The short answer

For US equities at retail scale in 2026, Polygon.io Stocks Advanced ($199/mo) wins flat-rate real-time, Alpaca free IEX is the zero-cost paper-trading default, Tiingo Power ($30/mo) wins long-horizon EOD research, and Databento is the only realistic tick and L2 source — $199/mo flat Standard or metered billing.

For US equities at retail scale in 2026: Massive (formerly Polygon.io) Stocks Advanced ($199/mo) wins for most flat-rate real-time workloads — Polygon.io's rebrand to Massive went official on 2025-10-30, and polygon.io now redirects to massive.com. Alpaca free IEX is the correct default for paper-trading research if you can tolerate partial volume. Tiingo Power ($30/mo) wins for long-horizon research built on EOD + news. Databento wins for tick + L2 — now on a flat $199/mo Standard plan, or metered billing that scales aggressively; model it before committing. FMP and Alpha Vantage sit in "budget with caveats" territory. Full pricing tiers and a live scenario calculator: /data-vendor-tco/.

Methodology

All pricing reflects list rates on vendor pricing pages as of 2026-07-12. Enterprise + negotiated tiers are out of scope. Scenarios: small (≤50 symbols), medium (~500), large (~2,000), all US equities (~10,000). Resolutions tested: daily, 1-minute, 1-second, tick, L2. See /data-vendor-tco/ for the full rate table, assumptions, and limitations.

The headline table

Vendor Cheapest tier w/ real-time Monthly Resolutions Options Futures
Massive (formerly Polygon.io) Stocks Advanced $199 daily → tick no (separate Options product, $199 Advanced) no (separate Futures product, $199 Advanced)
Alpaca Algo Trader Plus $99 daily → tick yes no
Databento Standard (flat) $199 (metered ~$125, medium-univ, minute) daily → L2 limited yes
Tiingo Power $30 daily + minute no no
FMP Starter $22 (billed annually) daily → minute no no
Alpha Vantage Premium 600 $199.99 daily → second no no
Alpaca (free tier) IEX-only $0 daily + minute no no

Numbers reflect list pricing as of 2026-07-12; the Databento row was re-verified 2026-07-25. Verify on the vendor page before committing. Full tier-by-tier breakdown for the Polygon.io row above: Polygon.io Pricing Plans 2026; options pricing is covered in Polygon.io Options API Pricing 2026, and Databento vs Polygon.io 2026 goes deeper on the tick + L2 trade-off.

Who wins for which profile

Profile: paper-trading researcher, zero budget

Alpaca free IEX + Tiingo's free Starter tier for EOD equities and news. Total: $0/mo — Starter caps at 500 unique symbols/month, 50 requests/hour, and 1,000 requests/day. For the full symbol universe, step up to Tiingo Power ($30/mo); fundamentals is a separate add-on. Limitations: IEX is a subset of consolidated volume (roughly 2-5%), so backtests on it are partial. Fine for directional idea generation; not fine for execution-sensitive strategies.

Profile: swing trader, ~500 symbols, medium-frequency

Massive (formerly Polygon.io) Stocks Advanced ($199/mo). Real-time across the full SIP tape. Unlimited API calls. No options on this tier — options ship as a separate Options Advanced product at $199/mo (the same price as Stocks Advanced, not a premium), so a stocks-plus-options stack is two subscriptions. If you'd rather pay once, pivot to Alpaca Algo Trader Plus ($99/mo), which bundles options, or layer on CBOE direct.

Profile: fundamental investor, long-horizon

Tiingo Power ($30/mo, or $300/yr). EOD + news in one tier; fundamental data via the API is a separate add-on priced with Tiingo's third-party provider. Limitations: real-time comes from the IEX feed only, no options. Earnings call transcripts moved up-market at FMP — they sit in the Ultimate tier ($149/mo billed annually), not the cheaper plans.

Profile: microstructure / HFT-curious retail

Databento — the flat Standard plan ($199/mo, live + historical, 1 month of L2/L3 history) or metered usage (~$100-500/mo depending on universe + resolution). Still the only realistic option for tick + L2 at retail scale. On metered, budget carefully — usage billing punishes speculative re-queries. Verify with Databento's quoting tool before subscribing.

Profile: options-first retail trader

Alpaca Algo Trader Plus ($99/mo) or tastytrade API. Polygon.io does not bundle options on the Stocks Advanced tier; it's a separate Options Advanced subscription priced at $199/mo — the same as Stocks Advanced, so you pay it on top, not instead. See Polygon.io Options API Pricing 2026 for the full options ladder.

Gotchas + caveats

  • IEX tape vs SIP tape. Alpaca's free tier is IEX-only. IEX handles roughly 2-5% of total US equity volume. For low-frequency research on large-cap names, IEX is fine. For microstructure, small-caps, or anything execution-sensitive, you need SIP — which means paying for it.
  • Databento now has two pricing modes. The flat Standard plan is $199/mo (live + historical, 16+ years of L0 history, the last 12 months of L1, the last 1 month of L2/L3), re-verified 2026-07-25. Metered usage bills per GB with no subscription; the calculator models typical retail spend at ~$125/mo for a medium universe on minute bars, and real spend varies ±50% depending on schema, delivery mode, and query patterns. New accounts get $125 in historical-data credits that expire six months after signup. Note the Databento CME price increase (June 2026) when budgeting for futures.
  • Polygon.io's "unlimited API calls". Rate-limited by HTTP connection, not quota. Parallel streaming + bulk historical pulls can still get you throttled.
  • Alpha Vantage's rate limits. Premium 75 allows 75 calls/minute. Premium 600 allows 600. For a 500-symbol scan, you'll hit that limit without batching; see Alpha Vantage API Pricing 2026 for the rate-limit-per-tier breakdown.
  • FMP's historical depth. Starter limits to 5 years. Premium and Ultimate extend to 30+ years. Check your backtest window before subscribing; the full tier ladder is in Financial Modeling Prep Pricing 2026.
  • Tiingo's two license prices. The pricing page now reads cleanly: Power is $30/mo ($300/yr) for individual use, and the $50/mo ($499/yr) figure that circulates is the internal-commercial-use license. The earlier $30-vs-$50 ambiguity is resolved (verified 2026-07-12).

What changed as of 2026-07-12

All six vendor pricing pages were re-verified on 2026-07-12. Three real changes since the 2026-06-12 check:

  • FMP repriced its ladder: Starter $22/mo, Premium $59/mo, Ultimate $149/mo (all billed annually), at 300 / 750 / 3,000 calls per minute respectively. Earnings call transcripts now require Ultimate.
  • Databento sells flat-rate subscriptions: Standard at $199/mo (live + historical, no license fees), Plus at $1,750/mo, and Unlimited at $4,500/mo (the latter two on annual contracts), re-verified 2026-07-25. This page previously published $179 / $1,500 / $4,000; those figures are retired. Metered per-GB billing remains available with no subscription.
  • Tiingo's Power price is confirmed: $30/mo ($300/yr) for individual use; $50/mo ($499/yr) is the internal-commercial license. The free Starter tier covers 500 unique symbols/month.

Unchanged since June: Massive (ex-Polygon.io) Stocks tiers (free / $29 / $79 / $199), the separate Options Advanced and Futures Advanced products at $199/mo each, Alpaca ($0 IEX or $99 Algo Trader Plus), and Alpha Vantage's premium ladder ($49.99 at 75 requests/min up to $249.99 at 1,200 requests/min).

The MCP angle

If your research stack uses MCP, consider vendor MCP server coverage:

  • Polygon.io ships an official MCP server (read-only, Apache-2.0). Grade A in the Finance MCP Directory.
  • Alpaca ships MCP V2 with 61 actions including execution. Grade A. The idempotency support is a distinguishing feature vs community alternatives.
  • Databento has a community MCP server (grade B) — read before wiring to production.
  • Tiingo, FMP, Alpha Vantage do not ship official MCP servers. Community wrappers vary in quality.

What we'd recommend today

The combo that shows up repeatedly in retail algo threads:

  • Data: Polygon Stocks Advanced (real-time) or Alpaca Algo Trader Plus (if you also trade on Alpaca)
  • Fundamentals: Tiingo Power plus its fundamentals add-on, priced on request
  • Options (if needed): Alpaca options surface (included in Algo Trader Plus)
  • MCP layer: Alpaca MCP V2 + Polygon MCP (both grade A)

Total: $230–300/mo for a mature single-operator stack. Budget workers can start at $0–30/mo (Tiingo free Starter or Power + Alpaca free IEX) and scale up as the strategy demands it.

Calibrate for your exact workload

The flat table above is a starting point; your actual cheapest vendor depends on your universe, resolution, and real-time need. The Data-Vendor TCO Calculator takes those inputs and returns a ranked list of qualifying vendors for your scenario. Use it before subscribing.

This is the market-data entry in the broker-and-data-vendor series: six data vendors (Polygon, Databento, Alpaca, Tiingo, FMP, Alpha Vantage) on price, resolution, and coverage — distinct from the broker decision. Read alongside:

Sources

Editorial independence

AI Fin Hub Research maintains editorial independence across sponsor relationships. Vendor placements in tools and comparators are not altered by sponsor payments. Disclosures at /sponsor-disclosure/.

Frequently asked questions

What's the cheapest market data API for a paper-trading researcher under $15/month?
Alpaca's free IEX tier ($0) plus Tiingo's free Starter tier for EOD equities and news, $0/mo total. Starter caps at 500 unique symbols/month and 50 requests/hour; the full symbol universe requires Tiingo Power ($30/mo). The IEX feed covers only about 2-5% of consolidated volume, so backtests on it are partial. Fine for directional idea generation, not for execution-sensitive strategies, which need the full SIP tape.
Which market data API fits a 500-symbol swing-trading agent that needs real-time?
Polygon.io Stocks Advanced at $199/mo: real-time across the full SIP tape with unlimited API calls (rate-limited by connection, not quota). It carries no options coverage, so if you also need options, pivot to Alpaca Algo Trader Plus ($99/mo) or layer on a dedicated options feed.
Is Databento worth it over a flat-rate vendor for tick and order-book data?
For tick and L2 at retail scale it is effectively the only realistic option, and its flat Standard plan ($199/mo) now caps that spend when its history windows cover your workload. Metered billing runs around $125/mo for a medium universe on minute bars, varying plus or minus 50% by schema and query pattern. If you only need daily-to-minute bars, Polygon ($199/mo) or Tiingo Power ($30/mo) is more predictable. Model it first.