etherscan-api

Etherscan API

A way to access the etherscan.io api using promises. Fetch a diverse set of information about the blockchain.

Written in TypeScript, shipped as an ES module with bundled type declarations. Requires Node.js >= 20.

Mainnet

import { init } from 'etherscan-api';

const api = init('YourApiKey');
const balance = await api.account.balance('0xde0b295669a9fd93d5f28d9ec85e40f4cb697bae');
console.log(balance);

Example in the wild

• Polymer3 based example

Zero dependencies / custom HTTP transport

This library has no runtime dependencies — requests use Node's built-in https module. If you need custom networking (a proxy, retries, a different agent), pass your own transport as the 4th argument to init. It receives the fully-qualified URL and must resolve with the parsed JSON body:

import { init } from 'etherscan-api';

// (url, { timeout, method, body }) => Promise<object>
// `method`/`body` are only set for the POST contract-verification endpoints;
// for read-only use you can ignore them.
async function request(url, { timeout, method = 'GET', body }) {
  const res = await fetch(url, {
    method,
    body,
    headers: body ? { 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' } : undefined,
    signal: AbortSignal.timeout(timeout),
  });
  return res.json();
}

const api = init('apikey', null, 10000, request);

Security notes

• The API key travels in the request URL on GET requests. Etherscan requires apikey as a query parameter, so it is part of every GET request URL. Treat full request URLs as secrets: do not log them, and be careful with proxies, APM tools, and access logs that capture URLs. A custom transport receives the URL containing the key — never write it to logs verbatim. (The library itself never puts the URL or key into thrown errors.) The POST contract-verification endpoints are the exception: there the key is sent in the form body and the URL is a bare /v2/api.
• The default transport refuses cleartext http://. Requests go to https://api.etherscan.io over TLS with certificate validation on. If a request somehow targets an http:// URL, the default transport rejects rather than sending the key unencrypted; pass { allowInsecure: true } in the transport options only if you deliberately need cleartext (e.g. a local test server).
• The default transport caps the response body at 50 MB to guard against a memory-exhaustion response. Override with maxResponseBytes in the transport options if you expect larger payloads.

Overriding the transport options

init only ever passes timeout to the transport, so allowInsecure and maxResponseBytes are set by wrapping the default transport, which is exported as httpTransport:

import { init, httpTransport } from 'etherscan-api';

const api = init('apikey', 'mainnet', 10000, (url, options) =>
  httpTransport(url, { ...options, maxResponseBytes: 200 * 1024 * 1024 }));

Selecting a chain (Etherscan V2 / multichain)

Etherscan deprecated the V1 API on 2025-08-15. This library now talks to a single base URL — https://api.etherscan.io/v2/api — and selects the network with a chainid query parameter. One API key works across all chains.

Pass a chain name (or a numeric chainid) as the second argument to init:

import { init } from 'etherscan-api';

// apikey, chain, timeout
const api = init('YourApiKey', 'sepolia', 3000);

Supported chain names:

Name	chainid
mainnet / homestead / ethereum	1
sepolia	11155111
holesky	17000
arbitrum	42161
optimism	10
base	8453
polygon	137
bsc	56
avalanche	43114

Any other chain is reachable by passing its numeric chainid directly, e.g. init('YourApiKey', 59144) for Linea.

Retired testnets (ropsten, rinkeby, kovan, goerli, morden, arbitrum_rinkeby, avalanche_fuji) have been removed and now throw an error with a helpful message — use sepolia or holesky instead.

Install

npm install etherscan-api --save

API Documentation

Full Api Docs

Development workflow

Source lives in ./src (TypeScript) and compiles to ./lib (ES modules + .d.ts).

• npm run build - compiles src → lib with tsc
• npm run typecheck - type-checks without emitting (replaces the old linter)
• npm test - builds, then runs the fully mocked test suite (no API key required)
• npm run docs - generates the API docs with TypeDoc
• npm run preversion - type-check + changelog before tagging a release
• npm run changelog - generates a changelog and pushes it

Sponsors

This library is maintained in my spare time. If your company relies on it, consider sponsoring — it directly funds maintenance and new features. Sponsors at $50/month or more get their logo placed here.

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