# Alpha Vantage vs Intrinio

> Intrinio scores 54.2 (C) to Alpha Vantage's 41.5 (E) for market prices. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-intrinio
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-intrinio.md (~3,700 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-03

Intrinio scores 54.2 (C) on agent readiness against Alpha Vantage's 41.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Alpha Vantage leads on payments & pricing. Both do market prices.

- Alpha Vantage: grade E, 41.5/100, rank #1197 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alpha-vantage.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alpha-vantage.json
- Intrinio: grade C, 54.2/100, rank #879 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/intrinio.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/intrinio.json
- Best financial market data APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/market-data/index.md
- All 55 markets comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/market-data/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Alpha Vantage (E)

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:
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20

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

### Intrinio (C)

Good for: An agent doing US equity, options and fundamentals research on a paid plan that wants one vendor for prices, filings, estimates and an OAuth MCP server.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 83 against 30
- Agent ergonomics, 70 against 54
- Maintenance & community, 70 against 63

Watch for: The API key is documented as `api_key` in the query string as the first option, with no scopes, rotation or expiry found


## Why the edge

### Reliability: Intrinio +53

- Alpha Vantage (30): Graded as a hosted service. No status page was found. The site links none and status.alphavantage.co has no valid certificate (0). With no page there is no incident history to read (5). Limits are published with numbers, 25 requests a day on a free key and 75 to 1,200 a minute on premium plans (15). No 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance was found, and in our test calls a missing key and an unknown function both returned HTTP 200 with a text field (0). No SLA was found, and the terms supply the service as is (0). The REST API is generally available (10). Total 30.
- Intrinio (83): Graded as a hosted service. Atlassian Statuspage at status.intrinio.com with APIv2 and APIv1 components (20). The incident feed's newest entry is a delayed SIP feed for CTA on 24 June 2026, so the 90 days to 3 November are clean (30). Limits are published in part. Pages above 100 records and bulk requests are 1 a minute on free feeds and 1 a second on paid ones, free feeds are throttled at 100 requests a second, and the daily and per-minute caps for a plan are shown only on the account page (8 of 15). A 429 carries an explanation of the limit and a 503 marks throttling or the 25-second timeout, with no Retry-After or backoff guidance (5 of 15). The Enterprise plan lists an SLA (10). The REST API is generally available (10). Total 83.

### Agent ergonomics: Intrinio +16

- Alpha Vantage (54): `outputsize=compact` returns the latest 100 points, `datatype=csv` shortens long series, and the MCP server previews anything over 32,000 tokens with a link to the full data. No field selection (15 of 25). `limit` and time filters on news and a `month` parameter for intraday history, with no pagination elsewhere (10 of 20). Errors and limit notices arrive as HTTP 200 with free text under `Error Message` or `Information`, undocumented (5 of 20). Every call is a GET read, and all MCP tools carry readOnlyHint true and destructiveHint false (16 of 20). Few required parameters and sensible defaults. No official SDK, only a Python CLI and community libraries (8 of 15). Total 54.
- Intrinio (70): `page_size` from 100 up to 10,000 sizes a response, and the MCP server batches ticker lists, but there is no field selection (15 of 25). `next_page` tokens, date and symbol filters on the data endpoints (18 of 20). Response codes are documented, 403 for an unsubscribed feed and 429 with a limit explanation, with no error body format or error code reference (10 of 20). Every call is a read and the vendor says the MCP server writes nothing back, but no readOnlyHint or safe-retry guidance was found (12 of 20). Few required parameters, and official SDKs in Python, C#, Java, JavaScript, R and Ruby (15). Total 70.

### Payments & pricing: Alpha Vantage +10

- Alpha Vantage (30): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Five monthly plans are public with prices, sold by requests a minute and not by call (10). A free key gives 25 requests a day with no card (20). The key comes from a browser form that asks for a name and an email address, and no key API was found (0). Total 30.
- Intrinio (20): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices are public without a login, $150, $333 rising to $999, and $1,250 and up, with no per-call price (10). Both self-serve plans say a free trial is available, and the trial length and card requirement were not found on the pricing, plan or terms pages, since the plan pages are drawn by script (10 of 20). A person signs up in a browser; no key API was found (0). Total 20.

### Maintenance & community: Intrinio +7

- Alpha Vantage (63): The MCP server repository, which a workflow deploys to the hosted server, had its last commit on 3 October 2026, and the site footer says it was updated in October 2026 (30). No tags, and the newest PyPI release is 17 March 2026, so there are no dated releases in the last 90 days, though the repository shows over 30 commits since 21 July (8 of 20). Pull requests 14 and 18 were merged within a day and issue 16 closed in a day, while issue 17, a reported startup crash, has been open since 4 September. Support is by email (10 of 25). The server sits in the official MCP registry under the vendor's GitHub namespace, with no official SDKs (12 of 15). The published package leaves its `mcp` dependency unpinned, and the workflows deploy and publish without a visible test run (3 of 10). Total 63.
- Intrinio (70): The six real-time websocket SDK repositories were pushed between 22 and 29 October 2026, and the MCP server is labelled New on the vendor's page (30). The last tagged release found is intrinio-sdk 7.2.0 on PyPI on 27 May 2026, following 7.0.0 on 2 March and 7.1.0 on 24 March; the October pushes have no tags or dated changelog entries, and the API version history carries no dates (10 of 20). Support is live chat through HubSpot, an AI chat and support@intrinio.com, with a status page; GitHub issue activity was not read (8 of 15). Official SDKs are current in six languages (15). The Python SDK is generated by swagger-codegen with CI not checked (7 of 10). Total 70.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Alpha Vantage | Intrinio | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 83 | Intrinio +53 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 46 | 43 | Alpha Vantage +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 54 | 70 | Intrinio +16 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 32 | 35 | Intrinio +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 20 | Alpha Vantage +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 70 | Intrinio +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 50 | 51 | Intrinio +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **41.5 · E** | **54.2 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Alpha Vantage | Intrinio |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Alpha Vantage Inc. | Intrinio, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://www.alphavantage.co/query` | `https://api-v2.intrinio.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| 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 | yes |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| MCP registry | `io.github.alphavantage/alpha_vantage_mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2026-05-27 |
| 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 | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | 217 stars, 172 PyPI/wk | 76 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Alpha Vantage

- +0.2 on 27 October 2026: checklist

### Intrinio

No score change since it was listed.

## 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.

**Intrinio.** A read-only US equities, options and fundamentals API with a clean status history, SDKs in six languages, paging up to 10,000 records and an OAuth MCP server included in every plan. The REST key is documented in the query string, no OpenAPI document or llms.txt was found, the version history is undated, and plans start at $150 a month.

## Before you call either

### Alpha Vantage

1. Check every 200 response for `Error Message`, `Information` or `Note` keys before parsing data. The API does not signal failures or limits by status code
2. 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
3. Keep `outputsize=compact` unless full history is needed, and ask for `datatype=csv` on long series to cut tokens
4. Use the hosted MCP server with OAuth at `https://mcp.alphavantage.co/mcp`. The `?apikey=` MCP URL is marked deprecated
5. Confirm the owner's use is personal and non-commercial, or that a commercial agreement exists, before acting for a business

### Intrinio

1. Send the key as `Authorization: Bearer`, not `?api_key=`, so it stays out of logs
2. Expect 403 for a data feed the account isn't subscribed to, 429 with an explanation when a limit is hit, and 503 when a request passes 25 seconds; shrink the query rather than retry at once
3. Keep `page_size` at 100 or below unless the plan is paid, since larger pages are limited to one request a minute on free feeds
4. Confirm the plan before displaying or passing Intrinio data to anyone else; the Individual plan forbids it
5. The MCP server returns a message naming the product that unlocks data outside the plan; don't retry the same call

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Alpha Vantage or Intrinio?

Intrinio scores 54.2 (C) on agent readiness against Alpha Vantage's 41.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Alpha Vantage leads on payments & pricing.

### Do Alpha Vantage and Intrinio need an API key?

Alpha Vantage takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Intrinio needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Alpha Vantage and Intrinio without installing anything?

Yes. Alpha Vantage has a hosted endpoint at https://www.alphavantage.co/query and Intrinio at https://api-v2.intrinio.com.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-intrinio.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-intrinio.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "alpha-vantage", "b": "intrinio"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare alpha-vantage intrinio`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alpha-vantage.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/intrinio.json

## Other comparisons with Alpha Vantage or Intrinio

- [Alpha Vantage vs Benzinga](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-benzinga.md)
- [Alpha Vantage vs Databento](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-databento.md)
- [Alpha Vantage vs EODHD](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-eodhd.md)
- [Alpha Vantage vs Financial Datasets](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-financial-datasets.md)
- [Alpha Vantage vs Financial Modeling Prep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-financial-modeling-prep.md)
- [Alpha Vantage vs Finnhub](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-finnhub.md)
- [Alpha Vantage vs Massive (formerly Polygon.io)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-massive.md)
- [Alpha Vantage vs Tiingo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-tiingo.md)
- [Alpha Vantage vs Twelve Data](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-twelve-data.md)
- [Databento vs Intrinio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-intrinio.md)
- [Finnhub vs Intrinio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/finnhub-vs-intrinio.md)
- [Intrinio vs Massive (formerly Polygon.io)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/intrinio-vs-massive.md)
- [Intrinio vs Tiingo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/intrinio-vs-tiingo.md)
- [Intrinio vs Twelve Data](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/intrinio-vs-twelve-data.md)
- [Financial Datasets vs Intrinio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/financial-datasets-vs-intrinio.md)
- [Financial Modeling Prep vs Intrinio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/financial-modeling-prep-vs-intrinio.md)
- [EODHD vs Intrinio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/eodhd-vs-intrinio.md)
- [Benzinga vs Intrinio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/benzinga-vs-intrinio.md)

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