# Alpha Vantage vs FRED API (slim)

> FRED API scores 42.7 (E) on agent readiness against Alpha Vantage's 41.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Alpha Vantage leads on maintenance & community. Both do data markets. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-fred.md (~2,100 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-fred.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-fred
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

FRED API scores 42.7 (E) on agent readiness against Alpha Vantage's 41.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Alpha Vantage leads on maintenance & community. Both do data markets.

- Alpha Vantage: E 41.3, rank #799 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alpha-vantage.min.md
- FRED API: E 42.7, rank #789 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/fred.min.md
- Alpha Vantage, 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 15. Also Runs on your own machine.
- FRED API, good for Looking up US and international macroeconomic series, their metadata and their revision history in a live session. Ahead on Reliability, 38 against 30; Agent ergonomics, 68 against 54; Payments & pricing, 40 against 30; Transparency & trust, 53 against 48. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | Alpha Vantage | FRED API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 30 | 38 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 46 | 43 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 54 | 68 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 32 | 35 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 63 | 15 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 48 | 53 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Alpha Vantage | FRED API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Alpha Vantage Inc. | Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://www.alphavantage.co/query` | `https://api.stlouisfed.org` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Alpha Vantage's Terms of Service. The MCP server, CLI and shared client in alphavantage/alpha_vantage_mcp are MIT | Proprietary service under the FRED Services Terms of Use. Some data series are third-party copyright |
| MCP registry | `io.github.alphavantage/alpha_vantage_mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2025-11-04 |
| 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 | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 217 stars, 172 PyPI/wk | none |