Databento alternatives: where algoseek is different, and where it is not
Every vendor gets the same raw feed from the same exchanges. The difference is what happens after that: whether the feed is captured lossless, whether the datasets built on it are designed for how you actually work, and whether someone who understands the data answers when something looks wrong at 6 AM.
If you are weighing Databento alternatives, those three questions are where algoseek and Databento diverge. algoseek is the market data provider for two US regulators, bulge bracket banks, prop shops, fintechs, startup funds, and individual professionals, powering 1,855+ institutions and $350B+ in live-trading AUM since 2015.
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algoseek vs Databento: two market data providers side by side
US equity real-time feed
algoseek
The CTA/UTP consolidated SIP: every trade and the official NBBO across all 22 exchanges, with extended minute bars carrying up to 90 quantitative fields against an industry standard of 10 to 15.
Databento
Direct feeds from 15 US equity exchanges and 30 ATSs. Its US Equities Mini product carries a synthetic NBBO computed by Databento, not the SIP’s.
Reference data
algoseek
Security master built, maintained, and quality-controlled in-house from multiple sources. Updated daily.
Databento
Sourced from EDI (Exchange Data International). Updated weekly.
Depth of history
algoseek
US equities from 2007. Options via OPRA, CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX futures, and options on futures from 2014.
Databento
Varies by feed.
Access and delivery
algoseek
Browser sandbox, ArdaDB cloud SQL, RESTful API and Python library, S3, SFTP, direct download, and streaming.
Databento
API and client libraries, with cloud and download delivery.
Infrastructure
algoseek
Colocation, custom servers, and full infrastructure builds alongside the data.
Databento
Data delivery only.
Exchange licensing
algoseek
Completed with you by algoseek, as vendor of record.
Databento
Self-service sign-up.
Auction imbalance data
algoseek
On the roadmap.
Databento
Available.
Entry point for small budgets
algoseek
Incubator program for individual professionals, startup funds, and early-stage fintechs.
Databento
$125 in free credits for new accounts.
Pricing
algoseek
Published. Affordable, not the least expensive.
Databento
Published. Lower on some products.
Feed quality
Real-time market data: the consolidated SIP feed, or an approximation of it
algoseek delivers the CTA/UTP consolidated SIP: every trade, the official NBBO, and top-of-book quotes across all 22 US equity exchanges, for every equity, ETF, ETN, ADR, and warrant since 2007. It is captured losslessly, with A and B feeds arbitrated up to four ways. Databento builds its equity coverage from direct feeds across 15 exchanges and 30 ATSs, and its US Equities Mini product computes a synthetic NBBO from them. Databento’s own testing puts it very close to the official NBBO.
Both are legitimate products. They are not the same instrument. A derived NBBO is an estimate of the official one, and minute bars built on it carry that estimate into every number downstream.
OPRA makes the point sharper still. It is roughly 30 terabytes per day uncompressed, and algoseek is one of the very few vendors that captures the full feed losslessly, so no message is dropped or conflated. For one US regulator it calculates a custom OPRA NBBO to that regulator’s own specification, with no SLA failure to date.
When broker-dealers dispute a market price, the regulatory determination is based on algoseek data. Only two types of vendors have ever served that function: large multi-billion dollar firms, and algoseek.
algoseek is the better fit if
The SIP is the reference price for a backtest, a transaction cost report, or a compliance record.
Databento is the better fit if
A display or retail front end needs a reasonable consolidated price rather than the official one.
Reference data
Security master and reference data: built in-house, or passed through from EDI
Most data vendors, Bloomberg and LSEG/Refinitiv excepted, license a security master from someone else, white-label it, and sell it as their own, with whatever gaps came with it. Databento sources its security master and corporate actions from EDI and updates them weekly, so a corporate action that lands on Tuesday is not in your identifiers until the following week.
algoseek builds, maintains, and quality-controls its own security master, updated daily, with adjustment factors recalculated nightly going backward. The ASID gives one persistent identifier per equity, option, and futures contract, tracking every ticker through merger, split, share class change, and delisting since 2007, cross-referenced to FIGI and ISIN, so it joins to Bloomberg, LSEG/Refinitiv, or your prime broker. There is a full security master for US options as well, battle-tested by hundreds of firms.
Professionals do not build on tickers, because tickers change, and research that starts with a broken identifier is invalid before the first calculation.
algoseek is the better fit if
Your research joins across datasets, spans corporate actions, or has to survive a delisting.
Databento is the better fit if
You already run your own security master, in which case algoseek’s is reference data you would be paying for and not using.
Research to production
Historical market data is the real-time feed, captured
algoseek historical data is the direct capture of the corresponding real-time feed. The Mercury ticker plant processes every feed in real time and writes a copy to the archive, so what you receive streaming today is what appears in the archive tomorrow morning. Bars are harder than they look, from which condition codes to include to how to treat jitter at the bar edge, and algoseek computes them once, with the same code, for both.
Most teams only find out that their historical provider diverges from their live feed after a strategy fails in production. Historical data for research, the 15-minute delayed feed for paper trading, the real-time feed for live trading, colocation when latency matters: one source throughout.
algoseek is the better fit if
The same strategy has to run in research and in production without the data changing underneath it.
Databento is the better fit if
You are researching only, with no plan to trade the strategy live, so the archive is all you need.
High-touch support
Market data support: data partner vs data vendor
algoseek’s core team came from a quantitative trading background. They know what it costs when a field is wrong or a feed goes quiet during a session. So when you get in touch, by scheduled call, email, ticket, or Zoom, you talk to someone who understands the data at the same level you do, not someone reading from a troubleshooting script.
This is high-touch professional support: questions about the data, notifications when there is a problem, the ability to track what has happened to a dataset over time, and dedicated real-time support for clients with money on the line. Clients have a name for it: the data nanny. A vendor passing through third-party reference data cannot support it at this depth, because it did not build it.
algoseek is the better fit if
A wrong field or a quiet feed costs you money inside the session it happens in.
Databento is the better fit if
You prefer documentation to conversation, and your team is happy debugging market data itself.
Delivery
A market data feed, or the infrastructure to receive it
When it comes to receiving data, you are only as good as your weakest link. A server on someone else’s network, connected through someone else’s pipe, works until it does not, and then three parties point at each other. Databento delivers data; the servers, networking, and monitoring are yours to source and yours to reconcile when they disagree.
algoseek runs colocation from a single server to enterprise builds, with servers built and maintained in-house and the third-generation Mercury ticker plant written in C++ and assembly with zero external dependencies. Feeds run from Equinix NY2, NY4, and Chicago CH1, and raw exchange feeds go directly into your cloud: multicast into AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure over dark fiber and PrivateLink. The same team has built intraday index pricing for a bulge bracket bank and combined alternative data with market data feeds for a fund.
No algoseek client has ever lost a feed, and Mercury’s regional redundancy has meant no downtime since inception.
algoseek is the better fit if
You want one party accountable for the data and everything it arrives on.
Databento is the better fit if
You already run your own infrastructure and want data delivered into it.
Paperwork
Exchange licensing: a vendor of record, or self-service
Exchange fees are set by the exchanges and apply whichever vendor you use. What differs is who fills in the forms. Databento’s licensing is self-service. algoseek is a vendor of record and does this every day: it helps you complete the sign-up correctly and get the right rate, because the forms are bureaucratic, not always clear, and algoseek understands what the exchanges are looking for.
This has deliberately not been automated. For professional clients the nuances differ case by case, and a click-through form can lead to paying more in fees than necessary, or worse, not paying fees that apply, with the exchange then pursuing you for them. For a regulated entity that is a serious matter.
algoseek is the better fit if
You are a regulated entity, or you are not certain which use case you fall under.
Databento is the better fit if
You know your exchange classification and would rather click through it yourself.
Custom builds
A feed built to your specification, or a standard one
US Regulator
A custom OPRA NBBO, built to the regulator’s own specification
A US regulator needed an NBBO calculated to its own specification from the full OPRA feed. algoseek built it on the Mercury compute grid and delivers it to the regulator’s cloud, accurate through 30TB days and fivefold volume spikes, with no missed SLA.
Large Hedge Fund
Raw multicast feeds delivered into the fund’s own AWS
AWS blocks multicast at the network level, so raw exchange feeds cannot simply be sent into the cloud. algoseek encapsulates the fund’s multicast over TCP, carries it on dark fiber from Equinix New Jersey and Chicago, and lands it via PrivateLink, with no fund hardware in either data center.
Fintech
White-label market data for a fintech’s own product
Building market data into a product means running a data business inside a fintech. Through Data Supplier Solutions, algoseek handles the licensing, normalization, pipeline, and first-level support, and the fintech redistributes the data over the API under its own brand.
Cost
algoseek vs Databento pricing: affordable, not the least expensive
There is a real cost to maintaining professional datasets, in people, compute, and time. On list price algoseek is on par with Databento and somewhat higher on some products. Pricing is published, and it runs from an individual professional to a large bank. Every dataset and package includes the full history and daily updates for the term of the license, and with a historical package, streaming licenses for real-time and delayed feeds are 50% of list.
If budget is the binding constraint, the incubator program prices professional datasets against where your business is today. If you want proven data, support from people who understand it, and a firm investing in the people and infrastructure to keep it that way, algoseek is built to be a long-term partner.
Questions teams ask before switching market data providers
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Is there an option for an individual on a small budget?
Databento’s $125 in free credits for new accounts is a legitimate way to look at data on a small budget. For individual professionals, startup funds, and early-stage fintechs who need commercial use, the algoseek incubator program is priced to be affordable at your current stage.
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Does algoseek have auction imbalance data?
Not yet; it is on the roadmap. Databento offers it today, so if auction imbalance is a requirement rather than a preference, that is a reason to pick Databento.
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Do I have to redo my exchange licensing?
Exchange fees are set by the exchanges and apply whichever vendor you use, so the obligation itself does not change. algoseek is a vendor of record and completes the paperwork with you, including getting guidance from the exchanges on your classification without revealing your name.
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Can I start with one asset class?
Yes. Equities, options, and futures are separate asset class packages, and individual datasets can be licensed on their own. Teams commonly start with the asset class where the current data hurts most.
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Can I evaluate algoseek data before licensing?
Yes. The sandbox gives you up to a year of history across all asset classes, with no credit card. Sample files are available for any dataset, so you can compare fields, condition codes, and identifiers against what you run today.
Start with the data, not a sales call
Up to a year of history in the sandbox, no credit card, no sales call. When you know what you need, we will scope the data, the delivery, and the licensing with you.