If you are building an application that needs metal pricing data, choosing the right API is a critical early decision. The wrong choice can mean paying too much for data you do not need, or discovering six months into development that your provider does not cover the specific grades your users require. This comparison covers the major options available to developers in 2026.
General Commodity APIs
Services like Commodities-API, Metals-API, and similar providers offer broad coverage of exchange-traded commodities. They typically pull from LME, COMEX, and other major exchanges. Pricing starts around $10 to $20 per month.
The strength of these APIs is breadth. You can get gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, aluminum, nickel, zinc, lead, and tin from a single provider. The weakness is that they only cover exchange-traded base metals, not scrap grades. You get LME copper, but not the price of #1 Copper Tubing at a Midwest scrapyard.
For applications that need reference prices for base metals rather than scrap-specific pricing, these APIs are a solid and affordable choice.
Financial Data Platforms
Bloomberg, Refinitiv, and S&P Global provide comprehensive metals data including scrap prices from trade publications. The coverage is excellent, and the data is institutional grade. However, pricing typically starts at $1,000 per month and can go much higher. These platforms are designed for trading desks and large enterprises, not independent developers or small scrap operations.
Industry-Specific Data Providers
Fastmarkets (formerly American Metal Market) is the dominant provider of scrap-specific pricing. They publish assessed prices for hundreds of scrap grades across regions. Argus and CRU provide similar services. Subscription costs range from $5,000 to $25,000 per year, and API access often costs extra.
These are the gold standard for data quality and coverage, but the pricing puts them out of reach for most small to mid-size businesses and independent developers.
Free Government Sources
The FRED API from the Federal Reserve provides Producer Price Index data for iron and steel scrap at no cost. The USGS publishes annual commodity data. These sources are free and reliable but lack the granularity and timeliness that most applications need.
ScrapMetal API
The ScrapMetal API occupies a specific niche: affordable, developer-friendly access to scrap-grade-specific pricing. It aggregates data from public and free sources, normalizes it, and serves it through a standard REST API. Pricing starts free for current prices with low volume, and scales to $99 per month for full historical access and higher call limits.
The trade-off is clear: ScrapMetal API does not match the coverage or precision of a $20,000 Fastmarkets subscription. But for the majority of applications that need indicative scrap pricing at the grade level, it provides data that was previously unavailable at this price point.