The API most people's first script talks to — free key, wide coverage, hard rate limits.
$49.99/moFree tierMCP
Market data in Excel and Google Sheets
Tools with a spreadsheet add-in — where the built-in GOOGLEFINANCE and STOCKHISTORY functions stop, and what picks up.
Last updated
What the built-in functions do not do
Google Sheets ships GOOGLEFINANCE and Excel on Microsoft 365 ships STOCKHISTORY. Both are
free, both cover prices, and for a lot of work they are the right answer. Three limits send people
looking for something else:
Depth. Ten years of income statements, segment breakdowns, estimates — none of that is in either function. This is what Wisesheets, GuruFocus and Daloopa sell.
Breadth. Non-US listings, funds, FX pairs and asset classes the built-ins handle unevenly or not at all. EODHD and Twelve Data are both here for that.
Terms. Data pulled through the built-in functions is licensed for use in that spreadsheet. The moment a model is a deliverable — a client report, a product, anything leaving your account — it is the wrong source, whatever the numbers say.
The same key, a very different call budget
Most of these add-ins are a second front end onto an API the vendor already sells: Alpha Vantage, Financial Modeling Prep, Intrinio and Nasdaq Data Link all serve the same data to a script and to a cell.
What changes is how often you call it. A script runs when you run it; a sheet recalculates on every edit, every open, and every drag of a fill handle down two hundred rows. The rate limit that never bound a Python job is the first thing you meet in a spreadsheet, and it is worth reading the per-minute number on a card rather than the per-month one.
Not only data vendors
OpenBB brings an open-source terminal's data into a sheet; Quantower and Stock Events push the other way, letting a platform or a tracker feed a sheet that was already the place you did the thinking. Different starting points, same reason: the model lives in the grid and the data has to come to it.
All 22 of them
Showing 22 of 22
AI search over 500M+ filings, broker research and Tegus expert transcripts.
—MCP
Filings and slide-deck KPIs, machine-extracted and dropped into your own Excel model.
Free tier onlyMCP
Closed-source tick database with a vector language, as-of joins and streaming engines.
Free tier onlyMCP
End-of-day and fundamentals for 60+ exchanges worldwide, at a hobbyist price.
$19.99/moFree tierMCP
Financial statements, ratios and filings for 70,000+ securities across 60+ exchanges.
$22/moFree tierMCP
The Fed's macro database — 851,100 series, a free key and 120 requests a minute.
Free
Thirty years of financials, a deep screener and 13F guru portfolios, sold by region.
$549/yrFree tierMCP
XBRL-standardised US financials, options analytics and an MCP server.
$150/moMCP
Tick-by-tick data into a local Windows socket, with exchange fees billed on top.
$20/mo
What Quandl became — Nasdaq's own exchange feeds plus a curated data catalogue.
Free tier onlyMCP
One Python API, REST app and MCP server over thirty other people's data feeds.
$500/yrFree tierMCP
Short interest estimated daily from the lending pool, with cost to borrow beside it.
$49/moFree tierMCP
Windows order-flow terminal for 60+ connections, with an open C# API and a real free tier.
$40/moFree tier
Forty years of global fundamentals over REST, an MCP server and Google Sheets.
$29/moFree tierMCP
US fundamentals extracted from filings, shipped as bulk CSV datasets, not REST calls.
$25/moFree tier
A dividend and earnings calendar wrapped around your holdings, phone first.
$0.99/moFree tier
Macro data for 196 countries with its own forecasts. No free key; the API starts at $199.
$29.99/moMCP
Global stocks, forex and crypto over REST and WebSocket, billed in credits per minute.
$29/moFree tierMCP
Institutional 13F holdings back to 2001, queryable from a signed REST API.
$300/yrFree tier
Financials, estimates and live prices as worksheet functions in Excel and Google Sheets.
$60/yr
Advisor research and client reporting, priced by quote rather than published.
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FAQ
What is wrong with GOOGLEFINANCE?
Nothing, for what it is. It is free, it is already in the sheet, and it covers current and historical prices for major exchanges. What it does not do is fundamentals at any depth, statements going back further than the recent past, estimates, or anything you may redistribute — the data is licensed to you for use inside Google Sheets and nowhere else. Every add-in on this page exists on the far side of one of those limits.
Does Excel have something built in?
Yes — the STOCKHISTORY function and linked data types, on Microsoft 365. Same shape of answer as GOOGLEFINANCE — prices yes, depth no, and delayed rather than live. Add-ins plug into the same grid and bring their own provider, which is also what makes them cost money.
Will an add-in give me real-time prices in a sheet?
Some will, on the right plan, and it is worth asking why you want it. A spreadsheet recalculating a live quote is a poll against a rate limit, and the free and low tiers here are all delayed or end-of-day. Where a vendor does serve live prices into a sheet, the exchange fees apply exactly as they would through the API.
Are these add-ins just a wrapper around the same API?
Usually yes, and that is the point rather than a criticism — the same key works from Python and from a cell. What differs is the call budget. A sheet full of formulas recalculates far more often than a script runs, so the plan that felt generous through the API can burn through its quota in a morning of dragging fills down a column.