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Understanding Data Tags

Data Tags are one of the core concepts in the Intrinio API. They provide a standardized way to request individual financial metrics and data points without needing to know where that information originated in a company's financial statements.

Whether you're retrieving the latest value for a company, requesting historical financial data, or building custom financial models, Data Tags make it easy to access consistent, comparable financial information across thousands of companies.

What Is a Data Tag?

A Data Tag is a unique identifier that represents a specific financial metric, statistic, or company attribute.

Instead of requesting a line item by its location in a balance sheet or income statement, you simply reference its Data Tag. For example:

  • revenue
  • netincome
  • assets
  • marketcap
  • employees

Each Data Tag corresponds to a single standardized data point that can be requested through supported API endpoints.

Why Data Tags Matter

Public companies often report the same financial concept using different labels.

For example, one company may report:

  • Revenue
  • Net Sales
  • Total Revenue

Although the labels differ, they all represent the same financial concept.

Intrinio standardizes these values so you can simply request the revenue Data Tag and receive a consistent result across companies.

This eliminates the need to map thousands of company-specific labels yourself.

Where Data Tags Are Used

Data Tags are used throughout the Intrinio API, including endpoints for:

  • Company data points
  • Security data points
  • Historical company data
  • Historical security data
  • Economic index data
  • Stock market index data
  • SIC index data
  • Fundamental financial statements
  • Financial statement filtering and screening

The API also provides dedicated endpoints for discovering and searching available Data Tags, making it easy to explore the available financial metrics programmatically.

Finding Available Data Tags

If you're unsure of the exact Data Tag you need, you can browse or search the complete Data Tag catalog.

The API includes endpoints that allow you to:

  • Retrieve all available Data Tags
  • Search for Data Tags by keyword
  • Retrieve detailed information about a specific Data Tag

These endpoints are especially useful when exploring the API or building dynamic applications that allow users to select financial metrics.

Example

Suppose you want Apple's annual revenue.

Rather than searching through Apple's SEC filing for the appropriate line item, you simply request:

revenue

The API returns the standardized revenue value regardless of how Apple labeled that line item in its filing.

The same Data Tag can then be used for Microsoft, NVIDIA, Tesla, or any other supported company.

Standardized vs. As-Reported Data

Most developers will use standardized Data Tags because they provide consistency across companies and reporting periods.

If your application requires company-specific reported values exactly as they appear in SEC filings, Intrinio also provides access to as-reported financial data through its Fundamentals endpoints. This allows developers to choose the level of normalization that best fits their application.

Best Practices

  • Use standardized Data Tags whenever you're comparing companies.
  • Reuse the same Data Tags across your application to ensure consistent results.
  • Search the Data Tag catalog before creating custom mappings.
  • Pair Data Tags with Fundamentals endpoints when building financial models or historical analyses.

Learn More

For complete Data Tag definitions and searchable API documentation, visit the Intrinio API documentation.

If you're developing with AI coding tools such as ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or Windsurf, consider using the Intrinio Financial Data MCP Server. The MCP server understands your account permissions and can recommend the appropriate datasets, endpoints, and Data Tags available with your subscription, helping reduce implementation errors. Additional API endpoint information is also available through Intrinio's OpenAPI specification.

Summary

Data Tags provide a simple, standardized way to access financial metrics across the Intrinio platform. Rather than worrying about how each company reports financial information, you can request consistent Data Tags and let Intrinio handle the normalization, making it easier to build financial applications, perform analysis, and compare companies at scale.