BalanceProof vs Polygon.io: Fundamentals, and Where Polygon Went

Start with something you should check for yourself: as of 18 September 2026, polygon.io and polygon.io/pricing both return a 301 to massive.com. The figures below are read off that site, because that is where the product now answers from.

At a glance

Prices and features on the right-hand column change, and this page does not — check their site before you decide anything on it. The rows about method are the ones that stay true.

BalanceProof compared with Polygon.io
  BalanceProof Polygon.io
Scope SEC balance sheets, reconciled Market data: stocks, options, indices, currencies, futures
Fundamentals The whole product An add-on — “Financials & Ratios”, sold separately or bundled on their top tier
Selection method A = L + E, published and testable Check their site — not found published
Tells you when it is unsure Yes — every exception flagged with its reason Check their site
Free tier 1,000 calls/month, no card A free Basic tier, metered per minute, end-of-day — check their site
Entry paid tier $49/mo Check their site
Latency ~300 ms typical (measured 292–364 ms, Sep 2026) Check their site — real-time market data is their pitch, not ours
Bulk download $79.99, one CSV, no contract Check their site

Why transparency matters more than a number

Every provider in this category reads the same filings. The difference is what happens when a filing is hard to read. The usual answer is that you get a number anyway, with nothing attached to say how confident it is — and a figure that is quietly a segment instead of a company looks exactly like one that is right.

BalanceProof checks every balance sheet against Assets = Liabilities + Equity before publishing it. A filing that reconciles is published with its figures. A filing that does not is published with the reason: a noncontrolling interest reported as a separate line, mezzanine equity outside permanent equity, rounding inside one percent, a component we could not read, or a filing whose own totals disagree with each other. The exceptions are counted in public and named individually on how we verify.

That is the whole claim. Not that nothing is ever wrong — that when something is, you are told which number and why, instead of finding out from your own reconciliation three weeks later.

The difference is which tag gets picked

Every provider in this category reads the same source. SEC EDGAR publishes XBRL for every filer, free, and nobody has better raw material than anybody else. What separates one API from the next is not access. It is the selection step, and that step is almost never documented.

Here is the problem it has to solve. Open JPMorgan's 10-Q and search for Assets and you get twenty-three facts. Not twenty-three values — twenty-three tagged instances, one for the consolidated bank and one for each segment and subsidiary that has to be broken out separately. Every one is valid XBRL. Exactly one is the number on the face of the balance sheet, and the only thing marking it is an absence: it is the fact with no dimensions attached.

An extractor that takes the first match, or the largest, or the most recently filed, will be right most of the time and wrong in a way that leaves no trace. No exception, no null, no warning. Just a number that is a segment instead of a company. Measured across the filings loaded here, that naive approach disagrees with the consolidated figure often enough to matter — roughly one filing in five.

BalanceProof resolves it with arithmetic rather than a heuristic: pull every candidate for assets, liabilities and equity, and keep the combination that satisfies Assets = Liabilities + Equity. The consolidated figures balance against each other. A segment's assets do not balance against the whole company's liabilities. The identity is a test, not a guideline, and it is the reason a figure here is checked rather than guessed at.

When nothing balances, the answer is that nothing balances. The filing is served as-reported with a warning on it rather than adjusted until the columns agree, because a filing that does not add up is a fact about the company, and you should get it as one.

About the redirect

On 18 September 2026, https://polygon.io and https://polygon.io/pricing both returned 301 Moved Permanently to massive.com. The destination site does not mention Polygon anywhere, and describes itself as “modernizing Wall St. one market at a time”.

That is the whole of what can be said with certainty, so it is the whole of what is said here. This page does not assert a rebrand, an acquisition, or a shutdown, because none of those were verified — a redirect is a fact and the story behind it is not. Check it yourself before making a procurement decision on it; it is one curl -I.

What I am not going to pretend

I am not going to put Polygon.io's prices in a table on my own website. They change, this page would not, and you would be reading a number I had no way to verify at the moment you read it. Go and look at their pricing page. It is the only copy that is current.

I am also not going to tell you their data is bad. I have not audited it and I am not in a position to. What I can tell you is what this service does and how to check it, which is the part I am actually responsible for.

The check that settles it costs you nothing either way: take a company where you already know the answer, call both, and compare each against the filing on EDGAR. Not against each other — against the filing. That is the only comparison that means anything, and it is why the free tier here needs no card.

When to choose each

Choose BalanceProof

If the number has to be right.

  • Balance sheets are the thing you need, not a side dish. On their side fundamentals are an add-on to a market-data platform; here they are the product, and the verification is the reason to buy.
  • You want the method written down. A = L + E is testable, and the exceptions are counted in public on how we verify.
  • A call-per-minute cap is the wrong shape for a backfill. Five a minute is a sensible free tier for streaming quotes and an awkward one for walking a universe of filings.
Choose Polygon.io

If any of these is you.

  • You need prices, options, or anything real-time. That is their actual product and it is not remotely this one. Their homepage pitch is institutional market data; fundamentals are not mentioned on it.
  • You need one vendor across asset classes.
  • You want unmetered API calls on a cheap tier. Their paid tiers advertise unlimited calls, which is a different and perfectly good bargain.

The method, written out

These pages compare on METHOD because method is the part that stays true. Both of these are the method itself rather than an argument about it, so you can judge the claim rather than take it.

Compare

The same question from the other directions. Every one of these compares on method, for the reason at the top of this page.