Tiingo vs Alpha Vantage comes down to depth against breadth. Tiingo wins for 30-plus years of low-cost historical prices and a free tier that outpaces Alpha Vantage’s own. Alpha Vantage wins for built-in technical indicators and spreadsheet add-ins, which Tiingo does not sell at all.
Tiingo vs Alpha Vantage: the feature comparison
Tiingo’s free Starter tier gives 1,000 requests a day and 30-plus years of US equity history at no cost, far past Alpha Vantage’s own free tier of 25 requests a day with no real-time data. Alpha Vantage historical data claims 20-plus years against Tiingo’s 30-plus, and Tiingo adds 1-minute bars back to 2017 that Alpha Vantage does not offer at that granularity. What Alpha Vantage carries instead is tooling: 50-plus built-in technical indicators, a native Google Sheets add-on, and a beta Excel add-in, none of which Tiingo ships. Both sell forex and crypto data. Tiingo’s own fundamentals reach full financial statements too, but only through a separate paid add-on once you go past the DOW 30; Alpha Vantage bundles full income-statement and balance-sheet data into every paid tier already.
| Feature | Tiingo | Alpha Vantage | Market Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stock price history | 30+ yrs EOD; 1-min bars since 2017 1 | 20+ years claimed 2 | 2010 onward; 1-5yr free, unlimited paid |
| Real-time US stocks | IEX; full TOPS needs IEX agreement 3 | Real-time on paid plans (gated) 4 | SmartMid (API); IEX quote (Sheets) |
| US options | No | Basic, real-time endpoint exists 5 | Excellent, real-time OPRA (Trader+) |
| Forex | Good, 140+ pairs since 2020 6 | Good, FX intraday and daily 5 | No (coming soon) |
| Crypto | Good, 160+ venues 7 | Good, intraday and daily 5 | No (coming soon) |
| Free tier | 1,000 req/day, DOW 30 fundamentals 8 | 25 req/day, EOD only, no real-time 9 | 100 credits/day, 1yr history, delayed |
| Cheapest paid plan | $25/mo (Power, annual) 8 | $41.58/mo (Premium 1, annual) 9 | $12/mo (Starter, annual) |
| Cost of real-time stocks + options | Not offered 1 | $166.58/mo (annual) 5 | $30/mo (annual) 10 |
| Official SDKs | None official; community only 11 | Community only, no official SDK 5 | Python, JS, TS, Java, C#, Go, PHP |
| Google Sheets | None 11 | Native add-on 12 | Native add-on, free |
| Trustpilot | Not published (no listing found) | 2.4 of 5 (11 reviews) 13 | 4.5 of 5 (110 reviews) 14 |
Sources for this table, checked 2026-09-26
- tiingo.com/products/
- alphavantage.co/
- tiingo.com/documentation/websockets/iex
- alphavantage.co/realtime_data_policy/
- alphavantage.co/documentation/
- tiingo.com/
- tiingo.com/documentation/general/changelog
- tiingo.com/about/pricing
- alphavantage.co/premium/
- marketdata.app/docs/account/plan-limits/index.md
- tiingo.com/documentation/appendix/integrations
- workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/alpha_vantage_market_data/434809773372
- trustpilot.com/review/alphavantage.co
- trustpilot.com/review/www.marketdata.app
Does Tiingo or Alpha Vantage have options data?
Neither is built for it. Tiingo has no options product of any kind, not even end of day. Alpha Vantage has a REALTIME_OPTIONS endpoint with an optional greeks parameter, but no documented chain filtering, and historical quotes limited to one date per call, back to 2008.
Tiingo
6.8/10 30+ years of EOD history and 1-minute bars since 2017, but full real-time needs a separate IEX agreement.
- Real-time stock prices ×2
- 6/10
- Historical depth ×1.5
- 9/10
- Breadth ×1
- 7/10
- Price for value ×2
- 8/10
- Developer experience ×1.5
- 4/10
- Reliability and reputation ×1.5
- 7/10
Strengths
- 30+ years of US equity history
- 1-minute bars since 2017
- 1,000 requests/day on the free Starter tier
Weaknesses
- Full TOPS real-time needs a signed IEX Exchange agreement since 2025-02-01
- No official SDK
Tiingo pricing runs $30 a month before any discount, $25 a month billed annually on Tiingo’s pricing page for the Power plan, with 30-plus years of price history and 1-minute bars since 2017. Real-time equity data comes from IEX, and since February 2025 the full bid/ask/last-sale feed needs a signed market-data agreement with IEX Exchange directly; skip that agreement and Tiingo serves a derived reference price instead. It has no official SDK, no Google Sheets add-on, and no Trustpilot listing we could find, a thin public review footprint either way.
Alpha Vantage
5.2/10 20+ years of history and global symbols, but real-time is gated and unconfirmed in feed basis.
- Real-time stock prices ×2
- 4/10
- Historical depth ×1.5
- 8/10
- Breadth ×1
- 6/10
- Price for value ×2
- 5/10
- Developer experience ×1.5
- 6/10
- Reliability and reputation ×1.5
- 3/10
Strengths
- 100,000+ international symbols
- 20+ years of history claimed
- 50+ built-in technical indicators
Weaknesses
- Free tier capped at 25 requests/day
- No websocket delivery
- Trustpilot 2.4/5 (11 reviews)
Alpha Vantage covers what Tiingo does not: 50-plus technical indicators, a native Google Sheets add-on and a beta Excel add-in, across over 100,000 international symbols. Its free tier caps at 25 requests a day on Alpha Vantage’s pricing page with no real-time data, well short of Tiingo’s 1,000, and paid plans start at $49.99 a month, $41.58 billed annually. Its Trustpilot rating is 2.4 out of 5 on 11 reviews, with complaints about stale “real-time” data and slow support.
What if you need a commercial license for Tiingo and Alpha Vantage?
We refer you to our partner Intrinio. We made that change in February 2025, after IEX ended free redistribution of real-time stock prices for business use, because exchange compliance for business customers was more than our small team could handle.
The volume is steady: from 1 to 25 September 2026 we passed on 22 commercial enquiries. Each one described a product that would show prices, or something built from them, to other people.
Why can prices from Tiingo and Alpha Vantage differ from ours on the same day?
Usually because one source adjusts past prices for later splits and corporate actions and the other does not. Adjusted history changes whenever a new corporate action lands, so a value you fetched last month can come back different today.
That default cost us. In April 2026 an institution valuing donated stock told us our highs and lows disagreed with other quote sites, and it withheld a subscription payment for five weeks while we investigated. A donation is valued at the price that traded that day, so it needed unadjusted candles: two query parameters removed all five discrepancies it reported. The same review found a real bug that dropped the third decimal from some prices, and we fixed it.
Should you choose Tiingo or Alpha Vantage?
Choose Tiingo if deep, reliable EOD history and fundamentals at a low flat price matter more than asset-class breadth. Choose Alpha Vantage if you need technical indicators or a spreadsheet add-on today. Market Data fits neither buyer directly.
We cover US stocks and options only, with no forex, crypto, international symbols, or MCP server, and no Excel add-in of our own yet. A real customer once laid out the actual math on a related feed: Market Data vs. IEX direct at $500 to $4,000 a month vs. Tiingo’s IEX-derived feed at $250 a month for display only, no bid or ask. Our US stock market data page covers what we price by the same standard, and real-time options on our own Trader plan run from $30 a month.
Both providers also sit in our ranking of financial data providers, and the best stock API comparison scores all of them, Tiingo and Alpha Vantage included, on the same six criteria.