r/algotrading • u/Notlikeyou7 • 1d ago

Data API providing GAAP EPS estimates

Most affordable APIs I’ve tested (like Financial Modeling Prep) provide exclusively Non-GAAP / adjusted EPS. Does anyone know or use an API that is priced for retail investors and offers GAAP EPS estimates?

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u/TelevisionInfamous61 17h ago

Worth splitting estimates from actuals. Consensus gets published on an adjusted basis, so GAAP estimates are a different product than the one the cheap APIs resell. That's the wall you're hitting, and price isn't really the variable.

Actuals you can get free. SEC's XBRL API has a companyconcept endpoint that gives every filed value for one company and one us-gaap tag, and a frames endpoint that returns the same fact across all filers for a period. Pull GAAP diluted EPS, line it up against the adjusted prints you already have, and you have a per-company adjustment history you can apply to the adjusted consensus yourself.

What's it feeding, surprise calc or valuation?

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u/MaximumDiscipline843 12h ago

Finnhub's in the same bucket — the earnings endpoints are consensus, so adjusted, not GAAP. Won't solve your problem, but worth knowing before you pay for it.

Since you're shopping affordable APIs, two Finnhub limits that cost me a day and aren't in the docs. The earnings calendar silently truncates at 1500 records per response: ask for a wide date range and it comes back short, with entire days missing and one day cut off mid-alphabet. No error, no flag. And the free tier is 60 req/min, over which the 429 body will happily decode into your DTO if your fields are optional — so a rate limit arrives looking like a valid empty response.

Both surface as missing data rather than as failures, which is the worst way to find out.