Finnhub — Stock, Crypto, Forex Data

Finnhub's REST API. Real-time stock quotes, fundamentals, earnings, news, alternative data (insider transactions, sentiment, ETF holdings), economic data, crypto, and forex. Comprehensive market data with a strong free tier.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1476+ live data sources.

Why this matters for AI agents

Where Alpha Vantage is solid for fundamentals + technical, Finnhub is stronger for real-time quotes (1-minute resolution on free), insider transactions, news/sentiment, and international markets. For finance agents that need price data alongside news flow and insider activity, Finnhub is fit-for-purpose.

Common flows:

Quote. Real-time (or 15-min delayed on free tier) stock quote.
Company news. Recent news for a ticker with sentiment scoring.
Insider transactions. Form 4 filings with timing and dollar amounts (also see insider-trading pack which is SEC-EDGAR-direct).
Earnings. Upcoming earnings calendar, surprise history, EPS estimates.
International symbols. European, Asian, emerging-market tickers (where Alpha Vantage gets thinner).

Auth

Free key from https://finnhub.io/dashboard. Free tier: 60 API calls/minute. Pass via _apiKey.

Higher tiers ($50-200/mo) unlock real-time data, longer historical, and rate limits suitable for production. The free tier is sufficient for most agent research.

When to use Finnhub vs. Alpha Vantage

Need	Better source
Quotes	Either; Finnhub real-time-er on free tier
Income statement / balance sheet	Alpha Vantage (cleaner schema)
Insider transactions	Finnhub or insider-trading pack
Company news with sentiment	Finnhub
Earnings calendar	Finnhub
International coverage	Finnhub
Technical indicators	Alpha Vantage
ETF holdings	Finnhub

For richest coverage, Pipeworx agents often mount both.

Common pitfalls

Symbol conventions. US tickers are simple (AAPL); international markets need exchange suffixes (NESN.SW for Nestlé on Swiss exchange). Finnhub has a symbol search.
Free tier real-time delay. "Real-time" on free is essentially current; on paid it's actually live. For agent research, free is fine. For trading, paid.
News sentiment is heuristic. Finnhub computes sentiment with NLP — it's directionally useful but noisy. Don't treat as ground truth; useful as a signal.
Insider transaction lag. SEC requires Form 4 filing within 2 business days of the transaction. Finnhub picks them up shortly after. Real-time alerting requires either polling or a separate real-time SEC feed.
Estimates vs. actuals. Finnhub provides analyst consensus estimates; mixing them with actuals in plots requires labeling carefully.
Free-tier coverage holes. Some smaller caps and OTC stocks have limited Finnhub coverage on free. Verify the data exists for your target tickers before designing flows around it.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "finnhub": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/finnhub/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/finnhub/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1476+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Finnhub data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

License

MIT

Finnhub