How to integrate Alpha vantage MCP with CrewAI

Framework Integration Gradient
Alpha vantage Logo
CrewAI Logo
divider

Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Alpha vantage to CrewAI using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Alpha vantage agent that can get latest brent crude oil prices, show upcoming earnings calendar for tech stocks, fetch annual balance sheet for apple, retrieve historical global coffee price data through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your CrewAI agent real control over a Alpha vantage account through Composio's Alpha vantage MCP server.

Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get a Composio API key and configure your Alpha vantage connection
  • Set up CrewAI with an MCP enabled agent
  • Create a Tool Router session or standalone MCP server for Alpha vantage
  • Build a conversational loop where your agent can execute Alpha vantage operations

What is CrewAI?

CrewAI is a powerful framework for building multi-agent AI systems. It provides primitives for defining agents with specific roles, creating tasks, and orchestrating workflows through crews.

Key features include:

  • Agent Roles: Define specialized agents with specific goals and backstories
  • Task Management: Create tasks with clear descriptions and expected outputs
  • Crew Orchestration: Combine agents and tasks into collaborative workflows
  • MCP Integration: Connect to external tools through Model Context Protocol

What is the Alpha vantage MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Alpha Vantage MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Alpha Vantage account. It provides structured and secure access to real-time and historical financial data, so your agent can fetch market prices, analyze commodities, review company financials, and retrieve earnings transcripts on your behalf.

  • Get global commodities and market prices: Instantly retrieve real-time and historical price indices for all major commodities and markets—including aluminum, copper, coffee, corn, and crude oil.
  • Analyze company financial statements: Ask your agent to fetch detailed annual or quarterly balance sheets for any supported company, making fiscal analysis a breeze.
  • Access upcoming earnings calendars: Pull comprehensive earnings schedules for the next three months, so you never miss an important financial event.
  • Retrieve earnings call transcripts with sentiment: Automatically obtain full-text earnings call transcripts for a given company and quarter, including sentiment signals to help you gauge market tone.
  • Perform historical data research: Let your agent gather time series data for commodities and financial indicators, supporting deeper market research and trend analysis.

Supported Tools & Triggers

Tools
Get All Commodities Price IndexTool to retrieve the global price index of all commodities.
ALUMINUMTool to fetch global aluminum prices.
Balance SheetTool to return annual and quarterly balance sheets for a company.
Brent Crude Oil PricesTool to fetch brent crude oil prices.
Global Coffee PriceTool to retrieve the global coffee price series.
COPPERTool to fetch global price of copper in monthly, quarterly, and annual intervals.
CornTool to retrieve global price of corn in monthly, quarterly, and annual intervals.
COTTONTool to retrieve global cotton prices in monthly, quarterly, and annual intervals.
Earnings CalendarTool to return the earnings calendar for the next three months.
Earnings Call TranscriptTool to retrieve the earnings call transcript for a given company and quarter.
FX Daily Time SeriesTool to fetch daily time series (open, high, low, close) for a currency pair.
FX Monthly Time SeriesTool to get monthly time series (open, high, low, close) for a currency pair.
Income StatementTool to fetch annual and quarterly income statements.
IPO CalendarTool to retrieve the ipo calendar for the next three months.
Listing StatusTool to fetch listing status of us stocks and etfs.
News SentimentTool to fetch live and historical market news & sentiment.
Stock SplitsTool to retrieve historical stock split events for a symbol.
Global Sugar PriceTool to retrieve the global sugar price series.
Technical IndicatorTool to fetch technical indicators for the specified equity or currency pair.
WHEATTool to fetch global price of wheat.

What is the Composio tool router, and how does it fit here?

What is Tool Router?

Composio's Tool Router helps agents find the right tools for a task at runtime. You can plug in multiple toolkits (like Gmail, HubSpot, and GitHub), and the agent will identify the relevant app and action to complete multi-step workflows. This can reduce token usage and improve the reliability of tool calls. Read more here: Getting started with Tool Router

The tool router generates a secure MCP URL that your agents can access to perform actions.

How the Tool Router works

The Tool Router follows a three-phase workflow:

  1. Discovery: Searches for tools matching your task and returns relevant toolkits with their details.
  2. Authentication: Checks for active connections. If missing, creates an auth config and returns a connection URL via Auth Link.
  3. Execution: Executes the action using the authenticated connection.

Step-by-step Guide

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:
  • Python 3.9 or higher
  • A Composio account and API key
  • A Alpha vantage connection authorized in Composio
  • An OpenAI API key for the CrewAI LLM
  • Basic familiarity with Python

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

OpenAI API Key
  • Go to the OpenAI dashboard and create an API key. You'll need credits to use the models, or you can connect to another model provider.
  • Keep the API key safe.
Composio API Key
  • Log in to the Composio dashboard.
  • Navigate to your API settings and generate a new API key.
  • Store this key securely as you'll need it for authentication.

Install dependencies

bash
pip install composio crewai crewai-tools python-dotenv
What's happening:
  • composio connects your agent to Alpha vantage via MCP
  • crewai provides Agent, Task, Crew, and LLM primitives
  • crewai-tools includes MCP helpers
  • python-dotenv loads environment variables from .env

Set up environment variables

bash
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_composio_api_key_here
USER_ID=your_user_id_here
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key_here

Create a .env file in your project root.

What's happening:

  • COMPOSIO_API_KEY authenticates with Composio
  • USER_ID scopes the session to your account
  • OPENAI_API_KEY lets CrewAI use your chosen OpenAI model

Import dependencies

python
from crewai import Agent, Task, Crew, LLM
from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter  # optional import if you plan to adapt tools
from composio import Composio
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os
from crewai.mcp import MCPServerHTTP

load_dotenv()
What's happening:
  • CrewAI classes define agents and tasks, and run the workflow
  • MCPServerHTTP connects the agent to an MCP endpoint
  • Composio will give you a short lived Alpha vantage MCP URL

Create a Composio Tool Router session for Alpha vantage

python
composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
session = composio.create(
    user_id=os.getenv("USER_ID"),
    toolkits=["alpha_vantage"],
)
url = session.mcp.url
What's happening:
  • You create a Alpha vantage only session through Composio
  • Composio returns an MCP HTTP URL that exposes Alpha vantage tools

Configure the LLM

python
llm = LLM(
    model="gpt-5-mini",
    api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"),
)
What's happening:
  • CrewAI will call this LLM for planning and responses
  • You can swap in a different model if needed

Attach the MCP server and create the agent

python
toolkit_agent = Agent(
    role="Alpha vantage Assistant",
    goal="Help users interact with Alpha vantage through natural language commands",
    backstory=(
        "You are an expert assistant with access to Alpha vantage tools. "
        "You can perform various Alpha vantage operations on behalf of the user."
    ),
    mcps=[
        MCPServerHTTP(
            url=url,
            streamable=True,
            cache_tools_list=True,
            headers={"x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")},
        ),
    ],
    llm=llm,
    verbose=True,
    max_iter=10,
)
What's happening:
  • MCPServerHTTP connects the agent to the Alpha vantage MCP endpoint
  • cache_tools_list saves a tools catalog for faster subsequent runs
  • verbose helps you see what the agent is doing

Add a REPL loop with Task and Crew

python
print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end.\n")
print("Try asking the agent to perform Alpha vantage operations.\n")

conversation_context = ""

while True:
    user_input = input("You: ").strip()

    if user_input.lower() in ["exit", "quit", "bye"]:
        print("\nGoodbye!")
        break

    if not user_input:
        continue

    conversation_context += f"\nUser: {user_input}\n"
    print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

    task = Task(
        description=(
            f"Based on the conversation history:\n{conversation_context}\n\n"
            f"Current user request: {user_input}\n\n"
            f"Please help the user with their Alpha vantage related request."
        ),
        expected_output="A helpful response addressing the user's request",
        agent=toolkit_agent,
    )

    crew = Crew(
        agents=[toolkit_agent],
        tasks=[task],
        verbose=False,
    )

    result = crew.kickoff()
    response = str(result)

    conversation_context += f"Agent: {response}\n"
    print(f"Agent: {response}\n")
What's happening:
  • You build a simple chat loop and keep a running context
  • Each user turn becomes a Task handled by the same agent
  • Crew executes the task and returns a response

Run the application

python
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
What's happening:
  • Standard Python entry point so you can run python crewai_alpha_vantage_agent.py

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Alpha vantage and CrewAI:

python
# file: crewai_alpha_vantage_agent.py
from crewai import Agent, Task, Crew, LLM
from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter  # optional
from composio import Composio
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os
from crewai.mcp import MCPServerHTTP

load_dotenv()

def main():
    # Initialize Composio and create a Alpha vantage session
    composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
    session = composio.create(
        user_id=os.getenv("USER_ID"),
        toolkits=["alpha_vantage"],
    )
    url = session.mcp.url

    # Configure LLM
    llm = LLM(
        model="gpt-5-mini",
        api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"),
    )

    # Create Alpha vantage assistant agent
    toolkit_agent = Agent(
        role="Alpha vantage Assistant",
        goal="Help users interact with Alpha vantage through natural language commands",
        backstory=(
            "You are an expert assistant with access to Alpha vantage tools. "
            "You can perform various Alpha vantage operations on behalf of the user."
        ),
        mcps=[
            MCPServerHTTP(
                url=url,
                streamable=True,
                cache_tools_list=True,
                headers={"x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")},
            ),
        ],
        llm=llm,
        verbose=True,
        max_iter=10,
    )

    print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n")
    print("Try asking the agent to perform Alpha vantage operations.\n")

    conversation_context = ""

    while True:
        user_input = input("You: ").strip()

        if user_input.lower() in ["exit", "quit", "bye"]:
            print("\nGoodbye!")
            break

        if not user_input:
            continue

        conversation_context += f"\nUser: {user_input}\n"
        print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

        task = Task(
            description=(
                f"Based on the conversation history:\n{conversation_context}\n\n"
                f"Current user request: {user_input}\n\n"
                f"Please help the user with their Alpha vantage related request."
            ),
            expected_output="A helpful response addressing the user's request",
            agent=toolkit_agent,
        )

        crew = Crew(
            agents=[toolkit_agent],
            tasks=[task],
            verbose=False,
        )

        result = crew.kickoff()
        response = str(result)

        conversation_context += f"Agent: {response}\n"
        print(f"Agent: {response}\n")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Conclusion

You now have a CrewAI agent connected to Alpha vantage through Composio's Tool Router. The agent can perform Alpha vantage operations through natural language commands. Next steps:
  • Add role-specific instructions to customize agent behavior
  • Plug in more toolkits for multi-app workflows
  • Chain tasks for complex multi-step operations

How to build Alpha vantage MCP Agent with another framework

FAQ

What are the differences in Tool Router MCP and Alpha vantage MCP?

With a standalone Alpha vantage MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Alpha vantage tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Alpha vantage and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Can I use Tool Router MCP with CrewAI?

Yes, you can. CrewAI fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Alpha vantage tools.

Can I manage the permissions and scopes for Alpha vantage while using Tool Router?

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Alpha vantage scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

How safe is my data with Composio Tool Router?

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Alpha vantage data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

Used by agents from

Context
ASU
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai
Context
ASU
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai
Context
ASU
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai

Never worry about agent reliability

We handle tool reliability, observability, and security so you never have to second-guess an agent action.