FundFacts API vs Morningstar for fund data
Morningstar built the vocabulary the fund industry uses: star ratings, the style box, category peer groups. FundFacts API does not attempt any of that. It returns the facts a fund house publishes about its own product, as JSON, from an ISIN. Here is how the two fit together.At a glance
| Criterion | FundFacts API | Morningstar Direct and Morningstar data feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Fund and ETF factsheet data only: key facts, fees, holdings, exposures, risk indicator, performance, risk metrics | Fund and ETF research and analytics: proprietary ratings, categories, style analysis, peer groups, portfolio holdings, performance, plus equities and indexes |
| Proprietary analytics | None. A transparent profile (profile.*) recomputable from the payload with published rules | Star Rating, Medalist Rating, Morningstar Category, Style Box, Sustainability Rating and other proprietary measures |
| Source of figures | The management company's own factsheet, KID, holdings files and product page | Morningstar's own database, built from fund company filings and its analysts' work |
| Input key | Any fund or ETF ISIN, one REST call | Morningstar identifiers (SecId) as well as ISIN and tickers |
| Refresh | Reloaded from the issuer's current documents every 24 hours; response carries dataAsOf | Daily updates for prices and periodic updates for holdings and analytics |
| Delivery | REST JSON, OpenAPI spec, TypeScript types | Morningstar Direct desktop and web, data feeds and APIs licensed to institutions |
| Onboarding | Self-serve: free key in a minute, no contract, card only for paid plans | Sales-led licence; Direct is a per-seat subscription; feeds and APIs are contracted |
| Pricing | Published: Free $0 (10 requests/day), Pro $49/month, Scale $299/month, metered enterprise $0.01/request | Quoted by Morningstar sales; not published as a self-serve price list |
| AI tooling | AI companion kit (AGENTS.md, Cursor rule, Claude Code skill, OpenAPI, TypeScript types) on paid plans | Morningstar's own AI research assistant inside its products |
What Morningstar gives you that this API does not
Ratings, categories, peer-group rankings and analyst opinion are Morningstar's product. If your users expect a star rating next to every fund or a category average to benchmark against, you need a licence for that data, and no document-based API can substitute for it.
What this API gives you instead
Everything a fund house says about its own product, normalised into one JSON shape:
- Key facts: size, inception, currency, distribution policy, benchmark.
- Fees: the ongoing charges figure from the KID.
- The 1–7 SRRI / SRI risk indicator as printed, not a proprietary risk score.
- Holdings, sector and country weights.
- Calendar, cumulative and annualised returns, and a NAV series where published.
The profile object adds a classification (region, valuation, credit quality, rate sensitivity) computed with published, versioned rules from the same payload, so a compliance reviewer can reproduce every label. It is deliberately not a rating.
Onboarding and cost
The practical difference for a small team is the buying process. FundFacts API is self-serve with a free tier, so a prototype costs nothing and a production screener runs on a published monthly plan. Institutional research platforms are sold by contract, sized to the organisation.
Using both
Many advisory platforms display issuer facts and third-party ratings side by side. If you already license ratings, a document-based API is a cheap way to add current holdings, exposures and KID figures without expanding the research licence.