Databento US Equities Mini now available

We're excited to announce the release of Databento US Equities Mini, our most cost-effective solution for real-time, top-of-book US equities data. It combines multiple trading venues into one composite dataset that provides accurate best bid and offer (BBO) quotes, liquidity, and trade volume data—all without exchange license fees. As its name suggests, it delivers a synthetic "mini" NBBO and eliminates the need for users to manually aggregate BBOs from individual venues.

This dataset was designed as an improvement over our legacy Databento Equities Basic bundle. It's constructed from a proprietary blend of direct feeds sourced from several NMS exchanges and ATSs that have approved its use under derived data licensing terms with Databento.

This approach allows us to offer real-time data without requiring a license or additional paperwork for our users, making Databento US Equities Mini the only blended offering of US stock market data that supports commercial applications—such as external redistribution and non-display trading—without licensing restrictions.

Databento US Equities Mini is optimized for a variety of real-time use cases, including display platforms, redistribution, brokerages, and analytics tools that need real-time BBO or last sale data without incurring additional licensing costs like per-user fees. Its entry-level pricing makes it an ideal starting point for equities data and an excellent choice for those integrating Databento's services for the first time.

Instant, unlimited access to live Databento US Equities Mini data is included with any Standard, Plus, or Unlimited subscription through our Databento US Equities service. Visit our pricing page for more details or to upgrade your plan.

As long as you have an active subscription, you can stream live data using its dataset ID: EQUS.MINI. The example below demonstrates how to request top-of-book data for two symbols using our Python client library.

import databento as db

client = db.Live("YOUR_API_KEY")

client.subscribe(
    dataset="EQUS.MINI",
    schema="mbp-1",
    symbols=["AAPL", "NVDA"],
)

client.add_callback(print)
client.start()
client.block_for_close(timeout=10)

Historical Databento US Equities Mini data starts from March 28, 2023, and is available for usage-based rates or with any subscription.

import databento as db

client = db.Historical("YOUR_API_KEY")

data = client.timeseries.get_range(
    dataset="EQUS.MINI",
    schema="trades",
    symbols=["AAPL", "NVDA"],
    start="2025-01-28",
    end="2025-01-29",
)

df = data.to_df(tz="US/Eastern")

Refer to our documentation for additional details.

Effective today, February 1, 2025, Databento will no longer provide live IEX TOPS data. This change follows IEX’s decision to introduce license fees for data accessed within 15 minutes of dissemination (previously 15 milliseconds). As a result, live IEX TOPS data will be replaced with Databento US Equities Mini, which provides tighter spreads and deeper liquidity than IEX TOPS. Historical IEX TOPS data will remain available with its existing dataset ID: IEXG.TOPS.