If you want your next fintech development project to succeed, you need a reliable stream of data, updated in real-time, from the stock market. Thanks to high demand and enormous potential in the financial data space, financial market data has turned into a $30 billion – and growing – industry, and dozens of new options for fintech developers have emerged.
The right stock API can provide your app or platform with all the accurate, thorough information it needs to perform optimally. But with so many choices available, how can you decide what’s right for your business?
The Top Stock APIs for Open-Source Fintech Developers
These are some of the best options available to you:
1. Alpha Vantage. Backed by Y Combinator and incubated at Harvard Innovation Labs, Alpha Vantage prides itself on being a free, open-source stock market API. For more than five years, Alpha Vantage has provided resources for more than 500 open-source libraries on GitHub – and for projects in languages like Python, Java, and JavaScript. It provides historical information on stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds, data on cryptocurrencies, and even derived financial data (like 50+ technical indicators). One of the most interesting features of Alpha Vantage is its suite of products for time series analysis – making it the ideal option for pulling historical information. It’s also designed to be friendly to most developers, with support for many different programming languages.
2. IEX Cloud. With IEX Cloud, open-source fintech developers can gather both first-party exchange data and third-party financial market data. You can get real-time and historical market data from IEX, but also a wide range of data streams form market-aggregated stocks, forex, crypto, and alternative sources (like news media).
3. Zirra. Zirra is a business intelligence company that relies on artificial intelligence (AI) to create better, more dynamic financial data products. With the Zirra signature API, developers can get access to 100+ time series signals for more than 16,000 companies. In addition to real-time data, you can use this API to pull historical data from as far back as 2014. You can even get information on secondary metrics, like media sentiment and employee data.
4. Bloomberg API. Bloomberg Terminals have been around for decades, but the modern Bloomberg API suite is better suited to today’s demanding environment for tech and innovation. At Bloomberg, you’ll gain access to several different APIs that pull financial data from a wide range of different sources. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to be a Bloomberg customer to use it.
5. QuoteMedia. Developers from around the world rely on QuoteMedia as an enterprise product for pulling financial data. At QuoteMedia, each stream of data is tailored specifically to each client, so you can get exactly the financial data stream you need to build and maintain your products. In addition to streaming real-time and historical stock market data, you can get news and headlines, access to options and option chains, and even analyst ratings and earnings.
6. Google API. If you were a fan of Google Finance API or Yahoo Finance API, you know these APIs have been officially discontinued. However, you can still get access to important financial market data through Google Sheets. If you don’t mind working with spreadsheets, it could be a convenient and reliable option – but if you need more advanced functionality, you should look elsewhere.
Making the Right Choice
The stock API world is exploding with new products and new technological innovation, so whatever you’re hoping to build as a fintech developer, there’s an API for you. Review your options carefully, look at both functionality and usability, and pay attention to how many people are relying on each product.