# Alpha Vantage vs TickerLayer (slim)

> TickerLayer scores 71.5 (BB) to Alpha Vantage's 38.9 (E) for market prices. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-tickerlayer.md (~5,650 tokens) · this version ~1,330 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-tickerlayer.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alpha-vantage-vs-tickerlayer
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-11
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

TickerLayer scores 71.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Alpha Vantage's 38.9 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alpha Vantage leads on transparency & trust. Both do market prices. TickerLayer accepts x402. Alpha Vantage doesn't.

- Alpha Vantage: E 38.9, rank #1341 of 1520 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alpha-vantage.min.md
- TickerLayer: BB 71.5, rank #160 of 1520 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tickerlayer.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 Transparency & trust, 50 against 38. Also Runs on your own machine.
- TickerLayer, good for An agent that needs latest prices, bars and market hours across stocks, forex, crypto, indices, ETFs, commodities, bond yields and perpetual futures from one schema, and wants to pay per call without an account. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 30; Schema & documentation, 88 against 46; Agent ergonomics, 79 against 54; Security & auth, 49 against 32; Payments & pricing, 92 against 30; Maintenance & community, 79 against 33. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account; Free to start without a card.

| Category | Alpha Vantage | TickerLayer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 30 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 46 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 54 | 79 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 32 | 49 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 92 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 33 | 79 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 50 | 38 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Alpha Vantage | TickerLayer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Alpha Vantage Inc. | TickerLayer |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://www.alphavantage.co/query` | `https://mcp.tickerlayer.com/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, websocket |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.01/call |
| 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 hosted service under the TickerLayer terms of use, user agreement and market data disclaimer (all effective 3 November 2026), which name no legal entity or governing law. Free and Individual plans are for internal use, Business adds use inside the customer's own product, and redistribution needs a written Enterprise agreement. The agent plugin (github.com/tickerlayer/agent-plugin) and the npm client are MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 12 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.alphavantage/alpha_vantage_mcp` | `com.tickerlayer/market-data` |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Popularity | 217 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, TickerLayer +62: Alpha Vantage 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0).); TickerLayer 92 (x402 on the vendor's own gateway, x402.tickerlayer.com, for 41 GET routes.)
- Maintenance & community, TickerLayer +46: Alpha Vantage 33 (The MCP server repository, which a workflow deploys to the hosted server, had its last commit on 3 October 2026, an OAuth redirect fix merged as pull request 18…); TickerLayer 79 (Read as a closed service.)
- Schema & documentation, TickerLayer +42: Alpha Vantage 46 (The surface graded is the REST API, with the official MCP server noted.); TickerLayer 88 (OpenAPI 3.1 at tickerlayer.com/openapi.json (TickerLayer Market Data API 1.0.0, about 386,000 characters), read in its first 100,000 and last 96,000 characters…)
- Reliability, TickerLayer +40: Alpha Vantage 30 (Graded as a hosted service.); TickerLayer 70 (Read with the hosted lines, on the REST API.)
- Agent ergonomics, TickerLayer +25: 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…); TickerLayer 79 (Read on the REST API, with the MCP server where a line covers it.)
- Security & auth, TickerLayer +17: Alpha Vantage 32 (One key per account with no scopes, documented only as `apikey=` in the query string, and replaced by emailing support.); TickerLayer 49 (A plain account key with no scopes, shown once and replaced by regenerating it in the dashboard (20).)