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Alternatives for Downloading Historical Stock Prices into Excel or R

Article Quant Q&A · Author: T-T
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Summary

The document compares ways to obtain historical prices for stocks without relying on Bloomberg’s Excel add-in. The original question describes a need to download data for many U.S. and international equities, while seeking a less costly option than broader analytical platforms. Suggested approaches include data services with Excel or programming-language access, R tools that retrieve Yahoo Finance quotes, and Excel add-ins that connect to market data providers and support historical-price formulas or bulk downloads.

These are practical pointers rather than a tested comparison. The discussion gives no assessment of coverage, data quality, licensing, reliability, pricing, or suitability for institutional research. In particular, a workflow that is convenient for individual stock histories may not meet requirements for large-scale, reproducible analysis. Users would need to check provider terms and verify the available history and fields for their securities.

Key ideas

  • Historical equity prices can be retrieved through services that support spreadsheets or programming languages.
  • R packages can provide an alternative workflow for downloading stock quotes from public finance sources.
  • Some Excel add-ins offer formulas and bulk-download interfaces for historical prices.
  • The discussion does not compare vendors on data quality, coverage, cost, or licensing.

Tags

EquitiesUS marketsExecution
Full text
# Alternative to Bloomberg Excel Add-In for EOD Stock Prices


# Alternative to Bloomberg Excel Add-In for EOD Stock Prices












Is there a more cost-effective alternative to Bloomberg Excel Add-In? 90% of the time I only use Bloomberg to download security (hundreds of U.S. and international stocks) historical price data. The formula I use is `=BDH(security, field,start date [mm/dd/yyyy], end date [mm/dd/yyyy], optional arguments)`.

I did some research online and found a few platforms like Factset. They provide analytical solutions which are more than what I needed. I am simply looking for alternative Excel Add-Ins to Bloomberg's or R packages that can download historical price data. Thanks a lot!

## Answer by nimbus3000 (score 3, accepted)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/32430

Quandl - you can use Excel, R python addin/code to pull data

## Answer by Mike Pic (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/32428

I also heavily rely on Bloomberg for price data at work. For single stock price history I leveraged Yahoo Finance in the past. The quantmod() R package has some functions that can pull Yahoo Finance equity quotes. I'm sure there are others, too. I would try that route first.

## Answer by Marc S. (score 1)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/32895

Money.net also provides an Excel add-in (details see here).

## Answer by Andy Sinclair (score 1)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/48779

I've built an Excel Add-in (https://www.excelpricefeed.com/) which enables retrieval of data from Yahoo Finance (as well as other data providers). The Add-in currently provides live and historic prices to Excel cells via simple formulas such as:

```
=EPF.Yahoo.Price("AAPL")

=EPF.Yahoo.Historic.Close("TSLA", "1 May 2019")
```

It also has a UI for bulk downloading historic data to Excel.

Hope you find it useful.

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This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.