The limit fails loudly, which is the useful part: at 251 tickers the unified snapshot returns HTTP 400 rather than quietly truncating your list, so you will never get a short response you mistake for a complete one. For a universe larger than 250, batch it, or use an endpoint that covers the whole market in a single call.
Applies to
- Plans: Starter and above. The free Basic plans do not include the snapshot, and each ticker still has to be covered by a subscription you hold.
- Endpoints: /v3/snapshot with ticker.any_of.
- Asset classes: stocks, options, indices, forex and crypto, which can be mixed in one request.
How to batch a larger universe
curl -X GET "https://api.massive.com/v3/snapshot?ticker.any_of=AAPL,MSFT,SPY&apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY"
Response
{
"results": [
{ "ticker": "AAPL", "type": "stocks", "name": "Apple Inc.", "market_status": "closed",
"last_trade": { "id": "636947", "timeframe": "REAL-TIME" } }
],
"status": "OK"
}
Chunk your list into groups of 250 and make one request per chunk. A symbol we do not recognize comes back as a row carrying "error": "NOT_FOUND" rather than being left out, so check for that field rather than comparing the count you sent with the count you received.
When to use something else
Use something else when a batching loop stops making sense, which is at a few hundred tickers:
| What you need | Better endpoint |
|---|---|
| Every US stock's current day, in one request | /v2/snapshot/locale/us/markets/stocks/tickers |
| Every US stock's daily bar for a date | /v2/aggs/grouped/locale/us/market/stocks/{date} |
| A whole option chain for one underlying | /v3/snapshot/options/{underlyingAsset} |
| The same values continuously | The WebSocket, rather than polling anything |
Polling a snapshot loop is also the pattern most likely to meet a rate limit, because each chunk is a request and the limit is counted per asset class.
Why there is a limit at all
The limit exists because a snapshot is assembled per ticker at request time, so a very long list turns one HTTP request into a great deal of work and a large response. Capping it keeps a single request predictable for everyone, and the market-wide endpoints exist precisely so that "I want everything" does not have to be expressed as a list.
If you see an error
HTTP 400 on a snapshot request is almost always the ticker count. Count the entries in ticker.any_of.
Rows carrying "error": "NOT_FOUND" are symbols we do not recognize. Check the prefixes: O:, I:, X: and C:.
A 429 from a batching loop is the per-asset-class request limit rather than the ticker limit.
