Real-Time or Delayed Market Data: Which is Right for You?

We love to have everything instantaneously, so it makes sense that real-time market data seems attractive. Depending on your use case, however, you may be able to gain huge cost savings by using delayed data.

Here’s a guide to whether you need real-time equity or options prices for your platform, or if delayed data can meet your needs.

What’s the difference?

Real-time market data is essential for driving trading decisions, creating buy and sell sentiment, and powering trade execution platforms. These use cases require the ability to react quickly to market changes – delayed data will put you at a serious disadvantage. Intrinio clients can stream real-time market data through our WebSocket, which continually pushes, or streams, data to the user with low latency (this may require an additional fee). Or, you can pull the latest real-time price as needed via our Web API.

Delayed market data is valuable for businesses that need to display stock prices and other datapoints on their platform or website. Delayed feeds typically have the same datapoints as real-time feeds. This data is available through our Web API with a 15-minute delay.  

When choosing between feeds, exchange fees are a critical consideration. You can pay thousands each month just in exchange fees, which are determined by the exchange and non-negotiable. Delayed feeds typically save clients $1,000 to $5,000 a month in exchange fees. For most delayed datasets, there are also no exchange reporting requirements or variable per-user fees associated, which require sophisticated entitlement systems to maintain.

Intrinio offers both real-time and delayed data for US equity prices and option data. Our real-time and delayed equity market data feeds have no exchange fees. Exchange fees for options data depends on use case; our team helps you understand the exchange fees you would be responsible for real-time vs. delayed data and internal vs. external display.

Why choose Intrinio for market data?

• Speed: Our real-time market data is low latency, meaning our clients don’t miss any opportunities because of data delays.
• Guidance: Navigating the different requirements and fees of each exchange and the paperwork that accompanies that can be a major headache for your company. Intrinio advises clients on choosing the right exchange and works with the exchanges to coordinate paperwork, reporting, and delivery.  
• Support: We care about our clients’ businesses and provide first-class tools and support to help succeed. This includes SDKs, technical consulting and implementation help, third-party coordination, a customer success team, and a built-in ticketing system for technical and data quality issues.  

Our experienced team can help you identify whether real-time or 15-minute delayed data is the best fit for your data needs. Visit intrinio.com to explore our data packages and talk to our team!