Best Finance API Companies in 2023

The API is the best and quickest way to transfer data between Google’s servers and software used for trading or automated data collection. What exactly is an Application Programming Interface? Overall, it is an application framework that allows multiple computers to communicate with one another, resulting in massive data exchange. If you need an example from the everyday consumer’s life, take a quick registration on the site through the social network page or Gmail account. Another instance is your phone’s weather forecast announcement, which is the outcome of integration between the corresponding app and the National Weather Service’s open-source servers. As you can guess, many users rely on the perks of API applications without consciously knowing what an API stands for or how to use an API.

Meanwhile, you can scale up your business with API support to supply your customers with first-class UX, generating a greater loyalty rate and revenue increase. According to the RapidAPI Developer survey, 61% of participants implemented APIs more actively in 2020, so API meaning considerably increased compared to the previous year. Finding the best stock trading API platform for your purpose is important. Specifically, the three major spheres to which it concerns are financial services, manufacturing, and technology. As a result, if your startup is on this list, API can help it grow, and the API companies on this list can assist you in getting started.

There are several available finance APIs that you can use to track the movement of various stocks. You could use your expertise as a computer programmer to invest in the stock market. You may use Google Finance API, but it hasn’t been updated in years.

What is the best stock market data API?

№1 Alpaca API

What’s its service about?

Alpaca stock trading API is a California-based commission-free platform that exclusively serves US clients’ needs. Founded in 2015, the company has paved a confident path towards algorithm improvement, better app integration, and building products for traders, quant funds, brokers, and market data analysts. In the end, Alpaca has positioned itself as the best finance API expert that readily takes the burden of financial responsibility on its shoulders. Being run on the AI and ML base, this API provider helps fintech companies to find their place under the ’trading’ sun: 100,000 API developers have been successfully onboarded at the platform to create fintech apps on its foundation. Besides, in 2020, Alpaca gained $10bn in stock transactions, which spells out a clear-cut message on its community’s growth and steady investment increase.

Any distinctive API peculiarities?

As Alpaca finance application programming interfaces service lacks commissions, its business model stems from paying for order flow, margin trading, and interest on cash deposits. It implies the reduction of redundant expenses on the development part, which drives its popularity within the fintech circles. Besides, Alpaca is the best API stock trading platform if you need smooth infrastructure adjustment to the required product thanks to the great documentation provision, open-source contribution, and SDKs’ existence in different languages. As a result, its API can be justly called developer-friendly. In traders’ eyes, Alpaca wins the leading position in the US market owing to its stock price prediction and detection tools — AlpacaForecast and AlpacaRadar.

Why Alpaca?

In addition to the characteristics mentioned above, Alpaca is also one of the best financial stock APIs because of its security standards, high-quality technical analysis, and mindful KYC process. First is explained by the 2FA, FINRA & SIPC membership, and general account protection measures. Second embodies the 100+ prebuilt indicators that ensure flexibility with API and app integrations. The third refers to the simple procedure of opening and funding the brokerage accounts via RESTful APIs. Altogether, these factors positively influence Alpaca’s image among those who are planning to develop the trading app, the challenger bank seeking financing, or the investment advisor. And if considering its plan to launch the cryptocurrency product, the new B2B partners should join.

№2 Xignite API

What’s its service about?

Xignite is another California-originated data exchange platform and one of the top finance APIs. It provides the full cycle of data management operations for stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and other financial institutions. Relying on the API technology, the provider handles the multiple integrations with the commercial apps and applies the client-focused data mining approach for real-time and historical data processing. At the same time, its 10+ years of expertise in API implementation in the financial industry and various case studies ranks Xignite way higher than its fledgling competitors. The company is skillful in AWS building, scaling, and operating. That’s why its cloud-based API is one of the best APIs for trading stocks or your capital markets firm.

Any distinctive API peculiarities?

Not all APIs look alike! Xignite’s API hallmark is its cloud-native character, which suggests a flexible, case-based data delivery service to fintechs. The ready-to-use code integration into the necessary infrastructure determines its high scalability potential. The limitless usage and considerable data coverage make Xignite one of the top fintech API companies by a symbolic cost — $50 per month of the Premium subscription. It’s no surprise that clientele include fintech titans like SoFi, Robinhood, StockCharts, Betterment, Wealthsimple, and many more. Among the other perks, XigniteGlobalNews and XigniteEarningsCalendar features should be named too. The former is dedicated to collecting and shaping the condensed summary for the fresh economy-, business-, and fintech-related news. You can better estimate the direction of the exchange rate if you have this knowledge.

Why Xignite?

Xignite’s API marketplace is a cross-asset global markets leader that owns quality data from the best cloud software providers, including Morningstar and FactSet. This allows you to save time for business operations instead of vetting, extracting, and further optimizing the obtained data. The immediate customization with CSV, Excel, and JSON formats leaves some space for a choice, whereas the speed of financial data maintenance is also a pleasant bonus — 12bn API requests are processed per day in AWS. What’s under the hood of its success? Probably, the recent transfer to Yugabyte is a part of its today’s performance achievement as now Xignite is ready to scale more than 11 terabytes of data for both reads and writes. Not to mention the cost reduction consequence, which also has evoked the substantial fintechs’ attention to its service.

№3 Bloomberg API

What’s its service about?

The majority of users know Bloomberg as the media company that has been long to the market — since 1981. Its key role was extended from the print version to the digital edition and broadcasting. Meanwhile, that’s not all you should bear in mind when hearing about Bloomberg! First, if you work in the fintech industry, you might be interested in the Bloomberg Terminal — it’ll surely upgrade your decision-making skills due to real-time data and innovative trading tools. BTW, that’s the feature that makes the largest part of the company’s annual revenue — close to $10bn. And one of its latest examples is Bloomberg Server API (SAPI), which logically adds to the Bloomberg Terminal by broadening your data access to the historical and key reference intelligence. Besides, the new instrument anticipates the engine capabilities when leveraging confidential and third-party apps. SAPI becomes the best API service provider that lets your developers’ team easily connect to the network, consume bundles of market data, and create the interrupted link to the client-server apps.

Any distinctive API peculiarities?

As the fast and accurate delivery of data is the exclusive focus priority of Bloomberg, its open banking API solution also translates this belief: you may choose between a fully managed Bloomberg Appliance or a company-supervised host server. In addition, the options of third-party data hosting and AWS cloud delivery options are also available, which puts it among the top fintech API providers. Whatever delivery route you pick, using technology to quickly and qualitatively extract, integrate, and further use the required market information will be secure: encryption, built-in data management control, and SSL session authentication. Moreover, Bloomberg stock API represents the full functionality package that aids global market risk evaluation, order management, and general operational optimization.

Why Bloomberg?

If your principal goal is to bring consistency among the different data sources (usually across applications), Bloomberg API is the perfect alternative for financial organizations. The reliable data delivery technology will guarantee the firm’s well-organized processes flow and cost reduction. The vendor managers will definitely enjoy regular stock updates as well as simplified control of permissions and entitlements. The app developers name it the best fintech API platform for the smooth integration of SAPI with the most popular programming languages, including Java, C++, .NET, and others.

№4 Alpha Vantage API

What’s its service about?

Alpha Vantage is the top API company of Silicon Valley origin. Started its developer-friendly stock exchange API activity in 2018. Today it explains to the leading fintech players how to use Alpha Vantage API for professional software development, mindful investing, and successful ML and blockchain implementation. If it sparks your business interest in you, consider that Alpha Vantage’s portfolio incorporates stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, forex, and cryptocurrencies. Thus, together with this stock and options trading data provider API, you can go with both traditional and non-traditional asset types for free, only by sticking to the 500 requests limit per day. However, for those who are eager to get less restricted access to its API functionality, monthly premium plans vary from $29.99 to $249.99, depending on the number of requests per minute. What’s more, in case of necessity, you’ll be supported on the go by expert assistance.

Any distinctive API peculiarities?

Alpha Vantage stock API fundamentals come from combining thorough research, cutting-edge tech stack, and affordability of financial information. To start your digital transformation with the API provider, scroll down the API documentation list and decide which one you need for your business project. Then you’re to figure out whether you need the API library. This is easier after you’ve examined the trial version. Finally, after completing this stage, claim your free API key and begin your data exploration.

Why Alpha Vantage?

That’s one of the best-automated stock trading APIs, which will help you quickly get the gist of changes on the global market and timely align your trading strategy accordingly. However, you should be ready to use the Alpha Vantage Wrapper to cope effectively with the data pulling, especially if you use Python for interface integration to the API.

№5 Polygon API

What’s its service about?

Polygon is an Atlanta-based API service provider specializing in real-time market data delivery for currencies, crypto, and stocks. Founded in 2016, it’s quickly evolving as one of the top API vendors that disrupt the standards of financial app development through the support of all major programming languages and operating systems. That truly confirms its business motto — a tool that is ‘‘created by developers for developers." Plus, if you’re a startup, Polygon would also make you pleased with a 20% discount for the first three months of its usage. During this solid test drive, you’ll be able to establish your project scalability plan and keep an eye on its gradual realization and intermediate integration results.

Any distinctive API peculiarities?

In an expert’s review, Polygon is the most scalable financial technology solution to build up the transfer channel of market data to any kind of trading software. In all likelihood, this conclusion derives from the instant access of the historical data, low latency in real-time processing data (20ms is a max), and unlimited REST APIs (both in daily and per minute several requests parameters. Moreover, Polygon can be estimated highly because of its precise trading timestamp accuracy and cooperation with the best data centers: NASDAQ, NYSE, IEX, and BATS are among the key data-sharing partners.

Why Polygon?

As you can see, Polygon grants you high-end trading opportunities, so you understand exactly what you’re paying for. Instead of losing money on sales or proxies, you directly invest in the institutional-level data, increasing your chances to target the end users quickly and effectively.

So, are you ready for the API power in the end?

Gartner predicts that open finance API will develop in the next decade to unbelievable levels. Hope yes, as it’s the window into the quick and effective data integration between different systems, networks, or applications. That’s especially indispensable in the fintech realm, so give it a try with the top API vendors the Dashdevs team has researched and listed for you. Still, have questions about how to use API for your business product? Just knock and let us know!

FAQ

What are APIs in finance?

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the mechanisms via which programs exchange data and carry out a variety of coordinated operations. Financially speaking, we provide third-party platforms with protected access to banking services, which enables businesses to create products based on banking.

Is selling APIs profitable?

Successful API solutions like Stripe, Twilio, and Google Maps generate revenue from their APIs. Direct API monetization describes their business strategy, in which they earn a tiny sum of money from each API call made by their clients, who together make trillions of API calls yearly.

How does API work in fintech?

To further understand what an API is, imagine the mechanical process within a lock when you enter a locked room. Banks, e-commerce platforms, customers, and service providers may all benefit from fintech.