Alpha Vantage

Alpha Vantage — Financial Market Data

Access 20+ years of global financial data: equities, options, forex, crypto, commodities, economic indicators, and 50+ technical indicators.

API Key Setup (Required)

1. Get a free key at https://www.alphavantage.co/support/#api-key (premium plans available for higher rate limits)
2. Set as environment variable:

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export ALPHAVANTAGE_API_KEY="your_key_here"

Installation

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uv pip install requests pandas

Base URL & Request Pattern

All requests go to:

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https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=FUNCTION_NAME&apikey=YOUR_KEY&...params

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import requests
import os

API_KEY = os.environ.get("ALPHAVANTAGE_API_KEY")
BASE_URL = "https://www.alphavantage.co/query"

def av_get(function, **params):
    response = requests.get(BASE_URL, params={"function": function, "apikey": API_KEY, **params})
    return response.json()

Quick Start Examples

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# Stock quote (latest price)
quote = av_get("GLOBAL_QUOTE", symbol="AAPL")
price = quote["Global Quote"]["05. price"]

# Daily OHLCV
daily = av_get("TIME_SERIES_DAILY", symbol="AAPL", outputsize="compact")
ts = daily["Time Series (Daily)"]

# Company fundamentals
overview = av_get("OVERVIEW", symbol="AAPL")
print(overview["MarketCapitalization"], overview["PERatio"])

# Income statement
income = av_get("INCOME_STATEMENT", symbol="AAPL")
annual = income["annualReports"][0]  # Most recent annual

# Crypto price
crypto = av_get("DIGITAL_CURRENCY_DAILY", symbol="BTC", market="USD")

# Economic indicator
gdp = av_get("REAL_GDP", interval="annual")

# Technical indicator
rsi = av_get("RSI", symbol="AAPL", interval="daily", time_period=14, series_type="close")

API Categories

Common Parameters

Rate Limits

• Free tier: 25 requests/day (as of 2026)
• Premium plans: higher limits, real-time data, intraday access
• HTTP 429 = rate limit exceeded
• Add delays between requests when processing multiple symbols

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import time
# Add delay to avoid rate limits
time.sleep(0.5)  # 0.5s between requests on free tier

Error Handling

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data = av_get("GLOBAL_QUOTE", symbol="AAPL")

# Check for API errors
if "Error Message" in data:
    raise ValueError(f"API Error: {data['Error Message']}")
if "Note" in data:
    print(f"Rate limit warning: {data['Note']}")
if "Information" in data:
    print(f"API info: {data['Information']}")

Reference Files

Load these for detailed endpoint documentation:

• time-series.md — Stock OHLCV data, quotes, bulk quotes, market status
• fundamentals.md — Company overview, financial statements, earnings, dividends, splits
• options.md — Realtime and historical options chain data
• intelligence.md — News/sentiment, earnings transcripts, insider transactions, analytics
• forex-crypto.md — Forex exchange rates and cryptocurrency prices
• commodities.md — Gold, silver, oil, natural gas, agricultural commodities
• economic-indicators.md — GDP, CPI, interest rates, employment data
• technical-indicators.md — 50+ technical analysis indicators (SMA, EMA, MACD, RSI, etc.)