Octav vs Nansen: Portfolio Data vs Analytics

Nansen and Octav get compared because both touch wallets, but they answer different questions. Nansen tells you who is doing what on-chain — smart money, wallet labels, flow. Octav tells you what a wallet actually holds, decoded and priced across every chain. If you need an accurate portfolio, that second question is the one that matters, and it is Octav's whole job.

Two different products

Nansen is an analytics platform. Its value is labelled intelligence: which wallets are accumulating, where flows are heading, what "smart money" is doing. That is research, not portfolio accounting.

Octav is a portfolio data engine — an API and an app on one backend — built to resolve any address into every decoded position: lending, LP, staking, vaults, perps and options, valued at the block timestamp. In our nine-provider benchmark Octav scored the maximum on coverage and DeFi decoding; Nansen, measured on the same wallets, scored lower on coverage and at the bottom on cost.

The same data in the API or the app

Everything the Octav API returns is also in the app, free to use at pro.octav.fi — search any address and read the full decoded portfolio, no analytics subscription required.

One wallet, 48 chains, every protocol position resolved individually — Aave, Yearn, Euler, Uniswap, Hyperliquid — priced and categorised.

Why Octav wins for portfolio accuracy

Analytics tools optimise for signal, not for reconciling every position in a wallet to a correct dollar value. When the goal is an accurate portfolio — for reporting, NAV, tax, or a product you are building — coverage and decoding accuracy dominate, and that is measured, not asserted: Octav ties the top benchmark scores and is the only provider tested that also decodes options, perps and Solana DeFi. See Octav vs DeBank vs Zerion for the head-to-head against the other API leaders.

Which should you pick?

• Nansen — if you want research: smart-money tracking, labels and flow analytics.
• Octav — if you want the portfolio itself decoded correctly, as an API to build on or a free app to look at.

They are complements as often as alternatives. Start with any wallet at pro.octav.fi, or read the benchmark for the method behind the numbers.