Where to Find Sector and Industry Classification Data for Stocks

A stable, URL-safe mapping of equity tickers to sector and industry groups, available from Alphanume.

Almost every cross-sectional strategy needs a way to group stocks, whether for sector-neutral construction, industry-relative ranking, or simply filtering a universe down to one corner of the market. Standardized classification schemes are often expensive to license, and the free ones are inconsistent across data providers. What you want is a clean, stable map from ticker to sector and industry.

Alphanume provides one as the Ticker Classification dataset.

What the dataset is

Ticker Classification maps equity tickers to Alphanume-defined sector and industry groups. The taxonomy is internally defined rather than a standardized scheme, which keeps it stable and consistent across the rest of the Alphanume catalog. It has no date dimension, the values are URL-safe, and rows are ordered by ticker.

Fields and taxonomy

• ticker: the equity symbol
• alphanume_sector: one of eleven sector groups
• alphanume_industry: one of twenty-five industry groups

Sectors include technology, finance, healthcare, energy_resources, consumer_cyclical, essential_goods, industrial_transport, communications_media, raw_materials, real_assets, and utilities_infrastructure. Industries range from semiconductors and software to banking, pharma_biotech, reits, and transport_logistics. Filter values are lowercase and underscore-separated, and invalid values return a 400.

What you can do with it

• Filter a universe by sector or industry.
• Build sector-neutral or industry-relative strategies.
• Group names for cross-sectional analysis.
• Add economic-exposure features and keep segmentation consistent across pipelines.

How to access it

The dataset is on the free tier as a rolling 30-day delayed window. Filter to one sector in a single call:

curl "https://api.alphanume.com/v1/ticker-classification?sector=technology&api_key=alp_your_key"

Grab a free Alphanume API key, read the API documentation, or explore it on Alphanume to browse the mapping.

Why a stable taxonomy beats a standard one

Standardized classification schemes are often expensive to license, and the free alternatives drift between providers, so the same stock can land in different sectors depending on where you pull it. For a sector-neutral strategy, that inconsistency is corrosive: your neutrality is only as good as the labels underneath it.

Alphanume uses an internally defined taxonomy of eleven sectors and twenty-five industries. It is intentionally not a standardized scheme, which is what keeps it stable and consistent across the rest of the catalog. With no date dimension and URL-safe values, it works as a clean, permanent join key for grouping, filtering, and sector-relative analysis.

Frequently asked questions

What classification scheme does Alphanume use?

An internally defined taxonomy of eleven sectors and twenty-five industries. It is not a standardized scheme, which keeps it stable and consistent across the rest of the catalog.

Does the classification have a date dimension?

No. It is a stable, URL-safe mapping ordered by ticker, with no time series, so it serves as a clean join key.

What sectors are available?

Eleven groups including technology, finance, healthcare, energy_resources, consumer_cyclical, essential_goods, industrial_transport, communications_media, raw_materials, real_assets, and utilities_infrastructure.

How are filter values formatted?

Sector and industry values are lowercase and underscore-separated. An invalid value returns a 400 response.

Is it free?

Yes, on the free tier as a rolling 30-day delayed window. Pro raises the rate limit to 600 requests per minute.