Price + news data — three stacks, free to premium

Swing Deck already ships with a 4-tier cascade that falls through providers automatically. You can run the whole thing without a single API key, but adding 3 free keys (5 minutes of signup work) unlocks live quotes, sentiment, and better news. Here's what each tier adds and how to wire them.

The cascade (how Swing Deck fetches data)

┌─ QUOTES ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tier 0  Tradier        — sub-second, bearer token                │
│ Tier 1  Finnhub        — ~15-min delayed on free tier            │
│ Tier 2A Alpha Vantage  — keyed free tier                         │
│ Tier 2B Stooq          — free, EOD-based                         │
│ Tier 3  yfinance       — last resort, unofficial                 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─ HISTORICAL BARS ────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tier 2A Alpha Vantage  — daily, keyed                            │
│ Tier 2B Stooq          — daily, free                             │
│ Tier 3  yfinance       — last resort                             │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─ NEWS ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tier 1A Finnhub news   — keyed, per-ticker                       │
│ Tier 1B GNews.io       — commercial-friendly ($49 upgrade path)  │
│ Tier 1C News API       — non-commercial free tier                │
│ Tier 2  Google RSS     — free, unlimited                         │
│ Tier 3  yfinance news  — last resort                             │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─ SENTIMENT ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Primary MarketAux      — sentiment scoring, 100/day free         │
│ Fallback OBV + volume  — no external call                        │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
    

Each tier falls through to the next on 429 (rate-limited), 500 (provider down), or empty response. The dashboard shows which tier answered each request in the source-health panel.

Three recommended stacks

Free-keys quickstart (5 minutes total)

Register these 4 free keys in order. Each takes ~60 seconds. Add to your .env file.

Tradier is set up separately — see Broker setup. The free token works for quotes + Greeks.

Viewing cascade health in the dashboard

Hit http://localhost:8001/data/sources/health to see which providers are keyed + which tier answered each recent request. Also surfaced on the Settings panel as "Data Sources → Provider health."

{
  "providers": {
    "tradier":       true,
    "finnhub":       true,
    "marketaux":     true,
    "alpha_vantage": true,
    "gnews":         true,
    "newsapi":       false
  }
}

Every true = an active tier. Every false = Swing Deck falls through to the next one (no user-visible breakage — just a degraded free-tier experience).