Costs and Alternatives for Direct US Equity Market Data

# US Equity Real-time Market Data Feed Pricing


# US Equity Real-time Market Data Feed Pricing












I'm trying to compare the minimum cost of subscribing to primary sources of real-time market data on NYSE and NASDAQ for last sale and level 1 top-of-book quotes.

Use cases are log to files, store history in a database, process messages and historical data to submit orders via broker API.

I'm a non-professional user, i.e. I don't work for a financial services company and I trade on my own account.

As of January 2021:



- CTA (only Network A): `$750` Indirect Data Access Charges for Network A Last Sale Output Feed `$1,250` Indirect Data Access Charges for Network A Bid-Ask Output Feed `$2,000` Non-Display Use Fee Network A Last Sale `$2,000` Non-Display Use Fee Network A Bid-Ask



- NASDAQ - Not sure if Basic can be Non-Display

The least expensive feed in terms of subscription fees is UTP at `$4,000` which is expensive.

Are there better options, i.e. something that costs `$500` but a few milliseconds of latency?

## Answer by JoshK (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/60681

You are forgetting about the actual cost to bring in your connectivity to the exchanges. You will have to spend a few \$k per month to bring in your own digital lines to bring the data back.

Also, you have some redundancy there why do you want CTA, UTP, and NYSE? If you just want the current best bid/offer for each US equity then the CTA/UTP will do.

But, do you want futures as well? Then you will have to pay CME/Globex and build out lines there.

Also, you have to build the software to parse these data feeds. You can't just plug them into your PC.

Better look at dealer platforms like Interractive Brokers. I think they, and a few others, will give you a simplified API that lets you see all of the data that you would like.

Alternatively, you can independetly purchase a Reuters (cheaper) or Bloomberg (more expensive) terminal which comes with a simple API that let's you see the best bid and offer for most securities. You will pay a small fee for each exchange.