Marketstack Review: Real-Time, Intraday & Historical Stock Market Data API

Marketstack is a REST API for developers who need stock-market data in JSON without building their own exchange-data pipeline. Its current offering covers end-of-day prices, U.S. intraday data, real-time updates on higher tiers, historical data, ticker and exchange metadata, corporate actions, market indices, bonds, ETF holdings, commodities on higher plans, and newer EDGAR endpoints. The biggest change from older Marketstack reviews is that new integrations should use API v2; Marketstack says v1 was deprecated after June 30, 2025.

For a lightweight market-data API, Marketstack remains appealing because the entry price is low and the REST model is simple. The trade-offs are equally important: the free quota is now only 100 requests per month, intraday coverage is centered on U.S. IEX data, real-time access requires Professional or higher, and Marketstack does not provide WebSocket streaming.

What Marketstack offers now

Marketstack is part of APILayer and returns market data through standard HTTP requests. Its official API Playground shows current v2 examples such as /v2/tickers/AAPL/eod/latest, ticker search, and exchange listing. That makes it straightforward to prototype requests before writing application code.

The core data categories are:

• End-of-day data: daily OHLC and related market fields.
• Intraday data: U.S. IEX intraday prices on paid plans.
• Real-time updates: available on Professional and higher, with intervals below 15 minutes including one-minute updates.
• Historical data: the current pricing page lists one year on Free, 10 years on Basic, and 15+ years on Professional and Business.
• Reference and corporate data: tickers, exchange information, currencies, time zones, splits and dividends, plus additional datasets on paid tiers.

API design and documentation

The API is approachable if you already work with REST services. Authentication uses an access key, responses are JSON, and common endpoints support filtering and pagination. A current single-ticker example is GET https://api.marketstack.com/v2/tickers/AAPL/eod/latest?access_key=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY.

One important migration detail is easy to miss: Marketstack's v1 documentation explicitly says v1 was deprecated after June 30, 2025 and directs developers toward v2. If an older integration still uses /v1/, updating it should be a priority.

Marketstack's official FAQ also confirms that this is a REST API, not a WebSocket or streaming API. You can poll for current prices, but applications that require persistent tick-by-tick streaming should evaluate whether that request-response model fits their architecture.

Pricing and request limits

These are the current monthly list prices shown on Marketstack's official pricing page. Annual billing is cheaper: the site currently shows $8.99 per month for Basic, $43.99 for Professional, and $127.99 for Business when billed yearly.

Quota accounting deserves attention. Marketstack says each ticker looked up consumes one request, so asking for five symbols in one call consumes five requests. API errors do not count. Paid plans also list per-request overage charges, so production users should monitor usage rather than treating the monthly limit as a hard stop.

Coverage, performance, and important caveats

Marketstack promotes broad global coverage, but its own public pages currently present different headline ticker totals. The safer approach is to verify the symbols and exchanges your application actually needs with the official Stock Search instead of choosing a plan from a marketing count alone.

For reliability, Marketstack publishes a live API status page with endpoint-level checks and states that its infrastructure operates at close to 100% uptime. That is useful operational transparency, but it is not a substitute for benchmarking latency from your own deployment region and workload.

Marketstack has also expanded beyond the feature set described in older reviews. Its site now advertises six EDGAR endpoints for SEC company information, submissions, filings, and financial facts. That can be valuable for research or compliance applications that want market data and regulatory filings through the same provider.

Marketstack review verdict

Marketstack is a good fit for developers who want a simple REST stock-data API, predictable entry-level pricing, JSON responses, and a clear upgrade path from end-of-day data to intraday and real-time use. Basic is the practical starting point for commercial apps that need U.S. intraday data; Professional makes more sense when one-minute updates and larger quotas matter.

The main limitations are the tiny free quota, REST polling instead of WebSockets, request consumption per ticker, and plan-dependent coverage. Before committing, test your required symbols in the Playground, confirm licensing for your use case, and calculate request volume using your real number of tickers rather than the number of HTTP calls.