Head to head · Data company · October 2026 research run
Alpha Vantage vs Companies House API
Companies House API scores 49.3 (D) on agent readiness against Alpha Vantage's 41.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alpha Vantage leads on maintenance & community. Both do data company.
Which one, for what
Good for A personal research or analysis agent that wants many asset classes, fundamentals, indicators and news sentiment from one key at a flat price.
Ahead on
- Maintenance & community, 63 against 25
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
The REST key is documented only as apikey= in the query string, with no scopes and no self-service rotation found
Good for UK company lookups, KYC, officer and PSC checks where the statutory source matters.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 38 against 30
- Schema & documentation, 60 against 46
- Agent ergonomics, 67 against 54
- Security & auth, 45 against 32
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 69 against 48
Watch for
A person has to create the account and key
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Alpha Vantage | Companies House API | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 30 | 38 | Companies House API +8 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 46 | 60 | Companies House API +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 54 | 67 | Companies House API +13 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 32 | 45 | Companies House API +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 40 | Companies House API +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 63 | 25 | Alpha Vantage +38 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 48 | 69 | Companies House API +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 41.3 · E | 49.3 · D |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Alpha Vantage | Companies House API |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Alpha Vantage Inc. | Companies House |
| Hosted endpoint | https://www.alphavantage.co/query | https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Alpha Vantage's Terms of Service. The MCP server, CLI and shared client in alphavantage/alpha_vantage_mcp are MIT | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| MCP registry | io.github.alphavantage/alpha_vantage_mcp | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2026-04-27 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 217 stars, 172 PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Alpha Vantage
One GET endpoint covers about 130 documented functions, with a free key at 25 requests a day and an official MCP server whose tools are all marked read-only. The REST key travels only in the query string, errors come back as HTTP 200 with a text message, and no status page, SLA or OpenAPI document was found.
Companies House API
The statutory register itself, 5,516,377 companies in June 2026. A person has to create the account and key.
Before you call either
Alpha Vantage
- Check every 200 response for
Error Message,InformationorNotekeys before parsing data. The API does not signal failures or limits by status code - Budget 25 requests a day on a free key. Real-time, 15-minute delayed and intraday US data, index data and several indicators need a premium plan
- Keep
outputsize=compactunless full history is needed, and ask fordatatype=csvon long series to cut tokens - Use the hosted MCP server with OAuth at
https://mcp.alphavantage.co/mcp. The?apikey=MCP URL is marked deprecated - Confirm the owner's use is personal and non-commercial, or that a commercial agreement exists, before acting for a business
Companies House API
- Send the key as the Basic auth username with an empty password.
curl -u KEY:works - Search with
/search/companies?q=and page withitems_per_pageandstart_index, then fetch/company/{number} - Pad company numbers to 8 characters with leading zeros
- Stop on the first 429 and wait out the five-minute window, since every call until it resets also fails
- Map filing and error codes to text with the public api-enumerations YAML rather than guessing
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Alpha Vantage or Companies House API?
Companies House API scores 49.3 (D) on agent readiness against Alpha Vantage's 41.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alpha Vantage leads on maintenance & community.
Do Alpha Vantage and Companies House API need an API key?
Alpha Vantage takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Companies House API needs an API key.
Can an agent call Alpha Vantage and Companies House API without installing anything?
Yes. Alpha Vantage has a hosted endpoint at https://www.alphavantage.co/query and Companies House API at https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk.
Other comparisons with Alpha Vantage or Companies House API
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-companies-house.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/alpha-vantage.json·/api/v1/tools/companies-house.json - From a terminal
anchor compare alpha-vantage companies-house(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "alpha-vantage", "b": "companies-house"}at/mcp, no key