If you’re a solo developer or founder building a stock-related app, chances are you started with a simple idea: show prices, plot a chart, maybe track a portfolio or build a screener. Stocks feel straightforward. After all, prices are everywhere. But chances are you haven’t considered how you’re going to handle stock market data licensing.
Then you start researching market data and things get confusing fast. You see references to SIPs, NBBO, redistribution licenses, and five-figure monthly costs. At that point, many developers either assume they’re doing something wrong, or conclude that building a stock app simply isn’t feasible without institutional backing.
The reality is much simpler: most stock apps do not need the most expensive form of market data. What trips developers up is the assumption that displaying prices is an all-or-nothing decision. It isn’t.
U.S. equity data exists in distinct tiers, with costs that scale based on precision. Historical data, delayed consolidated data, single-exchange feeds, and derived pricing all serve legitimate and widely used roles. Choosing the right tier early can mean the difference between shipping an app in weeks versus abandoning it after reading an exchange fee schedule.
This guide walks through those tiers step by step, explains what each one actually gives you, and shows how solo developers can build credible stock applications without taking on unnecessary cost or compliance burden.
The Three Buckets of U.S. Equity Market Data
When developers say they want to “show stock prices,” they’re usually referring to one of three data categories defined by the U.S. SIPs (the Securities Information Processors). These buckets determine what you can legally display, how much it costs, and how closely your prices match what users see inside a brokerage platform.
At a high level, U.S. equity market data falls into three SIP-defined buckets:
- Historical data (at least 1 full trading day old)
- 15-minute delayed consolidated data
- Real-time consolidated data (less than 15-minute delay)
Historical Equity Data: Free to Display
Historical equity data—defined as stock prices, trades, and volume that are at least one full trading day old—can be displayed publicly with no exchange licenses and no SIP entitlements. From an exchange perspective, this data is no longer considered fee-liable data once the next trading session begins.
Operationally, this means that yesterday’s data becomes historical at the next market open. For example, Monday’s trades and closing prices are considered historical starting at the opening bell on Tuesday. At that point, the data may be freely displayed without triggering exchange redistribution fees or compliance requirements.
This makes historical data the ideal starting point for many products, including:
- Price and performance charts
- Backtesting and research tools
- Stock screeners and ranking systems
- Educational and informational applications
From a cost and compliance standpoint, historical data sits at the lowest possible tier: zero exchange cost and zero compliance burden. There are no user agreements, no reporting, and no audit requirements imposed by the exchanges or SIPs.
It’s important to note, however, that while historical data is free to redistribute from an exchange licensing perspective, it is still owned by the underlying venues. Exchanges allow historical data to be redistributed downstream without charging exchange fees, but they do not make the data public-domain or license-free in an absolute sense.
In practice, this means you still obtain historical data from a data provider, and the commercial terms you pay depend on that provider’s license and pricing model. You are paying for data access, normalization, storage, and delivery—not for exchange redistribution rights.
This distinction is critical: historical equity data is free from exchange fees, but not necessarily free from vendor licensing costs. Even so, it remains the simplest and most economical way to begin building and validating a stock-focused product.
Intraday Candlesticks and 15-Minute Delayed Data: A Cheaper Middle Ground
The next tier up from historical data is 15-minute delayed consolidated equity data. This data still originates from the SIPs, but it sits in a fundamentally different pricing and compliance category than real-time consolidated feeds.
15-minute delayed data includes the same types of information as real-time consolidated data, just delayed by at least fifteen minutes:
- Consolidated trades (last sale across all venues)
- Consolidated quotes (NBBO)
- Intraday aggregations such as OHLC candlesticks
Candlestick charts are simply aggregations of trade data. When you display 5-minute, 15-minute, or hourly candles, you are not using a separate data product—you are aggregating delayed consolidated trades into a visual format. This makes 15-minute delayed data a natural foundation for intraday charting.
From a cost perspective, this bucket is dramatically cheaper than real-time. A common example is UTP intraday data, which carries a base exchange fee of $250 per month, plus a $250 annual administrative fee for display rights. There are no per-user display fees and no professional vs. non-professional classifications required.
This pricing structure makes 15-minute delayed data the sweet spot for many products:
- Live-feeling intraday charts
- Technical analysis tools
- Portfolio visualizations that update during the trading day
- Most retail-facing stock applications
While this tier does not deliver real-time bid/ask updates, it is often “good enough” for the vast majority of use cases. Users still see intraday price movement, trends, and structure—without the five-figure monthly costs associated with real-time consolidated redistribution.
For many developers, 15-minute delayed consolidated data represents the best balance between cost, functionality, and user experience, and it often serves as the final production tier for apps that are not executing trades or competing directly with brokerage platforms.
Consolidated Real-Time Quotes and Trades: The Expensive Part
This is the point where many otherwise well-designed stock applications run into trouble. Consolidated real-time equity data is fundamentally different from every tier below it, both technically and economically.
In the U.S., true real-time stock prices—meaning real-time NBBO (national best bid and offer) and real-time consolidated last sale—are produced exclusively by the SIPs (CTA for NYSE-listed securities and UTP for Nasdaq-listed securities). There is no alternative source for this data.
This is also the data most users assume they need, because it’s what they see inside their brokerage accounts. But what’s rarely understood is that the moment you redistribute this data to external users, you step into a completely different cost and compliance regime.
Once redistribution is involved, real-time consolidated data routinely costs five figures per month. That figure is not an edge case—it is the baseline. Between SIP redistribution fees, per-user charges, reporting obligations, and ongoing compliance requirements, costs escalate quickly and compound as your user base grows.
The result is a very common inflection point for developers: they investigate real-time consolidated data under the assumption that it’s mandatory, encounter the pricing and compliance requirements, and immediately hit the brakes. The costs don’t just scale with usage—they start high and only go up.
In practice, most teams never actually deploy real-time consolidated data. The five-figure monthly commitment is enough to force a rethink long before launch. At that point, developers start asking the more important question: what problem am I actually trying to solve for the user?
Once that question is framed correctly, the answer is usually clear: real-time consolidated data is almost never required for early-stage apps. What users need is timely, directionally accurate pricing and clean intraday structure—not perfect NBBO alignment across every venue.
The good news is that there are much cheaper ways to deliver real-time or near-real-time experiences without triggering SIP-level redistribution fees. Single-exchange feeds and derived pricing models can cover the vast majority of use cases at a fraction of the cost, while still meeting user expectations.
Understanding this distinction early can save months of development time, significant capital, and unnecessary architectural complexity.
Single-Exchange Alternatives
Once you move past the assumption that real-time data must be consolidated, a much more practical category of market data becomes available: single-exchange feeds.
Unlike consolidated data, which is produced by the SIPs by combining quotes and trades from all U.S. exchanges, single-exchange data comes from one venue only. It does not represent the official consolidated NBBO, but it often tracks the broader market closely—especially in normal trading conditions.
Because single-exchange data avoids consolidation, it also avoids the most expensive part of market data licensing. For many apps, this makes it possible to show real-time prices that meet user expectations without taking on SIP-level redistribution costs.
IEX: The Lowest-Cost True Exchange Feed
The most common and practical single-exchange option is IEX. IEX is a single U.S. equities exchange, not a consolidated feed. Its data reflects trading activity and quotes from IEX alone, rather than from all U.S. venues combined. While this means it does not represent the official NBBO, it tracks the broader market closely enough for most use cases.
It’s also important to understand that IEX is not limited to IEX-listed securities. All U.S. equities and ETFs—whether they are listed on NYSE or Nasdaq—can and do trade on IEX. A stock may be listed on NYSE or Nasdaq, but it can still have active quotes and trades on IEX. As a result, IEX produces real-time bid, ask, and last sale prices for the vast majority of U.S. stocks and ETFs. In normal market conditions, these prices tend to track the consolidated NBBO very closely. This distinction matters because it means you can use IEX as a general-purpose real-time equity feed, not just for a narrow subset of symbols.
What makes IEX particularly attractive is that its real-time data is legally displayable to end users without per-user fees. Unlike SIP consolidated data, there are no professional vs. non-professional classifications, no per-subscriber charges, and no monthly user reporting requirements.
The primary display feed from IEX is IEX TOPS. For $500 per month in exchange fees, this feed provides real-time:
- Bid prices
- Ask prices
- Last sale prices
In other words, IEX TOPS delivers true market prices—not a synthetic midpoint or derived value—while avoiding the five-figure monthly costs and per-user fee structures associated with SIP redistribution.
For many applications, IEX is the lowest-cost way to display real-time stock prices in a manner that feels familiar and trustworthy to users. While prices may differ slightly from consolidated NBBO during fast markets, the tradeoff is usually well worth it. In practice, IEX often serves as the final production tier for apps that want real-time pricing without taking on the financial and compliance overhead of consolidated real-time data.
Derived Data: Real-Time Prices With No Exchange Licenses
In addition to single-exchange feeds like IEX, there is a separate and increasingly important category of equity pricing data: derived data. Derived data is fundamentally different from exchange data. Instead of redistributing raw quotes or trades from an exchange or the SIPs, derived data provides calculated prices based on underlying market inputs. Because the output is not a direct redistribution of exchange data, it does not trigger exchange display licensing requirements.
Two common examples of derived equity feeds are:
- SmartMid from Market Data
- Intrinio Equities Edge
These feeds produce real-time or near-real-time prices that track the market closely, but they are not classified as SIP data or exchange data. As a result, they can be displayed to end users with no exchange licenses, no entitlements, and no per-user fees.
The only contractual requirements for derived feeds come from the data vendor itself. There are no SIP agreements, no exchange audits, and no user classification obligations. Your costs and permissions are governed entirely by your vendor’s commercial terms.
From a product perspective, derived feeds are often the most cost-efficient way to show “live” stock prices, especially for start-ups, solo developers, founders, or anyone who is price-sensitive. They allow you to deliver a responsive, real-time user experience without committing to exchange-level infrastructure or compliance.
For many products, derived pricing paired with historical or delayed consolidated data is enough to meet user expectations while keeping costs predictable and manageable.
A Practical Progression for Stock Apps
Once you understand the different categories of equity market data and their associated costs, a clear and pragmatic progression emerges. Most successful stock applications do not start with real-time consolidated data—they earn their way there, if they ever need it at all.
A cost-efficient and product-driven sequence typically looks like this:
- Start with historical data (free).
Build charts, screeners, research tools, and educational features using prior-day data. There are no exchange licenses, no compliance requirements, and minimal friction to get started. - Add derived real-time pricing (no exchange licensing).
Introduce live or near-live prices using derived feeds such as SmartMid or Intrinio Equities Edge. This delivers a responsive user experience without triggering SIP or exchange fees. - Add intraday candlesticks via 15-minute delayed data ($250/month).
Layer in delayed consolidated trades and quotes to support intraday charts and technical analysis. For many apps, this is the point where the product feels “live” enough for most users. - Add IEX for true bid/ask/last sale ($500/month).
When you need real-time market prices from an actual exchange, IEX TOPS provides legally displayable bid, ask, and last sale data without per-user fees or SIP-level costs. - Only later consider real-time consolidated SIP data.
Real-time consolidated NBBO and last sale should be treated as a final step, reserved for products that truly require strict market-wide accuracy and can justify five-figure monthly costs and ongoing compliance.
This progression allows you to align data spend with product maturity. Each step adds meaningful user value while keeping costs proportional to traction, revenue, and real-world requirements.
By designing your data strategy incrementally, you avoid premature commitments to expensive licensing models and preserve flexibility as your product evolves.
Common Mistakes Developers Make
Solo developers and founders run into a predictable set of problems when building stock apps. These aren’t technical mistakes. They’re almost always the result of misinformation about market data licensing and cost.
- Giving up after seeing SIP real-time pricing.
Many builders start researching stock prices, discover that consolidated real-time data costs five figures per month, and conclude the project is impossible. In reality, very few personal or early-stage apps actually need SIP real-time data. - Assuming “real-time” automatically means consolidated SIP feeds.
Developers often believe there is a single definition of real-time pricing. In practice, single-exchange feeds and derived pricing provide real-time or near-real-time experiences without SIP-level licensing or cost. - Overthinking compliance before validating the idea.
It’s common to worry about exchange audits, user agreements, and reporting before a single user exists. Starting with historical, delayed, or derived data lets you build and test ideas without taking on unnecessary legal or compliance overhead. - Completely overlooking derived feeds.
Derived pricing is often dismissed because it isn’t raw exchange data. For solo projects and side apps, derived feeds are frequently the most practical option: no exchange licenses, no per-user fees, and predictable costs governed only by the data vendor.
For individual developers, the key insight is simple: you can build useful, credible stock applications without institutional budgets. Most successful projects start small, choose the lowest-cost data tier that meets user needs, and only move up the stack if the product truly demands it.
Conclusion: Design the Data Strategy First
Displaying stock prices is not a binary decision. You are not choosing between “no data” and “full real-time consolidated feeds.” There is a wide spectrum of options, each with different costs, precision, and licensing requirements.
The key takeaway is that cost scales with precision, not usefulness. For most solo developers and hobbyist builders, perfect NBBO accuracy delivers little additional value compared to historical, delayed, single-exchange, or derived pricing—yet it carries orders of magnitude more cost and complexity.
By designing your data strategy deliberately, you can launch faster, iterate more freely, and keep burn under control. Starting with the lowest-cost tier that satisfies user needs allows you to focus on product and experience rather than licensing and compliance.
If your app goes beyond stocks and starts working with listed options, it’s important to know that options data is governed by a completely different licensing framework. Real-time and delayed U.S. options data falls under OPRA, with its own redistribution rules, fees, and compliance obligations. If that applies to your project, we’ve put together a separate guide that walks through OPRA licensing step by step: OPRA options data licensing for developers .
If you’re unsure which data tier makes sense for your app, it’s worth talking through the architecture and licensing implications before committing to expensive feeds. Market Data is here to help. We’ve worked through these tradeoffs with many developers, and we’re happy to help you choose a path that fits your goals and budget. Please contact us if you’d like to talk it through.