Market Data Subscriptions: Reading the Subscriber Agreement

Click to enable live quotes and a box usually appears: an exchange subscriber agreement, a set of status questions and a checkbox. Most people accept in seconds. For a professional trader the agreement sets the fee tier, the number of subscriptions you are billed for, and what you may do with the data once it is on your screen. Six clauses carry most of the weight: your status, the limits on viewing, the counting of users and devices, sharing and redistribution, changes you must report, and billing. Read those six. Save a copy.

Find the agreement before you accept

The agreement often lives behind the enable button for a data package, in the account’s market data settings, or in a link on the subscription page. Exchanges publish their own subscriber agreements, and brokers and platforms present them, sometimes alongside terms of their own. Download or screenshot what you accept, with the date. Terms change over time, and the version you agreed to is the one that applied to you.

The status questions

The first questions ask whether you are a professional or non-professional subscriber. They are usually framed as a short questionnaire: registrations, whether you act for a firm, whether you use the data for business. Answer from the definitions in the agreement itself, not from a sense of how much you trade. Professional or non-professional status explains the test, with the situations where people most often get it wrong, such as trading through a company account.

The answer drives the bill. Non-professional fees are generally lower, and the gap between the tiers is one reason an honest mistake can turn expensive later.

How users and devices are counted

Find the clause that says what one subscription covers. Some agreements count a subscriber per person. Some count each device, terminal or session that can display the data, and some count simultaneous logins, so a trader with a desktop, a laptop and a phone all signed in at once may be using more than one subscription under the terms they accepted.

The numbers are illustrative. The counting rule is what matters. Read it before deciding how many screens to run.

Who may view, and redistribution

Look for the limits on display and sharing. Agreements commonly limit viewing to the subscriber and forbid passing the data on. That can catch ordinary habits: a second person watching your screen at a shared desk, a screenshot of a live order book posted to a chat group, quotes fed into a spreadsheet that others can open. Each may count as display to someone else or as redistribution.

If a business shares a trading room, the safe reading is that each person who views live data needs their own subscription. Ask the provider before assuming otherwise.

Changes you must report

The agreement typically expects you to keep your status answers current. A new job at a firm in the securities industry, a registration, setting up a company to trade through, or starting to manage money for others can each change the answer, and the duty to tell the provider usually sits with you, which means a status that was correct on the day you signed can drift out of date with nobody noticing until a review or an audit asks the question.

Set a reminder to reread your answers whenever your work or your account structure changes.

Reviews, billing and cancelling

Many agreements let the exchange or the provider review how the data is used. Keep the record of what you accepted.

Then read the billing clause:

• Billed by calendar month, or from the start date?
• Charged in full for a partial month?
• Cancelled at once, or at the end of the period?
• Waived with trading activity?

The real-time market data guide covers fee waivers and billing in more detail. For the full list of feeds a professional might carry, see what professional traders need.

Liability and accuracy

Look for the clause on accuracy. Agreements commonly say the data is supplied as it is, with no promise that it is complete, accurate or on time, and they limit what the exchange or provider owes you if it isn’t. A bad tick, a frozen quote or an outage during a fast market is therefore your risk to manage. Keep a second source for prices you act on.

Data supplied by a firm

Traders at proprietary firms, and employees who trade on a desk, often get data through the firm’s own agreements. Then the firm’s terms decide your status and what you may do with the screen, and a personal subscription you also hold at home is a separate agreement with its own status answers, which have to reflect the fact that you now work for a firm in the industry. Ask the firm which agreements cover you. Get the answer in writing.

Keep a data file

Keep one folder for market data. Put in it the agreement versions you accepted, your status answers, the dates, and each month’s bill. It takes minutes to set up, and it is the first thing anyone will ask for if a question about your subscriptions ever comes up.

Questions to put to the provider

Some answers never appear in the agreement text. Ask support directly, and keep the reply:

• Which exchange agreements does this package include?
• How do you count users, devices and sessions?
• Does a second platform need its own subscription?
• What is the process for changing status after a job change?
• When does a cancellation take effect?
• Is any fee waived with trading activity, and how is that measured?

Written answers carry more weight than a chat window that disappears when you close it, so ask for email where the provider offers it, and file the reply with the agreement you accepted.

What goes wrong

• Accepting without saving a copy.
• Answering the status questions from habit.
• Running more screens than the subscription covers.
• Posting live data to a group.
• Never updating status after a job change.