amBrain

HollaEx alternatives: revenue share, self-hosting and when to run your own exchange core

Published Sep 23, 2026Facts checked: Sep 23, 2026

Short answer

HollaEx sells a crypto exchange kit that runs on its cloud or on your own servers.[2] Its Enterprise Cloud plan lists "Low revenue sharing at 15%" among its features, and the pricing page's own structured data prices that plan at $35,000 USD "billed yearly"; a two-week Operator Trial is free, subject to approval.[1] Stay while the share and the yearly fee together cost less than running an exchange core, and while your exchange competes on markets and community rather than on its engine. Look at OpenDAX, ChainUp, AlphaPoint, B2TRADER or your own core when the share grows with every good month, or when a due-diligence review asks for licence terms you cannot show.

On this page

What HollaEx sells and how it charges

HollaEx describes itself as "more than just a white-label exchange, it is a complete crypto exchange kit that connects your business to the blockchain world", says operators can "host it locally or on the cloud", and states that its software "adheres to the CCXT crypto exchange API standard". Third-party services connect around it: "Integrate on/off ramps, crypto ATMs, KYC providers, compliance tools, blockchain analysis, customer support tools", with "User verification with Sumsub & iDenfy, or built-in exchange KYC".[2]

The pricing page shows two cloud plans and no dollar figure in its visible text. The Enterprise Cloud plan lists "Low revenue sharing at 15%" among its features, alongside "Unlimited registered user base", "Exchange wallet included", "KYC & AML plugins", "Market making bot", "HollaEx® cloud", "Connect custom domain", "Add custom tokens (x20)", "Downloadable mobile & desktop app" and "Testnet exchange environment". The page's own schema.org data, however, does carry prices: two offers, "Operator Trial (2-week free)" at "0" USD and "Enterprise Cloud (billed yearly)" at "35000" USD.[1]

The trial is time-boxed and gated: "Operator Trial 2-Week Free *", with "Your exchange hosted on HollaEx® cloud" and the asterisk reading "* Subject to approval."[1]

On-premise is offered but not priced: the pricing page covers only the two cloud plans and does not mention on-premise deployment anywhere, and the former /pricing-on-premise address now redirects to it.[1] The home page still says you can "host it locally or on the cloud".[2]

Older USD plans still circulate on third-party pages. AlphaPoint, a competing vendor, quotes HollaEx tiers of "Cloud Basic: $900/month", "Cloud Crypto Pro: $2,400/month" and "Cloud Enterprise: $13,900/quarter", with "On-premise Exchange: Custom pricing" and a "free, open-source version for teams comfortable with self-hosting".[4] None of those three figures appears on HollaEx's pricing page today; the figure that does appear there is the $35,000 yearly offer in the page's structured data.[1]

The kit's own source is not on GitHub under the vendor's organisation. On 2026-09-23 the hollaex organisation listed 16 public repositories — libraries, tools and forks such as hollaex-node-lib, hollaex-apidoc, hollaex-cli and hollaex-web-lib — and none of them is the exchange kit; the main libraries carry MIT (hollaex-node-lib) and Apache-2.0 (hollaex-apidoc) licences.[3] The address github.com/hollaex/hollaex-kit returns 404.

The pricing page does not define what counts as revenue for the 15% share. Trading fees only, or also withdrawal fees, listing fees and token income: the answer changes the bill, and it belongs in the contract rather than on a marketing page.

HollaEx vs the alternatives vs an own exchange core

Six options, by what each vendor publishes
OptionModelPublished priceCode and hostingExit and data terms
HollaExExchange kit, hosted locally or on HollaEx's cloud[2]"Low revenue sharing at 15%" on Enterprise Cloud, priced at $35,000 USD "billed yearly" in the page's structured data; two-week trial subject to approval; on-premise not priced[1]No first-party kit repository among the organisation's 16 public repositories[3]Not published
OpenDAX (Openware)Open-source stack plus the commercial OpenDAX Aurora[7]Aurora: a "Perpetual Software License" whose "Lifetime software license grants you the rights to use the software as long as you need it - with only one-time payment"; no dollar figure on the page[7]Core licensed Apache-2.0, last push 2 December 2023[5]; "BaseApp license only allows Non-Commercial use of this component" without a commercial licence[6]Aurora: "Access to the source code"; "deployed on your Cloud or Baremetal hosting"[7]
ChainUpWhite-label exchange, SaaS or on-premise[8]An "Annual Fee" and a "Technical Service Fee", both "as agreed and set forth in Order Form"[8]The on-premise licence permits use "solely for your own single legal entity and for the operation of one exchange only"; the source code "shall remain the exclusive property of ChainUp"[8]On termination "you will promptly delete and purge the Product from your system or return the Product to ChainUp"[8]; on renewal ChainUp "is entitled to adjust any price, fee, payment or consideration"[9]
AlphaPoint"Platforms for institutional treasury, trading, payments, and liquidity"[10]Not published on its own site; its blog says "AlphaPoint offers tailored pricing based on the unique needs of each business"[4]Source-code access not stated[4]Not published
B2TRADER (B2Broker)A "pre-configured SaaS model" that charges by accounts rather than by traded volume[12]"Starting from $2,500 / mo" or "Free with liquidity"[11]Vendor-hosted SaaS[12]Not published
Your own exchange coreMatching engine, wallets and back office built to your specificationNo revenue share; build cost plus operationsYour code under your development contract; your hostingYour data

Stay on HollaEx if…

  1. 1.You are testing whether an exchange has a market at all. A revenue share costs little while revenue is small, and the two-week Operator Trial lets you see a live exchange before signing anything.[1] Building an exchange core to test demand is the expensive way round.
  2. 2.Your market makers and bots already speak CCXT. HollaEx states that its software "adheres to the CCXT crypto exchange API standard",[2] so existing tooling connects without adapter work. That is a real saving in the first months.
  3. 3.Your difference is listings, region or community, not the engine. If clients pick you for the coins you list and the language you speak, a kit that bundles wallet, KYC plugins and a market making bot in one plan[1] keeps your spending on what they actually choose you for.

Consider leaving HollaEx if…

  1. 1.Symptom: the revenue share is now your largest technology cost. The published rate is 15%.[1] On that rate, $50,000 of monthly revenue sends $7,500 to the platform and $500,000 sends $75,000 — our arithmetic, not a figure HollaEx publishes. A fixed licence or your own team does not grow with revenue; the share does.
  2. 2.Symptom: a due-diligence review asks which licence your exchange software is under. Investors, banking partners and regulators ask. The kit is not among the organisation's public repositories, which are libraries and tools under MIT and Apache-2.0.[3] Without the licence text for the exact version you run, the question stays open.
  3. 3.Symptom: your matching rules, fee model or custody design must differ from every other exchange on the same kit. When the exchange itself is the product — order types, market-maker programmes, derivatives, a custody model your regulator prefers — the kit's release plan starts to set your product plan.

What to settle before moving an exchange off HollaEx

ItemWhy it mattersWhat to do
Wallets and on-chain balancesThe Enterprise Cloud plan includes "Exchange wallet included"[1]Establish in writing who holds which keys, then plan the sweep of every chain to the new wallets with on-chain verification
User accounts and KYC recordsVerification runs through "Sumsub & iDenfy, or built-in exchange KYC"[2]Check where KYC files physically sit and what consent is needed to move them
Open orders and trade historyOrder books cannot be copied mid-sessionCancel open orders at a published cutover time; export full trade and ledger history for tax and regulatory records
Market makers and API clientsThey connect through a CCXT-compatible API[2]Give them the new endpoints and a testnet weeks before cutover; the old plan includes "Testnet exchange environment",[1] so the new platform needs one too
Custom tokens and marketsThe cloud plan allows "Add custom tokens (x20)"[1]Re-create token contracts, market pairs, tick and lot sizes and fee tiers, and test deposits per chain
Domain and apps"Connect custom domain" and "Downloadable mobile & desktop app" are part of the plan[1]Publish apps under your own developer accounts and move DNS last
Revenue-share settlementThe published rate is 15%, with no revenue definition on the page[1]Agree the final statement period and the revenue definition used in it

A migration path in four steps

  1. 1.Settle custody and data first. Key ownership, the wallet sweep plan, where KYC data sits, and the export format for users, balances and history.
  2. 2.Stand up the new core in a testnet. Matching engine, wallets, KYC and the public API, with your market makers connected and trading against each other; the engine design is covered in a matching engine in Rust.
  3. 3.Run a shadow period. Mirror balances into the new system daily and reconcile every asset to the chain before any user moves.
  4. 4.Cut over at a published time. Halt trading, cancel open orders, sweep wallets, load final balances, reopen on the new platform, and keep the old history available read-only.

What drives the cost of building your own

These are the cost drivers, not a price.

  • Matching engine and order book. Price-time priority, order types, replay and recovery.
  • Wallets and custody. Every chain adds a node or a provider, deposit detection, withdrawal signing and a hot-cold split.
  • KYC, AML and blockchain analysis. Usually connected vendors, each with its own contract and data flow.
  • Public API. REST and WebSocket; CCXT compatibility is a design choice that saves market makers work.[2]
  • Liquidity. A market making bot, external market makers, or both.
  • Admin and listing tools. Token onboarding, fee tiers, limits, manual reviews.
  • Security. Key management, penetration tests and incident response.
  • What you do not have to write from scratch. OpenDAX's core is Apache-2.0 licensed,[5] though its BaseApp front end "only allows Non-Commercial use" without a commercial licence.[6] Read the licence of every component before you plan around it; where to start with your own trading platform covers the decisions that come first.
  • Operations. Crypto markets never close, so on-call cover is continuous.

Frequently asked questions

The Enterprise Cloud plan lists "Low revenue sharing at 15%" among its features, and the pricing page's structured data prices that plan at $35,000 USD "billed yearly"; the Operator Trial is "2-Week Free *", subject to approval. On-premise deployment is not priced on the page.[1] USD tiers quoted on third-party pages, such as a competitor's comparison blog, do not appear on HollaEx's pricing page today.[4]

HollaEx describes a kit you can "host it locally or on the cloud".[2] No first-party kit repository was found: the organisation's 16 public repositories are libraries and tools, with MIT and Apache-2.0 licences on the main libraries.[3] Ask for the licence text of the exact version you would run.

HollaEx says you can "host it locally or on the cloud".[2] On-premise pricing is not published: the pricing page covers only the two cloud plans.[1]

The Enterprise Cloud plan lists hosting, the exchange wallet, KYC and AML plugins, a market making bot, apps and a testnet.[1] The page does not define the revenue base the 15% is taken from, so settle that in the contract.

OpenDAX, with an Apache-2.0 core last pushed in December 2023[5] and a commercial Aurora licence that includes source-code access;[7] ChainUp, with an annual fee and a technical service fee set in an order form and source code that "shall remain the exclusive property of ChainUp";[8] AlphaPoint, with "tailored pricing" per its own blog;[4] B2TRADER, "Starting from $2,500 / mo" or "Free with liquidity";[11] or your own exchange core.

Disclosure: this page is published by amBrain. "amBrain is a Yerevan, Armenia software engineering company building low latency trading platforms, matching engines, and real-time bidding systems in Rust." The last row of the comparison table is the kind of work amBrain does. Every vendor fact on this page links to its source, and one source, AlphaPoint's comparison blog, is a competitor of HollaEx's and is labelled as such. HollaEx, OpenDAX, ChainUp, AlphaPoint and B2TRADER are trademarks of their owners and are used only to identify the products discussed.

Sources

  1. [1]HollaEx, Pricing (Operator Trial and Enterprise Cloud feature lists, and the page's schema.org Product offers). Vendor's own page · checked Sep 23, 2026
  2. [2]HollaEx, Home page. Vendor's own page · checked Sep 23, 2026
  3. [3]GitHub, Public repositories of the hollaex organisation, GitHub REST API. Official documentation · checked Sep 23, 2026
  4. [4]AlphaPoint, AlphaPoint vs. HollaEx: A Comprehensive Comparison of White-Label Crypto Exchange Solutions (a competing vendor's comparison of its own product with HollaEx). Third-party source · checked Sep 23, 2026
  5. [5]GitHub, openware/opendax repository metadata, GitHub REST API. Official documentation · checked Sep 23, 2026
  6. [6]Openware, BaseApp repository and README. Vendor's own page · checked Sep 23, 2026
  7. [7]Openware, OpenDAX product page. Vendor's own page · checked Sep 23, 2026
  8. [8]ChainUp, Terms. Vendor's published terms · checked Sep 23, 2026
  9. [9]ChainUp, General terms and conditions. Vendor's published terms · checked Sep 23, 2026
  10. [10]AlphaPoint, Home page. Vendor's own page · checked Sep 23, 2026
  11. [11]B2Broker, Fees and pricing. Vendor's own page · checked Sep 23, 2026
  12. [12]B2Broker, What is B2TRADER and how does it work. Vendor's own page · checked Sep 23, 2026

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