Learn what is covered by an API call and how data retrieval is measured by Intrinio's financial data plans.
This article will tell you what an API and API call are, how API call limits work in Intrinio's data plans, and how API calls are counted.
What is an API call?
API stands for application programming interface, and this is just a fancy term for a tool that gets data from a database so a developer can display that data in their application. Intrinio has a massive database of financial information like stock prices, balance sheets, economic data, and FDIC call reports. Our data feeds give developers an easy, systematic way to pull that data into whatever program they want to use via a single API.
Pulling data in this manner is called an API call, and it's very much like a phone call. The developer calls the database, asks for a specific piece of data, and the database sends back that data. The developer can then use that data in their application.
How do you sell API calls?
All paid plans have API call limits. In general, more expensive plans allow more API calls, meaning you can access more data in the allotted amount of time. The various plans a user can subscribe to have different features, such as whether the plan includes redistribution rights, but the savvy user will still want to estimate how many API calls they will need so they can pick the right plan.
How do you count API calls?
Since Intrinio's plans come in units of API calls, its important to understand exactly how much data you can get with an API call. For most data types, one API call gets you one data point. For example, a developer building an application would be charged one API call to get this data:
https://api-v2.intrinio.com/companies/AAPL/data_point/ceo/text
A developer building an application would be charged one API call to get this data. There are two exceptions to the 1 data point = 1 API call rule. For historical stock prices, it is possible to get up to 100 stock prices in a single API call. For example:
https://api-v2.intrinio.com/securities/AAPL/prices
will get a developer Apple's price history. That call is limited to 100 results per page with each day containing the open, low, high, close, volume, and adjusted stock prices. This article explains paging with the API - each page of data counts as one API call. For developers, this one page = 1 API call is a good rule of thumb.
A developer can get the entire income or balance sheet for a company in a single API call:
https://api-v2.intrinio.com/fundamentals/AAPL-income_statement-2015-FY/standardized_financials
This API call gets quite a few data points but counts as only a single API call.
How can I track my usage?
Developers will notice that the JSON return of their API call includes the item "api_call_credits." This number will usually be one, but with API calls that include multiple items, or multiple tickers, it can go up to 150.
API users can track their usage in their accounts for any of the data feeds they are subscribed to.