Regulation NMS ensures that orders are executed at the best available prices across the 16 equities exchanges, so trades reported on any venue execute at the best available prices at the time and are still suitable for most use cases. Many of our users opt against subscribing to all venues to lower their license fees.

Yes, each of our equities datasets covers all exchange-listed US stocks ("NMS stocks"), as these stocks are traded across all venues. For example, a Nasdaq-listed stock like AAPL is also traded on IEX.

The three FINRA Trade Reporting Facilities (TRFs) record all off-exchange trades in exchange-listed stocks, as required by regulation. This includes over-the-counter (OTC) transactions in NMS stocks, such as trades executed on Alternative Trading Systems (ATSs) or by FINRA broker-dealers. Collectively, TRFs account for approximately 52% of the average daily volume (ADV) in NMS stocks as of 2024.

For more information, see FINRA's FAQ page or our microstructure guide on the TRFs. Data from the two Nasdaq-operated TRFs is included in our Nasdaq Basic with NLS Plus dataset, while the NYSE-operated TRF is available in our NYSE Trades dataset.

Databento is the only market data distributor to source all of our US equities from the direct prop feeds only and to consolidate these feeds ourselves. This is a common practice among the leading electronic market making firms, but uncommon among vendors because the direct prop feeds are significantly more expensive to license (about $60,000/month) than the SIPs ($10,500/month).

The direct prop feeds offer significant informational advantages over the SIPs, such as 100% accurate trade signs, odd lot quotations, full order book, auction imbalance, and lower latency from one less hop to Tape A/B/C. In actual applications, we've found that the SIPs are usually only more useful to FINRA broker-dealers that require a snap quote to meet the Vendor Display Rule.

Since we're licensing all of the direct prop feeds individually, it also gives us the flexibility to provide different blends of prop feeds that may be cheaper to license than the SIPs and more cost-effective for real-time use cases. Exchange operators offer similar solutions, such as Cboe One, Nasdaq Basic, and NYSE BQT, but they're limited to their own exchanges. Databento is venue-neutral, so we can blend a more effective set of feeds across exchange groups.

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.

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. 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.

Based on our internal testing, we've found that it is very close to NBBO like other exchange-provided "mini-NBBO" feeds (like NYSE BQT, Cboe One, and Nasdaq Basic), at a much more cost-effective price point. It's the only exchange-neutral "mini-NBBO" of its kind; prior to Databento US Equities Mini, no similar commercial solution existed since very few vendor firms have the infrastructure or access to aggregate multiple proprietary feeds and the major exchange operators only blend their own proprietary feeds.

Databento has a derived use license in place with these venues specifically for its redistribution and in turn our end users are allowed to use and redistribute the feed without further licensing or exchange fee requirements. This is based on specific exceptions on these venues for feeds like this so long as they cannot be reverse-engineered to their original feeds and do not serve as a direct substitute of the original prop feeds.

Here are some common use cases which can help you determine which real-time feed to use:

• Investment firms. Most of our buy-side trading customers prefer to use Nasdaq TotalView-ITCH or Nasdaq Basic with NLS Plus.

• Brokerage. Our brokerage customers use our feeds to provide an indicative BBO and save substantially on SIP user fees. Both Nasdaq Basic with NLS Plus and Databento US Equities Mini are a great fit for this use case. Firms that have already used Nasdaq Basic in the past often prefer to retain it for legacy purposes. Firms that don't have any legacy requirements often prefer Databento US Equities Mini due to the lighter reporting requirements.

• Fintech and analytics. Most of these customers use Databento US Equities Mini as it provides an accurate BBO and permissive distribution terms for web applications, and these firms often don't require L2 or L3 granularity. All plans include our Databento US Equities Summary dataset which provide official EOD prices and 100% delayed volume, which tends to cover their remaining needs. A small portion of customers in this category consume the Nasdaq feeds instead.

• Individuals and professional traders. Most of our individual users use Databento US Equities Mini due to its low cost.

You may also consider these factors:

• Cost. Databento US Equities Mini is our most cost-effective solution, followed by Nasdaq Basic with NLS Plus. If you're constrained by budget, we recommend using Databento US Equities Mini.

• Accuracy, liquidity, and volume. Nasdaq Basic with NLS Plus is by far the single direct feed that provides the most accuracy, liquidity, and volume since it covers the most active venues, including Nasdaq, BX, PSX, and the Nasdaq TRFs which report over 95% of off-exchange trades in NMS stocks.

• Licensing terms, compliance burden, and reporting requirements. Databento US Equities Mini is by far the most convenient since it has no license fees on distribution and does not require exchange reporting. You're instantly approved to use it once you subscribe to a plan.

• Granularity. If you need L2 (MBP-10) or L3 (MBO) data, Nasdaq TotalView-ITCH is our only real-time feed that offers this at the moment.

• Intraday historical simulation. Our history is most complete for Nasdaq TotalView-ITCH and if agreement between backtest and production trading at the intraday level is important to you, we'd recommend using it.

• Auction imbalance. Auction imbalance is only available on Nasdaq TotalView-ITCH. If you have need for auction imbalance on other venues like NYSE Arca, contact our sales team.

• NYSE Trades. In most cases, you should only consider adding NYSE Trades as a supplemental feed to one of the Nasdaq feeds. Licensing fees for NYSE Trades are significantly higher than Nasdaq Basic and Nasdaq TotalView-ITCH, which cover significantly more ADV. Moreover, NYSE Trades alone does not include the BBO on NYSE.

• NYSE National Trades and BBO and NYSE Chicago Integrated. The advantage of these two feeds is that they have no licensing fees. However, due to the low ADV, wider spreads, and paperwork requirement on these two feeds, most of our commercial users only consider adding them alongside with NYSE Trades. Non-professional users, however, will be able to add these feeds with instant approval without papering with NYSE, and often will activate these feeds as it's a convenient way to improve their coverage over Databento US Equities Mini.

Databento consumes all of the listed feeds in real-time and has the real-time distribution licenses for most of them, so we can arrange to distribute any feed to you in real-time even if we do not currently advertise it as part of our live coverage.

Most of the other feeds have very high license fees for real-time non-display use, hence we don't actively market them. You may contact our sales team to arrange receipt of any of the other real-time feeds.

A common reason for this is if you have specific needs for NYSE Arca Integrated (e.g. for ETF/ETP liquidity) or any of the L3 (MBO) feeds that include auction imbalances.