yfinance is one of the most popular Python libraries for market data, and for notebooks and quick experiments it is hard to beat. But it reads Yahoo Finance's website rather than an official API, so it can stop working or change behaviour without notice. For anything that runs unattended, you need a yfinance alternative with a documented interface.
Why look for a yfinance alternative?
- No contract: it relies on unofficial endpoints that can change or rate-limit you at any time.
- Unclear licensing for commercial products.
- Silent data issues: missing candles or time-zone surprises are hard to detect.
- No support when something goes wrong in production.
What to look for
- A versioned REST API with public documentation and an OpenAPI specification.
- Live prices with timestamps and a status (live or market closed).
- Historical OHLC candles in many timeframes, plus tick data.
- A Python SDK with automatic pagination and clear errors.
- Transparent pricing and a free tier to test.
Migrating from yfinance in Python
With our Python client the switch takes a few lines:
from marketapi import MarketAPI # pip install marketapi, or download marketapi.py
api = MarketAPI("YOUR_API_KEY")
print(api.latest(["EURUSD", "XAUUSD"])) # live bid/ask with status
for bar in api.bars("EURUSD", "D1", "2024-01-01", "2026-01-01"): # pages automatically
print(bar["time"], bar["close"])Load the candles into pandas exactly as before. See the developer page for the full reference, and our tutorial on EUR/USD historical data in Python.
Coverage
Forex majors, minors and exotics, gold and silver, stock indices and stocks, all listed in the ticker CSV. Try it without a key on the free tier, or create an account for live data and history.
