In the past, investors and traders used to get information regarding the stock market from television, newspapers, or even the radio. However, these sources couldn’t provide unrestricted access to historical and real-time market data that investors needed to make informed decisions. Fortunately, advanced technologies for the stock market sector are now available that make it possible to get highly accurate, real-time stock data. A stock market API is an example of such technology. Developers can use a stock API to build financial products, such as a stock market prediction app or a brokerage platform, that provide invaluable stock market data. However, using a reliable stock API is imperative because inaccurate stock data can have huge financial implications.
If you’re a developer building a financial app that requires the integration of stock market data, using marketstack stock API is a great option. Read on to learn how to integrate it into your app.
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What Is a Stock API?
An API (Application Programming Interface) is essentially a set of protocols and functions that allow two applications to exchange data. They enable developers to build applications and software products quickly by providing them instant access to existing data and functionality. For example, developers can use a stock API to integrate historical and real-time stock market data into their apps. These APIs collect relevant financial data from multiple sources and deliver it in an easily accessible and human-readable format, such as JSON format. Efficient stock market APIs also provide details regarding individual stocks, indexes, etc.
Stock market APIs can be used in a variety of financial apps. For example, a stock market prediction app can use a stock API to collect and analyze real-time and historical data and provide forecasts regarding the value of particular stocks based on the collected data. Similarly, developers can use these APIs in stock research and analysis apps.
Obtaining stock market data would be extremely difficult without a stock data API. Developers would have to write long lines of complex codes to collect raw data directly from stock exchanges and parse it in an easily readable format. This is a hectic and time-consuming process, and building apps this way would take many days.
Why Is It Essential to Choose an Accurate Stock Market API?
The global stock market is extremely complex. Stock prices can go up or down with milliseconds. Hence, traders and investors need highly accurate data on global markets to make informed and effective decisions. However, not all stock data APIs provide accurate data. For example, due to latency issues, there can be a delay in updating the real-time data. Moreover, the accuracy of the stock market data API also depends on the data sources it uses.
Hence, it’s essential to evaluate the accuracy of a stock market API. You should also consider the number of API calls or requests the API allows per day or month.
What Is the Best Stock API?
If you’re looking for the best stock market data API that can provide highly accurate, consistent and detailed stock market data, marketstack is the best option. Marketstack is a simple yet powerful REST API that offers real-time, intraday, and historical stock data. It uses reliable data sources to ensure you always get accurate data. The API is highly scalable and has an uptime of almost 100%. From Uber and Amazon to Accenture and Revolut, many well-known companies (over 30,000) use marketstack to collect worldwide stock market data.
Here are the key features of marketstack that make it the best stock market API:
Real-Time and Intraday Data
Many stock APIs only provide end-of-the-day stock data, which is not enough to make informed decisions. This is why marketstack provides end-of-the-day data as well as intraday and real-time data. With marketstack, you can obtain real-time stock data for any ticker of your choice down to the minute.
You can use the API’s ‘eod’ endpoint to get end-of-the-day data for one or multiple tickers. With the ‘intraday’ endpoint, you can obtain intraday data for all US stock tickers. The endpoint can also provide real-time data with data intervals as short as one minute.
Historical Data
With marketstack, you can access 30+ years of accurate historical stock market data. You can use any of the end-of-the-day or intraday endpoints and specify the ‘date_from’ and ‘date_to’ parameters to obtain historical data. This data is highly useful in analyzing past trends and predicting future values of different stocks.
70 Global Exchanges
Marketstack supports over 70 global exchanges, including Nasdaq and NYSE, and allows you to search 170,000+ worldwide stock tickers from any of these exchanges. These include GOOG, AAPL, AMZN, MSFT, and many more.
Easy to Use
Marketstack is known for its ease of use. The API is super easy and quick to integrate into your website. Moreover, it has extensive documentation consisting of all the details about API endpoints. It also has several code examples in several programming languages to help you get up and running within minutes.
Free Plan
Marketstack offers a completely free plan (no credit card required) that gives you 100 requests per month and supports 70 stock exchanges, ten years’ worth of historical data, end-of-the-day data and market indices. To access intraday and real-time data, you can choose from flexible pricing plans.Sign up free and integrate market data to your app with the best stock API.
How to Integrate Stock Market Data in Your App Using Marketstack Stock API?
Here is how you can integrate end-of-the-day stock market data (PHP) using the marketstack eod endpoint:
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$queryString = http_build_query([ 'access_key' => 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY' ]); $ch = curl_init(sprintf('%s?%s', 'https://api.marketstack.com/v1/tickers/aapl/eod', $queryString)); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); $json = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); $apiResult = json_decode($json, true); foreach ($apiResult['data'] as $stocksData) { echo sprintf('Ticker %s has a day high of %s on %s', $stockData['symbol'], $stockData['high'], $stockData['date'] ) } |
Here is the node.js code:
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const axios = require('axios'); const params = { access_key: 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY' } axios.get('https://api.marketstack.com/v1/tickers/aapl/eod', {params}) .then(response => { const apiResponse = response.data; if (Array.isArray(apiResponse['data'])) { apiResponse['data'].forEach(stockData => { console.log(`Ticker ${stockData['symbol']}`, `has a day high of ${stockData['high']}, `on ${stockData['date']}`); }); } }).catch(error => { console.log(error); }); |
You can use the code below to integrate intraday data:
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$queryString = http_build_query([ 'access_key' => 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY' ]); $ch = curl_init(sprintf('%s?%s', 'https://api.marketstack.com/v1/intraday ? access_key = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY & symbols = AAPL', $queryString)); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); $json = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); $apiResult = json_decode($json, true); |
Here is the code for accessing historical data:
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$queryString = http_build_query([ 'access_key' => 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY' ]); $ch = curl_init(sprintf('%s?%s', 'https://api.marketstack.com/v1/eod ? access_key = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY & symbols = AAPL & date_from = 2021-07-08 & date_to = 2021-07-18', $queryString)); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); $json = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); $apiResult = json_decode($json, true); |
Below is an example API response for end-of-the-day data:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How Does a Stock API Work?
A stock API provides access to valuable stock market data. Developers can use these APIs to build financial products, such as stock market prediction apps.
Can Stock APIs Provide Real-Time and Intraday Stock Market Data?
Reliable APIs like marketstack provide accurate intraday data as well as real-time data with data intervals as short as 1 minute.
Is There a Free Stock API?
There are several free stock APIs available, but not all of them are reliable. A good option is marketstack, which offers a free plan and several flexible pricing plans.
Sign up for marketstack stock API today and get access to highly accurate stock market data!
