I ask Claude about my investments way too often. “How does this ETF compare to that one?” “What’s the analyst take on this stock?” The problem? The answers come back stale or completely made up.
AI models have a knowledge cutoff. They don’t know what happened in the market today, last week, or last month. For investing decisions, that’s basically useless.
The gap
I started looking into Finance MCP servers — tools that give AI assistants live access to real data. Brilliant idea on paper. Reality check: all the free finance MCPs only work for US markets. Popular non-US markets (ASX, LSE, and most others) were out of reach.
What I built
I found Yahoo Finance has a free, undocumented API that covers everything — US stocks, ASX, crypto, forex, ETFs. No API key required. So I took an existing MCP wrapper, rebuilt it properly, and shipped FinMCP.
It’s a production-grade financial data server. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor to live market data across any market Yahoo Finance touches. Can run as a local server, or deployed to Railway or Docker and shared with mates over HTTPS.
What you get on FinMCP
15 tools covering what investors actually need:
- Real-time quotes across any market (
BHP.AX,AAPL,BTC-USD,EURUSD=X— up to 100 at once) - Crypto and forex quotes
- Financial statements (annual or quarterly)
- Options chains with Greeks (delta, gamma, theta, vega)
- Analyst consensus and price targets
- Institutional holdings data
- News with relevance scoring
- Market screener (filter by sector, P/E, yield, beta, etc.)
Real example: I asked Claude to compare free cash flow trends across three ASX mining companies over four years. It pulled the numbers and gave me a clear breakdown. Normally that takes 20 minutes of spreadsheet work.
How to run FinMCP
Locally — Node.js 22+, clone the repo, point Claude Desktop at it. Five minutes.
In the cloud — Deploy to Railway with one click, get a public HTTPS URL, share with friends. Free tier is plenty for personal use.
Why Yahoo Finance
It’s free, global, and needs no API key. Alpha Vantage caps you at 25 requests per day. Polygon costs money. Everyone else is either US-only or paid.
Yahoo covers what matters — US, ASX, LSE, crypto, forex, ETFs.
The catch: it’s unofficial. But the circuit breaker, rate limiter, retry logic, and caching handle hiccups gracefully.
Automation ideas
- Pre-market brief — scheduled prompt every morning with your watchlist moves and news
- Portfolio health check — monthly scan for deteriorating cash flow or rising debt across holdings
- Options monitoring — track put/call ratios and unusual activity
- Earnings tracker — pull analyst estimates before results
- Dividend calendar — track ex-dividend dates for ASX income plays
- Sector rotation check — spot rotations by combining screener data with analyst sentiment
Get it
GitHub: github.com/mustafa-ramax/finmcp
MIT licensed. Free forever. Open an issue if something’s broken.
If you’re working with real-time market data and tired of AI tools that don’t know what happened in the market today, this one solves that problem.
Found this useful or inspiring? You can support my work — buy me a coffee. Every little bit helps keep the magic alive, and my brain awake 😅