Alpha Vantage Exchange Coverage and Limits of Free Intraday Data
Summary
The discussion addresses why an Alpha Vantage intraday query may work for US listings but fail for Indian exchange symbols. One answer describes uncertainty around the provider's underlying sources and exchange coverage, noting that US data was linked to IEX and some international symbols appeared to be relayed from other free providers. It warns that undocumented coverage and ticker ambiguity make availability difficult to assess.
Another answer suggests adding an exchange prefix to Indian symbols and using a personal API key, offering this as a practical troubleshooting step. The thread also cautions that genuinely real-time stock data is generally not free because exchanges charge for it. Its IEX example is limited to trades on that venue rather than the full market, so it should not be treated as comprehensive market data. The discussion reflects user reports and an exchange-specific workaround; it does not establish current provider coverage or guarantee that the suggested symbol format will continue to work.
Key ideas
- Intraday data availability can vary by exchange even when daily data is accessible.
- A respondent suggests qualifying Indian symbols with an exchange prefix and using a valid API key.
- The provider's data sources and exchange coverage are described as insufficiently documented in the discussion.
- Free venue-specific trade data may represent only a small portion of the overall market.
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Full text
# Alpha vantage API Not working for NSE while the same query is giving output for NYSE stocks # Alpha vantage API Not working for NSE while the same query is giving output for NYSE stocks Was trying to pull intraday data with free api from alpha vantage but unable to download it; While At the same time I'm able to download daily OHLC data. Also, intraday data query is working for NYSE stocks but not working for NSE or BSE stocks. I tried lot but not worked for me; also, some time back the same query thrown the result/s and now it is not throwing. Please help. I am using R for testing. If you have any other free data source for live data(NSE feeds) request you to share it. ## Answer by TraderPatrick (score 4) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/41125 I tried out Alphavantage a while ago. I was looking at it as a source of data for US and Canadian stocks. They use IEX for US stock data. There are a few other international symbols that do work because they seem to pass-through the request to Yahoo (or other free sources) and return that data back to you. I think they may also use that as a fall-back if their IEX systems stop working too. However, when there was a common ticker symbol it would only return the US one. I didn't get a response from my support email. That they don't acknowledge or detail their data sources or have any way of querying available symbols, or even document which exchanges they cover, should be of concern. In general, you should not expect to find free live/real-time stock data, as the exchanges charge fees for that. The IEX data feed is an exception here - but it's not a proper feed - it only shows trades on IEX (under 3% of the market volume). ## Answer by Sridhar (score 2) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/44745 Try NSE:[Stock Symbol] in the URL Example: - NSE:TITAN - NSE:TATASTEEL Also replace demo apikey with your APIKey ``` https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=TIME_SERIES_INTRADAY&symbol=**NSE:TITAN**&interval=5min&apikey=**your apikey**&datatype=csv ```
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This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.