Although the cost of servers and technology have gone down significantly in the past decade, cost of market data (stock API) keeps going up year after year. It's extremely challenging to find good and clean data for US markets and global markets. Below are a list of good stock API that we have curated at Columbia University and are widely used amongst member of our quant trading community.
6 best stock APIs
- Finnhub Stock API
- Morningstar stock API
- Xignite API
- Bloomberg API
- Google sheet finance
- Exegy
1. Finnhub.io Stock API
Coverage: Stock API with Global markets (60+ stock exchanges) data, forex, crypto
Historical market data coverage: 20+ years EOD , intraday data
Tick data: 20 years
Fundamental data: Global coverage of Company profile, 30+ years of financial statements, Analyst’s price target and recommendation, EPS/Sale surprises.
Alternative data: Earnings call transcripts, global M&A data
Stock API Access: REST API and Websocket
Pricing : Free plan comes with 60 API calls/minute
Comment: Institutional-grade data with the most generous free plan. Finnhub is the most comprehensive instituional-grade stock API available for retail investors at this point.
I hope you found this guide helpful and our experience at Columbia university can help you find the most suitable API for your trading/research.
2. Morningstar stock API
Coverage: Stock API with Global markets (60+ stock exchanges) data, forex, crypto
Historical market data coverage: 20+ years EOD , intraday data
Tick data: 20 years available for instituional only.
Fundamental data: Global coverage with 65,000 companies.
Comment: Awesome API. Morningstar stock API is powering some of the best companies out there.
3. Xignite stock API
Coverage: Stock API with Global markets (30+ stock exchanges) data, forex, crypto
Historical market data coverage: 20+ years EOD , intraday data
Tick data: 20 years available for multiple markets
Fundamental data: Global coverage powered by Factset Fundamentals.
Comment: Enterprise-grade API. Xignite has big clients such as Robinhood and Stocktwits.
4. Bloomberg stock API
If you have access to a Bloomberg terminal, you can get ANY financial data you ever need out of this API. It's an amazing product with every data from historical price, tick data, to fundamentals, economic and alternative data. As an example of in depth marco analysis, You can read more about Fed's policy examination on University of washington's post.
5. Google sheet finance
Only support last price plus a few metrics but has global coverage and is free!
6. Exegy
Reputable real-time market data provider with enterprise-grade feed. They have direct connection with exchanges, which make it suitable for HFT and applications sensitive to latency.
7. ValueInvesting.io Valuation API
This is an honorable mention for ValueInvesting.io API where you can obtain fair value of global stocks + pre-built DCF models readily available in an API. Here are a few examples of prebuilt WACC and DCF models:
8. AlphaResearch SEC Filings Search API
If you are looking for API infrastructure to do full-text search for SEC Filings, earnings call transcripts, SEDAR and other global filings, AlphaResearch would be a great option for this. You can learn more here. Alpha Research is recommended as 1 of the best equity research platforms.
Here are a few examples of SEC Filings search capability available on AlphaResearch:
