We are democratising access to financial content, so we want to offer our API and data to as many people as possible. However, we are a business and we need to make some money too.
To balance these two, we steeply discount the API for non-commercial use, and we ask that our users adhere to our guidelines.
By non-commercial use, we mean
For individuals:
- used in personal trading and/or research
- not displayed in a public way or shared with other users or companies over API, widgets, and other means of data distribution
- non-revenue-generating, non-business-growing activities
For companies:
- Used in testing environments before release in production
- non-revenue-generating, non-business-growing activities, either directly or as part of derived works using our content, used only in non-commercial settings and not displayed publicly
This doesn't mean you can't use CityFALCON API to make money. It is perfectly acceptable, for example, to build your own trading platform that makes decisions based on CityFALCON Analytics and NLU tags. Here you are using our API to help you create income, but you aren’t selling the information, gaining customers, or conducting business.
What's prohibited under the non-commercial use license:
You cannot sell the data from CityFALCON or sell your recommendations. If your program decides Stock 123 is a buy using CityFALCON data, you cannot then sell your recommendation. When your API-based program indicates you should sell Stock 123, you cannot publish this fact.
You cannot use the data to derive products that generate income or interest from the public. The recommender algorithm above is one example. Another example might be building a popular blog that makes a derivative of CityFALCON-provided data its main attraction, driving most of the traffic. Here you are publishing derivative work specifically to drive more traffic, potentially generating revenue in the process. These examples are not exhaustive.
Fundamentally, you may not act as a distributor between CityFALCON and others using the data, including in derivative works. You may not do this for profit or for free. Any activity that circumvents our payment structure is basically commercial activity, and you'll need to follow the stipulations we've laid out for those distributors.
However, we do offer some commercial-use API packages for low prices. You can sign up for lower-tier commercial-use API services. Please note that some packages may require you to provide attribution and link back to us.
Clarification on commercial use:
Anything not considered "non-commercial" is considered "commercial" by default. Even if your product is not generating revenue, if you are publicly displaying content from CityFALCON or derivatives thereof, it is considered commercial in nature. This is because even non-revenue-generating projects may be monetised indirectly via customer acquisition, brand-building, and other commercial operations.
The only exceptions are those carved out by law and for academia. For academic research, you must be acting in the capacity of a student, professor, or other member of an academic institution. You must provide attribution to CityFALCON somewhere in the publication (citing the source). This includes derivative works.