Barchart OnDemand

What it is

Barchart OnDemand is the developer half of Barchart: seventy-odd named REST endpoints — getQuote, getHistory, getEquityOptions, getNews, getCmdtyStats — on one host, keyed by an apikey query parameter, answering in JSON, XML or CSV. A separate event-based API pushes alerts over REST or Socket.IO when a user-defined condition fires.

Breadth is the pitch, and it goes somewhere unusual: next to the equities endpoints sit grain cash bids, USDA grain prices, refined fuel prices, crop factors and weather — Barchart's agricultural data business, sold through the same key.

Pricing

There is no price list. Barchart's own product overview offers to build "a custom package for you" whether you want a small, medium, large or enterprise solution, and the quick start tells you to fill in a contact form to be issued a key rather than to sign up. A trial exists, but it has to be asked for and its length is not published.

Data & coverage

Equities by exchange covers Aequitas, ASX, Cboe, CSE, Euronext, LSE Group, Nasdaq, ICE/NYSE and TMX; the futures and commodities side reaches further, with Hong Kong, Osaka, Shanghai, Tokyo and NSE India in the exchange list. Quotes are real-time, delayed or end-of-day by entitlement; history is tick, minute or daily bars.

One documented limit to design around: getEquitiesByExchange refuses a fileDate more than 30 days back, so the bulk-by-exchange route is for recent snapshots rather than backfill. getHistory publishes no record cap at all — the response follows your date range unless you set maxRecords.

Integrations

Official clients exist for Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python and MATLAB, and the docs ship an OpenAPI specification. Treat them as sample code rather than maintained SDKs: the Python client's most recent release is v1.1.1 from April 2023, and the Java client has had no commit since February 2019.

Limitations

• Redistribution is expressly prohibited: the docs say data is for internal use only. That rules out the obvious consumer product unless you negotiate separately.
• No self-serve signup, no published price, no trial you can start yourself. Evaluating it means a sales call, which prices out the weekend project entirely.
• Rate limits are published nowhere — they are whatever the contract says.
• The screening and charting endpoints are narrow: an options screener and a server-rendered chart image, not something you would hand a user.

Alternatives

Massive (formerly Polygon.io) and Alpha Vantage publish their prices and hand over a key in a minute, which matters more than breadth while you are prototyping. What Barchart has that they do not is the physical-commodity side — no close substitute among the other market data APIs.