# Stooq

Free daily, hourly and 5-minute history as bulk files, for personal use only.

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

## Facts

### At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | Stooq |
| Category | Stock Market Data APIs |
| Job | historical |
| Website | https://stooq.com |
| Pricing model | free |
| Free tier | true |
| Open source | false |
| Licence | none |
| Self-hosted | false |
| Tested hands-on | false |
| Last updated | 2026-10-04 |

### Pricing

| Tier | USD | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free | 0 USD | month |

### Coverage

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Asset classes | stocks, etf, indices, forex, crypto, bonds, futures, options, mutual_funds |
| Markets | us, uk, eu, asia, global |
| Works outside the US | true |
| Data latency | eod |
| Platforms | web |
| AI features | none |

### Interfaces

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

### Capabilities

Yes: charting

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

*Verified: pricing 2026-10-04; coverage 2026-10-04; capabilities 2026-10-04.*

## What it is

Stooq is a Polish financial portal, in Polish and English, best known outside Poland for one
page: a free historical database of daily, hourly and 5-minute bars, published as ASCII text or
MetaStock files and refreshed overnight. Each instrument's page also has a CSV download link for
its own daily history, and the site carries the charts and quote tables of an ordinary portal.

For years it was the standard fallback when Yahoo Finance broke, because it asked for no key and
had a reader in pandas-datareader. Both of those have changed in 2026, and that is most of what
this card is for.

## Pricing

Free, with nothing to upgrade to: no subscription, no key, no request quota published anywhere.
The cost is the licence. The download page says the data is "intended solely for personal use.
Any commercial use is prohibited", and section 5.3 of the terms of service bars redistributing
any of it without Stooq's consent. S&P Dow Jones index data on the site carries its own
personal, non-commercial clause and a ban on using it to build or track any investment product.

## Data & coverage

The bulk database is split by market and interval. The daily US folder holds files for 4,660
Nasdaq stocks, 4,532 NYSE stocks, 327 NYSE American stocks and 3,812 ETFs, and runs to 515 MB as
ASCII. Beside it are the London Stock Exchange (1,821 stocks, 4,742 ETFs), the Tokyo exchange,
Hong Kong, the Warsaw exchange down to bonds, futures, options and structured products, Budapest,
Polish mutual funds, and a world folder of currencies, cryptocurrencies, bonds and indices. A
macro folder carries economic series for 37 countries and the euro area.

Depth is per listing — Apple's daily series starts in September 1984. Intraday files exist only
for the US, UK, Hong Kong, Poland, Hungary and the world folder; Japan and macro are daily only.
There is no fundamentals data and no corporate-actions file, and the database page does not say
how prices are adjusted for splits and dividends — check a known split before trusting a series.

## Integrations

None, officially. Stooq publishes no API and no documentation for one. What people scripted against were the plain
per-symbol CSV URLs, and **pandas-datareader 0.11.0 (23 June 2026) removed its Stooq reader**,
together with Yahoo, Tiingo, Quandl and IEX, as dependent on defunct or broken upstream APIs.

The URLs themselves are now guarded. Between 20 May and 8 June 2026, by Internet Archive
captures, every page gained a JavaScript proof-of-work check, and on 4 October 2026 a scripted
request that solved it — session cookie and referrer in place — still got `Access denied` from
a single-symbol CSV link and `Unauthorized` from a bulk archive. In a browser the bulk files ask
for a four-character image captcha first; they were already captcha-gated in March 2026.

## Limitations

- **Not for anything commercial.** Personal use only, and no redistribution without consent.
  A product, a client report or a public dataset built from it is outside the terms.
- **Scripted access was refused when we tried.** On 4 October 2026 a scripted request got
  `Access denied` and `Unauthorized` where a browser got the files; plan on downloading by hand,
  and expect a nightly job written before June 2026 to need checking.
- **No adjustment documentation and no fundamentals.** Prices only, with no published
  adjustment method.
- **No support relationship.** The terms say continuous access cannot be guaranteed, and there
  is no paid tier to buy a guarantee with.

## Alternatives

[yfinance](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/yfinance) is the other free, keyless route, with its own breakage history and
Yahoo's terms. [Tiingo](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tiingo) and [EODHD](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/eodhd) sell documented end-of-day APIs
for small monthly fees, with keys and published limits. For survivorship-free US history with
delisted names, [Norgate Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/norgate-data) and [CSI Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/csi-data) are the
paid standard.

## FAQ

### Is Stooq data free?

Yes, with no paid plan to upgrade to, but it is free for personal use only. The download page says commercial use is prohibited, and the terms of service forbid redistributing data from the site without Stooq's consent.

### Does pandas-datareader still support Stooq?

No. pandas-datareader 0.11.0, released on 23 June 2026, removed the Stooq reader along with Yahoo Finance, Tiingo, Quandl, IEX and the other securities sources, on the ground that their upstream APIs were defunct or broken. Code that calls DataReader with the stooq source needs the 0.10.0 release from 2021, and even then the site may refuse the request.

### Can I download Stooq data with a script?

Not reliably any more. Since late May or early June 2026 every page sits behind a JavaScript proof-of-work check, and on 4 October 2026 a scripted request that had passed it still got Access denied from the single-symbol CSV link and Unauthorized from the bulk archives, which a browser unlocks with a four-character image captcha.

### How far back does Stooq history go?

It depends on the listing rather than on a plan. Apple's daily series on Stooq starts on 7 September 1984. Hourly and 5-minute bars are offered as bulk files for a subset of markets — the US, UK, Hong Kong, Poland and Hungary — while Japan and the macro folders are daily only.

## Also worth comparing

- [AlgoSeek](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/algoseek.md) — Lossless SIP, OPRA and CME tick history with published per-asset-class lease pricing.
- [Alpha Vantage](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/alpha-vantage.md) — The API most people's first script talks to — free key, wide coverage, hard rate limits.
- [CSI Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/csi-data.md) — End-of-day futures history back to 1922 and eight ways to build a continuous contract.
- [Databento](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/databento.md) — Full order book and tick history from exchange feeds, billed by the gigabyte.
- [EODHD](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/eodhd.md) — End-of-day and fundamentals for 60+ exchanges worldwide, at a hobbyist price.
- [FirstRate Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/firstrate-data.md) — Historical US intraday and tick data as zipped CSV, bought once rather than rented.