Financial Modeling Prep Review 2026: API, Pricing, Limits

Financial Modeling Prep sells its cheap plans for personal use only, and showing the data on a website requires a separate contract. That line is clear in the terms of service, but it is not the first thing the home page tells you. The second point to know: global coverage starts with the most expensive personal plan.

This review is based on FMP’s public pages, not on a paid plan. We read the pricing, documentation and terms on November 8, 2026. We did not measure the data quality ourselves.

Financial Modeling Prep in 30 seconds

• What it is: a data provider with an API. FMP delivers prices, financial statements and ratios to your own programs, spreadsheets and AI assistants. It is not a charting platform.
• Pricing: free for 250 calls a day. Starter is $29 a month, Premium $69 and Ultimate $139. With annual billing they work out to $19, $49 and $99 a month.
• Coverage: Starter lists the US, Premium adds the UK and Canada, and “Global Coverage” appears only with Ultimate.
• Personal means personal: the terms exclude business ties and public data display without a separate agreement.
• No refunds: the terms call all sales final, so test your queries on the free plan first.

What is Financial Modeling Prep?

Financial Modeling Prep, or FMP, is a financial market data provider that delivers prices, company financial statements, ratios and calendars to your own applications through an API.

You buy data from FMP, not a finished trading screen. An API, short for application programming interface, is a door through which one program requests data from another. You ask for Apple’s balance sheet, for example, and get the numbers back. An API key identifies you, as the documentation explains.

By its own count, FMP covers more than 70,000 securities. The home page also lists over 4,500 cryptocurrencies, 1,500 forex pairs and 40 commodities. The endpoint count varies: the home page says over 100, the pricing page over 150.

Feature	Details
Product	Financial data by API, WebSocket and bulk download
Operator	Utradea Inc., according to the Trust Center
Plans	Basic, Starter, Premium, Ultimate, Enterprise
Formats	JSON and CSV, add-ins for Excel and Google Sheets
AI connection	MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT and others
Trading	not a broker, no order execution

What data does FMP provide and how fresh is it?

FMP refreshes its datasets on cycles that range from real time through a few minutes to the filing date of a financial statement.

Four groups matter most to traders. They are price data down to one-minute bars, ratios from financial statements, technical indicators, and calendars for earnings and dividends. FMP also carries the Commitments of Traders report, insider filings and 13F holdings of large US investors.

A table lists the refresh cycle for each dataset. The cycle times page is useful because it turns “current” into time. We did not measure these figures. They describe the cycles of each endpoint. Which ones you can access depends on plan and market, and they do not guarantee a delay from the market event onward.

Dataset	Refresh according to FMP
Stock quote and one-minute bars	Real time
End-of-day prices	5 to 15 minutes
Latest insider trades	2 minutes
News	5 minutes
Financial statements and ratios	Filing date
Price target summary	25 minutes
COT report	Weekly

“Real time” is the provider’s description, not a guarantee. The pricing page itself says that errors can occur and disclaims liability for inaccurate data. Before a trading rule depends on these numbers, compare them with a second source. Our guide to backtesting covers how to test rules and data.

Which markets do the FMP plans cover?

Coverage depends on the plan, and this is where buyers outside the US get caught. The pricing page lists “US Coverage” for Starter. Premium adds the UK and Canada. Only Ultimate lists “Global Coverage”.

If you trade only US stocks, the lower plans may be enough. Historical depth is the next limit: 5 years on Starter and up to 30 years on Premium. Intraday charts and technical indicators first appear on Premium, one-minute charting on Ultimate.

We could not check coverage symbol by symbol without a paid plan. Direct data sources named on the home page are Nasdaq, LSEG, Cboe, TMX and IEX. Write down your symbol list and check it before you pay, because refunds are excluded.

How to connect FMP to Claude: the MCP server

The FMP MCP server is a connection that lets AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT request financial data directly, without you writing your own code.

For many traders this is the real starting point today. You ask a question in plain language, and the assistant fetches the ratios itself. The MCP documentation describes official connectors for Claude and ChatGPT and up to 28 tools, depending on your plan. Requests count toward your normal limits.

We have set this up live in a course. On August 9, 2026, Bjarne Claussen connected FMP to Claude in our German course on AI for traders. Several participants reported in the course chat that the connection worked for them. That shows the setup works, not how good the data is, and it does not show contractual permission either: we did not check for this review which license covered the use in the course. For the chart side, see our guide to the TradingView MCP.

Three technical points are worth knowing. Your key belongs in the request header rather than the URL, where it can end up in logs, and FMP says the same. Tool calls over 25 seconds return an error, and on endpoints with a limit parameter the default is 50 entries, or lower if your plan caps it. If you prefer to code yourself, start with our Python trading bot guide.

How much does Financial Modeling Prep cost?

The four personal plans differ mainly in markets, history and calls. The pricing page showed these figures on November 8, 2026. We calculated the yearly totals from the monthly price with annual billing. Billed yearly, that is $228, $588 or $1,188 a year. These are USD list prices, plus taxes where they apply. The screenshot below shows the monthly prices.

Plan	Price a month	Includes
Basic	$0	250 calls a day, end-of-day data, profiles
Starter	$29, or $19 billed yearly	300 a minute, US, 5 years of history
Premium	$69, or $49 billed yearly	750 a minute, adds UK and Canada, 30 years, intraday
Ultimate	$139, or $99 billed yearly	3,000 a minute, global, 13F, 1-minute bars, bulk
Enterprise	on request	display and resale rights, by contract

There is a bandwidth limit as well as a call limit. Over 30 days the pricing page lists 500 MB on the free plan, 20 GB on Starter, 50 GB on Premium and 150 GB on Ultimate. On large downloads this limit can matter as much as the calls per minute.

Do not count on getting your money back. The terms of service call all sales final and exclude refunds. Subscriptions renew automatically, and a cancellation takes effect at the next billing period.

Personal or commercial: what the terms allow

The cheap plans are for individuals and not for business purposes. FMP defines commercial use very broadly and expressly includes an association with a company, for example as an employee or contractor. Analyzing data to support business decisions falls under it too.

You may not display the data on a website without a separate agreement. Section 2.2.2 prohibits this on websites, blogs and applications used by multiple people, even when they are free. As we read it, a dashboard shared by a trading group is therefore not covered by a personal plan. FMP requires a separate agreement for this, and the pricing page points to the Enterprise plan with an inquiry form.

You may not share your key either. Sharing your login or API key is expressly prohibited, and FMP reserves the right to monitor use and suspend accounts. The terms are dated August 1, 2023 and refer to a separate data use policy. At the address given we found only an error page on November 8.

Is Financial Modeling Prep legit?

FMP is a real, widely used data service, but its transparency did not convince us. Our findings give no basis for a fraud allegation. The Trust Center lists SOC 2 Type I and II reports, a standard for security controls. The reports themselves are available there only on request.

FMP’s pages do not give one answer on who runs it. The Trust Center names Utradea Inc. as operator. The Microsoft Marketplace lists Financial Modeling Prep SAS as publisher of the Excel add-in. The terms of service speak only of “FMP” and, in the text we read, name neither a company nor an address. We could not establish how the two names are connected.

The tracking statements do not fit together. The privacy policy rules out tracking cookies and third-party behavioral tracking. It also describes visit-based Google advertising and Analytics and DoubleClick cookies. It further mentions a potential sale of interaction data, and whether that data is personal stays open.

Independent voices are mixed. On Trustpilot FMP stood at 4.0 out of 5 from 104 reviews on November 8. Of those, 41 came in the last 12 months, the newest on November 1, 2026. 66% give five stars and 21% one star. The profile is claimed, FMP has replied to 10% of negative reviews, and Trustpilot notes it has not invited reviews recently. Support and price often get praise. A one-star review from September 2026 complains about datasets that turned out to need a different plan.

A complaint from this fall fits the coverage trap. A Reddit user reports that an annual Starter plan lost access to free-float data for Indian NSE stocks and that FMP refused a pro-rata refund. We could not verify the dispute independently. Either way, build your queries so that a data gap does not stop your system.

Put the customer logos in context. FMP shows names such as OpenAI, Perplexity, TipRanks and Trading 212 and speaks of over 1,000 businesses. We cannot see contracts or scope, and it tells private users little, since large customers buy on other terms.

What are the alternatives to Financial Modeling Prep?

The right provider depends mainly on your markets. Here are the main alternatives, based on the provider pages of November 8, 2026:

Service	Strength and limit
Twelve Data	800 free calls a day, real-time EU data only from the Pro plan according to its pricing page
Alpha Vantage	only 25 free calls a day, paid plans without a daily limit, official MCP server
EODHD	prices and fundamentals with free and paid plans, check the scope before buying
QuantConnect	full backtesting platform with its own data market, not pure data access
Quiver Quantitative	focus on special data about politicians and insiders

Our tip: write down your symbol list and the fields you need, then test them on the free plan. If you only want to look at prices, you do not need an API at all. Our overview of AI trading covers the wider limits of AI in trading.

Pros and cons of Financial Modeling Prep

After checking the public pages, this is the picture: broad data access at a low price stands against strict contract limits. We did not measure the data quality ourselves.

Pros

• Low entry: the free plan is enough to test the endpoints.
• Many datasets: prices, statements, calendars, COT and insider filings from one source.
• Clear cycles: a table lists the refresh time for each dataset.
• AI connection: the MCP server connects Claude and ChatGPT without your own code.
• Audit reports: the Trust Center lists SOC 2 Type I and II.

Cons

• Costly global coverage: “Global Coverage” appears only with the most expensive personal plan.
• Narrow personal license: business ties and data display need a separate agreement.
• No refunds: the terms call all sales final.
• Unclear operator: different company names, no address in the terms we read.
• Inconsistent privacy policy: its tracking statements do not fit together.

Conclusion: who Financial Modeling Prep is for

Based on the features described, FMP suits private tinkerers who want US data in their own analysis or an AI assistant. The entry is cheap for that, and the MCP server is convenient. Start on the free plan and compare a few values with the company’s annual report.

For markets beyond the US, UK and Canada, the math changes. Ultimate is the first personal plan explicitly advertised with global coverage, so check your specific symbols and endpoints before paying, because there are no refunds. For pure chart analysis you do not need a data provider at all.

The personal plans do not fit anything with a business tie. If you want to feed a website, an app or a group dashboard, you belong on the Enterprise plan or with another provider. That applies to free offerings as well.

This review is market information, not investment advice.

Frequently asked questions about Financial Modeling Prep

Is Financial Modeling Prep any good?

Opinions are mixed. Trustpilot showed 4.0 out of 5 from 104 reviews on November 8, 2026, with praise for support and price and criticism of plan limits. Our assessment rests on the public pages, not on a paid plan.

How much does the FMP API cost?

It starts free, with 250 calls a day. Starter costs $29 a month or $19 with annual billing, Premium $69 or $49, Ultimate $139 or $99. Enterprise is available on request only.

Is the FMP API free?

Partly. The Basic plan costs nothing and is limited to 250 calls a day and 500 MB in 30 days. The pricing page lists end-of-day data and profiles there and describes it as a plan for testing.

Can I show FMP data on my website?

Not without a separate contract. The terms of service prohibit display on websites, blogs and multi-user applications, even for free offerings. The Enterprise plan is meant for that.

Does FMP cover stocks outside the US?

According to the pricing page, that depends on the plan. Premium adds the UK and Canada, and Ultimate lists global coverage. Check your symbols before you pay, because the terms exclude refunds.