Top 8 Stock Market Data Providers in 2025

In most cases, the best financial data is one that you scrape yourself, but collecting stock market data is no easy feat. The complexity of the markets and the ever-fluctuating stock prices require sophisticated solutions that can’t rely only on historical market data.

Real-time stock data is generated during trading hours to reflect the market conditions, which, depending on your use case and data volume, might not be viable with simple tools. Paid financial data providers covering the stock market may be a better starting point.

Why Choosing the Right Stock Market Data Provider Matters

Stock market data differs from general financial data in its focus on trading activities and price movements of the market. Typically, it is dynamic, real-time data at two levels.

• Level one stock data provides the most basic real-time information, including bid/ask prices and last trade price.
• Level two stock data covers a more in-depth view, showing bids and asks at multiple price levels.

Such stock data alone isn’t informative, so platforms also include reference data (e.g., exchange codes) and various fundamental data points, such as key financial metrics, earnings reports, or financial statements. It’s also common to add context from historical data, news feeds, or other economic indicators.

All of this information frames the stock market changes happening at the level one in some way. So, not only is accurate real-time or historical data important, but also how stock changes are contextualized. This becomes evident when we look into who uses stock data platforms the most.

• Investors, especially day traders or other short-term traders, are the most obvious users of stock and financial data platforms. Timely updates and context are crucial for making quick decisions for holding, buying, or selling.
• Private and regulatory analysts require a broad range of data types for market surveillance and trend analysis. Stock data is an important part of broader economic indicators and their forecasting.
• Developers need APIs or other stock data access points to build various tools. From news sites to custom portfolio trackers or AI models, use financial data regularly.

How to Evaluate a Stock Market Data Provider

Some financial data providers are also excellent stock market sources and vice versa, but the two categories aren’t the same. There are specific requirements that stock market vendors must meet. Their importance might vary depending on your use case.

• Data coverage and depth

A comprehensive coverage of exchanges, asset classes (stocks, options, futures), and market depth at both level one and two.

• Data accuracy and latency

Real-time trading and analysis require high-quality data delivered in milliseconds or even faster.

• Real-time and historical data coverage

A financial data provider will have both real-time data and historical records.

• Integration and customization options

Flexible APIs or other solutions that can deliver data in the needed formats are crucial for many projects.

• Legal compliance

Leading financial data providers maintain regulatory compliance, including requirements of confidentiality.

Best Stock Market Data Providers List in 2025

Alpha Vantage

• Available data: Real-time and historical stock data, options, fundamentals, forex, cryptocurrencies, commodities, economic and technical indicators.
• Access: APIs, Excel, Google Sheets.
• Pricing: Subscription-based.
• Best for: Retail traders, developers, and small to medium enterprises.

Alpha Vantage is a NASDAQ-licensed stock data provider, known for comprehensive documentation of its APIs and an accessible free tier. It covers dozens of different exchanges for traditional financial data as well as commodities, cryptocurrencies, and much more.

While Alpha Vantage APIs make stock data accessible for retail traders and other smaller players, they might lack the ultra-low latency real-time trade feeds. Yet, if you can rely on higher latency or historical data, it’s one of the best choices today.

Cbonds

• Available data: Fundamental data, real-time, and historical bond data.
• Access: APIs, dashboard, mobile app, Excel sheets.
• Pricing: Subscription-based.
• Best for: Fixed income analytics, institutional investors.

Since the 2000s, Cbonds has operated as a financial data provider known for a reliable source of equity and fixed income data. It provides coverage of over 900,000 bond quotes and more than 100,000 ETFs and funds across global markets.

Cbonds makes accessing needed data easy with a convenient dashboard, mobile app, and Excel add-in. Primarily used by those active in the bond market, it’s one of the best tools for daily aggregated analytics and traditional fundamental research.

FactSet

• Available data: Real-time, level 1 & 2, fundamental, news, historical.
• Access: APIs, portal, bulk downloads.
• Pricing: Enterprise subscription.
• Best for: Institutions, analysts, investment bankers, portfolio managers, and other professionals.

FactSet is not only a financial data provider, but also includes various portfolio analysis tools. It stands out for being oriented towards professionals who need accurate real-time (level 1 and 2) data about mutual funds, private and public companies, and more.

Its API integration is more expensive and complicated compared to other tools, but it’s one of the most accurate real-time data providers to date. In addition to stock data, FactSet includes various AI and portfolio management tools.

IEX Cloud

• Available data: Real-time, historical, news data.
• Access: APIs.
• Pricing: Pay-as-you-go and subscription.
• Best for: Developers, fintech startups, retail traders.

Investors Exchange (IEX) offers institutional-grade and affordable data through APIs. Primarily focused on U.S. equities, it also covers 14 international stock exchanges, forex, commodities, and other options.

Its pay-as-you-go model makes it easy to start using IEX Cloud and scale the operations if needed. Generally, optimized for availability, IEX gives a decent latency trading environment for U.S. equities.

InfoTrie

• Available data: News and sentiment, alternative, and fundamental stock data.
• Access: APIs, Portal.
• Pricing: Subscription-based.
• Best for: Quantitative analysts.

InfoTrie is a financial data provider specializing in publicly traded and private companies globally. It offers data pipelines for forex, equity data, alternative data sources (including social media, news analytics, and job postings), and more.

The platform stands out for leveraging various AI and machine learning methods to extract insights from large data sets. InfoTrie uniquely blends traditional stock data coverage with innovative alternative data and sentiment analytics.

Polygon

• Available data: Real-time stocks (Level 1 and 2), historical, and news.
• Access: APIs, JSON, CSV.
• Pricing: Subscription-based.
• Best for: Developers, fintech startups.

Polygon.io is another innovative financial data provider on a mission to implement new technologies for stock data. Widely used in developer communities, it offers powerful APIs with highly scalable infrastructure that can provide real-time data in nanoseconds.

Mostly focused on U.S. equity trading, Polygon also hosts data on cryptocurrencies with records dating back over 20 years. While hardly suitable for institutions, Polygon is a great and surprisingly affordable option for startups and new investors.

Refinitiv

• Available data: Real-time stocks (Level 1 and 2), fundamental, news, and Historical data.
• Access: APIs, portal, bulk downloads.
• Pricing: Enterprise subscription.
• Best for: Large institutions, investment banks.

Refinitiv, recently rebranded as London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) Data & Analytics, is one of the best-known financial data infrastructure providers. The company is known to provide stock and other investment data to thousands of large corporations worldwide.

Its APIs and workstation portal can deliver data across various asset classes, including equities, fixed income, derivatives, commodities, forex, and more. Refinitiv subscriptions are only available with large demand, but they can ensure ultra-low latency real-time data.

Exchange Data International (EDI)

• Available data: Real-time, historical, market depth data, and other data on equities and other.
• Access: FTP downloads, SFTP, APIs.
• Pricing: Subscription and license.
• Best for: Trading firms, data vendors.

Exchange Data International (EDI) is one of the oldest global financial data providers, with a well-established reputation for serving large firms. Its strict compliance and licensing standards make it one of the most authoritative tools for current historical data.

The EDI databases encompass a wide range of data on corporate actions (dividends, splits, mergers), pricing and closing prices for equities, various securities, including mutual funds, as well as numerous other data points. The focus is on end-of-day pricing with extensive historical data.

Conclusion

Each of these financial data providers can deliver stock market updates and data needed for most projects. In case you need more custom tools for stock market-related data (alternative datasets, investor sentiments, or others), use a web scraper with stock market proxies .