Financial Data & API

Alpaca is a technology platform that provides commission-free stock and crypto trading APIs for developers, enabling fintech companies, robo-advisors, and financial apps to offer trading capabilities without building broker-dealer infrastructure. Founded in 2015 and backed by Y Combinator and others, Alpaca has become the go-to platform for developers building trading applications. The Trading API provides programmatic access to buy, sell, and manage positions in US equities and cryptocurrencies with paper trading for testing. Market Data API delivers real-time and historical bars, quotes, trades, and snapshots for US equities from all major exchanges. Broker API enables fintech companies and financial advisors to offer trading to their customers, handling account opening, funding, order management, and reporting. Alpaca's commission-free model is made sustainable by payment for order flow and interest income. The platform supports fractional shares, enabling investment in any amount. Streaming WebSocket APIs provide real-time market data and order status updates. SDKs for Python and JavaScript are well-maintained with active open-source communities. Alpaca's developer community is particularly strong in the algorithmic trading space, with many open-source strategy libraries built on top of Alpaca's APIs. The paper trading environment faithfully replicates live trading mechanics. Alpaca serves thousands of individual developers and hundreds of fintech companies building automated trading and investment applications.

Drata is a security and compliance automation platform that helps companies achieve and maintain compliance with frameworks including SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, and others. Founded in 2020 and valued at $2 billion after a $200M Series C, Drata has become one of the fastest-growing compliance automation platforms. The platform continuously monitors cloud infrastructure, identity providers, HR systems, and development tools to collect compliance evidence automatically—replacing the manual, point-in-time evidence collection that makes audits expensive and labor-intensive. Drata's 85+ native integrations connect to AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub, Okta, Workday, and other common infrastructure and business systems. Control monitoring provides real-time compliance posture visibility with automated alerts for gaps. The policy management module provides pre-built templates for required compliance documentation. Vendor risk management tracks third-party compliance through automated assessments. Trust Center enables companies to share their compliance status with customers and prospects, accelerating security reviews in the sales process. Personnel management tracks security training completion and background checks. Drata's clean interface and automation-first approach dramatically reduce the time and cost of initial compliance certification and ongoing maintenance. The platform is designed for technology companies seeking to meet enterprise customer security requirements or achieve regulatory compliance efficiently.

Finmark is a financial modeling and planning platform designed for startups and growing businesses that need professional financial models without hiring a CFO or financial analyst. Founded in 2020 and acquired by BILL in 2023, Finmark enables founders and finance teams to build dynamic financial models, track actuals against projections, and create investor-ready reports through an accessible interface. The platform connects to QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, and other data sources to pull actual financial data automatically, reducing manual entry. Model templates cover SaaS, e-commerce, marketplace, and other common business models. Scenario planning allows teams to stress-test assumptions and model different growth trajectories. The investor metrics dashboard tracks ARR, MRR, burn rate, runway, and other key KPIs. Department-level budgeting enables distributed financial planning across teams. Revenue forecasting models customer cohorts, churn, expansion, and new customer acquisition. Hiring plans integrate with financial models to show the cost impact of headcount decisions. Finmark's accessibility—designed for founders, not financial professionals—differentiates it from complex FP&A tools. The platform produces presentation-ready charts and reports for board meetings and investor updates. As part of BILL's ecosystem, Finmark integrates with BILL's AP and AR products for richer financial data. It is particularly popular with seed to Series B startups building financial infrastructure before hiring dedicated finance talent.

Flinks is a financial data platform that provides open banking connectivity and data enrichment for financial institutions, lenders, and fintechs primarily in Canada and expanding in the US. Founded in Montreal in 2016, Flinks has built the leading bank data aggregation infrastructure for the Canadian market, connecting to 250+ Canadian and US financial institutions. Flinks Connect is the embeddable UI that users see when linking their bank account, optimized for mobile and desktop with high connection success rates. The API provides transaction data, account balances, identity information, and financial statements for connected accounts. Flinks Insights enriches raw transaction data with merchant identification, category classification, and income/expense analysis—enabling lenders and fintechs to make better decisions from bank data. Income Verification uses bank transaction patterns to verify income without pay stubs, supporting faster lending decisions. Cashflow Analytics provides structured analysis of cash inflows and outflows for credit assessment. Flinks has deep compliance expertise in Canadian financial regulation, including open banking framework participation. Integration with major Canadian lenders, credit bureaus, and financial institutions makes Flinks the de facto standard for Canadian financial data connectivity. The platform is expanding into the US market, bringing its data quality and enrichment capabilities to the broader North American market. Flinks is particularly valuable for Canadian mortgage lenders, consumer lenders, and fintech applications needing bank data.

Intrinio is a financial data platform that provides developers, analysts, and fintech companies with affordable access to market data, company fundamentals, ESG data, and alternative datasets through clean REST APIs. Founded in 2012, Intrinio has positioned itself as the accessible, developer-friendly alternative to expensive legacy data providers like Bloomberg and FactSet. The platform covers US equities, international stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, cryptocurrencies, forex, and economic indicators. Company fundamentals include standardized financial statements, calculated ratios, earnings estimates, and ownership data going back decades. Real-time and delayed quotes are available from major US exchanges. Intrinio's Excel Add-In enables analysts to pull live data into spreadsheets without coding. SDKs for Python, JavaScript, Ruby, Java, and other languages accelerate integration. The Data API provides flexible querying of financial data points. ESG and sustainability data has become increasingly prominent. Alternative datasets include web traffic, app downloads, and other non-traditional financial signals. Intrinio's pricing is significantly more accessible than traditional financial data providers, making it viable for startups and individual developers. The company provides excellent documentation and a responsive support team. Intrinio is popular with fintech startups building investment apps, financial analysts building custom models, and developers creating financial tools. Its free tier enables experimentation before commitment.

Laika is a compliance automation platform that combines software with expert compliance guidance, helping technology companies achieve and maintain SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and other certifications. Founded in 2019 and backed by Accel and others, Laika differentiates from pure-software competitors by providing access to compliance experts who guide customers through the certification process. The platform's automated evidence collection integrates with AWS, GCP, Azure, GitHub, Okta, and other infrastructure systems. Policy management provides pre-built templates for required compliance documentation. Risk assessment tools guide teams through identifying and evaluating security risks. Personnel management tracks employee security practices including training, background checks, and device management. Vendor management assesses third-party security practices with automated questionnaires. The platform's expert network provides access to experienced compliance professionals who answer questions, review documentation, and prepare teams for audits. Laika also offers managed penetration testing services. The combination of software and human expertise positions Laika as a higher-touch option compared to self-service platforms. This resonates with companies that want guidance through their first compliance certification, not just tooling. Laika's compliance experts have deep experience with the specific requirements of major SOC 2 auditors and can prepare teams effectively. The platform is particularly popular with Series A–C companies establishing compliance programs for the first time.

Merge is a unified API platform that enables B2B software companies to add hundreds of integrations to their product through a single integration build. While not exclusively financial, Merge is widely used for accessing HRIS, payroll, accounting, ATS, and CRM data—making it essential infrastructure for fintech and HR-tech companies. Founded in 2020 and backed by Addition, NEA, and others, Merge allows product teams to integrate with Workday, ADP, QuickBooks, Salesforce, and 200+ other systems through one normalized API. For financial applications, Merge's Accounting category covers QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage, and other accounting platforms with a unified data model for companies, accounts, transactions, invoices, and payments. The HRIS and Payroll categories provide employee and payroll data from ADP, Workday, BambooHR, and others—critical for financial apps embedding workforce cost analysis. Merge's Magic Link enables end users to authenticate their integrations securely. The platform handles OAuth flows, credential management, data normalization, and API version management, eliminating integration maintenance burden from product teams. Field Mapping allows customers to customize how their source system data maps to Merge's standard model. Analytics track integration health and usage. Merge has become infrastructure for hundreds of B2B SaaS companies that need rapid, scalable integrations without building each individually.

Morningstar provides institutional-grade investment data APIs covering mutual funds, ETFs, equities, fixed income, and alternative investments for asset managers, wealth managers, and financial platforms. With over 40 years of investment research history, Morningstar's data is trusted by the world's leading financial institutions. The Morningstar Direct API provides programmatic access to the same data underlying its flagship Direct research platform. Fund data covers performance, holdings, fees, risk metrics, Morningstar Ratings (Stars), and category rankings for 620,000+ investment vehicles globally. Equity data includes fundamentals, valuation metrics, analyst estimates, and Morningstar Fair Value assessments. Fixed income data covers credit quality, duration, yield, and sector allocations for bond funds. Portfolio analytics enable factor analysis, attribution, stress testing, and risk decomposition. ESG data provides environmental, social, and governance ratings and controversy screening. The API's data quality and coverage breadth are among the best in the industry for investment management use cases. Morningstar's proprietary methodologies—like the Star Rating and Style Box—add analytical value beyond raw data. Enterprise licensing includes dedicated support, data consulting, and white-label capabilities. The platform is primarily suited for financial institutions, asset managers, and wealth management platforms where investment data quality justifies premium pricing.

Quandl, rebranded as Nasdaq Data Link after its 2018 acquisition by Nasdaq, is a leading platform for financial, economic, and alternative datasets used by quantitative analysts, hedge funds, and financial researchers. Founded in 2012, Quandl became the go-to aggregator of diverse financial datasets, offering both free public data and premium proprietary datasets through a single API. The platform covers traditional financial data—equity prices, company fundamentals, macroeconomic indicators—alongside alternative datasets that provide unique investment signals. Alternative datasets include satellite imagery, web traffic, sentiment analysis, geolocation data, supply chain monitoring, and credit card transaction aggregates. The Nasdaq acquisition has deepened the platform's financial data capabilities and extended its reach into institutional asset management. The API provides programmatic access to thousands of datasets in consistent JSON/CSV formats, with Python and R libraries for data science workflows. Premium datasets from institutional data providers like Preqin, FactSet, and specialized vendors are accessible through a single account. Data Lake capabilities enable enterprise clients to customize data delivery and storage. Nasdaq Data Link is particularly popular with quantitative investment firms, hedge funds building proprietary signals, and academic researchers studying financial markets. Its breadth of alternative data coverage and institutional pedigree make it a reference source in the quant investing community.

Plaid's financial data API products provide developers with programmatic access to bank account data, transaction history, income verification, and investment data across 12,000+ financial institutions. Beyond its consumer-facing Link product, Plaid has built a comprehensive API platform for financial data use cases. Transactions provides enriched, categorized transaction history going back 24 months from connected accounts. Identity extracts and verifies account holder information for KYC purposes. Assets delivers a point-in-time snapshot of account balances and transaction history formatted for lending and verification workflows. Liabilities provides data on loans, mortgages, student loans, and credit cards. Investments gives access to brokerage, retirement, and investment account holdings. Income Verification uses bank data to verify income, supplementing or replacing pay stubs in lending workflows. Balance provides real-time account balance information for payment risk assessment. Signal predicts the likelihood of ACH return, enabling smarter payment decisioning. Plaid's API documentation is considered best-in-class, with comprehensive guides, SDKs, and sandbox environment. The company's network of institutional connections and developer-friendly tooling have made it the default choice for fintech developers needing financial data access. Regulatory compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and financial data regulations is built into the platform.

Polygon.io is a market data API platform providing real-time and historical data for stocks, options, forex, and cryptocurrencies. Founded in 2017, Polygon.io has built a developer-first market data platform with clean REST and WebSocket APIs, comprehensive documentation, and competitive pricing. The Stocks API provides real-time quotes, trades, aggregates (bars), and snapshots across all US equities. Historical data goes back decades for equity markets. Options data covers the complete US options market with Greeks calculation. Forex data covers all major and minor currency pairs with real-time rates. Crypto data aggregates from multiple exchanges for a comprehensive view. WebSocket streaming delivers real-time market data with sub-second latency. Polygon's Snapshot API provides a complete market state for all tickers at once—useful for scanning and screening applications. Company details, financials, dividends, and splits are available through the Reference API. The free tier provides historical data access, while paid tiers unlock real-time data and higher rate limits. Polygon's pricing is transparent and developer-friendly, with plans scaling from hobby projects to production applications. SDKs for Python, JavaScript, Go, Java, and other languages simplify integration. Polygon is particularly popular with quantitative analysts, algorithmic traders, and fintech developers who need reliable, affordable market data. Its API design and documentation quality receive consistently high marks from developers.

Secureframe is a compliance automation platform that helps companies achieve SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and other security certifications faster and maintain them with less ongoing effort. Founded in 2020 and backed by Kleiner Perkins, Secureframe has grown rapidly to serve thousands of technology companies. The platform's automated evidence collection integrates with 200+ cloud services, development tools, and business applications to continuously gather compliance evidence without manual effort. Comply AI uses artificial intelligence to accelerate policy generation, risk assessments, and questionnaire responses. Control monitoring provides real-time compliance posture with automated alerts when issues arise. The personnel management module tracks security training, background checks, and access reviews. Vendor risk management assesses and monitors third-party compliance continuously. Secureframe's Trust Center enables public sharing of compliance status with integrated security questionnaire automation. The platform supports multiple compliance frameworks simultaneously, enabling companies to pursue SOC 2 and ISO 27001 in parallel efficiently. Penetration testing management integrates pen test results into the compliance workflow. Secureframe's customer success team provides hands-on guidance throughout the compliance process. The platform is competitive with Drata and Vanta in features and pricing, with particularly strong customer support and rapid feature development. It is popular with growth-stage technology companies building security programs ahead of enterprise customer requirements.