Track Stocks in Real Time with This Open-Source Tool
Keeping an eye on the market can feel like a full-time job. Between meetings, code reviews, and actually building things, who has time to constantly refresh a finance page? And while there are plenty of stock tracking apps out there, they’re often packed with features you don’t need, hidden behind a paywall, or just not built with a developer’s mindset in mind.
That’s where OpenStock comes in. It’s a clean, open-source tool built to solve a simple problem: give you real-time stock price updates and the ability to set personalized alerts, without any cost or clutter.
What It Does
OpenStock is a web-based dashboard that fetches and displays real-time stock prices. You can create a watchlist of your favorite tickers and, more importantly, set custom price alerts. Want a notification when Tesla dips below $200 or when NVIDIA crosses a certain threshold? You can set that up here. It’s designed to be straightforward and focused, pulling in live data to keep you informed without the noise.
Why It’s Cool
The real appeal for developers is in the project itself. First, it’s completely open-source. You can see how it works, from the data fetching logic to the notification system. This makes it a fantastic learning resource if you’ve ever wanted to understand how to build a real-time data dashboard or implement alerting features.
Second, it’s built with a modern, approachable stack (like React, Node.js, and potentially WebSockets for real-time updates—check the repo for the exact tech). You’re not just using a black box; you’re looking at a fully functional project you can dissect, run locally, and even modify for your own needs. Maybe you want to add cryptocurrency tracking, hook the alerts into a Slack bot, or change the data source. Because you have the code, you can.
How to Try It
The quickest way to see OpenStock in action is to check out the live demo if one is available (look for a link in the repository's README). To really get your hands dirty, you can run it locally:
- Head over to the GitHub repository: https://github.com/Open-Dev-Society/OpenStock
- Clone the repo to your machine.
- Follow the setup instructions in the
README.md. You’ll likely need to install dependencies, set up any required environment variables (like an API key for stock data), and run a couple of commands to start the development server.
In a few minutes, you’ll have your own private stock tracker running on localhost.
Final Thoughts
As a developer, I appreciate tools that do one job well and are transparent about how they do it. OpenStock is exactly that. Whether you use it as-is to keep tabs on a few investments, or treat it as a starter kit to build something more tailored to your workflow, it’s a genuinely useful project. It proves you don’t need a complicated, expensive platform for basic financial tracking—sometimes a focused open-source tool is the perfect solution.
Give the repo a star if you find it helpful, and consider forking it if you have an idea for a cool modification.
Follow us for more cool projects: @githubprojects
Repository: https://github.com/Open-Dev-Society/OpenStock