Bloomberg Open Market Data Requires a Subscription for Data Access

Summary

The document clarifies the distinction between Bloomberg’s open source data distribution technology and access to Bloomberg’s data. The API and its documentation are publicly available, but connecting to Bloomberg’s database and downloading its data requires a Bloomberg subscription. The question also asks what data OMDI contains and whether it serves as a shared data publishing system, but the answer does not resolve those details.

The evidence is a brief answer pointing out the subscription requirement; it gives no examples of available datasets, publisher discovery, or data download workflows. Its practical takeaway is limited to separating access to the technology from access to the underlying commercial data. It does not establish whether specific earnings or market datasets are included, nor does it explain how third-party publishers participate.

Key ideas

• The API and its documentation are publicly available.
• Accessing and downloading Bloomberg database data requires a Bloomberg subscription.
• The answer does not specify OMDI datasets or explain how to find publishers.

Tags

# Bloomberg's Open Market Data Initiative


# Bloomberg's Open Market Data Initiative












I am reading about OMDI: https://www.bloomberg.com/company/announcements/bloomberg-opens-its-data-distribution-technology/

After reading that, I am still not sure: Is it free? If so, what kind of data are there? Can I download compiled data from companies' earnings reports? And from stock markets? Or is it rather a data bus for companies to send data to, for potential subscribers? If so, how can I know about data publishers?

I have tried the API following the examples, against `open.bloomberg.com`, but all I was able to get was `Unauthorized` or `Unknown service` or such.

What it seems to me as is that Bloomberg is essentially asking others, "this is how we store our data internally, please publish them in the same way." Correct?

Lastly, should this question go rather to Open Data StackExchange?

## Answer by assylias (score 0, accepted)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/42370

The API and its documentation have been open sourced and are publicly available, but to connect to and download data from the Bloomberg database you need a Bloomberg subscription.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.