# finlight

Financial news API resolving companies to tickers, ISINs and FIGIs, plus a stream.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/finlight · Stock Market Data APIs*

## Facts

### At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | finlight |
| Category | Stock Market Data APIs |
| Job | news |
| Website | https://finlight.me |
| Pricing model | subscription |
| Free tier | true |
| Open source | false |
| Licence | none |
| Self-hosted | false |
| Tested hands-on | false |
| Last updated | 2026-09-19 |

### Pricing

| Tier | USD | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Launchpad | 0 USD | month |
| Pro Light | 29 USD | month |
| Pro Standard | 99 USD | month |
| Pro Scale | 249 USD | month |
| Enterprise | on request | — |

### Coverage

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Asset classes | stocks |
| Markets | global |
| Works outside the US | true |
| Data latency | none |
| Platforms | web, library |
| AI features | none |

### Interfaces

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| API | true |
| Webhooks | true |
| Scripting | none |
| Python | true |
| Spreadsheet add-in | false |
| MCP server | true |
| Export | json |

### Capabilities

Yes: alerts, news

No: charting, screening, scanning, backtesting, automation, live_trading, paper_trading, portfolio_tracking, broker_import, tax_reporting, options_analysis

*Verified: pricing 2026-09-19; capabilities 2026-09-19; coverage 2026-09-19.*

## What it is

A financial news API from a small German vendor, built around one idea the free-tier competition
usually skips: the companies in an article are resolved, not just matched. Each `companies` entry
carries a confidence score between 0 and 1, a name, a sector and industry, a country, a ticker, an
ISIN, an OpenFIGI identifier, a `primaryListing` and an `otherListings` array — each listing its
own ticker, MIC exchange code and country — plus every known ISIN for the company. Of those,
`ticker`, `isin`, `openfigi`, `exchange` and `country` are also things you can query on.

The query language is the other half. `query` takes boolean operators, quoted phrases, `+` and
`-`, parentheses, and field-level filters on `ticker`, `isin`, `openfigi`, `exchange`, `source`,
`title`, `summary` and `content`, plus `country` and `category`. Three of those —
`ticker`, `exchange` and `source` — take a `*` wildcard to match everything. Articles also carry a
sentiment label with a confidence, ISO country codes, and one of thirteen categories from
`markets` and `economy` through to `regulation` and `commodities`.

## Pricing

Four published plans and a quote. Free is 5,000 requests a month with articles held back 12
hours; $29 buys 10,000 real-time requests and the company entities; $99 buys 50,000 and adds
sentiment; $249 buys 150,000 with unlimited push delivery. Prices exclude tax, and VAT is added
at checkout by country. There is no annual discount to read past — the page bills monthly and
only monthly.

Read the feature rows rather than the request counts, because that is where the tiers actually
differ. Sentiment starts at $99. Company entities start at $29. Websockets and webhooks start at
$29 and are metered separately from requests — dispatches and deliveries have their own monthly
caps, and when the webhook quota runs out deliveries pause until the period rolls.

## Data & coverage

Many languages, indexed — but one language per request. The `language` parameter defaults to `en`
and takes a single value, with no "all" option, so a request that does not set it silently
returns English only and you cover three languages by making three calls and merging. The docs
say this twice, which suggests it catches people.

There is no published source count, no published article volume and no published archive start
date. The vendor's marketing claims sub-second websocket latency; nothing in the docs puts a
number on indexing delay.

## Integrations

REST at `api.finlight.me/v2`, two websockets (an enriched stream and a raw low-latency one),
webhooks in enriched and raw flavours with HMAC-SHA256 signatures and replay protection, and a
first-party MCP server at `mcp.finlight.me` taking OAuth or an API key and exposing
`search_articles`, `get_article_by_link` and `list_sources`.

Eight official client libraries — TypeScript, Python, Go, .NET, Java/Kotlin, PHP, Ruby and Rust —
all published by the vendor, all on the same auth header, all with retries and webhook signature
verification. PHP deliberately omits websocket streaming. The Python package is `finlight-client`
on PyPI, from ali@finlight.me, 2.4.0 in May 2026. Docs are served as Markdown by appending `.md`
to any page, with an `llms.txt` index.

## Limitations

- **Redistribution is not granted.** The terms of use, effective 16 April 2025 and under German
  law, licence the API for internal business or personal use, forbid reselling access, and state
  that finlight does not authorise redistribution or republication of third-party content without
  a licence from the owner. Displaying anything requires attributing the publisher and linking
  the article.
- **No published archive depth.** The matrix says one month on the lower two plans and nothing at
  all for the upper two.
- **Sentiment is a label, not a score** — `positive`, `neutral` or `negative` with a separate
  confidence — and it belongs to the article, not to each company in it.
- **English-only by default**, and there is no way to ask for every language at once.
- **No rate-limit headers.** No `Retry-After`, no `X-RateLimit-*`; a burst 429 means wait ten
  seconds and a monthly 429 means wait for the billing period. The dashboard's usage figure is
  aggregated about once a day and lags a day behind, while enforcement is live.
- `includeContent` and `includeEntities` are marked deprecated in the endpoint reference while
  still being the documented way to get full text and companies.

## Alternatives

[Marketaux](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/marketaux) is the closest match on price and shape and scores sentiment per
entity rather than per article, but serves only snippets. [Stock News API](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stocknewsapi)
and [NewsFilter.io](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/newsfilter-io) both tag tickers and sell a stream.
[NewsAPI.ai](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/newsapi-ai) has a far wider corpus and no security identifiers at all, which
is the trade running the other way.

Compare it against the rest of the [market data APIs](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/market-data-apis).

## FAQ

### Is it finlight.me or finlight.io?

finlight.me. That is the site, the API host (`api.finlight.me`), the docs host and the address in the terms of use. finlight.io does not resolve at all — a DNS lookup returns nothing, so anything sending you there is out of date.

### Which tiers include sentiment?

Only Pro Standard at $99 and Pro Scale at $249. The free and $29 plans do not get it, and the docs are explicit that the fields are stripped from the payload rather than nulled — an ungranted capability simply is not in the response. Company entities are the same shape one tier lower — absent on free, present from $29 up.

### How far back does the archive go?

No start date is published. The pricing matrix gives Launchpad and Pro Light one month and marks the two higher plans as simply including "Historical Data"; the docs say higher plans "unlock deeper historical coverage" and point back at the pricing page, which does not answer it. Requests outside your window return nothing rather than an error, so ask before you plan a backfill on it.

### Can I show finlight articles to my own users?

Only with rights from the publisher. The terms grant a licence for your internal business or personal use, bar sharing or reselling API access, and state that finlight does not authorise redistribution or republication of third-party content unless you hold a licence from the content owner. Where you do display content you must name the publisher and link the source article. Building a competing news distribution service is barred outright.

## Also worth comparing

- [Benzinga News API](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/benzinga-news-api.md) — Licensed US stock newswire over REST, TCP, WebSocket or webhook, priced by contract.
- [Marketaux](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/marketaux.md) — Global financial news over REST, tagged to entities and scored for sentiment per entity.
- [NewsAPI.ai](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/newsapi-ai.md) — Global news API with Wikipedia-grounded entity tagging and event clustering.
- [NewsFilter.io](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/newsfilter-io.md) — Ticker-tagged news API with a websocket push stream and a stalled SEC filings source.
- [RavenPack News Analytics](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/ravenpack-news-analytics.md) — Entity-level sentiment and event tags over 40,000 news sources, licensed by contract.
- [Stock News API](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stocknewsapi.md) — US stock news with a keyword sentiment label — headline and link, never the article text.