In quantitative trading, data is everything. The quality of your backtests, strategies, and macro research depends on reliable, high-quality data. But finding the right provider - one that’s both affordable and meets your specific needs - can be daunting.
That’s why at QuantJourney, we’ve integrated with over 60 data providers, offering unparalleled market data connectivity for publicly available frameworks. From equities to forex, crypto to macroeconomic data, we provide seamless connections to platforms like EOD, IBKR, CCXT, FRED, and many more. This integration allows us to process data faster, validate inputs more efficiently, optimize workflows, and interact with both local and cloud databases.
And because no one wants to overspend on data, we’ve compiled this detailed guide to help you find the best providers for your needs - many of which are already included in the QuantJourney package!
Who Is This For?
Quants, Traders and Investors running strategies and backtests.
Fundamental analysts seeking detailed company and earnings data.
Crypto traders exploring market trends and sentiment.
Anyone needing cost-effective solutions to access high-quality data.
Core Market Data Providers
1. EOD Historical Data
End-of-day and intraday historical data for global markets. Provides fundamental data, economic data, and technical indicators. Coverage includes 70+ exchanges worldwide with 15+ years of historical data. Real-time and delayed quotes available for US markets.
Basic: $19.99/month (30 API calls/minute)
2. Yahoo Finance (YFinance)
Free financial data through Python library. Historical prices, fundamentals, options chains, and company information. Global market coverage with focus on US markets. Data may be delayed by 15-20 minutes.
Free to use
3. Marketstack
Marketstack offers a reliable real-time and historical market data API, covering over 125,000 stocks from 72+ global exchanges, including Nasdaq, NYSE, and LSE. It provides end-of-day, intraday, and tick data for stocks, commodities, forex, and cryptocurrencies.
Free Tier: 100 API calls/month
Basic: $9.99/month (1,000 API calls/month)
Sign up: https://marketstack.com/signup
4. Polygon.io
Real-time and historical data with microsecond granularity. Covers stocks, options, forex, and crypto. WebSocket connections for real-time feeds. Coverage for all US exchanges, 100+ crypto venues, and forex markets.
Free Tier: 5 API calls/minute (limited functionality)
Starter: $49/month - 100 API calls/minute
Sign up: https://polygon.io/dashboard/signup
5. Alpaca
Commission-free trading API with market data access. Real-time and historical data for US equities. WebSocket streaming for live data. Integration with paper trading environment.
Alpaca provides trading and clearing services for US equities under its subsidiary Alpaca Securities LLC. They currently support stocks, ETFs listed in the US public exchanges (NMS stocks), Options trading, and cryptocurrencies. Support for other asset classes, such as futures, FX, private equities, and international equities are on their roadmap.
Free tier with basic market data
Premium: $49/month for real-time data
Sign up: https://app.alpaca.markets/signup
6. Alpha Vantage
Global market coverage including stocks, forex, and cryptocurrencies. Technical indicators, fundamental data, and economic indicators. 20+ years of historical data.
Free: 5 API calls/minute
Premium: $29.99/month - 30 API calls/minute
Sign up: https://www.alphavantage.co/support
7. Finviz
Advanced stock screener with real-time data, heat maps, and technical analysis. Provides comprehensive market visualization tools, news aggregation, and insider trading data. Features include advanced charts, financial statements, and backtesting capabilities.
Free: Basic screener with delayed data
Premium: $39.96/month (real-time data + advanced features)
Sign Up: https://finviz.com/register.ashx
8. IEX Cloud
Financial data platform with real-time and historical data. Core market data, fundamentals, news, and alternative data. Primary focus on US markets with some international coverage.
Start: $49/month - 50,000 messages
Sign up: https://iexcloud.io/console/sign-up
9. Finnhub
Real-time data provider for stocks, forex, and crypto markets. Offers company financials, earnings data, and sentiment analysis. Features WebSocket connections for live price updates.
Finnhub's data is institutional-grade as it is being used by hedge funds, investment banks, mutual funds, fintech startups and thousands of private investors.
How does Finnhub source the data?
Market data & corporate actions are sourced directly from the exchanges, ActivFinancial, EDI, QuoteMedia.
Fundamental data is sourced directly from companies' filings which we make available in SEC Filings endpoint and International Filings endpoint
ETFs data is sourced from Issuers' filings and public websites.
Why is Finnhub's data different from Bloomberg, Reuters, Factset, S&P and Yahoo Finance?
As an independent data company, Finnhub has their own methods of sourcing, and standardizing financial data. During this complicated accounting process, they do employ some methods used by those big companies. However, Finnhub also introduces some new ways to calculate a same data field in financial statements such as Cash & Due from Banks item.
Finnhub sources 30 years of fundamental data globally. For market data, they support 35+ years of tick data for US market and 1 year for international markets. Daily OHLC data is available up to 30 years depending on the exchanges.
Free: (60 API calls/minute)
Premium: $15/month (600 API calls/minute)
Sign Up: https://finnhub.io/register
10. Barchart
Comprehensive financial data platform offering real-time and historical market data. Provides advanced technical analysis tools, custom studies, and trading signals. Coverage includes stocks, options, futures, forex with detailed fundamental data.
Barchart's Investing Ideas section that highlights top performing industries, themed lists to jumpstart your own trading ideas, insider trading activity, and links to run pre-set Barchart Market Screeners to uncover more trading ideas. Price and News Alerts to stay on top of market developments. Portfolios for monitoring your investments.
Basic: $39/month
Sign Up: https://www.barchart.com/ondemand/free-market-data-api
11. Tiingo
Specialized financial data provider focusing on high-quality historical data and real-time feeds. Features research-grade historical data, corporate actions, and crypto market coverage. Includes advanced screening tools and customizable alerts.
Basic: $10/month (500 API calls/day)
12. FMP (Financial Modeling Prep)
Comprehensive financial data provider specializing in company fundamentals and real-time market data. Offers detailed financial statements, ratios, and real-time stock quotes. Includes extensive historical data and company metrics.
Basic: $19/month (250 requests/day)
Sign Up: https://financialmodelingprep.com/developer/docs/pricing
13. IBKR (Interactive Brokers)
Professional-grade trading platform providing comprehensive global market data access. Features real-time data for stocks, options, futures, and forex worldwide. Includes advanced trading tools and research platforms.
Free: Paper trading account
Premium: Variable based on exchange subscriptions
Sign Up: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/ib-api.php
14. ThinkOrSwim
Advanced trading platform by TD Ameritrade offering professional-grade tools and data. Features real-time market data, advanced charting, and scanning capabilities. Includes options analysis tools and paper trading.
Free with TD Ameritrade account
Sign up: https://www.tdameritrade.com/tools-and-platforms/thinkorswim/desktop.html
15. Tradier
Integrated brokerage API platform providing market data and trading capabilities. Offers real-time US equities and options data with REST API access. Includes historical data and fundamental analysis tools.
Basic: $10/month (delayed data)
16. OpenFIGI
OpenFIGI is a global standard for identifying financial instruments, offering a service to map securities across systems, exchanges, and data providers.
Completely Free
Sign Up: https://www.openfigi.com/api
17. OANDA
Advanced forex trading platform with comprehensive market data access. Provides real-time currency data, historical rates, and trading capabilities. Features REST API and streaming rates.
Free: Practice account
Sign Up: https://developer.oanda.com/
Options Data Providers
1. OptionsData.com
Specialized options data provider with historical options chains, Greeks, and implied volatility surfaces. Coverage of all US-listed options with 15+ years of history.
Basic: $39/month
Sign up: https://www.optionsdata.com/plans
2. Unusual Whales
Real-time options flow tracking, dark pool data, and unusual options activity alerts. Covers all US options exchanges. Advanced options chain analysis and flow tracking tools.
Basic: $25/month (web access)
Sign up: https://unusualwhales.com/subscribe
3. ORATS
Comprehensive options analytics including historical data, Greeks, and implied volatility. Covers all US-listed options with advanced analytics tools.
They can scan and rank thousands of option trades based on volatility metrics, delta cost, and other theoretical values. Customize DTE, strikes, and more. Same for equities. Also show comprehensive view of a company's options chain, earnings history, time and sales, and technical outlook.
Basic: $99/month
Sign Up: https://orats.com/signup
4. CBOE
Official options market data and analytics. Complete US options market coverage. Subscription pricing varies by data type Real-time data requires exchange membership
The Cboe One Feed is a market data product that provides cost-effective, high-quality reference quotes and trade data for market participants looking for comprehensive, real-time market data.
Cboe offers a variety of licensing options to fit the needs of our various customers. These licensing options are available on the Cboe One Summary Feed and each of the four Cboe U.S. Equities Top-of-Book Feeds.
The Cboe One Feed is 60% less expensive per professional user and more than 85% less expensive for an enterprise license for professional users and non-professional users when compared to a similar competitor exchange product.
Fundamental & Analysis
1. EOD Historical Data
End-of-day and intraday historical data for global markets. Provides fundamental data, economic data, and technical indicators. Coverage includes 70+ exchanges worldwide with 15+ years of historical data. Real-time and delayed quotes available for US markets.
Basic: $19.99/month (30 API calls/minute)
2. FMP (Financial Modeling Prep)
Comprehensive financial data provider specializing in company fundamentals and real-time market data. Offers detailed financial statements, ratios, and real-time stock quotes. Includes extensive historical data and company metrics.
Basic: $19/month (250 requests/day)
Sign Up: https://financialmodelingprep.com/developer/docs/pricing
3. Morningstar
Morningstar is an industry leader in investment research and data analysis, offering global coverage of stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, and bonds. Its proprietary ratings and star-based system are trusted benchmarks for evaluating investment quality and risk. Morningstar provides detailed fundamental data, portfolio analysis tools, and comprehensive market commentary. Professional investors rely on its research reports, financial statements, and valuation insights to make informed decisions. The premium service includes advanced tools like X-Ray for portfolio optimization and access to in-depth analyst opinions and investment forecasts.
Basic: $29.99/month
4. Zacks
Zacks Investment Research is a leading provider of US-focused stock analysis, known for its proprietary Zacks Rank system that predicts stock performance based on earnings estimate revisions. The platform provides detailed earnings estimates, analyst ratings, and financial statements for thousands of companies. Zacks also includes advanced screening tools, industry rankings, and premium research reports, catering to both retail and institutional investors.
Basic: $249/month
Sign Up: https://www.zacks.com/products/api/
5. Koyfin
Advanced financial analytics platform with global market coverage. Features comprehensive charting, screening, and macro data analysis tools.
Free Tier: Basic features
Premium: $45/month
Sign Up: https://www.koyfin.com/signup
6. Estimize
Estimize is a crowdsourced platform for earnings and economic estimates, leveraging input from analysts, buy-side investors, and academics to create alternative consensus forecasts. Its database includes thousands of earnings estimates for publicly traded US companies, offering a unique perspective that often diverges from Wall Street projections. Estimize's transparency and collective intelligence approach provide users with access to real-time data, historical accuracy comparisons, and trends for earnings season. It is especially valuable for traders and investors seeking market insights beyond traditional sources.
7. Brain Company
BrainCompany specializes in financial data analysis, offering products like the Brain Sentiment Indicator (BSI), which evaluates market sentiment by analyzing financial news. The BSI is available through various channels, including an API
Basic: $99/month
Sign Up: https://www.braincompany.co/contact
8. Intrinio
Intrinio is a financial data marketplace designed to cater to fintech developers, asset managers, and quantitative researchers. It offers a wide range of datasets, including real-time and historical market prices, company fundamentals, economic indicators, and alternative data.
Basic: $50/month
Premium: $200/month
Sign Up: https://intrinio.com/signup
9. MarketBeat
MarketBeat is a comprehensive stock research platform offering real-time market data, analyst ratings, and institutional holdings information. It provides insights into insider transactions, dividend payouts, and earnings reports, making it an essential resource for investors and traders. MarketBeat’s tools include email alerts for portfolio tracking, customizable stock screeners, and detailed financial summaries for companies. The premium version offers advanced analytics, including consensus ratings, price targets, and trend analysis to identify actionable opportunities in the market.
Basic: $20/month
10. Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha offers a powerful collection of tools and resources, supply of news and research, with their proprietary Quant ratings, and Stock Screener and Portfolio Health Check tools. As the Premium Seeking Alpha offers a comprehensive platform for researching stocks and ETFs. Their community of analysts covers more U.S. stocks than the top investment banks combined. For each stock and ETF, they offer news, community discussion, ratings, and a simple card which grades each stock on Valuation, Growth, Profitability and Momentum. Plus comprehensive financials and data.
Premium: $19.99/month
11. SEC EDGAR
Official database for US securities filings. Provides real-time access to corporate filings, financial statements, and disclosures. Includes historical data and full-text search capabilities.
Completely Free
Sign Up: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/
Economic Data
1. FRED
he Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) platform is a go-to resource for macroeconomic research, offering over 816,000 time-series datasets from 108 trusted sources, including the US Federal Reserve, World Bank, and IMF. Researchers can access data on GDP, employment, inflation, interest rates, and financial market statistics.
Completely Free
2. World Bank
Global development data covering 217 economies. Provides economic indicators, social metrics, and environmental data. Features comprehensive historical data and projections.
Completely Free
Access:
https://data.worldbank.org/
3. BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Official source for US economic accounts statistics. Provides GDP data, personal income statistics, and international trade information. Includes regional economic accounts and industry-specific data.
Completely Free
Sign Up: https://apps.bea.gov/API/signup/
4. Trading Economics
Global economic data platform covering 196 countries. Provides real-time economic indicators, financial data, and market analysis. Includes forecasts and historical data.
Free: Limited access
Premium: $49/month
5. EIA (Energy Information Administration)
Comprehensive US energy data and analysis platform. Provides detailed statistics on energy production, consumption, and prices. Features historical data and forecasting tools.
Completely Free
6. Quandl
Alternative data marketplace offering unique financial and economic datasets. Provides access to premium financial, economic, and alternative data sources. Features normalized data delivery through unified API.
Free: Limited access
Sign Up: https://www.quandl.com/sign-up
7. OECD.Stat
Provides macroeconomic and financial data from OECD economies. Excellent for global economic indicators and financial stability metrics.
Free
Sign Up:
https://stats.oecd.org/
8. Robert Shiller Data
Free access to historical US stock market data since 1871. Includes S&P 500 index, dividends, and CAPE Ratio.
Free
Crypto Data
1. CCXT (CryptoCurrency eXchange Trading)
It is a unified trading API that simplifies access to over 100 cryptocurrency exchanges. It provides a consistent interface for trading, retrieving historical data, managing balances, and monitoring order books.
Free
Sign Up: https://www.ccxt.com/
2. Kaiko
Institutional-grade cryptocurrency market data provider covering 100+ exchanges. Offers trade data, order book data, and aggregated prices with millisecond precision. Includes historical data and customizable data feeds.
Basic: Contact for pricing
Sign up: https://www.kaiko.com/contact
3. Glassnode
Advanced on-chain crypto analytics platform providing market intelligence. Features comprehensive metrics for blockchain networks, token economics, and investor behavior. Includes advanced charting and customizable alerts.
Basic: $29/month
Sign Up: https://studio.glassnode.com/signup
4. Cryptowatch
Multi-exchange cryptocurrency trading terminal with comprehensive market data. Offers real-time pricing, charting, and trading features across major exchanges. Includes portfolio tracking and customizable alerts.
Basic: Free
Premium: Starting $15/month
Sign Up: https://cryptowat.ch/account/create
5. Tardis
The most granular data for cryptocurrency markets. Tick-by-tick order book snapshots & updates, trades, open interest, funding rates, options chains and liquidations data for leading crypto exchanges. Comprehensive, fair and transparent.
Solo: Starting $350/m
Sign Up: https://tardis.dev/#pricing
6. Binance
Leading cryptocurrency exchange offering extensive market data API access. Provides real-time trading data, order book depth, and historical information. Features WebSocket streams and REST API endpoints.
Free with rate limits
Sign Up: https://www.binance.com/en/register
News & Sentiment
1. Benzinga
Real-time financial news and market intelligence platform. Provides breaking news, analyst ratings, and earnings information. Features custom news feeds and sentiment analysis.
Basic: $347/month
Sign up: https://www.benzinga.com/apis
2. StockTwits
Social media platform focused on financial markets and trading. Offers real-time sentiment data and community insights. Includes trending stocks and custom watchlists.
Free: Basic API access
3. WSJ (Wall Street Journal)
Premium financial news and analysis platform. Provides real-time market coverage, in-depth analysis, and investigative reporting. Features custom alerts and archived content access.
Basic: Contact for API access
Sign Up: https://www.wsj.com/api-contact
4. CNN Fear & Greed Index
Market sentiment indicator combining multiple market metrics. Provides daily updates on market emotion and risk appetite.
Completely Free
5. BizToc
Real-time business and financial news aggregator. Covers global markets with focus on breaking news and market-moving events. Features customizable news feeds and alerts.
Free: Basic news access
Premium: $9.99/month
Sign up: https://biztoc.com/subscribe
6. NewsAPI
Comprehensive news aggregation service covering global financial markets. Provides real-time news from thousands of sources with customizable feeds. Features sentiment analysis and topic categorization.
Basic: $49/month
Sign Up: https://newsapi.org/register
7. Reddit
Access to financial communities and discussion data. Provides real-time posts, comments, and sentiment data from finance-related subreddits. Features streaming API for live updates.
We may fetch all Reddits, SubReddits, and also Post to certain Reddit discussions.
Free: Basic access with rate limits
Premium: Starting $99/month (higher rate limits)
Sign Up: https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps
How to use it?