Stock data API

Getting started is simple—just sign up to instantly generate your API key. Whether you're evaluating data sources, comparing financial data providers, or ready to start building a production-ready application, new users are automatically credited with $125 in free API credits. These can be applied toward historical data requests or used to offset the cost of a subscription plan if you want to try real-time data.

Databento is the only financial data provider to offer real-time stock data with zero license fees, free redistribution rights, and full exchange compliance. This means you can start testing live data without the need to purchase a separate exchange license. This benefit is available exclusively through our US Equities Mini feed with any active subscription plan. Many users rely on this dataset to power dashboards, financial news applications, and real-time ticker visualizations—especially those accessed by a large number of end users—without the cost or complexity of traditional licensing.

Our APIs share a unified structure across asset classes, making it seamless to move from backtesting to live trading. We provide a Quickstart guide and code examples tailored to common use cases to help you get up and running fast.

No. Our real-time and historical APIs are unified across all asset classes: futures, options, and equities. Our APIs share the same methods and endpoints regardless of which asset class you're working with, and our schemas use consistent fields across all datasets. This makes the API more scalable and easier to extend into new markets without rewriting your integration.

Databento US Equities, however, is a standalone service made up of 18 datasets sourced from every major U.S. exchange. You can request historical market data from any of its constituent datasets for usage-based rates, or start a subscription plan to unlock unlimited historical and real-time access.

Note: We don’t currently support cryptocurrencies or digital assets. We're considering future coverage of forex data and additional global markets based on user demand.

Yes. Each of our equities datasets includes all exchange-listed U.S. stocks (also known as NMS securities), which are traded across multiple venues regardless of their primary listing. For example, a Nasdaq-listed stock like AAPL is also available on IEX and other U.S. exchanges. This ensures complete coverage across the U.S. market.

We support U.S.-listed ETFs and index-tracked products like SPY and QQQ. Mutual funds aren't included in our data because they aren't traded on exchanges. We also don't provide official index values such as SPX, , since separate index providers publish those. However, many ETFs in our datasets are designed to track major U.S. financial indices.

Our APIs are language-agnostic. You can use any language that can make HTTP requests for historical data or open raw TCP connections for real-time data. We offer official client libraries for Python, Rust, and C++, but you can also build custom integrations in Java , Go, C, or other languages using standard networking libraries.

However, since we don’t currently offer REST or WebSocket APIs, building your own integration—particularly for real-time data—may require lower-level networking. For most users, our client libraries are the fastest way to get started and are designed to abstract away this complexity. REST and WebSocket APIs are easier to implement in some environments, but they introduce added latency and protocol overhead that make them less suitable for high-performance financial data.

We don’t currently provide company fundamentals like earnings, balance sheets, or analyst estimates. These are typically sourced from public filings available for free through the SEC.

Our stock data APIs focus on real-time and historical price data, trade volume, order book depth, and market microstructure signals—all critical inputs for technical indicators, quantitative models, and backtesting. We also offer corporate actions data, including splits, dividends, and mergers, which can be used alongside external fundamental datasets for a more complete view of the financial markets.

We're currently working on equities reference data and fundamentals, e.g., shares outstanding, short interest, market capitalization, and P/E ratios. In the meantime, you can always combine our data with external providers of financial news and company fundamentals for a full picture.