Best Free Tools for Students/Researchers

Portfolio123

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Portfolio123 is a rules-based quant research and portfolio-management platform for investors who want stock and ETF screeners, ranking systems, factor research, realistic backtests, strategy simulations, portfolio tracking, broker connectivity, and API/DataMiner access. It is strongest for systematic investors who want point-in-time research workflows without building everything from code.

Quartr

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Quartr is a qualitative public-market research platform for earnings calls, real-time transcripts, filings, reports, slide decks, analyst estimates, AI chat, and investor-relations data. The mobile app is useful for free earnings-call and transcript access, while Quartr Pro and Quartr API serve professional research, MCP, webhook, and data-integration workflows.

SEC.gov (EDGAR)

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SEC.gov EDGAR is the official free source for U.S. public-company filings, fund filings, insider forms, 13F reports, full-text filing search, RSS feeds, bulk archives, and no-key public JSON APIs. It is the baseline source for filings research and data validation, but it is raw official infrastructure rather than a polished commercial research terminal.

Stock Analysis

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Stock Analysis is a web and mobile research hub for investors who want stock screeners, financial statements, earnings calendars, market news, charts, analyst forecasts, watchlists, and portfolio tracking in one approachable workspace. It is strongest as an everyday due-diligence layer for researching public companies, ETFs, mutual funds, IPOs, dividends, corporate actions, and market movers without needing a professional terminal. Free access is useful but ad-supported and limited; Pro and Unlimited add broader history, saved screeners, alerts, exports, full ETF holdings, broker sync, advanced analyst filtering, and higher watchlist or download limits. It is not a broker, advisory service, portfolio accounting system, public API, custom quant platform, or data redistribution source.

TIKR

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TIKR is a browser-based global equity research terminal for investors who care about fundamentals, financial statements, analyst estimates, valuation work, transcripts, filings, and stock screening. It is strongest for long-term stock research across global markets, with paid plans unlocking the deeper history, broader coverage, exports, and workflow limits that serious investors usually need.

Alpha Spread

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Alpha Spread is a value-investing research platform for investors who want quick intrinsic value estimates, DCF and relative valuation, stock reports, screeners, watchlists, alerts, analyst forecasts, and AI-assisted company questions. It is strongest for first-pass fair-value research, but free usage is metered weekly and automated valuation outputs should be reviewed as assumptions, not final investment decisions.

Alpha Vantage

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Alpha Vantage is an API-first financial data provider for developers, students, quants, and analysts who need a simple API key for stock, ETF, mutual fund, FX, crypto, options, commodities, fundamentals, news, sentiment, and macroeconomic datasets. It is strongest for learning, prototypes, spreadsheets, and personal API workflows, but the free quota is small, premium endpoints require membership, and commercial use needs separate licensing.

AlphaResearch

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AlphaResearch is an AI-powered stock research platform for searching filings, transcripts, press releases, reports, notes, fundamentals, estimates, news, insider transactions, institutional ownership, and fund holdings. It is useful for document-heavy research and collaboration, but global coverage and spreadsheet add-ins are Enterprise features and the premium trial requires a credit card.

Bank of England

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The Bank of England website is the official free source for UK monetary policy decisions, Bank Rate context, MPC calendars and minutes, Monetary Policy Reports, statistics, exchange-rate and interest-rate series, and UK yield-curve downloads. It is strongest as a primary-source macro and rates reference for analysts, students, investors, and developers, but it is not an investing app and some datasets, including yield curves, are delivered as files rather than a full API.

Bank of Japan (BOJ)

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The Bank of Japan website is the official free source for Japanese monetary policy releases, meeting schedules, BOJ statistics, release calendars, time-series downloads, charts, and API access. It is strongest for analysts, students, developers, and investors who need primary-source Japan rates, FX, money stock, TANKAN, balance-of-payments, and central-bank data, but it is a macro data source rather than an investing app or security-level research terminal.

BIS Data Portal

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BIS Data Portal is the official free statistics portal from the Bank for International Settlements for global macro-financial time series, exports, bulk downloads, release calendars, charts, tables, and SDMX API access. It is strongest for analysts, students, quants, and builders who need cross-country banking, credit, debt, derivatives, liquidity, property-price, exchange-rate, and central-bank statistics, but it is an official macro data source rather than an equity terminal or trading platform.

Börsdata

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Börsdata is a Nordic-first equity analytics, screening, and data platform for investors who want long-history fundamentals, thousands of ratios, strategy screens, ownership data, insider and short-selling context, technical charts, reports, watchlists, calendars, and API or spreadsheet access. It is strongest for Nordic stock research, while global coverage, holdings data, Excel/Sheets workflows, and REST API access depend on paid tiers and professional users are routed to Enterprise.

Calcbench

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Calcbench is a professional SEC filing, XBRL, financial statement, disclosure, and Excel research platform for analysts who need traceable as-filed numbers, standardized accounting metrics, footnotes, redlines, proxy data, compensation data, M&A details, and API access. It is strongest for accounting-heavy U.S. equity research and data workflows, but meaningful access is priced for professional users and API access is sold separately from standard subscriptions.

Capitol Trades

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Capitol Trades is a free public web app from 2iQ Research for tracking U.S. politician trading disclosures under the STOCK Act. It is strongest for investors, journalists, and researchers who want to filter congressional trades by politician, issuer, chamber, party, committee, state, asset type, transaction type, sector, size range, and filing details, but disclosure timing can lag trades and reported amounts are ranges rather than exact fills.

DATAROMA

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DATAROMA is a free, focused tracker for superinvestor 13F portfolios, recent portfolio changes, and insider buying activity. It supports value-investing idea discovery and manager-following workflows, then verify timing, filings, and fundamentals before acting.

Dune

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Dune is a crypto and onchain analytics platform for SQL dashboards, decoded blockchain data, APIs, alerts, uploads, teams, and AI-agent workflows. It is useful when you want to build or automate custom onchain analysis across many blockchains rather than consume a fixed market-data screen.

ECB Data Portal

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ECB Data Portal is the official free European Central Bank source for ECB statistics, euro area macro data, interest rates, exchange rates, yield curves, downloads, charts, and SDMX API access. It is useful when you need primary-source European macro data rather than a commercial terminal summary.

EDINET

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EDINET is Japan's official electronic corporate-disclosure system. It supports issuer, security, fund, stock-code, document-type, keyword, and date searches, with source filings, XBRL resources, taxonomy files, and an API for programmatic filing retrieval.

EIA Open Data

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EIA Open Data is the U.S. government source for statistical and operational energy data. Analysts and developers can browse energy series or retrieve them through a free API, bulk files, and spreadsheet tools for macro, commodity, utility, and energy-market research.

EMMA

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EMMA is the official public transparency platform for the U.S. municipal-securities market. It brings together disseminated trade prices, offering documents, continuing disclosures, credit ratings, issuer information, new-issue calendars, alerts, and market statistics for municipal-bond research.

ETF Central

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ETF Central is a free ETF research and education site for screening, comparing, watching, and learning about U.S.-listed ETFs. It supports approachable ETF discovery, segment flows, portfolio building, news, and ETF education before moving to execution or deeper portfolio accounting elsewhere.

European Central Bank (ECB) — Statistics & Data

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European Central Bank Statistics & Data is the official ECB source for euro-area statistics, policy rates, FX reference rates, yield curves, inflation, macro indicators, downloads, and SDMX API access. It is useful when you need primary-source European macro and rates data rather than investment-app commentary.

EveryTicker

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EveryTicker is a free U.S. stock research platform focused on undercovered public companies, including microcaps, nanocaps, and OTC names. It supports fundamental reports, AI and traditional screening, watchlists, 13F ownership context, and investment-theme discovery before doing deeper diligence.

FDIC BankFind Suite (BankFind)

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FDIC BankFind Suite is the official free FDIC source for looking up FDIC-insured banks, branches, histories, structure changes, failures, financials, Summary of Deposits data, APIs, and bulk downloads. It is useful when bank research needs primary-source U.S. government data rather than a commercial bank screener.

Financial Modeling Prep (FMP)

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Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) is a market-data API and spreadsheet-data provider for developers, analysts, quants, and product builders who need equities, ETFs, funds, FX, crypto, commodities, macro, ESG, ownership, news, calendars, transcripts, and fundamentals from one vendor. It is strongest when you want REST and WebSocket access plus Excel and Google Sheets add-ins at a lower entry price than enterprise terminals. The main buying questions are plan limits, geography, history depth, and dataset access: the free Basic tier is a limited EOD sandbox, while real-time, global, transcript, 13F, holdings, intraday, and bulk workflows require paid tiers.

FinancialData.Net

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FinancialData.Net is an API-first financial data platform for developers, analysts, spreadsheet users, and AI-agent builders who want broad market data, fundamentals, ownership, options, funds, ESG, calendars, news, Excel access, and MCP connectivity from one provider. It is strongest when breadth matters: stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, futures, crypto, forex, commodities, OTC securities, indices, filings-related datasets, and institutional/insider activity can sit behind one REST API. Serious use is paid, and compliance/security claims should be verified directly because no public audit reports were identified.

FINRA Fixed Income Data

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FINRA Fixed Income Data is an official source for U.S. bond security details, disseminated TRACE transactions, trade-activity history, and aggregate market reports. It is useful for researching executed prices and volumes, but TRACE is not a quote system, exchange, or execution venue.

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)

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FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) is the free macroeconomic time-series database from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, used by students, investors, analysts, quants, and product builders who need trusted economic data, charts, release calendars, Excel access, mobile apps, and a REST API. It is strongest for official macro context around inflation, rates, GDP, employment, exchange rates, credit, and market indicators rather than equity fundamentals or brokerage workflows. API users need a free API key, and usage remains subject to FRED terms and source-specific data restrictions.

GeminIQ

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GeminIQ is a browser-based U.S. public-company research platform built around as-filed SEC financial statements. It combines XBRL-traceable 10-K and 10-Q data with calculated metrics, interactive visualizations, reusable custom tables, stock screening, watchlists and comparable-company analysis, Form 4 insider transactions, institutional ownership monitoring, and post-earnings price-reaction views. It is strongest for filing-grounded fundamental research, but coverage is U.S.-focused and new filing data is available the next day rather than in real time.

Global Factor Data (JKP Factors)

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Global Factor Data, often called JKP Factors, is a free academic research dataset and web interface for global equity factor returns, stock characteristics, and reproducible factor-construction code based on Jensen, Kelly, and Pedersen. It is best for quants, researchers, students, and factor-investing teams that need transparent evidence on global factor performance rather than marketing claims. The data is not a live trading feed, and the license is non-commercial unless separate permission is granted.

Investopedia

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Investopedia is a free finance education and market news publisher with a widely searched Stock Simulator for paper trading. It is best for beginners, students, educators, and self-directed investors who want definitions, explainers, market context, newsletters, calculators, and a virtual-money environment before using a real brokerage account. The simulator is useful for practice, but it uses delayed data, limited exchange coverage, and limited options functionality, so it should not be treated as live execution, professional trading infrastructure, or investment advice.

Marketstack

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Marketstack is an APILayer REST market-data API for developers who need stock prices, end-of-day history, intraday bars, corporate actions, reference data, ETF holdings, bond yields, commodities, analyst ratings, and SEC EDGAR company datasets through JSON endpoints. It is useful for prototypes and products that need a simple stock market API with a free tier and clear paid plans. It is not a charting app, broker, portfolio tracker, screener UI, or unlimited institutional data license.

OpenBB

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OpenBB combines an open-source financial data layer with a hosted Workspace for dashboards, AI research, custom agents, and team workflows. It is best for analysts, quants, developers, and firms that want to connect their own market data, internal datasets, provider API keys, widgets, MCP tools, and AI workflows instead of buying a closed terminal. Community access is useful for individuals, while Pro adds collaboration, exports, Excel, RBAC, SSO, MFA, and private deployment options. OpenBB does not provide production market data itself; it orchestrates connectors, your data, and your vendor access.

PCAOB AuditorSearch

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PCAOB AuditorSearch is the official free lookup for the audit firms and engagement partners behind U.S. public-company audit reports. It is useful when governance, audit-quality, restatement, or auditor-change work needs source-level audit provenance rather than another market-data estimate.

SentiSense

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SentiSense is a beta AI market-intelligence and data API platform for investors and developers who want stock data, sentiment, news clustering, social signals, institutional flows, insider trades, congressional trading disclosures, and AI-generated insights in one workflow. It serves as a signal layer for research, not as a broker or adviser.

StockInsights.ai

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StockInsights.ai is an AI equity research assistant for filings, earnings calls, transcript summaries, 8-K categorization, SEC filing dashboards, watchlist alerts, APIs, and custom research workflows. It is useful for AI-assisted public-company monitoring, but API commercial use, redistribution, higher limits, and custom workflows require separate plans or contact.

Stockoscope

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Stockoscope is a visual U.S. stock research platform built around five connected lenses: quality, peers, valuation, analysts, and holdings. It combines configurable fundamental scores, peer ranks, intrinsic-value models, analyst estimates, ownership activity, screeners, editable investment strategies, watchlists, and news. It is approachable for retail investors and unusually transparent about its model rules and data sources, but coverage is U.S.-only and data generally refreshes daily or after market close.

The Ledger Terminal

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The Ledger Terminal is a web-based fundamental stock research terminal built around one-page U.S. stock tearsheets, valuation charts, quality checks, screeners, comparisons, and SEC-linked financial history. It is aimed at long-term business analysis, not trading execution or portfolio accounting.

TickerTrends

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TickerTrends is an alternative-data and KPI-forecasting platform for public-company investors, analysts, quant teams, hedge funds, and institutions. It combines search, web traffic, app usage, social, reviews, news, transcripts, financial data, consensus, and proprietary trend signals, but those signals are noisy proxies that require validation before investment use.

Trading Economics

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Trading Economics is a macro and markets data platform for browsing economic indicators, calendars, forecasts, market data, company financials, news, ratings, and corporate events, with paid REST API, WebSocket, spreadsheet, BI, and AI-assistant integrations. It is strongest for developers, analysts, and teams building dashboards, alerts, research apps, and macro data pipelines from one source. Guest credentials provide limited sample access, while Standard, Professional, and Enterprise plans govern real API use, streaming, rate limits, row limits, and commercial rights. It is data infrastructure, not a broker or investment-advice service.