SimFin Alternative: When You Need Explicit Point-in-Time Fundamentals

If you searched "SimFin alternative," you already know SimFin is one of the best-value fundamentals sources on the internet. It has a real free tier, full financial statements, bulk CSV downloads, and 20+ years of history. For a lot of people, it is the right answer — and this page will tell you exactly when it is.

But there's one job SimFin doesn't do the way a backtester needs it done: answering "what did the market actually know about this company on date X?" with a single, server-side query. That's the specific gap Tradevo Data fills. This is an honest comparison from a competitor, so we'll be clear about where each tool wins.

The core question: is it point-in-time?

Point-in-time (PIT) data means every value is stamped with the date it first became public, so a backtest can only see what was knowable at the time. Get this wrong and you get lookahead bias — restated numbers, or numbers that hadn't been filed yet, leaking into your signal and inflating your results.

Here's the honest read on SimFin, based on its own documentation. SimFin's standard datasets are latest-restated — its docs state plainly that they are "not so-called point-in-time data" because they surface the newest restatement, not the originally-filed figure. SimFin does track the raw material for PIT: it stores a Publish Date (the 10-K/10-Q filing date), a Restated Date, and offers an as-reported variant so you can pull original figures. As of July 2026, the as-reported columns are gated to SimFin's paid tiers (per their pricing page). So it's fair to say SimFin can support PIT-style work — but the default is restated, and reconstructing the point-in-time view is left to you in pandas.

Tradevo Data is built the other way around. PIT is the default and the whole product:

• Every row carries first_filed (the date the value became public), original_value (the first-reported number, PIT-safe), and latest_value (the current revision).
• A restated flag marks any same-tag revision greater than 0.5% (including amendments) — 18,539 restatements are labeled in the dataset.
• The API does the PIT filtering for you server-side: /v1/fundamentals?ticker=AAPL&as_of=2021-06-30 returns only rows where first_filed <= as_of (same-day inclusive). You never reconstruct anything.

That's the real difference. SimFin gives you the columns to build a point-in-time view; Tradevo Data gives you the point-in-time view as an API call.

Side-by-side comparison

Pricing and tier details for SimFin change — verify current numbers on their pricing page rather than trusting a number quoted here.

When SimFin is the better choice

We mean this genuinely. Pick SimFin if any of these describe you:

• You want to start for free. SimFin's free tier covers 5,000 US stocks with no credit card. Tradevo Data's free offering is a 40-company sample; the full API is paid. If budget is the constraint, SimFin wins outright.
• You need full financial statements. SimFin gives you the complete balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. Tradevo Data deliberately covers only 7 headline concepts. If you need line items like inventory, R&D, or long-term debt, we don't have them.
• You need quarterly data. SimFin has it today. Tradevo Data is annual-only right now (quarterly is on the roadmap, but roadmap isn't reality).
• You need international coverage or 20+ years of history. SimFin covers more years and is expanding beyond the US. Tradevo Data is US-only, up to 12 fiscal years.
• You want bulk downloads or pre-calculated ratios. SimFin ships bulk CSV and computed metrics. Tradevo Data has no Parquet/bulk export yet and returns only raw filed values — you compute your own ratios.

If you're doing broad fundamental screening, education, or dashboard-building, SimFin is likely the better tool, and it's cheaper. We'd rather you use the right thing.

When Tradevo Data is the better choice

Choose Tradevo Data if PIT integrity on core concepts is the whole point:

• You're backtesting and cannot tolerate lookahead. You want as_of handled server-side, not reconstructed from restated columns in your own code. One wrong join and your Sharpe is fiction.
• You need first-reported vs restated on the same row. original_value, latest_value, and an explicit restated flag let you study revision effects directly, or simply guarantee you're trading the number that was actually public.
• You want to see the QA, not have it hidden. Every row carries a qa_status; flagged rows are labeled, never silently dropped.
• You value radical honesty about limits. We measured lookahead on a 40-company sample (reliable-filing rows): mean 43.4 days, max 61. That's a sample figure, not a dataset-wide guarantee — and we say so. We're the honest budget tier of research-grade PIT, not a claim to be the only cheap PIT option. Credible alternatives like Sharadar and Tiingo exist too.

Try it before you pay

The fastest way to judge the PIT semantics is to read them yourself. The free sample — 40 large caps, 3,212 rows, full methodology, no signup — is on GitHub. Inspect the first_filed, original_value, and restated columns against a name you know well.

If it fits your workflow, the full API is $49/mo: 5,214 US companies, 313,562 point-in-time rows, one JSON endpoint, 5,000 requests/day, key issued instantly after checkout, cancel anytime. Docs are at /docs.

There's no wrong answer here — just different jobs. If you need breadth, statements, or free, SimFin is excellent. If you need a purpose-built, server-side point-in-time API for core fundamentals, that's us.

Not investment advice. Competitor pricing and features change — verify SimFin's current pricing and capabilities on their site before deciding.