Crypto Fear and Greed Index: how it works and how to use it
What drives the crypto Fear and Greed Index, what its 0–100 zones mean and how bitcoin traded after extreme fear since 2018. Data as of October 11, 2026.
Contents
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is a daily score of bitcoin market sentiment on a 0–100 scale, where 0 means "Extreme Fear" and 100 means "Extreme Greed." The best-known version, published by alternative.me, blends volatility, momentum and volume, social media activity, bitcoin dominance and Google Trends into one number. It does not forecast price. It tells you how emotionally the market is reacting to what has already happened, which makes it a crowd thermometer rather than a buy or sell signal.
Below: how the crypto fear and greed index is calculated, what each zone means, how bitcoin performed after extreme fear and extreme greed since 2018, and what the index looked like on October 11, 2026.
How the crypto fear and greed index is calculated
alternative.me lists six inputs and their weights on its methodology page:
| Component | Weight | What it measures | Pushes toward "greed" when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volatility | 25% | Current BTC volatility and max drawdowns vs. 30- and 90-day averages | Volatility is below normal |
| Momentum and volume | 25% | Current volume and momentum vs. 30- and 90-day averages | Heavy buying volume in a rising market |
| Social media | 15% | Bitcoin hashtag posts on X (Twitter), their count and interaction speed | Activity is unusually high |
| Surveys | 15% | Weekly reader polls; the site says they are currently paused | — |
| Dominance | 10% | Bitcoin's share of total crypto market cap | BTC share falls as money rotates into altcoins |
| Google Trends | 10% | Changes in bitcoin-related search volume | Depends on which queries are rising |
Three details from the same page matter. The index covers bitcoin only; separate altcoin indices are promised but not live. It updates once a day, so an intraday crash only shows up the next day. And the exact normalization formula is not published, so you cannot recompute the number yourself, only understand what feeds it.
The survey input is paused and Reddit sentiment is not yet in the live index, according to the site. In practice, more than half of the weight (volatility plus momentum) is bitcoin's own price action. That is why the index largely echoes recent BTC moves: after a sharp drop it is almost always in fear, after a steady rally it sits in greed.
What the 0–100 zones mean
The alternative.me page only defines the two ends of the scale. Its public API, however, labels every reading, and across the full history since February 2018 the bands work out as:
- 0–25: Extreme Fear. Sell-offs, high volatility, rising searches about crashes.
- 26–46: Fear. Cautious market, buyers hold back.
- 47–54: Neutral. No clear emotional tilt.
- 55–75: Greed. Rising price, growing volume and attention.
- 76–100: Extreme Greed. Euphoria and more speculative buying.
The bands are not symmetrical. The neutral band is only eight points wide, so most of the time the index reads either fear or greed, and the label alone says little without the history behind it.
The fear and greed index on October 11, 2026
As of 4:00 AM ET on October 11, 2026, the bitcoin fear and greed index stood at 61, "Greed," according to alternative.me data in our dashboard. It was 64 a day earlier, 65 a week earlier and 56 a month earlier. Bitcoin traded near $83,000 on Binance at the time (live price in the market brief).
The past year is more telling. From October 12, 2025 to October 11, 2026, the index spent 188 of 365 days in Extreme Fear, 109 in Fear, 16 in Neutral, 51 in Greed and just one day in Extreme Greed: September 22, 2026, when it reached 78 and BTC closed near $86,200 (Binance daily candles).
The year opened with a sharp flip. On October 10, 2025 the index read 64; on October 11 it was 27, after a leveraged liquidation cascade of roughly $19 billion, as estimated by RockawayX. Sentiment bottomed in February 2026, when the index hit 5 on February 12 and again on February 23. Tekedia called it the lowest reading in history, but the API also shows a 5 on August 22, 2019, so it is more accurate to say the index matched its all-time low. BTC's daily close on February 12 was about $66,300.
On our market temperature gauge, the fear and greed index is just one of eight inputs. On October 11, 2026 it contributed 61, while the overall temperature was 37 out of 100: cycle gauges such as MVRV (1.54) and the Mayer multiple (1.15) remained far from overheated. More on those in our guide to bitcoin cycle indicators.
Does "buy when there's extreme fear" actually work?
The popular line is "be greedy when others are fearful." We tested what bitcoin did after days in each zone using the full alternative.me history from February 1, 2018 to October 11, 2026, with daily BTC/USDT closes from Binance. The table shows the median BTC return 90 and 365 days after a day in each zone, and the share of cases where price ended higher.
| Zone on entry day | Days | Median after 90 days | Higher after 90 days | Median after 365 days | Higher after 365 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All days | 3,081 / 2,806 | +3.1% | 54% | +42.3% | 65% |
| Extreme Fear (0–25) | 731 / 551 | −4.1% | 45% | +35.1% | 61% |
| Fear (26–46) | 880 / 800 | +2.7% | 52% | +44.7% | 70% |
| Neutral (47–54) | 399 / 385 | +7.1% | 60% | +98.4% | 72% |
| Greed (55–75) | 790 / 789 | +5.1% | 58% | +41.8% | 61% |
| Extreme Greed (76–100) | 281 | +10.1% | 60% | +16.3% | 63% |
First number in "Days" is the 90-day sample, second is the 365-day sample. CoinLab calculation.
The result is awkward for the adage. Buying on an Extreme Fear day did not give an edge on average: the 90-day median was worse than buying on a random day, and more often negative. The reason is simple: extreme fear lasts weeks or months, and in the 2018, 2022 and 2026 bear markets price kept falling after the first "panic" days. Extreme greed, by contrast, often rode a strong trend, so price was usually higher 90 days later, but the one-year result was the weakest of all zones.
K33 Research reached a related conclusion in 2022: buying extreme fear had paid off on median and average returns, though sell-offs often continued after such readings. Our numbers, which add 2022–2026, suggest that "paid off" holds only over long horizons and was no better than buying on a random day.
Caveats: days inside one fear episode are strongly correlated, so there are far fewer independent episodes than rows. A handful of cycles drive the result, and the next one may play out differently.
How to use the fear and greed index in practice
- Watch the change, not the level. A one-day drop from 64 to 27, as in October 2025, says more than the number 27 itself.
- Compare it with price. If price makes a new high but the index no longer reaches its prior greed, buyers are tiring. If price falls but the index stops making new lows, panic is fading.
- Check leverage. Crowd mood reads better next to derivatives data: the funding rate and open interest. Greed with hot funding and rising OI is riskier than greed driven by spot buying.
- Add slow metrics. The index reflects days and weeks. MVRV, the 200-week average and other cycle gauges on the bitcoin page say more about where the cycle stands.
- Use it as an emotion check. It is most useful for spotting your own panic or FOMO and not acting at its peak.
Other fear and greed indices
Several different indices share the "Fear & Greed" name, and on the same day their readings can differ noticeably.
- CoinMarketCap runs its own index with five inputs: momentum of the top 10 coins excluding stablecoins, BTC and ETH implied volatility (Volmex BVIV and EVIV), the options put/call ratio, BTC market cap relative to stablecoins, and CMC's own search and user engagement data. It is broader than alternative.me's and not bitcoin-only (CoinMarketCap announcement).
- CNN Fear & Greed Index is a US stock market gauge built on seven equity indicators, including the VIX, options and demand for bonds. It does not track crypto, but it is useful context: when stocks are fearful, bitcoin often struggles too.
When a headline says "fear and greed index falls to 20," check which index it means.
Common mistakes
- Treating extreme fear as a buy signal. Since 2018, bitcoin was lower, not higher, 90 days after an Extreme Fear day on median.
- Treating extreme greed as a sell signal. In a strong trend greed can last for months; around the turn of 2020–2021 the index stayed at 90 or above for 18 days in a row while price kept rising.
- Expecting speed. The index updates once a day and lags intraday moves.
- Applying it to altcoins. The alternative.me index is calculated from bitcoin data only.
- Mixing up indices. alternative.me, CoinMarketCap and CNN use different inputs; their numbers are not directly comparable.
FAQ
Where can I check the bitcoin fear and greed index? On alternative.me, through its free API, and in our market brief next to other market gauges.
How often does the index update? Once a day. A sharp intraday move shows up in the index only after the next daily recalculation.
What is the lowest fear and greed reading ever? According to the alternative.me API, the low is 5: on August 22, 2019 and on February 12 and 23, 2026. The high is 95, reached several times between June 2019 and February 2021.
Can you trade on the fear and greed index alone? Data since 2018 shows that a simple "buy extreme fear" rule did not beat buying on a random day. The index works better as one filter alongside price, derivatives and on-chain metrics.
This is not investment advice.
