While working on the ASmap dashboard I collected a list of crawlers and DNS seeders. Ended up checking quite a few of them, so in case it helps someone, here is the list:
Crawlers / node datasets
(Every DNS seeder runs its own network crawler internally - some operators publish that crawler’s full view as a dump, which is why I put several of the seeders from the section below also in here)
| Source | What you get | Code | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| https://mainnet.achownodes.xyz/ | Full dnsseed.dump of achow101’s crawler: one line per known node with uptime stats (2h to 30d), block height, services, user agent. A makeseeds.py source with the widest service-bit coverage. |
achow101/dnsseedrs | live, fresh |
| https://bitcoin.fish.foo/ | Same dump format from Will Clark’s dnsseedrs instance. Not in Core’s vSeeds, so an independent vantage point | live, fresh | |
| https://bitnod.es/ | BitMEX Research node explorer: one cumulative “last seen” CSV per day with IP, country, ISP, services, user agent, height. Daily since 2026-06-26, weekly before. The site credits ayeowch/bitnodes as its network crawler. | ayeowch/bitnodes | live, fresh |
| https://btcnodes.io/ | Revival of the original bitnodes.io crawler. Full snapshots including Tor/I2P/CJDNS via /api/v1/snapshots/latest/; API history back to 2026-05-10. |
brunneis/btcnodes (bitnodes fork) | live, fresh |
| dsn.kastel.kit.edu/bitcoin | KIT DSN group research crawl: one dossier per day with per-node whois/ASN annotations under /bitcoin/snapshots/. The public index goes back to 2015-07 |
live, fresh | |
| https://haf.ovh/seed.txt | Full dnsseed.dump from seed.bitcoin.haf.ovh, run by Retropex. Not in Core’s vSeeds, so another independent vantage point |
live, fresh | |
| https://21.ninja/seeds.txt.gz | virtu’s crawler, also a makeseeds.py source. The dump is frozen since 2026-05-22; the 21.ninja data site itself is still up. |
virtu/p2p-crawler | stale since 2026-05 |
| https://bitcoin.sipa.be/seeds.txt.gz | sipa’s dnsseed.dump, the published file is frozen since 2025-11-22, even though the DNS seed itself is fine |
sipa/bitcoin-seeder | stale since 2025-11 |
| blockchair.com/bitcoin/nodes | Only a filtered “recently active” subset via api.blockchair.com/bitcoin/nodes, not a full crawl | live, fresh |
DNS seeders
- The eight mainnet seeds from Bitcoin Core: chainparams.cpp
- seed.bitcoin.wiz.biz returns IPv4 addresses only (no IPv6 records) and publishes no crawler dump, just an HTML status page (wiz/dnsseed-rust)
- seed.bitcoin.fish.foo is a ninth, non-Core seeder run by willcl-ark that also answers (its dump is in the table above)
- seed.bitcoin.haf.ovh is a tenth, non-Core seeder run by retropex that also answers and publishes a full dump (in the table above)
- Two former Core seeds are still live and answering:
dnsseed.bitcoin.dashjr-list-of-p2p-nodes.us(removed from vSeeds in Dec 2025, still in Knots’ chainparams.cpp) andseed.bitcoinstats.com(removed in Aug 2024)
octavio.xyz monitors the quality of some of these seeds daily (advertised, reachable, stale, pristine, duplicate) via a small JSON API, own measurements since 2026-05-17. It also hosts virtu’s older series (Oct 2022 to Nov 2025, originally at 21.ninja/dns-seeds) as static CSVs under demo-data/
Related, but no raw node data
- the dnsseedrs dashboard is willcl-ark’s frontend for his fish.foo dump above
- census.yonson.dev publishes feature-acceptance aggregates
- Seed Coat only record counts per seeder
- bitdis.org only Core/Knots totals
If you know a live source I missed, I’d be happy to hear about it. Thanks!