How Does Alpha Vantage Make Money
Stock APIs: Best 6 (free and paid) for 2020
Top 6 stock APIs to fuel your investing strategies and analytics
"We search through historical data looking for anomalous patterns that we would not expect to occur at random."
— Jim Simons, founder of Renaissance Technologies and considered one of the greatest quantitative investors of all time.
A stock API can make all the difference in finding these patterns.
In the previous decades, access to data has been through Bloomberg, FactSet, Thompson Reuters, CapIQ, and the likes for hefty fees. Two of the flagship products being the Bloomberg terminal and the Reuters Eikon, which can each cost between $20,000 — $24,000 per year per seat, not including setup or live fees.
Each has its advantages, but luckily , not necessary or often even advantageous to enter the space anymore, a simple stock API can be the answer you need. There is no need to drop money on a few gigs of data and a big piece of hardware that after additional fees could nearly buy you a new Tesla Model 3. Especially if you just need the raw data to gather your insights and run your testing.
The data providing space has exploded in the last decade, with quality, low-cost solutions for those who want either to tinker in the space as a hobbyist or serious professional investor. As someone who both worked for a hedge fund, run my own hobby algorithmic trading, and worked for a data provider, data is my life. I've bought nearly all the subscriptions and tested below providers for various use cases. If you're not an engineer, that's fine too, some of these have excel, google sheets, or other ways to get their data to make your life easier. Each of these stock API providers has a commercial option that's either self-serve or by contacting their support page.
Here's the lineup for best overall stock market APIs:
- Alpha Vantage
- Xignite
- Polygon.io
- Intrinio
- IEX Cloud
- Tradier (and other brokerages)
Best free stock market APIs:
- Alpha Vantage
- IEX Cloud
- Tradier (and other brokerages)
At the bottom are honorable mentions, special notes, and here's a link to a current Reddit thread, with additional insights.
1. Alpha Vantage
There is a reason why you see Alpha Vantage at the top of so many lists.
When it comes to free data for all, there isn't much that compares to Alpha Vantage. With easily the most generous free tier @ 5 stock API calls/minute & 500/day, they give anyone access to their entire data library, without having to input any card information. If you want additional usage, they have a simple pricing tier where you pay for more API calls.
Their documentation is clear and simple to use, spreadsheet support available, and they boast a massive GitHub following because of it. One of the original saviors of the yahoo finance survivors, they have constantly improved while only being on the market for a few years now. Access to 20 years historical data, FX, Crypto, sector performance, and technical indicators, this YC Harvard Alumni startup is an all around "yes" for both the hobbyist investor to the serious professional.
The downside of Alpha Vantage is they don't have much for alternative types of data. Other than sector performance and technical indicators, it's only price data, however if that's what you need, this is the place to go.
Best for: Serious to hobbyist investor, who wants all kinds of pricing data. Both technical and non-technical.
2. Xignite
If you don't care about price, and want to hammer the data provider with as many API calls as you can muster, then Xignite is 100% where you should look.
With customers like Wealthfront and Robinhood, they have already made themselves a name in the community. Boasting one of the largest selections of data packages, (pay is per package per region), these guys don't have an API limit.
Similar to Intrinio in the payment scheme, they differentiate themselves by focusing in on the commercial application market. They pride themselves on being possibly the best stock API in terms of technical infrastructure. They have a 7-day limited trial program, that doesn't really do them justice. They use a data-as-a-service model where you get their data down from the AWS cloud.
Another company with strong human interaction, they have a sales team that makes sure customers feel taken care of and supported.
The downside of these guys is price. A comparable package from Intrinio can cost maybe more than five times as much on Xignite's platform.
Best for: Serious investor, budget isn't an issue, or you don't want to deal with a database. For both technical and non-technical.
3. Polygon.io
Polygon is what happens if you combine Xignite and Intrinio, and keep them inside the US.
This a provider I skipped over in my last review, which I shouldn't have. They also boast unlimited API requests, and have 3 simple price tiers, Currencies + Crypto, US Stocks, and enterprise. I think of them as similar to Intrinio, but with a little more focus on the US, that makes them simple and easy to us. Their pricing can be a little cheaper due to this.
Powering massive sites like Robinhood and Alpaca, they have honed in on their specialty of US only, crypto, and FX markets, and do well there. Upon entering the site you see a lot of documentation speaking to their streaming and web-sockets, both great products.
Best for: Serious investor focused just on the US. Technical users preferred.
4. Intrinio
Intrinio is a different flavor of beast then the two previously.
Whereas Alpha Vantage maybe leading the charge for the democratized free data, Intrinio may be queen of the various types of alternative data. One of the main draws of the Intrinio platform is their massive library of extremely specific and alternative data with over 300 feeds!
They have a large number of SDKs built by them, and a chat box in the bottom right when you get onto the site. A quick, available, customer support to a real human was great to see and chat with upon entering the site. A bit more limited in their free trial, they allow you to get a good sense of what each package does before you decide on one.
As opposed to the rate limit of the above two, Intrinio is on a per package payment plan, meaning you pay for the data that you want. Everything is very specific from Irish Stock Exchange prices to their US advanced analytics package, so you can get exactly what you're looking for.
Each package has their own use terms and rate limits, so you'll have to check the terms before you subscribe for a package. They also have student, startup, military, and commercial prices on their UI.
For someone who is just looking to get the basic price data, their platform may be overwhelming or more than what you're looking for. Once you start to try to get a few different regions of data, the price really starts to rack up. They have a weak free tier, and often compete with Quandl for alt. data clients.
Best for: Serious investor, who values support and wants alternative data. For both technical and non-technical.
5. IEX Cloud
I'm a big fan of the book "Flash Boys", and love what IEX is looking to do, and their spinoff IEX Cloud is making a good run of it too… but maybe not as good as their exchange.
With this entry we return to a data provider with a truly free option for data, this is another platform you can start making calls to right now for nothing.
IEX Cloud is being continuously updated, they even added a premium data feature with some promising feeds. When it comes to any type of data from the IEX exchange, they are spot on. US prices are not an issue with these guys. They run into some issues when trying to spin up other exchange data, sometimes not being quite as accurate as one would like.
The group with the most unique payment structure, they work on a pay per message platform per month. So every month you have a certain number of "messages". A message is a unit that they have described in their docs. Each API call returns a "data weighting" attribute, they tell you how many messages you've used to make that call. Messages vary greatly in size and it's up to you to figure out how many messages you're going to use that month.
With different types of data though, and one of the cheapest alternatives, IEX Cloud is a solid up and coming platform that keeps getting better and better, and is apart of one of the (in my opinion) best exchanges in the country, with a mission to keep the markets fair.
Best for: Serious to hobbyist investor, mainly focused on the US. Technical preferred.
6. Tradier (and other brokerages)
There are a few great platforms out there that combine getting market data with their trading platform, Tradier is one of them.
With a fantastic community behind them, and a simple signup for their developer platform, you can start getting US delayed data (15 minutes) immediately. This is a standard for most brokerages to have something like this, but they also have an option to get real-time and international data if you upgrade to a full brokerage account with them.
The brokerage account is free, but they do have some inactivity fees, so if you want the data you're going to have to either make trades on their platform or take the hit on the inactivity fees (which, might be cheaper depending on your use case)
Most likely for cheap, pure price data solutions Alpha Vantage or IEX Cloud are going to be simpler integrations, but maybe getting everything from the same platform (if they have enough of the data you're looking for without the rate limits) this can be a solid option.
Best for: Serious or hobby investor who wants to trade and use data from the same platform. Preferably technical.
Honorable Mentions
Quandl: Similar products and alternative data to Intrinio, go here if Intrinio doesn't have what you want. They focus on selling alt data.
Tenquant: Probably the best up-and-comer, a fundamentals focused project still under construction.
Brokerages with Market Data:
- Alpaca — US only, but you can open a paper account and get data, and with a live account you can get data from Polygon. You can paper trade and get data without actually having to open up a brokerage account with them, and then can upgrade when you're ready.
- Interactive Brokers — Another data and quantitative investing platform, they have multiple tutorials to help you get started. This is another brokerage with a large online presence.
- ETRADE, Ally, Thinkorswim… A number of the main large firms also have market data APIs. The fees and rate limits vary on each of them.
How Does Alpha Vantage Make Money
Source: https://towardsdatascience.com/best-free-and-paid-stock-market-apis-for-2020-11adb98e7023
Posted by: youngoblecte.blogspot.com
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