Cryptohopper Alternative for Kraken and Crypto.com in 2026: What Cryptohopper Costs Now That the Free Plan Is Gone, What Its A.I. Does, and the Bots to Compare

Cryptohopper changed in 2026. It retired its free Pioneer plan on June 18, so automated trading now needs a paid plan starting at $29 a month, and the features it calls A.I. are in the $129 Hero plan. If you trade on Kraken or the Crypto.com Exchange and are deciding whether to stay, there are three kinds of alternative: another hosted bot of the same type, the free bots the two exchanges now run themselves, or a platform that decides and trades within limits you set. This page lays out what Cryptohopper includes now, how its stops work, the alternatives that connect to Kraken and Crypto.com, and what a month of bot trading costs in exchange fees, all as of November 6, 2026.

What Cryptohopper costs and includes in 2026

Every plan includes paper trading, backtesting and a visual strategy designer, according to the pricing page. Market-making is listed under Hero. On top of the plan, the marketplace sells strategies, signals, templates and copy bots from outside sellers: strategies were listed from $7.99 to $89.99 and copy bots run $9.99 to $99.99 a month, and Cryptohopper keeps 30% of each sale. Cryptohopper lists 11 exchanges, including Kraken and Crypto.com, and connects through API keys or a sign-in it calls Fast Connect. It says it never asks for withdrawal rights; for Kraken its guide has you enable every permission except Withdraw, and for Crypto.com you whitelist Cryptohopper's IP addresses on a trading key.

One detail matters for US traders on Crypto.com. Cryptohopper's help article on what is available by country names three options for US users: Coinbase Advanced, Binance US and Kraken. Crypto.com is not on that list, so confirm with Cryptohopper before you plan a US Crypto.com setup around it. Crypto.com's own Exchange and its App are also different products, which this explainer sorts out.

What Cryptohopper means by A.I.

Cryptohopper's feature page says its A.I. analyzes the strategies you give it and decides on its own which one to use. Its help center defines the term: A.I. stands for "Algorithmic Intelligence. No, it's not Artificial Intelligence." It works like an automatic backtester that scores your strategies against recent data and follows the one that has been most accurate. That is a useful tool if you have several strategies and want the bot to switch between them, and it is only in the Hero plan.

Where Cryptohopper's stops live

Cryptohopper's bot checks take-profit, trailing stop-loss, stop-loss and DCA settings every 16 seconds on a live account and then sends the sell. We found no Cryptohopper page saying a stop rests on the exchange's own books, so the stops are evaluated on Cryptohopper's servers. Its help center also notes that a stop-loss timeout can delay a sale after the level is hit and that an "only sell in profit" setting can block a trailing stop. Its terms say it cannot guarantee uninterrupted service and cap its liability at the lower of $1,000 or six months of fees.

Server-held stops are the norm on Crypto.com for any bot. When we built JorgAI's Crypto.com connection, the Exchange rejected every stop order we sent, so JorgAI holds its crypto exits on its own servers too. Kraken is different: its API accepts stop-loss, take-profit and trailing-stop orders that the exchange holds itself. What happens to your stop loss when the connection drops covers both cases.

Alternatives that work with Kraken and Crypto.com

Three notes on the table. 3Commas and Gainium do not list Crypto.com, so they are Kraken-only choices here; the 3Commas alternative page compares that group in more detail. Gunbot runs its trading engine on your own computer or server, so the bot stops when that machine does. Bitsgap's free plan includes no live grid or DCA bots, so the first useful plan is Basic at $29. The Kraken bot list and the Crypto.com bot list cover each exchange on its own.

The free option: the exchanges' own bots

Both exchanges now run bots themselves, which changes the math if all you want is a grid or a recurring buy. Kraken launched Smart Grid on September 9, 2026 for eligible Kraken Pro users in the Kraken Desktop app, with backtesting, editing of a running grid and a base stop loss; the launch post mentions no fee and calls it "not a passive income product." Kraken's recurring buys cost 1% per trade plus the spread, against 0.40% to 0.80% for an order placed through Kraken Pro. The Crypto.com Exchange runs DCA, grid and TWAP bots on its website, not in its app, with no additional fee beyond normal trading fees. Grid vs DCA vs rules-based trading on Kraken explains when each kind of bot fits and when it breaks.

What a month of bot trading costs in exchange fees

The subscription is only part of the bill. Every order a bot places pays the exchange, and the order type decides the rate: a market order pays the taker fee and a resting limit order usually pays the lower maker fee. Here is what a fresh account pays on Kraken Pro, whose tier is reassessed after every trade, and on the Crypto.com Exchange at its first level, for a month of buys and sells:

Two things follow. At $5,000 a month, a bot that trades with market orders pays Kraken about twice what a grid bot resting limit orders pays, whichever platform runs it. And at these volumes the subscription can be the larger cost: Cryptohopper's Explorer plan at $29 a month is close to the Kraken fees on $5,000 of market orders. Kraken's fee tiers for a bot carries the same arithmetic up to $100,000 a month, and Crypto.com's fee page lists its higher levels.

Who should pick which

• You want a grid or DCA bot and nothing else: try the exchange's own bot first, Kraken Smart Grid or the Crypto.com Exchange bots, then Bitsgap or Altrady if you want more control.
• You like Cryptohopper's strategy designer and marketplace: staying is reasonable; the Explorer plan at $24.16 a month billed annually is the cheapest way back to automation, and A.I. strategy switching needs Hero.
• You want to write rules in plain if-then form: Coinrule.
• You already have TradingView alerts: TradersPost, with Crypto.com still in beta.
• You want your own machine to run everything: Gunbot.
• You want software to find and place trades within limits you set, and you also trade stocks: JorgAI.

Where JorgAI fits

JorgAI connects to Kraken and the Crypto.com Exchange with a trade-only API key: on Kraken the key has trading permissions and Withdraw left off (which toggles and why), and on Crypto.com you add JorgAI's outbound address to the key's IP whitelist. You set a daily spend, a position size, a cap on auto-trades per day, a stop loss and a trailing stop; the scanner runs around the clock because the market does, independent AI models vote on each setup, and a trade goes out only when they agree and the confidence clears your threshold. Entries are market orders, so they pay the taker rate in the table above. Exits go out as limit orders at the exit price, with a market order as the fallback, and JorgAI's servers hold them on both exchanges. The same account can trade stocks at Schwab, Tradier, tastytrade or Alpaca, which one trading bot for stocks and crypto explains. Plans are Starter at $14.99 a month, Plus at $39, Pro at $99 and Elite at $199; the free plan shows the system running on a simulated account before you connect anything. The Kraken and Crypto.com set-up guides walk the connection.

Quick answers

Is Cryptohopper still free?

No. The free Pioneer plan ended on June 18, 2026, and automated trading now needs a paid plan from $29 a month, or $24.16 billed annually. New accounts get a 3-day Explorer trial.

Does Cryptohopper work with Kraken and Crypto.com?

Both are on its exchange list. Its help article for US users names Kraken, Coinbase Advanced and Binance US, not Crypto.com, so US traders on Crypto.com should confirm before subscribing.

Is Cryptohopper's A.I. artificial intelligence?

Cryptohopper's own help center says A.I. stands for Algorithmic Intelligence, not artificial intelligence. It scores the strategies you give it and follows the most accurate one, and it is included only in the Hero plan.

Is there a free alternative to Cryptohopper for Kraken or Crypto.com?

The exchanges' own bots: Kraken Smart Grid in the Kraken Desktop app, and the Crypto.com Exchange's DCA, grid and TWAP bots on its website, with no added bot fee. WunderTrading also has a free tier with one bot of each kind.

Can Cryptohopper trade stocks?

No. Its exchange list is crypto exchanges only. To automate stocks and crypto from one platform, see one trading bot for stocks and crypto.

How we put this together. We read Cryptohopper's pricing page, help center, documentation, terms and marketplace on November 6, 2026, then each alternative's own pricing and exchange pages, and kept only platforms that state they connect to Kraken or the Crypto.com Exchange. Where a page was incomplete, the table says so. The fee table is arithmetic on Kraken's and Crypto.com's listed fees. The Crypto.com stop behavior comes from building JorgAI's own connection. JorgAI is our product; the other platforms are described from their own pages, and any of these prices can change, so check before you subscribe. More crypto pages are in the Crypto section. Education, not financial advice.

If you want to see how JorgAI behaves before you connect an exchange, start on the free plan: the same system on a simulated account, with nothing connected.

To see where a stop would sit on a trade you are planning, the stop-loss calculator turns a percentage or dollar risk into an exact price.

The crypto fee calculator shows the round-trip cost of a trade at Kraken or Crypto.com at your volume tier.

For what each connected broker's API supports, order types, sign-in rules, brackets, fractional shares, hours, assets and limits side by side, see the broker API capabilities page.