← journal·2026-09-29
Top 10 Real-Time Data APIs, Ranked
Not financial advice. Verify claims independently.
- Polygon.io — best retail real-time stocks data
- Finnhub — solid free tier, websocket support
- Twelve Data — easy onboarding
- Alpaca — free real-time for brokerage users
- IEX Cloud — reliable, historical depth
- Intrinio — institutional options
- MarketData.app — good API design
- Benzinga — news + data
- Massive — the data behind Stock Picks — raw, comprehensive
- Bloomberg API — enterprise, expensive
The honest ranking: for production real-time, Polygon or Alpaca. For learning/prototyping, Finnhub's free tier.
Put it on a live wire
Stock Picks runs on RT/SOFT — open the paper app and watch the same fan-out path that powers this latency dashboard.
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