alpha-vantage

Alpha Vantage — Financial Market Data

Access 20+ years of global financial data: equities, options, forex, crypto, commodities, economic indicators, and 50+ technical indicators.

API Key Setup (Required)

1. Get a free key at https://www.alphavantage.co/support/#api-key (premium plans available for higher rate limits)
2. Set as environment variable:

read -rsp "Alpha Vantage API key: " ALPHAVANTAGE_API_KEY
echo
export ALPHAVANTAGE_API_KEY

Installation

uv pip install requests pandas

Base URL & Request Pattern

All requests go to:

https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=FUNCTION_NAME&apikey=YOUR_KEY&...params

import requests
import os

API_KEY = os.environ.get("ALPHAVANTAGE_API_KEY")
BASE_URL = "https://www.alphavantage.co/query"

def av_get(function, **params):
    if not API_KEY:
        raise ValueError("Set ALPHAVANTAGE_API_KEY before requesting data")
    if "apikey" in params or "function" in params:
        raise ValueError("Reserved request parameters")
    try:
        response = requests.get(
            BASE_URL, params={**params, "function": function, "apikey": API_KEY},
            timeout=30,
        )
    except requests.RequestException:
        raise RuntimeError("Alpha Vantage transport failure; request URL redacted") from None
    # Avoid logging request URLs or raw HTTP exceptions: URLs contain the key.
    if not response.ok:
        raise RuntimeError(f"Alpha Vantage HTTP status {response.status_code}")
    try:
        data = response.json()
    except ValueError:
        raise RuntimeError("Alpha Vantage returned invalid JSON") from None
    if not isinstance(data, dict):
        raise RuntimeError("Alpha Vantage returned an unexpected response shape")
    if any(key in data for key in ("Error Message", "Note", "Information")):
        raise RuntimeError("API returned an error, quota, or entitlement message; inspect a redacted response")
    return data

Quick Start Examples