Open source

Open source finance is here and it cannot be stopped. A vendor can decline to build the connector. It cannot stop a doctoral student from publishing one.

25open source projects for finance research

14of them updated in the month to 10 Oct 2026

544kGitHub stars between them

Eight public projects connect WRDS to AI agents. Every one was created in 2026.

Build the dataset yourselfPublic filings, statistics and call audio are a few open tools away from a research panel. How to do it

Start from someone's skillFactor construction and reproducibility checks already exist as files you can drop into a repository. How skills work

Run the whole loopIdea, code, backtest and write-up, from projects with tens of thousands of stars. The pipelines guide

Before you connect any of this to licensed data

The public WRDS policy on generative AI says: "loading Data retrieved from WRDS into LLMs and other Generative A.I. tools is prohibited." It lists vendors that make an exception for protected, enterprise versions of AI tools with a no-training agreement: Audit Analytics, CRSP, LSEG, MSCI, Revelio, S&P and data created by WRDS. It says the rule applies to web tools, desktop tools such as Codex, and models called through other software.

A server that returns rows to a model puts those rows in the model's context. Read the policy, read our guide to agents and licensed data, and read the code of anything you install. Why to be wary of other people's MCP servers.

A large share of financial data is free at the source, and an agent can rebuild it in days: filings, financial statements, macro series, factor libraries and recent earnings calls. Build the dataset yourself from the source.

That gives a researcher more bargaining power at renewal than at any time in twenty years. A vendor that knows you can rebuild most of a product has to price the part you cannot. Use it in the next contract negotiation.

7 of 10 things you query a platform for have a free source

As of 9 October 2026

You need	Usually licensed as	Free at the source	Our call
Accounting fundamentals	Compustat	SEC Financial Statement Data Sets and the XBRL company facts APIUS filers in the XBRL years. No standardized items and no earlier history.	Free for part of it
Filing text and metadata	A vendor's filings product	EDGAR APIs, read with edgartools (MIT license)10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, insider forms and 13F in one Python library.	Use the free one
Institutional holdings	Vendor 13F files	SEC Form 13F Data SetsThe filings the vendor files are built from.	Use the free one
Insider trades	Vendor insider files	SEC Insider Transactions Data SetsFilings by executives, directors and large holders.	Use the free one
Mutual fund portfolios	Vendor fund holdings	SEC Form N-PORT Data SetsMonthly portfolio holdings as the funds report them.	Use the free one
Factor and anomaly returns	Factor files on a data platform	Open Source Asset Pricing and Global Factor DataSignals replicated from the literature with code, and 153 factors across 93 countries.	Use the free one
Earnings call text	Capital IQ transcripts	Company webcasts and open speech recognitionRecent calls for your own sample. Nobody can rebuild the history.	Free for part of it
US stock returns	CRSP	Nothing open matches it	Keep the license
Analyst forecasts	I/B/E/S	No free equivalent a search turns up	Keep the license
Options and intraday trades	OptionMetrics, NYSE TAQ	No free equivalent a search turns up	Keep the license

Rebuild what is free, license what is scarce, and take the list of what you can rebuild into the renewal meeting.

WRDS, wired up by researchers

Nobody waited for an official connector.

Project	What it does for a researcher	License	Stars	Updated
wrdswharton	The official Python client for WRDS. Runs SQL against WRDS and returns a dataframe.	BSD-3-Clause	160	10 Feb 2026
claude-wrds-publicpiotrek-orlowski	WRDS database skills for Claude Code, with one agent for PostgreSQL queries and one for TAQ jobs.	None listed	30	6 Oct 2026
wrds-factor-construction-skillfqybaba	Claude Code skill that builds academic factors from Compustat and CRSP in five steps.	MIT	1	17 Sept 2026
wrds-mcp-servermounist	MCP server that exposes CRSP, Compustat and IBES as tools for Claude and other models.	None listed	1	22 Apr 2026
wrds-research-mcpSharpma	A WRDS MCP server for research.	MIT	1	30 May 2026
wrds-mcphosseinzk	Claude plugin and MCP server that searches the WRDS catalog, checks what is available and pulls the data. Says it enforces the WRDS AI policy.	MIT	0	28 Sept 2026

Skills and workflows

Procedures other researchers have already written down.

Project	What it does for a researcher	License	Stars	Updated
applied-micro-skillskennethkhoocy	Claude Code and Codex skills for empirical applied-micro research, including reproducibility auditing.	MIT	22	4 Sept 2026
corbis-literature-starter-kitAgentic-Assets	A Claude Code project for exploring literature and brainstorming research ideas.	MIT	11	25 Sept 2026

Public data for agents

Filings, statistics and markets with no license in the way.

Project	What it does for a researcher	License	Stars	Updated
edgartoolsdgunning	Reads SEC EDGAR filings in Python: 10-K, 8-K, XBRL financials, insider forms and 13F holdings, without a paid filings product.	MIT	2,781	8 Oct 2026
sec-edgar-mcpstefanoamorelli	SEC EDGAR filings as tools an agent can call.	AGPL-3.0	368	3 Oct 2026
FTShare-MCPFTShare-Lab	Chinese market data and factors for agents.	MIT	250	9 Oct 2026
Equiblesdaniel3303	Self-hosted server for SEC filings and XBRL financials.	AGPL-3.0	230	10 Oct 2026
fred-mcp-serverstefanoamorelli	FRED economic data as tools an agent can call.	AGPL-3.0	124	22 Aug 2026
us-gov-open-data-mcplzinga	More than 40 US government data APIs behind one server.	MIT	112	8 Oct 2026

Research automation

Systems that run most of the loop.

Project	What it does for a researcher	License	Stars	Updated
qlibmicrosoft	Quant research platform with data, models and backtests in one framework.	MIT	49,244	8 Oct 2026
RD-Agentmicrosoft	Agents that propose factors and models, write the code and backtest it.	MIT	14,870	6 Oct 2026
AI-ScientistSakanaAI	Takes a research idea to a written paper with no person in between.	Custom	14,686	19 Dec 2025
AgentLaboratorySamuelSchmidgall	Literature review, experiments and a report from one research idea.	MIT	5,895	20 Aug 2025

Replication and factor data

The benchmarks your own results get compared with.

Project	What it does for a researcher	License	Stars	Updated
CrossSectionOpenSourceAP	Code and data to reproduce published cross-sectional return predictors.	GPL-2.0	1,064	22 Oct 2025
ReplicationCrisisbkelly-lab	The code behind the global factor data of Jensen, Kelly and Pedersen.	None listed	377	29 May 2026
websitetidy-finance	Source for the open textbook on reproducible empirical finance.	Custom	119	14 Sept 2026

Models and agents

The tools underneath.

Project	What it does for a researcher	License	Stars	Updated
opencodeanomalyco	The open source coding agent. You choose the model provider.	MIT	212,390	10 Oct 2026
codexopenai	OpenAI's coding agent for the terminal.	Apache-2.0	128,390	9 Oct 2026
whisperopenai	Speech recognition. Turns earnings call audio into text.	MIT	110,247	31 Aug 2026
finBERTProsusAI	Financial sentiment model. Small, old and still a common baseline.	Apache-2.0	2,249	9 Sept 2022

Stars and dates are from GitHub. "None listed" means the repository has no license file, so ask the author before you reuse the code.