--- title: "Alpha Vantage vs EvidInvest — broad market data APIs or cited SEC statements (checked September 2026)" description: "Alpha Vantage is a NASDAQ-licensed market data API — 130 endpoints across 9 asset classes, a 25-requests-per-day free tier, rate-based premium plans and an official MCP server. EvidInvest is a narrower SEC fundamentals service with per-row filing citations and prepaid credits. Every claim here is read off Alpha Vantage’s own pages and dated." canonical: https://evidinvest.com/alternatives/alphavantage last_updated: "2026-09-29" --- # Alpha Vantage vs EvidInvest: 130 market data endpoints on a rate plan, or cited SEC statements on prepaid credits > Alpha Vantage is a market data API whose own home page says it “provides realtime and historical financial market data through a set of powerful and developer-friendly data APIs and spreadsheets” — stated in its docs as 130 endpoints across 9 asset classes, from stocks, options and fundamentals to forex, crypto, commodities and 53 technical indicators, with NASDAQ naming it an officially licensed US market data provider. EvidInvest overlaps it on one column only — standardized fundamentals — and differs on what sits behind each row: US statement rows from fiscal 2009 carry the accession number and sec.gov URL of the filing they came from, and access is prepaid credits rather than a per-minute rate plan. > Every claim about Alpha Vantage below was read off its own pages on 2026-09-29; > the source URL and that date are printed on each comparison row. > Canonical page: https://evidinvest.com/alternatives/alphavantage. ## Who Alpha Vantage suits Alpha Vantage suits developers who want one key for many asset classes on a small budget. It states 130 endpoints across 9 categories: equities in four temporal resolutions with 25+ years of history, realtime and 15-minute delayed quotes as exchange-licensed premium entitlements, US options with 15+ years of history, earnings-call transcripts back to 2010Q1 with sentiment signals, institutional holdings, insider and congressional trades, news with sentiment, forex, crypto, commodities, US economic indicators and 53 technical indicators — with the majority of endpoints on a free 25-requests-per-day key, and unlimited requests for verified open-source or educational projects. ## What Alpha Vantage does better - Asset-class breadth on one key: 130 endpoints across 9 categories — equities, options, forex, crypto, commodities, economic indicators, news and sentiment, plus 53 technical indicators computed server-side. EvidInvest has no forex, no crypto, no commodities, no options history and no technical indicators at all. - A genuinely free tier: 25 API requests per day covering the majority of endpoints, no card required — and “unlimited API requests for verified open-source or educational projects”, which nothing at EvidInvest matches. - Exchange-licensed realtime: NASDAQ names it an officially licensed US market data provider, and realtime plus 15-minute delayed quotes are available as premium entitlements. EvidInvest is delayed-only at any price. - Earnings-call transcripts with turn-by-turn sentiment signals for any quarter since 2010Q1 — a stated, dated depth claim EvidInvest does not publish for its own transcript tool. - Institutional holdings inside the MCP server: INSTITUTIONAL_HOLDINGS is one of its MCP tools, so an agent can query ownership directly — at EvidInvest, 13F data is website-only and not an MCP tool. - An official, open-sourced MCP server with a remote OAuth endpoint and a local uvx install, exposing the API functions directly as tools. ## What EvidInvest does differently - EvidInvest is fundamentals and filings only. No forex, no crypto, no commodities, no options chains, no technical indicators and no realtime entitlement — a much narrower product than Alpha Vantage, deliberately. - Every US statement row from fiscal 2009 carries the form, period, filing date, accession number and sec.gov URL of the filing where that fiscal year first appeared, over REST and MCP alike. - Filing and earnings-transcript search return the passage as filed with its accession number and sec.gov URL, rather than structured fields alone. - Valuation is part of the product: seven methods including reverse DCF, each solved for what today’s price implies, with the inputs shown and adjustable. - The billing model is prepaid credits with no subscription and no per-minute rate tier, and the website itself is free to read with no account. - Commercial use is not a separate negotiation — Alpha Vantage’s terms grant a personal, non-commercial license by default and route commercial use to a sales conversation. ## Side by side | Capability | Alpha Vantage | EvidInvest | Source (read on) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | What you are actually getting | A broad market data API: “realtime and historical financial market data through a set of powerful and developer-friendly data APIs and spreadsheets”, stated in the docs as “over 130 endpoints” grouped into “9 broad asset classes / categories”. | A fundamentals and filings service: standardized statements, cited filing and transcript search, supply-chain facts from 10-K text and valuation, as a website, a REST API and an MCP server. | https://www.alphavantage.co/ (2026-09-29) | | Data source and how far back it goes | Equities “in 4 different temporal resolutions” with “25+ years of historical depth and split/dividend-based adjustments”; fundamentals “generally refreshed on the same day a company reports its latest earnings and financials”; options with 15+ years of history; transcripts for “any quarter since 2010Q1”. | Standardized annual statements from fiscal 1985 — 30+ annual periods on file for 5,000+ US-listed companies. The difference is what each row carries with it. | https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ (2026-09-29) | | Standardized statements across companies | Yes: annual and quarterly income statements, balance sheets and cash flow, “with normalized fields mapped to GAAP and IFRS taxonomies of the SEC”. | Yes — one normalized schema for income statement, balance sheet and cash flow, annual and quarterly, over both the US and the non-US universe. | https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ (2026-09-29) | | Citations on each statement row | Not stated. The fundamentals docs name the SEC’s GAAP and IFRS taxonomies as the mapping target, but an accession number, a filing date or a link back to the source SEC document on a statement row is stated nowhere on the pages checked. | Row-level: every US statement row from fiscal 2009 carries filing_date, accession and a sec.gov source_url for the filing where that fiscal year first appeared, over REST and MCP alike. Pre-2009 rows carry null rather than a fabricated link. | https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ (2026-09-29) | | SEC filing text (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K) | Not stated. “10-K”, “10-Q”, “8-K”, “EDGAR” and “filing” appear on none of the five pages checked; the closest offering is fundamentals mapped to SEC taxonomies plus news and sentiment. | Filing search returns the passage as filed with its accession number and sec.gov URL, and supply-chain facts are extracted from 10-K text with the same citation. | https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ (2026-09-29) | | Earnings-call transcripts | Yes, and deeper than most: “the earnings call transcript for a given company in a specific quarter, covering over 15 years of history and enriched with turn-by-turn sentiment signals”, with “any quarter since 2010Q1” supported — and EARNINGS_CALL_TRANSCRIPT is one of the MCP tools. | Yes — earnings-call transcript search is one of the tools, on both REST and MCP, returning the passage with its citation. | https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ (2026-09-29) | | Institutional ownership | Yes: “the institutional ownership and holdings information for an equity of interest”, also exposed as an MCP tool (INSTITUTIONAL_HOLDINGS), alongside separate insider-transactions and congressional-trades endpoints. Whether the source is Form 13F is not stated on the pages checked. | Form 13F holdings are published on the website, at evidinvest.com/holders/{SYMBOL}. They are not one of the MCP tools, so an agent cannot query them from EvidInvest today — for agent access to ownership, Alpha Vantage states more than we do. | https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ (2026-09-29) | | Valuation models (DCF, reverse DCF, fair value) | Not stated. The docs list 53 technical indicators computed from adjusted series, but discounted cash flow, fair value and intrinsic value appear on none of the pages checked. | Seven methods — DCF, reverse DCF, P/E growth, earnings power, Graham, EV/EBITDA, EV/FCF and P/E versus sector — each solved for what today’s price implies, with every input shown and adjustable. No buy or sell verdict is produced. | https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ (2026-09-29) | | Real-time versus delayed prices | Both, as licensed premium entitlements: “entitlement=realtime will return realtime … entitlement=delayed will return 15-minute delayed” quotes, with the support page noting this data “is regulated by the stock exchanges, FINRA, and the SEC” and NASDAQ naming Alpha Vantage a licensed provider. Realtime options require the 600 or 1200 requests-per-minute plans. | Delayed only. Prices are Cboe data delayed at least fifteen minutes, labelled as such on every price-bearing response, with daily history back to 2004. There is no real-time tier. | https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ (2026-09-29) | | MCP server | Yes, official: “The official Alpha Vantage API MCP server enables LLMs and agentic workflows to seamlessly interact with real-time and historical stock market data”, with a remote OAuth endpoint at mcp.alphavantage.co/mcp (the API-key query-string form is marked deprecated), a local uvx install, and the source on GitHub. “The Alpha Vantage functions are exposed directly as MCP tools.” | Hosted at mcp.evidinvest.com/mcp over Streamable HTTP, 59 tools, OAuth 2.1 in the browser so Claude and ChatGPT need no key pasted, or an API key as a bearer token. | https://mcp.alphavantage.co/ (2026-09-29) | | Price | As shown in USD on their premium page: the free key at 25 API requests per day, then monthly plans priced by rate — $49.99 for 75 requests per minute, $99.99 for 150, $149.99 for 300, $199.99 for 600 and $249.99 for 1200 — each with “No daily limits”, “Cancel anytime” and “No surprise overage charges”. Annual plans exist; their listed figures read as yearly totals, so check the page rather than this table for annual pricing. | The website is free with no account. AI analyses and API/MCP usage draw on prepaid credits: Starter $10 for 360 credits, Plus $20 for 720, Pro $59 for 2,000. Credits never expire and there is no subscription. | https://www.alphavantage.co/premium/ (2026-09-29) | | Billing model and commercial use | Rate-based monthly subscription. The terms grant a license “for personal, non-commercial use, unless you and Alpha Vantage have agreed otherwise in writing”; using the platform “as or on behalf of a corporation, firm, partnership, trust or any other association” counts as commercial use, which routes to premium@alphavantage.co — and the docs say premium plans are likewise “for your personal use”. | Prepaid credits, no subscription and no minimum term. One balance across the website, the REST API and the MCP server, and commercial use is not a separate negotiation. | https://www.alphavantage.co/terms_of_service/ (2026-09-29) | ## Pick Alpha Vantage if… you need market data breadth rather than filing provenance. One key covers equities with 25+ years of history, exchange-licensed realtime and delayed quotes, options, forex, crypto, commodities, economic indicators, news sentiment and 53 technical indicators — none of which EvidInvest carries — and the 25-requests-per-day free tier (unlimited for verified open-source or educational projects) makes it free to start. Its MCP server also exposes institutional holdings to agents, which EvidInvest’s does not. ## Pick EvidInvest if… you need each US statement row to name the filing it came from, so a person or a model can open the 10-K and check the number rather than trusting a field. Also if you want filing and transcript passages returned with their accession numbers, valuation models over the same data, or a prepaid balance instead of a per-minute rate plan — and if your use is commercial, since Alpha Vantage’s default license is personal and non-commercial while EvidInvest does not route commercial use through a separate tier. ## Where EvidInvest is the weaker choice - Filing links start at fiscal 2009. That is where the SEC’s structured XBRL data begins, so US statement rows from fiscal 2009 onward carry the form, period, filing date, accession number and sec.gov URL — and rows older than that carry the standardized figures with a null citation rather than a fabricated link. The series still runs back to fiscal 1985; the link does not. - Institutional ownership from Form 13F is published on the website, at evidinvest.com/holders/{SYMBOL}, and is not one of the MCP tools. If you need 13F positions inside an agent or a script today, EvidInvest is not the way to get them. - Coverage outside the US is standardized statements, not filing links. The 40,000+ non-US listings on 60+ exchanges are normalized by EvidInvest with end-of-day prices; there is no SEC filing behind them, no source document to open, and nothing like the 1985-deep history the US series has. - Prices are Cboe data delayed at least fifteen minutes and labelled as such on every response. There is no real-time feed, no tick data, no full options chain archive and no crypto at any price. Options positioning is previous-session only. - Quarterly statements do not reach as far back as the annual series, so a decades-long quarterly panel is not available. - EvidInvest is a hosted service. There is no open-source distribution and nothing to run inside your own network — if that is a requirement, stop reading here. ## FAQ ### Is Alpha Vantage free? Partly, and honestly so. Their support page states a free key covers “the majority of our datasets for 25 API requests per day and unlimited API requests for verified open-source or educational projects”. Realtime and intraday quotes, daily-adjusted series, realtime options and index data are marked premium in the docs and need a rate-based plan. ### How much does Alpha Vantage premium cost? As shown in USD on their premium page on 29 September 2026, monthly plans are priced by request rate: $49.99 for 75 requests per minute, $99.99 for 150, $149.99 for 300, $199.99 for 600 and $249.99 for 1200, each with no daily limits and cancel-anytime terms. Annual plans are listed too; their figures read as yearly totals despite a “/month” label, so verify on the page before budgeting annually. ### Does Alpha Vantage have an MCP server? Yes, an official one: a remote OAuth endpoint at mcp.alphavantage.co/mcp (the API-key query-string form is marked deprecated), a local install via uvx, and the source open on GitHub, with the API functions exposed directly as tools — including earnings-call transcripts and institutional holdings. EvidInvest’s MCP server is also hosted with OAuth 2.1 and covers cited statements, filing and transcript search, supply-chain facts and valuation. ### Does Alpha Vantage provide SEC filings? Their pages do not state it. “10-K”, “10-Q”, “8-K” and “EDGAR” appear nowhere on the documentation, homepage, support, premium or MCP pages checked; the fundamentals product maps fields to the SEC’s GAAP and IFRS taxonomies but publishes no filing text and no per-row link to a source document. If you need the passage as filed with its accession number, that is what EvidInvest’s filing search returns. ### Can I use Alpha Vantage commercially? Not on the standard plans as written. Their terms of service grant a license “for personal, non-commercial use, unless you and Alpha Vantage have agreed otherwise in writing”, count use on behalf of any corporation or association as commercial, and route commercial interest to premium@alphavantage.co — and the docs describe even premium membership as “for your personal use”. EvidInvest sells prepaid credits without a separate commercial tier. ## Sources Every Alpha Vantage cell above was read from these pages on 2026-09-29: - https://www.alphavantage.co/ - https://www.alphavantage.co/premium/ - https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/ - https://www.alphavantage.co/support/ - https://mcp.alphavantage.co/ - https://www.alphavantage.co/terms_of_service/ Product home page: https://www.alphavantage.co/ ## Related pages - All comparisons: https://evidinvest.com/alternatives (Markdown: https://evidinvest.com/alternatives.md) - Nine financial data APIs in one dated table: https://evidinvest.com/compare/financial-data-apis - The EvidInvest MCP server and every tool name: https://evidinvest.com/mcp - What EvidInvest costs: https://evidinvest.com/pricing (Markdown: https://evidinvest.com/pricing.md) Research and data software, not investment advice. ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://evidinvest.com/sitemap.md) for every page on this site, the [index for language models](https://evidinvest.com/llms.txt), and the [glossary](https://evidinvest.com/learn/glossary) for the terms used above.