> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://fruitstand.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Is yfinance Still Usable? Alternatives for Historical Prices > Is yfinance still usable? We tested it in November 2026: yes for small personal pulls. Where it breaks, and the alternatives for historical stock prices. *By [Fruit Stand Team](https://fruitstand.dev/about.md) · November 4, 2026 · Comparisons* Yes, yfinance still works for small, personal pulls. On November 4, 2026 it returned 10 years of daily prices for 498 of 500 US stocks in 17 seconds. But it's unofficial, for personal use only, and rate-limited without published limits, and Yahoo dropped Kenvue's history two days after it was acquired. For anything repeatable or commercial, use a licensed source. Below is what we tested, where yfinance breaks, what Yahoo's own download costs now, and the alternatives by how much data you need. > [!NOTE] > > Fruit Stand publishes the Historical Stock Prices listing, one of the > alternatives below. The yfinance tests were run with yfinance 1.8.0 from a > US home connection, and the prices were checked against our data. ## What we tested | Test | Result | | - | - | | One ticker, full history (`AAPL`, `period="max"`) | 11,567 daily rows back to December 12, 1980, in 0.7 seconds | | 500 tickers, 10 years, one `yf.download` call | 498 returned data, in 17 seconds | | The 2 that came back empty | `KVUE` (Kenvue, acquired November 2) and `IONQ-WS` (a warrant) | | Apple's November 3 close | \$331.90, the same as ours; volume rounded to 63,160,000 vs. 63,160,026 | | Today's row, during market hours | Open, high and low filled in, close and adjusted close blank | For a notebook, a class project or a personal watchlist, that's plenty. ## Where yfinance breaks * **Rate limits with no published number.** Yahoo answers too many requests with `YFRateLimitError: Too Many Requests`. Users in the project's own GitHub discussion report blocks lasting more than 24 hours, worse from VPNs and cloud servers, and the maintainer's answer is to cache and request less: "Stop spamming Yahoo." A full-market backfill, or a scheduled job on a cloud VM, is where this hits. * **Personal use only.** yfinance's README says it isn't affiliated with Yahoo, is meant for research and education, and that Yahoo's API is for personal use only. Anything client-facing or commercial needs a source licensed for it. * **Delisted tickers vanish.** Kenvue last traded on October 30, 2026 and Kimberly-Clark completed the acquisition on November 2. Two days later, yfinance returned nothing for `KVUE`, not even its history. A backtest that includes it now silently drops it. Our table still has all 877 of its trading days. * **Ticker formats.** Yahoo uses its own symbols for share classes, preferreds and warrants, so some tickers from another source come back empty, as `IONQ-WS` did. * **"Close" is adjusted by default.** yfinance sets `auto_adjust=True`, so its `Close` column is the split- and dividend-adjusted close unless you turn that off. Mixing it with as-traded prices from elsewhere gives wrong returns. [Why Don't My Historical Stock Prices Match Yahoo Finance?](https://fruitstand.dev/blog/stock-prices-dont-match-yahoo-finance.md) covers the differences in detail. * **No guarantees.** It depends on Yahoo's web endpoints, which change without notice. When they do, it breaks until the project ships a fix. ## Yahoo's own download is now paid The download button on Yahoo Finance's Historical Data page is no longer free. Yahoo's [help page](https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN2311.html) says downloading historical data needs a Yahoo Finance Gold subscription, which is $39.95 a month billed yearly ($479.40 a year). You can still view the table in the browser, and yfinance doesn't use the button, so it isn't affected. The Gold download is still one ticker at a time. ## The alternatives Prices and limits were checked on each provider's site on November 4, 2026. | Option | Free | Paid | How you get it | Best for | Main catch | | - | - | - | - | - | - | | yfinance | Free | n/a | Python library | Personal projects, a few hundred tickers | Unofficial, rate-limited, personal use only | | Nasdaq.com, Stooq | Free | n/a | Browser download | A one-off download | One ticker at a time | | [Alpha Vantage](https://www.alphavantage.co/premium/) | 25 requests a day | Premium plans | API | Trying an API | 25 a day is a handful of tickers | | [Tiingo](https://www.tiingo.com/about/pricing) | 500 symbols a month, 1,000 requests a day | $30/month individual, $50/month internal business | API | Personal and internal research | Internal use only, even on paid plans | | [EODHD](https://eodhd.com/pricing) | 20 calls a day, 1 year of history | \$19.99/month (personal) for 30+ years | API | Scripts across many tickers | You build and run the loading yourself | | Snowflake's free stock prices | Free | n/a | Snowflake share | Prototypes in Snowflake | Three months behind, close is after-hours | | [Fruit Stand Historical Stock Prices](https://app.snowflake.com/marketplace/listing/GZTYZTG3LNFA) | 30-day trial | \$100/month | Snowflake share | Every US ticker in SQL, refreshed daily | Snowflake only, daily data only | How to choose: * **A few tickers for yourself:** yfinance is still fine. Cache what you download, and don't rerun the full history every time. * **A script across many tickers:** a paid API with a clear license, such as Tiingo or EODHD, so a rate limit or a terms question doesn't stop the job. * **Prices in a warehouse, for a team:** a Snowflake Marketplace listing puts every ticker in a table with no download or loading code. [Stock Price Datasets on the Snowflake Marketplace, Compared](https://fruitstand.dev/blog/stock-price-datasets-snowflake-marketplace.md) covers the options, and [Snowflake's Free Stock Prices vs. Paid](https://fruitstand.dev/blog/free-snowflake-stock-price-data-compared.md) shows how the free tier's prices differ. ## Replacing a yfinance call with SQL A typical yfinance pull: ```python theme={null} import yfinance as yf df = yf.download(["AAPL", "MSFT"], start="2026-10-29", auto_adjust=False) ``` The same data from the Historical Stock Prices listing: ```sql theme={null} select code, date, open, high, low, close, adjusted_close, volume from security_price_history_vw where exchange_code = 'US' and code in ('AAPL', 'MSFT') and date >= '2026-10-29' order by code, date; ``` `close` is the as-traded close and `adjusted_close` matches Yahoo's `Adj Close`. To pull every ticker, drop the `code` filter: there's no request limit, only your warehouse's compute. For the other ways to load prices into Snowflake, see [How to Get Historical Stock Prices into Snowflake (3 Ways)](https://fruitstand.dev/blog/historical-stock-prices-into-snowflake.md). ## F.A.Q. > [accordion] Does yfinance work anymore? > > Yes, as of November 4, 2026, with yfinance 1.8.0. It can stop working for hours or days when Yahoo rate-limits your IP or changes its endpoints, so don't build anything that must run on schedule on it. > [accordion] Is yfinance free? > > The library is free and open source. The data comes from Yahoo, whose terms limit it to personal use. > [accordion] How far back does yfinance data go? > > As far back as Yahoo has it, usually to the stock's listing date. For Apple, that's December 12, 1980. Yahoo says its historical prices usually don't go back earlier than 1970. > [accordion] Can you still download historical data from Yahoo Finance? > > Only with a Yahoo Finance Gold subscription, at \$479.40 a year, one ticker at a time. Viewing the Historical Data table in the browser is still free. > [accordion] Is yfinance the same as Yahoo Finance? > > No. yfinance is an open-source Python library that isn't affiliated with Yahoo. It reads the same data Yahoo Finance's website shows. To query daily prices for every US stock, ETF and mutual fund in SQL, with no rate limits, start a free 30-day trial of the [Historical Stock Prices listing on the Snowflake Marketplace](https://app.snowflake.com/marketplace/listing/GZTYZTG3LNFA). The schema is in the [dataset docs](https://fruitstand.dev/datasets/historical-stock-prices.md). Questions? Reach out at [contact@fruitstand.dev](mailto:contact@fruitstand.dev). This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.