Alpha Vantage pricing and alternatives
What Alpha Vantage costs, what the free key allows, and the alternatives if your agent needs answers with a source.
Get set up in minutes. Free tier, no card required.
Alpha Vantage at a glance
- Free key
- 25 requests a day
- Premium
- from $49.99 a month (75 requests a minute)
- Top listed plan
- $249.99 a month (1,200 requests a minute)
- Annual billing
- $499 to $2,499 a year
What Alpha Vantage costs
Alpha Vantage has a free API key and five premium plans. The plans differ by requests per minute and by how fresh the US market data is.
| Plan | Requests | Market data included | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free key | 25 a day | Most datasets, end-of-day US quotes | $0 |
| Premium 75 | 75 a minute | 15-minute delayed US data, end-of-day options | $49.99/month or $499/year |
| Premium 150 | 150 a minute | Realtime US data, end-of-day options | $99.99/month or $999/year |
| Premium 300 | 300 a minute | Realtime US data, end-of-day options | $149.99/month or $1,499/year |
| Premium 600 | 600 a minute | Realtime US data, realtime options | $199.99/month or $1,999/year |
| Premium 1200 | 1,200 a minute | Realtime US data, realtime options | $249.99/month or $2,499/year |
Premium plans have no daily limit and no overage charges, and you can cancel anytime. Above 1,200 requests a minute, Alpha Vantage asks you to contact them.
What needs a premium plan
Some functions need any premium plan: market news and sentiment, intraday and daily adjusted time series, company overview, VWAP and MACD, and forex and crypto intraday. Index data needs the 150-a-minute plan or higher. Realtime options need the 600 or 1,200 plan.
Personal or commercial use
Alpha Vantage sells its realtime and 15-minute delayed US data on these plans for personal use. For commercial use, its documentation says to contact sales.
When to use Alpha Vantage
Choose it for prices and fundamentals. Choose Finks when your agent needs the news, filings or earnings calls behind the numbers, each with its source.
- 01
Market data across asset classes
Over 130 endpoints for stocks, indices, options, forex, crypto, commodities, economic data and technical indicators.
- 02
Long price history
Daily, weekly and monthly series with 25+ years of history, adjusted for splits and dividends.
- 03
Free for open source and education
Verified open-source and educational projects get unlimited requests. Everyone else gets 25 a day.
Alternatives to Alpha Vantage
Finks
Best for: AI agents that search in plain English and need the passage that answers, with its source.
Finks is a search API built for AI agents. Your agent searches in plain English and gets back the results that answer it, each linked to its source. Today that covers news, SEC filings and earnings call transcripts.
Filing results can carry the matching passage in the filing's own words, which your agent can quote and cite. The Finks MCP server adds the same search to Claude, Cursor or any MCP-compatible client.
Alpha Vantage's news endpoint filters by ticker, topic and time range, and it needs a premium plan. Finks takes the question itself.
What Finks does not do
Finks does not return stock prices, time series, technical indicators or financial statements. If your agent needs those, keep Alpha Vantage or another market data API for them.
Get set up in minutes. Free tier, no card required. Paid plans start at $29 a month (Starter).
Request
POST /v1/search { "query": "What did Nvidia say about China export licenses?", "symbols": ["NVDA"], "types": ["filing"], "depth": "deep", "limit": 2 }Response
{ "type": "filing", "title": "NVIDIA CORP — 8-K Item 2.02, Results of Operations and Financial Condition", "published_at": "2026-08-26T20:21:19Z", "url": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000104581026000073/q2fy27pr.htm", "passage": { "section_id": "8-k/ex-99.1", "text": "…Revenue is expected to be $108.0 billion, plus or minus 2%. NVIDIA is not assuming any Data Center compute revenue from China in its outlook…" }, "related": [ { "type": "brief", "title": "Nvidia Reports Record Q2 Revenue of $96.2 Billion; Q3 Guidance Exceeds Estimates", "url": "https://finks.ai/briefs/Zea2AiQofRok" } ] }Live response, 26 Oct 2026, test key (fewer fields than a production key)
Polygon.io (now Massive)
Best for: US stock market data at a flat monthly price, starting free.
polygon.io now redirects to massive.com. The free Stocks Basic plan allows 5 API calls a minute with 2 years of end-of-day data. Paid stock plans have unlimited API calls, and Massive lists a remote MCP server.
Finnhub
Best for: a higher free rate limit for personal projects, with company news included.
Finnhub's free plan allows 60 API calls a minute for personal use. It includes company news with one year of history and real-time updates. Its All-In-One plan, with global coverage, is $3,500 a month billed annually.
Tiingo
Best for: flat-rate end-of-day prices with a separate price for commercial use.
Tiingo charges $30 a month for individuals and $50 a month for internal commercial use. Its free Starter plan allows 1,000 requests a day and 50 an hour, with 30+ years of price history.
Alpha Vantage and the alternatives at a glance
| Compared on | Alpha Vantage | Finks | Polygon.io (now Massive) | Finnhub | Tiingo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it returns | Market data, fundamentals, news with sentiment | Passages that answer a question, each with its source (news, SEC filings and earnings call transcripts) | US market data | Market data, fundamentals, company news | End-of-day prices, news |
| Free limit | 25 requests a day | Free tier, no card required | 5 calls a minute | 60 calls a minute | 1,000 requests a day |
| Paid from | $49.99/month | $29/mo (Starter) | $29/month | $49.99/month (market data, billed quarterly) | $30/month |
| News on the free plan | No (premium) | Yes | Yes, ticker news | Yes, company news 1 year | No (paid plans) |
Related pages
Questions about Alpha Vantage pricing
Is Alpha Vantage free?
Yes, with limits. The free key allows 25 API requests a day and covers most datasets. Verified open-source and educational projects get unlimited requests.
How much does Alpha Vantage premium cost?
Premium plans run from $49.99 a month for 75 requests a minute to $249.99 a month for 1,200 requests a minute. Annual plans run from $499 to $2,499 a year. Prices checked 20 Oct 2026.
Is the Alpha Vantage news API free?
No. Alpha Vantage lists its market news and sentiment function as premium, so it needs a paid plan.
Does Alpha Vantage have an MCP server?
Yes. Alpha Vantage has an official MCP server that exposes its functions as MCP tools, with setup steps for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other clients.
Can I use Alpha Vantage in a commercial product?
Alpha Vantage sells its realtime and 15-minute delayed US data on the premium plans for personal use. For commercial use, its documentation says to contact sales.
Does Finks replace Alpha Vantage?
Not for market data. Finks returns the passages that answer a question, each with its source; today that covers news, SEC filings and earnings call transcripts. It does not return prices or financial statements. Use a market data API for prices and Finks for the context behind them.
Finks makes this page. We took every price and limit from each company's own website on 20 Oct 2026 and link to each source. Prices change, so check them before you buy.
Sources
- Alpha Vantage: alphavantage.co/premium, checked 20 Oct 2026.
- Alpha Vantage: alphavantage.co/support and alphavantage.co/documentation, checked 20 Oct 2026.
- Polygon.io (now Massive): massive.com/pricing, checked 20 Oct 2026.
- Finnhub: finnhub.io/pricing, checked 20 Oct 2026.
- Tiingo: tiingo.com/about/pricing, checked 20 Oct 2026.
- Each company's own site: mcp.alphavantage.co, massive.com/stocks and massive.com/docs/rest/stocks/news, checked 20 Oct 2026. Finks prices: Finks pricing, 20 Oct 2026.
Add sourced research to your market data
Finks returns news, SEC filings and earnings call passages, each with its source.