Usage Limitations

No Automated Access

Unless you have been granted prior approval, you must access StockCharts.com's content using a normal web browser, running in a non-automated mode. Automated or programmatic access to our website via scripts, macros or other non-manual methods is forbidden and will be blocked. Members who violate this policy may have their accounts terminated without notice.

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Excessive Chart Requests Policy

Non-Pro Members cannot request more than 1 chart per second on average over any 15-minute period.

Pro Members cannot request more than 2 charts per second on average over any 15-minute period.

While the number of charts we can provide to our users is very large, it is not infinite, meaning we do have to impose some limitations on chart requests. Non-Pro members can request up to 1 chart per second on average over a 15-minute period (i.e. 60 charts per minute). Pro members, meanwhile, can request up to 2 charts per second (120 charts per minute) on average.

People who open a large number of auto-refreshing charts can run afoul of these limits if they are not careful. If you have more than 15 charts refreshing at 15-second intervals, you are requesting more than 1 chart per second and are violating our policy. If you must have lots of charts auto-refreshing, we recommend reducing the refresh interval to 30 or 60 seconds.

If you exceed these limits, you will see a warning message in place of your charts. The warning message means that you have requested too many charts and that you need to reduce the number of auto-refreshing charts that you are requesting. Once you do that, the warning message will disappear.

Note: If you ignore the warning message and continue to request an excessive number of charts from our website, your account may be disabled.

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Third-Party Message Board Restrictions

Message board posts must contain four or fewer links to live charts. Message boards that violate this policy repeatedly will be blocked.

The key reason for this policy is that new posts on popular message boards can generate huge, spiky loads on our servers that are wildly disproportionate to what our users actually get out of these posts. When faced with a “wall of charts,” many people will be inclined to simply scroll past them without paying much attention. However, our servers still have to draw those charts, creating an unnecessary strain on our site.

However, breaking up this wall of charts into groups of 4 spreads the load on our servers much more evenly, preventing performance issues. For this reason, we insist on this limitation to help keep StockCharts working at its best for everybody.