Exploring Alternatives to the Yahoo Finance API

A comparison of leading alternatives to Yahoo Finance’s discontinued historical data download feature.

Yahoo Finance recently limited access to its historical data downloads to Gold membership subscribers, which costs $50 per month (or $500 per year with a discount).

We first heard about this from Reddit and verified it on Yahoo’s site, where exports are now only available to Gold members. While the price may seem high for OHLC data, we’ve taken a look at some alternative options and compared them.

What is Yahoo Finance?

Yahoo Finance’s API is one of the pioneers in the financial data market. Before its launch, users had to manually download CSV files from websites — a time-consuming and inefficient process. Yahoo Finance’s API transformed this approach by providing a range of easily accessible API endpoints for financial data.

While the official Yahoo Finance API has been discontinued, and they now only offer web access and downloads, unofficial scraping-based tools like yfinance exist. However, these do not offer fully reliable data or consistent service. For a more dependable alternative, many other data providers now offer robust APIs with access to the same essential data and more features.

What Does Yahoo Finance Offer Today?

Yahoo Finance today provides a broad array of services tailored for investors, including real-time stock quotes, market news, portfolio tracking, and financial analysis tools. While API access has been discontinued, users can still download data in CSV format. For those looking for more advanced features, Yahoo Finance Plus offers premium options such as detailed charting tools, exclusive research reports, and in-depth data insights. Subscribers benefit from enhanced portfolio management, personalized investment ideas, and market trend insights. In addition, Yahoo Finance includes stock screeners, global market data, and tools like currency converters, helping to enhance investment strategies. For more sophisticated traders, it also provides historical financial data, technical chart patterns, and specialized screeners to support better decision-making.

Types of Data Provided by Yahoo Finance Today

With recent changes to Yahoo’s pricing plan, institutional-grade financial data — such as income statements, balance sheets, cash flow reports, and years of earnings or historical end-of-day (EOD) data — are now available for download in its highest-tier plan. However, the lack of an official API means developers need to put in extra effort to manually extract and integrate this data into their projects.

As Yahoo Finance has shifted its focus from raw data to services like portfolio management, screeners, and charting tools, many data-driven users are turning to other platforms that offer faster, more straightforward data access, typically via APIs.

yfinance Library

The yfinance library is an unofficial Python tool that lets users scrape financial data directly from Yahoo Finance. It provides access to stock prices, historical market data, financial statements, dividends, and more. With yfinance, users can easily retrieve structured financial data for analysis, making it popular in the Python community for automating tasks like portfolio tracking and stock analysis. However, because it relies on web scraping, it’s not officially supported by Yahoo Finance and may occasionally encounter limitations.

Developed by dedicated enthusiasts, yfinance is a free and accessible tool. It’s fairly user-friendly, delivering reasonably well-structured data, but it comes with some notable limitations:

1. Reliability Issues

Since yfinance is built on web scraping, any minor change to Yahoo Finance’s website can cause disruptions. This introduces an element of unpredictability, especially if you’re using it to build applications that need continuous access to reliable data. Without official support or a team maintaining the package, the risk of instability remains, making it less ideal for critical projects.

2. Limited Data Availability

While yfinance provides key data like historical and fundamental information, it falls short for users needing more comprehensive insights. For serious investors or analysts, supplementary data such as economic indicators, real-time updates, and news sentiment are critical for maintaining a competitive edge. Unfortunately, these are not available with yfinance, prompting many to seek alternatives that offer a broader data spectrum for more in-depth analysis.

Alternatives to Yahoo Finance API

This is where things get interesting as we explore the best alternatives to the Yahoo Finance API. After testing numerous financial APIs, I’ve narrowed down some top contenders that stand out for their performance, reliability, and feature sets:

• EODHD APIs
• Finnhub
• Twelve Data
• Alpha Vantage
• Finage

These APIs are ranked based on three main factors: ease of use, quality of documentation, and the range of features they offer. Let’s dive into the details of each API and see how they measure up.

1. EODHD APIs (EOD Historical Data)

EODHD takes the lead as an alternative to the Yahoo Finance API for several compelling reasons:

1. Comprehensive API Coverage: EODHD offers an extensive range of API endpoints that cover everything from historical prices, fundamental data, and real-time feeds to stock screeners and economic calendars for stocks, ETFs, forex pairs, digital currencies, and indices. The stock tick data API is especially beneficial for backtesting strategies. Check their pricing for the full list of available data.
2. User-Friendly Documentation and Academy: EODHD provides well-structured documentation, making it easy to integrate the API into various platforms. Additionally, their Financial APIs Academy offers real-world use cases and coding examples, which is highly useful for both novice and experienced users. They also provide live 24/7 support to assist users whenever needed, a feature unmatched by their competitors.
3. No-Code Solutions: The platform provides not only API access but also no-code solutions like Excel and Google Sheets add-ons, allowing users to pull data without any programming skills. This is an especially valuable feature for users who previously relied on downloading CSV files from Yahoo Finance.
4. Pricing: EODHD’s pricing is highly competitive compared to Yahoo Finance. Their free plan is ideal for exploring APIs, while the $19.99 plan offers access to over 30 years of global historical price data, which is more affordable than Yahoo Finance’s Gold plan ($49.95). The All-in-One package for $99.99 offers a wealth of data, including historical, fundamental, real-time, and intraday data, 40,000 stock logos, and more, making it a valuable choice for analysts and developers.
5. Transparent Payment Structure: EODHD simplifies pricing by being clear about features offered in each subscription plan, avoiding vague terms like “API credits” or “API messages,” making it easier for users to understand what they’re getting.
6. API Marketplace: EODHD offers an innovative API Marketplace where users can sell their financial products, earn revenue, and gain marketing exposure through this collaboration. This platform provides a space for financial data providers and developers to share their tools and services with a wider audience. By leveraging the marketplace, customers can monetize their products while benefiting from EODHD’s established user base and marketing efforts. It’s an ideal solution for those looking to expand their reach and create new revenue streams in the financial data industry.

Moreover, EODHD provides a well-designed API usage dashboard packed with charts, statistics, and detailed reports. Their marketplace also allows companies to buy data directly from exchanges, expanding the value of the platform.

In conclusion, EODHD is a highly reliable and versatile alternative to Yahoo Finance API, suitable for beginners, advanced users, and commercial developers alike. It excels in features, support, and value, making it an excellent option for those looking to replace or upgrade from Yahoo Finance.

2. Finnhub

Finnhub offers an impressive array of API endpoints, including unique data such as analysts’ estimates, thematic investing insights, and extensive historical data. This makes it a standout option for financial analysis.

While their website might not be the most polished, it generally conveys the services available. The platform also offers solid documentation and a variety of subscription plans to cater to different needs.

However, there’s a major downside. The free-tier APIs are extremely limited, even missing some fundamental features that other providers include in their free accounts. While it’s understandable that Finnhub’s strategy encourages users to subscribe to paid plans, this limitation can be frustrating — especially for those simply looking to explore different financial APIs.

Despite this, Finnhub remains a strong alternative to Yahoo Finance API, offering valuable market data for those willing to opt for a paid plan.

3. Twelve Data

Twelve Data is another noteworthy alternative to the Yahoo Finance API, and I came across it while searching for API options. Before discovering EODHD APIs, I landed on Twelve Data, which stood out for its beautifully designed product page. Their storytelling is engaging, and the product page is visually appealing while also providing clear examples and code snippets that show exactly what they offer.

Although Twelve Data’s API offering is not as extensive as EODHD’s, it includes all the necessary endpoints. In terms of ease of use, Twelve Data shines with well-structured and clean API responses.

The documentation is particularly impressive. It’s not just well-organized but includes practical examples for each API, showing both the request URL and the JSON response. This helps users visualize the extracted data and plan how to clean and manipulate it efficiently.

A small but thoughtful touch in the documentation is how they highlight the most important API endpoints, making it easy to navigate to the most relevant ones. Another strength is the efficient categorization of APIs, which simplifies the process of finding specific endpoints without the hassle of searching through the documentation.

Where Twelve Data falters, however, is in its confusing pricing structure. Subscription plans are divided by market, which can be frustrating for users who need data from multiple exchanges. To get the required data, one might need to purchase several plans, which complicates the experience.

Overall, while Twelve Data might not be suited for large-scale, world-class applications due to its limited API collection, it remains one of the better alternatives to Yahoo Finance API for smaller projects and individual users.

4. Alpha Vantage

Alpha Vantage is the next API on our list of alternatives to Yahoo Finance. It’s widely regarded as the go-to option for beginners, primarily due to its fantastic free tier plan. This plan offers 500 API calls per day at no cost, providing access to most of their available endpoints, including historical data, fundamental data, and technical indicators.

However, Alpha Vantage has a couple of notable drawbacks. First, it’s not ideal for professionals or developers who are building large-scale applications. Compared to some of the other financial APIs we’ve discussed, Alpha Vantage lacks the extensive features and capabilities needed for high-level use.

Secondly, while Alpha Vantage covers the basics, like time series data, fundamental data, and technical indicators, it doesn’t offer some of the more advanced data types such as financial news or sentiment analysis. That said, its robust free tier almost makes up for these limitations, providing beginners with everything they need to get started.

The documentation is well-structured, offering live examples and code snippets to guide users. The format is very similar to Twelve Data’s, with sub-headings and labels highlighting the most frequently used APIs, making navigation easy.

Overall, Alpha Vantage is highly recommended for those just getting started in financial data APIs. Its free tier is one of the best, offering ample resources to learn and practice. For advanced users, however, it may be better suited as a secondary or backup option.

5. Finage

Finage is the final alternative in our list of Yahoo Finance API replacements. Despite being relatively new, Finage has quickly established itself as a solid platform in the market.

One of its strengths is its visually appealing landing page, which is both well-designed and informative. The page highlights the simplicity of using Finage’s APIs, offering coding examples that demonstrate ease of use.

The documentation is another plus. While it may not be the best out there, it covers the essentials of good API documentation, and the classification of APIs within the documentation makes navigation and finding the right resources much more efficient.

However, Finage has two significant drawbacks. First, its pricing is notably higher than the other alternatives discussed. For many users, the cost is simply too high, making it less accessible to a broad audience.

Second, Finage’s API collection is somewhat limited. While it provides essential data, it lacks alternative data types such as sentiment analysis or economic indicators, which are increasingly sought after by traders and developers to gain a competitive edge in the market. This limitation could make Finage less appealing to users looking for comprehensive data sources.

In conclusion, Finage is a reliable choice for those seeking a replacement for Yahoo Finance API, offering high-quality data. However, if affordability and a more extensive selection of API endpoints are important to you, Finage might not be the best option.

Conclusion

For a long time, Yahoo Finance API was the go-to solution for accessing a wide range of financial data. However, its unexpected discontinuation pushed users to search for alternatives. This shift revealed some excellent options, many of which offer more reliable features than the original API.

Among the alternatives, several stood out for their diverse features and enhanced capabilities. Of these, EODHD emerged as the top choice, providing the most comprehensive features and the largest stock coverage. As a result, EODHD can be seen as the leading alternative to the Yahoo Finance API.

The original article was published in the EODHD Academy by Nikhil Adithyan.

Please note that this article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as financial advice. We do not bear responsibility for any trading decisions made based on the content of this article. Readers are advised to conduct their research or consult with a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.

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