New check
Comparison
Free Stock APIs in JSON & Excel | Alpha Vantage lands on Worth it, and Medium lands on Depends.
Buy if you're a hobbyist trader, student, or indie developer who wants genuinely free stock, forex, or crypto data to prototype with.
Buy if you want zero-setup publishing with an existing readership for $0.
| Compare | ||
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Worth it | Depends |
| Best for | Hobbyist traders | Engineering teams sharing thought leadership |
| Who it's not for | Production apps needing high request volumes | Teams needing content ownership or SEO control |
| Privacy | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.² | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed. |
| Support quality | No support evidence found | No support evidence in reviewed sources |
| Public sentiment | Users consistently praise the generous free tier and straightforward docs, while complaints center on rate limits and thin alternative data.⁵ | Readers on r/datascience still use Medium daily, while writers and developers debate paywalls, earnings, and the platform's decline.16 |
| Biggest gotcha | Rate-limit sources disagree: 25/day (2026) vs 500/day (older). Verify before building.³ | Migration later costs SEO and followers . content lives on Medium's domain |
