Stocks

You can access real-time stock data, company info, and cryptocurrency time series through a dedicated MCP server that interfaces with Alpha Vantage. This MCP server exposes a consistent set of tools to fetch quotes, company details, time series data, and options information, making it easy to integrate live market data into your workflows and applications.

How to use

Connect to the Alpha Vantage MCP server from your MCP client to access the available tools. You will interact with eight tools to retrieve data such as stock quotes, company details, stock time series, and cryptocurrency data. Use the tools to query by symbol (and optional parameters like market or date) and receive structured results that you can feed into dashboards, alerts, or analyses. If you manage multiple data sources, you can combine results from different tools to build comprehensive market views in real time.

How to install

Prerequisites you should have before installing: Python 3.12 or higher, a Python package manager (pip), and the MCP runtime environment (uvx). Ensure you have network access to install dependencies and run the MCP server locally.

Step 1: Install the MCP and dependencies. Run the following in your terminal to add the necessary MCP tooling and dependencies.

uv add -r requiremets.txt .

# Note: This installs the required Python package dependencies for the MCP server.

Step 2: Prepare and configure the MCP connection for Claude Desktop. Create or edit your claude_desktop_config.json to enable the Alpha Vantage MCP server using the provided parameters. Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual Alpha Vantage API key.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alphavantage": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": [
        "-m",
        "alpha_vantage_mcp.server",
        "run",
        "server.py"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ALPHA_VANTAGE_API_KEY": "insert_your_alpha_api_key",
        "PYTHONPATH": "Path to the server.py"
      }
    }
  }
}

Step 3: Start the MCP server locally. You can run the server using the provided command from the Alpha Vantage MCP setup.

uv run src/alpha_vantage_mcp/server.py

Additional configuration and notes

You may also start the server directly from its repository location if you prefer to run it outside Claude Desktop. Use the same Python module invocation shown above to launch the server and ensure that your API key is correctly set in the environment.

Troubleshooting and tips

If you encounter rate limits or errors from the Alpha Vantage API, ensure your API key is valid and that you are not exceeding the request quotas. The MCP server includes built-in rate limit handling to mitigate excessive usage. Verify environment variables are correctly set and that your runtime has network access.

Security and maintenance notes

Keep your API key secure and do not commit it to version control. Rotate keys as needed and apply updates to the MCP server and its dependencies to benefit from security fixes and feature improvements.

Examples of data you can retrieve with the eight tools

Get the latest stock quote for a company, pull detailed company information, fetch daily/weekly/monthly cryptocurrency time series, and access historical options data with sorting and filtering. The server supports these capabilities as separate endpoints to build rich market data experiences.

Available tools

get-stock-quote

Fetches the latest stock quote for a given symbol and returns price, volume, and change information.

get-company-info

Returns detailed company information such as name, sector, industry, market cap, and description for a given stock symbol.

get-time-series

Retrieves historical daily OHLCV data for a stock symbol, with options for output size.

get-historical-options

Provides historical options chain data with sorting and filtering options for a given symbol.

get-crypto-exchange-rate

Gets real-time cryptocurrency exchange rates including bid/ask and market data for a crypto symbol against a market currency.

get-crypto-daily

Retrieves daily time series data for a cryptocurrency against a market currency.

get-crypto-weekly

Retrieves weekly time series data for a cryptocurrency against a market currency.

get-crypto-monthly

Retrieves monthly time series data for a cryptocurrency against a market currency.