Best affordable stock and market news API in 2026: 5 compared
Five affordable stock and market news APIs compared on published price, request caps, delay, WebSocket, and license. MarketNewsAPI Pro is $15 a month.
An affordable stock news API is a feed you can ship on a published monthly price, with tickers on each article, without a daily cap that breaks the first real watchlist. A general news API fails that test on tagging. A market-data platform can fail it on price, because the news is bundled with quotes you may already buy somewhere else.
This post scores five APIs on the numbers that decide an affordable build: the published entry price, what that price actually includes, whether a headline is delayed, whether a WebSocket exists, and whether the license covers the thing you are building. It does not score millisecond latency. None of these vendors publish an independently measured news latency, and a roundup that invents one is not a comparison.
Disclosure. This post is on the MarketNewsAPI blog, and MarketNewsAPI is one of the five. The prices for the other four are taken from their public pages as checked on October 7, 2026, and they can change. Read both pricing pages before you buy. The same figures are on the compare pages.
MarketNewsAPI does not write the news. It distributes it. Publisher stories and legal notices are a headline, a summary, and a link to the original. Press releases are the exception: the API includes the full wire text, still with the source and a link.
What's in this post
- The 5 things that make a news API affordable
- 1. MarketNewsAPI
- 2. StockNewsAPI
- 3. Marketaux
- 4. EODHD
- 5. Alpha Vantage
- Price matrix
- What a low sticker price hides
- The license, which is not the same as the price
- Which one to pick
- A request you can run
Short version
For real-time stock, crypto, forex, and macro headlines with no daily cap, MarketNewsAPI Pro is $15 a month, or $162 a year, and it includes the WebSocket and MCP. For a long-running stock news product with topic and analyst filters, StockNewsAPI Basic is $19.99 a month and meters calls. For multi-language news across 80 or more markets, Marketaux starts at $29 a month. For prices and news in one bill, EODHD's historical plan is $19.99 a month and a news request spends extra calls. For prices, fundamentals, and a news endpoint together, Alpha Vantage starts at $49.99 a month and has no news WebSocket.
The 5 things that make a news API affordable
Sort by the invoice, then read what the invoice buys. These five are the ones that change the build:
- Published entry price. A number on the pricing page, in dollars per month, that you can start without a sales call. "Contact us" is a different product.
- The cap inside that price. Calls per day, articles per response, and a delay. A $20 plan that allows 20,000 calls a month is a different product from a $15 plan with no daily cap.
- How the headline arrives. Polling is fine for a page. A watchlist that should update when the story lands wants a WebSocket. If the cheap tier is delayed, say so.
- What an article contains. Ticker tags, a summary, the publisher, and a link. Full text of a publisher story is usually not included, and it should not be assumed.
- The license. Personal and internal use is not a license to put the feed inside a product you sell. A low API price can still leave commercial use on a separate contract.
A table that only lists "sources" and "sentiment" does not answer whether you can afford to run the feed.
1. MarketNewsAPI
MarketNewsAPI is a news API. Pro is $15 a month, or $162 a year ($13.50 a month). Paid Pro has no daily or monthly request cap. A burst past 20 requests per second returns HTTP 429. The WebSocket is included, with 3 connections. MCP is included. History on paid plans goes back to 2020, more than 2.5 million stock articles. Free is 100 requests a day, delayed 15 minutes, for the last year. The 7-day trial is the real-time feed with 1,000 REST requests a day. A card is required.
Leave category off and the response is stocks: publisher stories, press releases, and legal notices, in English, for listings worldwide. category=crypto, category=forex, and category=macro are the other feeds, on the same key. Each article has published_at, tickers, the source, and a URL. A short summary and named entities are added once enrichment finishes, and the summary is null until then. Press releases include the wire text. Publisher articles and legal notices do not include the publisher's full body. There are no article images.
Where it fits. You want the headline, the release, and a stream, at a price you can put on a card, and you already get quotes somewhere else.
Where it does not. It does not return prices, fundamentals, or a trading signal. It does not have an in-house newsroom, analyst-rating dataset, or economic calendar. Pro is personal and internal use. A product you sell, client work, or redistribution needs a separate license. Write to [email protected].
2. StockNewsAPI
StockNewsAPI is a long-running stock news API with ticker, topic, and ranking filters. There is no permanent free plan. The public trial is a one-time 5 days and 100 calls. Basic is $19.99 a month for 20,000 calls. Premium is $49.99 a month for 50,000 calls. A WebSocket is not listed. Crypto is a separate sister product. Analyst upgrade and downgrade data is on Premium. Commercial use is steered to Premium or Business.
Where it fits. You already depend on their event, ranking, or analyst-rating fields.
Where it does not. Twenty thousand calls a month is about 650 a day. A watchlist polled every minute will leave that plan. There is no listed news stream at the $19.99 tier.
Side by side: MarketNewsAPI vs StockNewsAPI.
3. Marketaux
Marketaux is built around entity queries across a wide set of markets. The public pages describe 5,000 or more sources, 80 or more markets, and 30 or more languages. Free is 100 requests a day and 3 articles per request. Basic is $29 a month for 2,500 requests a day and 20 articles per request. Pro on their pricing page is $99 a month for 25,000 requests a day. A news WebSocket is not listed. The matched passage around an entity is part of the product.
Where it fits. You need non-English copy, or markets where an English worldwide stock feed is thin.
Where it does not. The cheap tiers are daily quotas, and three articles per free request is a prototype, not a page. Streaming is not part of the published product.
Side by side: MarketNewsAPI vs Marketaux.
4. EODHD
EODHD sells end-of-day prices, fundamentals, and a news feed as call packages. The free package is 20 API calls a day. EOD Historical All-World is $19.99 a month, or $199 a year. EOD plus intraday is $29.99 a month. Fundamentals is $59.99 a month. All-In-One is $99.99 a month. Paid tiers list 100,000 calls a day, and a news request spends 5 of those calls. A news WebSocket is not what the plan is sold as. Redistribution needs a separate commercial license.
Where it fits. You want global end-of-day prices and you will use the news endpoint occasionally.
Where it does not. Five calls per news request means the headline budget is a fifth of the number on the pricing page. This is a market-data bill that happens to include news.
Side by side: MarketNewsAPI vs EODHD.
5. Alpha Vantage
Alpha Vantage is a market-data API with a news and sentiment endpoint. Free is 25 requests a day, shared across every endpoint, not only news. The $49.99 a month tier is 75 requests a minute. Higher tiers run to $249.99 a month for 1,200 a minute. News items can carry a per-ticker relevance score and a short summary from the source. There is no news WebSocket. Equities, crypto, forex, and economic indicators share the account.
Where it fits. You want one vendor for prices, fundamentals, and a light news pull, and your volume fits a per-minute tier.
Where it does not. Twenty-five free requests a day disappears if the same key also fetches prices. At $49.99 you are paying more than three times MarketNewsAPI Pro before you have a stream.
Side by side: MarketNewsAPI vs Alpha Vantage.
Try it for 7 days. Signup starts Pro. A card is required. Real-time REST, WebSocket, and MCP, with 1,000 REST requests a day. Paid Pro removes the cap. After that it's $15/month, or Free if you stop.
Price matrix
Entry prices are the cheapest published paid tier that includes news, as checked on October 7, 2026. "No daily cap" still has a burst limit.
| API | Entry | Free | Cap on that paid tier | News WebSocket | Markets on the news feed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MarketNewsAPI | $15/mo, or $162/yr | 100/day, 15-min delay, 1 year | No daily cap. 20 requests/second burst | Yes, on Pro. 3 connections | Stocks worldwide, crypto, forex, macro |
| StockNewsAPI | $19.99/mo Basic | No free plan. 5-day, 100-call trial | 20,000 calls/month | Not listed | Stocks. Crypto is a separate product |
| EODHD | $19.99/mo historical | 20 calls/day | 100,000 calls/day on paid tiers. News spends 5 calls | Not sold as a news stream | Stocks, ETFs, forex, crypto, beside prices |
| Marketaux | $29/mo Basic | 100/day, 3 articles per request | 2,500 requests/day | Not listed | Global equities, crypto, forex. 30+ languages |
| Alpha Vantage | $49.99/mo | 25/day, shared with prices | 75 requests/minute | No | Equities, crypto, forex, on a market-data API |
What a low sticker price hides
A watchlist of 20 tickers, polled every minute, is 28,800 requests a day. That is about 864,000 a month. On that math:
- StockNewsAPI Basic (20,000 calls a month) covers less than one day.
- Marketaux Basic (2,500 a day) covers about two hours.
- EODHD's 100,000 calls a day becomes 20,000 news requests if each one costs 5 calls. A minute-by-minute watchlist still does not fit.
- Alpha Vantage at 75 requests a minute can keep up only if you spend the whole minute budget on news, and you are polling rather than streaming.
- MarketNewsAPI Pro has no daily cap. The limit that matters is 20 requests per second, and a WebSocket removes the poll.
The affordable API is the one whose cap survives the first real screen, not the one with the smallest number next to "Starting at."
The license, which is not the same as the price
MarketNewsAPI Pro is not a commercial license. Internal research on your own account is what $15 covers. A product you sell, work for a client, or a copy of the feed handed to users needs its own agreement.
The other four are not uniformly cheaper once that is included. Finnhub's self-serve plans, from a free tier up through market-data plans around $49.99 a month, are personal use, and commercial use is a contract. Tiingo's news API can sit on a $0 or $30 plan, and commercial use is a separate $50 a month license. EODHD calls out redistribution as its own license. StockNewsAPI points commercial use at Premium or Business. Read the license that matches the product you ship, not the license that matches a prototype.
Which one to pick
| You are building | Pick |
|---|---|
| A real-time news screen, alerts, or an agent, in English, and you buy prices elsewhere | MarketNewsAPI Pro |
| Topic ranks, event tags, or analyst upgrades from one vendor | StockNewsAPI, usually Premium |
| Non-English news, or a market their entity index covers and an English wire does not | Marketaux |
| End-of-day prices first, news second | EODHD |
| Prices, fundamentals, and a modest news pull on one key | Alpha Vantage |
| A trading desk that wants an in-house newsroom and a contract | None of these. Benzinga is sales-quoted |
Benzinga and Massive (formerly Polygon) are the wrong comparison for this list. Benzinga does not publish a self-serve price. Massive Advanced, the real-time stocks tier, is $199 a month and is a price feed. They belong in a latency and market-data review, not in an affordable news review.
A request you can run
This is the shape of a ticker query on MarketNewsAPI. The key belongs in an environment variable. The URL on each article is the link you show a person.
curl "https://api.marketnewsapi.com/v1/news?tickers=AAPL&limit=5" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $MARKETNEWSAPI_KEY"Crypto, forex, and macro use the same path with category set. A stock query does not include them. For a live screen, open the WebSocket instead of polling. The REST and WebSocket guide covers which one to use, and the Python alert bot is a working stream.
Start with the 7-day Pro trial if you want the live feed while you compare the same tickers on another API. Free is enough to prove a REST query. Neither one is a commercial license.