Head to head · Company data · October 2026 research run
Alpha Vantage vs SEC EDGAR APIs
Alpha Vantage and SEC EDGAR APIs score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 41.3 (E) and 40.8 (E). SEC EDGAR APIs leads on reliability, security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do company data.
Best data provider APIs for AI agents · All 31 data comparisons
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
- Schema & documentation, 46 against 23
- Agent ergonomics, 54 against 41
- Maintenance & community, 63 against 14
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 Reading a US-listed company's filing history and its reported financial figures from the primary source, with free reuse.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 38 against 30
- Security & auth, 52 against 32
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 57 against 48
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
Watch for
No OpenAPI file, llms.txt, response schema, error reference or official SDK was found. The documentation is one page of prose with example URLs
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Alpha Vantage | SEC EDGAR APIs | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 30 | 38 | SEC EDGAR APIs +8 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 46 | 23 | Alpha Vantage +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 54 | 41 | Alpha Vantage +13 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 32 | 52 | SEC EDGAR APIs +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 60 | SEC EDGAR APIs +30 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 63 | 14 | Alpha Vantage +49 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 48 | 57 | SEC EDGAR APIs +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 41.3 · E | 40.8 · E |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Alpha Vantage | SEC EDGAR APIs |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Alpha Vantage Inc. | U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission |
| Hosted endpoint | https://www.alphavantage.co/query | https://data.sec.gov |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| 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 | Public information. The SEC says information on sec.gov may be copied or further distributed without its permission, and asks for citation. EDGAR names and logos are registered trademarks |
| 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 | none |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2023-11-29 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2023-11-29 |
| 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 | 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 |
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.
SEC EDGAR APIs
The official source for US company filings and reported financial figures, free, keyless and, per the SEC, updated in real time as filings are disseminated. Documentation is one page with no OpenAPI file, error reference or changelog, responses cannot be filtered or sized, and there is no status page, SLA or support for scripted access.
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
SEC EDGAR APIs
- Send a User-Agent naming the operator's organisation and a contact email address on every request. The SEC limits or blocks undeclared automated tools
- Stay under 10 requests a second in total across all machines. Over the limit, the IP address may be limited until the rate has stayed below the threshold for 10 minutes
- Pad the CIK to 10 digits with leading zeros in
submissions/CIK##########.jsonand the XBRL paths. Find a CIK inhttps://www.sec.gov/files/company_tickers.json - Prefer
api/xbrl/companyconcept/for one figure.companyfactsreturns every concept a company has reported, andsubmissionsreturns at least 1,000 filings in column arrays - Read older filings from the extra files named in
filings.files, and check a frame fact's own start and end dates, since frames align company periods to calendar quarters
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Alpha Vantage or SEC EDGAR APIs?
Alpha Vantage and SEC EDGAR APIs score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 41.3 (E) and 40.8 (E). SEC EDGAR APIs leads on reliability, security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust.
Do Alpha Vantage and SEC EDGAR APIs need an API key?
Alpha Vantage takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. SEC EDGAR APIs needs no key.
Can an agent call Alpha Vantage and SEC EDGAR APIs without installing anything?
Yes. Alpha Vantage has a hosted endpoint at https://www.alphavantage.co/query and SEC EDGAR APIs at https://data.sec.gov.
Other comparisons with Alpha Vantage or SEC EDGAR APIs
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-sec-edgar.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/alpha-vantage.json·/api/v1/tools/sec-edgar.json - From a terminal
anchor compare alpha-vantage sec-edgar(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "alpha-vantage", "b": "sec-edgar"}at/mcp, no key