A Free Alpha Vantage Alternative for Forex, Gold & Crypto
Alpha Vantage is many developers' first market data API — until the free tier's daily request cap (25 requests/day at the time of writing) ends the project the same afternoon it started. If what you need is live prices for forex, gold, crypto or index CFDs rather than deep US-equity history, biquote does that with no API key and limits you will genuinely never hit.
Side by side
| biquote (free) | Alpha Vantage (free) | |
|---|---|---|
| API key / signup | none | required |
| Rate limit | 15,000 req/min per IP | 25 req/day (as of writing) |
| Real-time streaming | WebSocket (SignalR), unmetered | — |
| Forex / gold / crypto quotes | real-time, ~280 live instruments | limited on free tier |
| OHLC candles | 1m to 1d intervals | yes (daily strong, intraday limited) |
| Economic calendar | 54 countries, free | — |
| Embeddable widgets | 12 widgets, one script tag | — |
| US equity history & fundamentals | — (CFD quotes only) | yes — its real strength |
Try it right now — no key
curl https://biquote.io/api/EURUSD
curl https://biquote.io/api/XAUUSD
curl "https://biquote.io/api/XAUUSD/ohlc?interval=1h&limit=100"Batch quotes use a repeated parameter: /api/latest?symbols=EURUSD&symbols=XAUUSD. For streaming, connect a SignalR client to /hubs/tick and invoke Subscribe — ticks are pushed as they happen, no polling. Full details in the API docs, or pip install biquote / npm install biquote.
When Alpha Vantage is still the right choice
Honesty section: biquote is CFD pricing from a MetaTrader 5 broker feed, not exchange-licensed data. There is no last/volume (use mid), no stock fundamentals, no 20-year daily history, and no official NASDAQ/NYSE feeds. If you are backtesting US equities over decades or need earnings data, Alpha Vantage's free tier remains genuinely useful. If you need live FX, metals and crypto at real request volumes, that is exactly what biquote is for.