The Best Python Libraries to Get Financial Data for Free
Python is a powerful programming language that is often used for financial data analysis. There are a number of Python packages that can be used to acquire financial data, both free and paid.
In this article, we will discuss three of the best Python packages for acquiring financial data for free:
Alpha Vantage
yFinance
Pandas-DataReader
We will also discuss the pros and cons of each package, so that you can choose the one that is right for you. By the end of this article, you will know how to acquire financial data in Python for free.
Alpha Vantage
Alpha Vantage provides real-time and historical financial market data for traditional asset classes, economic indicators, foreign exchange rates, commodities, fundamental data, technical indicators, and much more.
To use Alpha Vantage, you need an API key. They have free and paid plans, subject to usage limits. The free plan allows maximum 500 API calls per day or 5 API calls per minute - which can be a limitation if you need a large amount of data.
You can find Alpha Vantage API Documentaiton here.
yFinance
yFinance is one of the most popular open source libraries that uses financial data from Yahoo Finance. You can use it to collect a range of market data on stocks, bonds, currencies, cryptocurrencies, fundamental data, options and a lot more.
The biggest limitation of the yfinance package is that it is not affiliated with Yahoo Finance. This means that you could be blacklisted, rate limited, or the package could stop working at any time. Additionally, yfinance lacks some data, such as technical analysis indicators.
You can find yFinance Documentation here.
Pandas-DataReader
Pandas-datareader is a Python library that gives you superpowers. With it, you can easily import financial data from a variety of sources, including stock prices, currency exchange rates, and even cryptocurrency prices.
The main advantage of this library is that you can retrieve data from multiple sources, for example: Google Finance, Yahoo Finance and FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data).
You can find Pandas-DataReader Documentation here.
But Which One Should I Use?
The best Python package for you depends on your needs. If you need a lot of technical data, Alpha Vantage is a powerful option. But if you are just starting out with Python or only need basic financial data, yFinance and Pandas-DataReaders are great choices.
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