What are Data Tags?

Data Tags are standardized identifiers that represent individual financial data points in the Intrinio API. Instead of requesting a value by a database field or proprietary column name, you request it by its Data Tag.

Think of a Data Tag as the name of a specific financial metric, such as:

revenue
netincome
ebitda
marketcap
assets
liabilities
epsbasic

Data Tags make it easy to retrieve consistent financial data across thousands of companies, regardless of how the original financial statements were formatted.

Why Data Tags Exist

Every public company reports its financial statements a little differently. Companies may:

Use different labels for the same concept
Present line items in different orders
Include company-specific disclosures

Intrinio standardizes this information into a common set of Data Tags, allowing you to retrieve comparable financial metrics with a single API request.

For example, whether a company labels a line item as:

Revenue
Total Revenue
Net Sales
Sales Revenue

Intrinio can normalize those values under the appropriate standardized Data Tag when available.

Where Data Tags Are Used

Data Tags are primarily used when working with company fundamentals and historical financial data.

Common use cases include:

Retrieving a single financial metric
Building financial models
Comparing companies
Creating custom dashboards
Downloading historical financial statement data

For example, if you want a company's revenue over time, you specify the revenue Data Tag rather than searching through an entire financial statement.

Finding Available Data Tags

Intrinio provides endpoints that allow you to browse and search available Data Tags.

You can:

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

This makes it easy to discover the correct tag before incorporating it into your application. The API includes dedicated endpoints for listing all Data Tags, searching Data Tags, and retrieving an individual Data Tag by its identifier.

Standardized vs. As-Reported Data

Many Data Tags represent standardized financial concepts, making comparisons between companies much easier.

Some workflows also allow access to as-reported financial statement data, which preserves the values exactly as they appeared in a company's SEC filing.

The appropriate approach depends on your application:

Standardized data is best for screening, analytics, comparisons, and quantitative research.
As-reported data is best when you need to reproduce a company's original financial statements or perform detailed accounting analysis.

Example

Suppose you want Apple's annual revenue.

Rather than downloading an entire income statement and locating the correct line item yourself, you can request the revenue Data Tag for Apple. Intrinio returns the standardized value associated with that metric, allowing you to work with the data immediately.

Tips for Working with Data Tags

Use the Data Tag search endpoint if you're unsure of the exact tag name.
Reuse the same Data Tags across companies to simplify comparisons.
Standardized Data Tags are generally the best choice for financial analysis and modeling.
Review the API documentation to see which endpoints accept Data Tags as parameters. You can also use the Data Tag discovery endpoints to browse or search available tags before building your integration.