Skill

yahoo-finance

Quotes, charts, fundamentals, options chains, and a local portfolio/watchlist tracker against Yahoo Finance — no API key, with Chrome-session fallback for rate-limited IPs

Verified: 2026-05-13 (printing-press-ingest-2026-05-13+enrich-capability-skill)

When to use yahoo-finance

Choose if

You're building a personal-finance or research agent that needs free, no-key access to US/global equity quotes, options chains, fundamentals, and a local portfolio/watchlist store — with a Chrome-session fallback for IP-blocked environments. Beats licensed market-data APIs when budget is zero and the workload tolerates Yahoo's unofficial-API uncertainty.

Avoid if

The workload is execution-critical (trading, compliance, regulatory reporting) or requires an SLA — Yahoo's endpoints are reverse-engineered and can break without notice. Also avoid when the agent runs on a shared or untrusted host, since the local SQLite stores unencrypted financial data, or when the IP is already rate-limited and Chrome-session cookie import isn't possible.

Risk Flags

  • HIGH data_quality Yahoo Finance endpoints are reverse-engineered (unofficial API) — there's no official API key, no SLA, no support contract with Yahoo. Endpoint shapes can change without notice and break the CLI. Agents shouldn't treat output as authoritative for execution-critical workflows; use a licensed market-data vendor for trading or compliance use cases.
  • MEDIUM rate_limit Yahoo returns HTTP 429 and blocks by IP address when usage looks abusive. The automatic crumb-bootstrap step can fail under rate limiting. A 5-minute GET cache is on by default (bypassable via --no-cache); high-frequency polling without backoff will trigger blocks.
  • MEDIUM auth Browser-session fallback (for IP-blocked agents) requires manual cookie extraction and crumb retrieval from an authenticated Chrome session. Cookies grant access to the signed-in user's Yahoo Finance state — agents should treat them as sensitive credentials.
  • LOW data_quality Local SQLite database stores unencrypted financial data and portfolio positions on disk. Agents running on shared or untrusted hosts should consider this when persisting watchlists or lots.

Cost

Type: Free · Free tier: No API key required — the CLI is a free MIT-licensed wrapper over Yahoo Finance's public endpoints. No upstream subscription or paid tier involved. Note that Yahoo's endpoints are reverse-engineered (unofficial), so the "free" comes with the caveats described in risks below.

Install

Default

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press install yahoo-finance
# No credentials required for the default path:
yahoo-finance-pp-cli quote AAPL MSFT GOOG
# If your IP gets blocked (HTTP 429), use Chrome-session fallback:
# see upstream README for cookie/crumb import instructions.

Setup docs →

Estimated time to first success: ~5 min

Dependencies

Minimum runtime: Node.js 18+ (or Go 1.26.3+ for source install)

Distribution

Repository
https://github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library
License
MIT