# Delayed data

Also written delayed quotes, 15-minute delayed.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/delayed-data · next to Stock Market Data APIs*

**Definition:** Prices and quotes released only after a delay interval that each venue sets in its own data policy. Fifteen minutes is the usual interval, not a rule, and some products are delayed until midnight or by twenty-four hours instead. Exchanges licence delayed data as a separate and far cheaper product, usually with no per-user display fee, and they require every display of it to say plainly that it is delayed.

## How it works

A delay is a licensing category, not a technical state. The consolidated tape's delayed market data
policy defines delayed last sale information and delayed quotation information as last sale or
quotation information that has been delayed for such period as NYSE, for Network A, or NYSE American,
for Network B, specifies on sixty days' written notice. The period is currently fifteen minutes after
the markets first make the information available — which is where the convention comes from, and also
why it is a convention: a venue can change it by giving notice.

Nasdaq's own policies show how little the fifteen-minute figure generalises. They recognise four
treatments applied per product: fifteen minutes, twenty-four hours, midnight local time, and not
eligible for delayed pricing. Midnight local means the time zone the information was released from,
not yours. Anything disseminated before the interval is real-time, whatever a page calls it.

Two things travel with the category rather than with the clock. The exchanges keep their proprietary
interest in the numbers: the tape's policy states that the passage of time does not alter a
participant's interest in its last sale, quotation or index information, so delayed data is licensed,
not public. And a delay must be declared. Vendors must ensure each device displaying delayed
information conspicuously carries a statement that it has been delayed by at least the delay period —
"Prices Delayed 15 Minutes" is the phrasing the policy accepts — and Nasdaq asks for the message at
or near the top of the page, interspersed at least every ninety seconds on a ticker.

What falls away at the delayed end is the per-user apparatus. Display unit fees do not apply to a
delayed interrogation or ticker service, professional or non-professional. Subscribers can be given
delayed interrogation and display services without executing a subscriber agreement with NYSE or
NYSE American, where a real-time service requires one from every subscriber. On Nasdaq's side,
distribution after the delay interval may cease to be fee liable and may no longer need to be
reported monthly at all — which is to say the [entitlement](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/entitlement) stops being
counted. On Nasdaq's price list published in January 2025, delayed data products are 50 dollars a
month per firm with no per-user fee.

Two carve-outs are worth knowing. Index information gets none of this preferential treatment: the
tape's policy says plainly that the same contract requirements apply to delayed index values as to
real-time ones, so an index number on an otherwise delayed page can pull subscriber agreements back
in. And real-time consolidated volume per issue may be distributed alongside delayed last sale or
quotation information at no additional charge, which is why volume so often looks live on a page
whose prices are not.

## What breaks on it, and what does not

It breaks anything whose answer depends on the current spread. Order placement and routing, stop and
alert logic keyed to a level, anything arbitrage-shaped, and any display a user will compare against
their broker's screen while a stock is moving. A fifteen-minute-old best bid is not a stale version
of the [NBBO](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/nbbo); it is a different number, and on a volatile open it is a materially
different one.

It breaks nothing in most of the rest of this catalogue. Screeners, portfolio trackers, dashboards,
research notebooks, fundamentals work and every backtest are unaffected — a backtest is delayed data
by construction. Daily bars are identical whether they arrived at 16:00 or the following morning.
End-of-day and delayed feeds are what the visible free layer of financial data is built on, which is
why the cheap APIs in this category are so often described as delayed rather than priced as real-time.

## Why it matters here

Read a card's latency field as a licence, not as a performance claim. "Delayed" on a card means the
vendor bought the cheap product, so the price you are quoted is real and will stay real as your user
count grows; "real-time" means per-user counting starts, and the professional or non-professional
answer then multiplies it. The honest question is not whether you would prefer live data but whether
anything you are building changes its output on a fifteen-minute-old price.

Two consequences. If the data is going in front of other people, delayed is usually the only version
you can afford to show at all — the reason is [redistribution](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/redistribution), priced per
feed. And if a program rather than a person acts on the number, the delay does not exempt you from
the other expensive word, [non-display use](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/non-display-use), where the licence follows the
consumer rather than the clock.

[What real-time market data costs](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/real-time-market-data-fees) has the full stack, and
[what is genuinely free](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/free-financial-data-sources) covers the sources whose terms are
lighter still.

## Where you will meet this

- [Twelve Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/twelve-data.md)
- [Marketstack](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/marketstack.md)
- [EODHD](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/eodhd.md)
- [Tiingo](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tiingo.md)
- [Alpha Vantage](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/alpha-vantage.md)
- [Equibles](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/equibles.md)
- [Financial Modeling Prep](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/financial-modeling-prep.md)
- [Finviz Elite](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/finviz-elite.md)
- [Fiscal.ai](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/fiscal-ai.md)
- [ib_async](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/ib-async.md)
- [IQFeed](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/iqfeed.md)
- [Koyfin](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/koyfin.md)

## FAQ

### Is delayed data always fifteen minutes behind?

No. Fifteen minutes is the interval the US tape applies to last sale and quotation information, and it is specified by the exchange rather than fixed by law. Nasdaq recognises several intervals across its products, including twenty-four hours and midnight local time, and some products are not eligible for delayed pricing at all. The number is per product, in the venue's policy.

### Why do vendors still charge for delayed data if the exchanges mostly do not?

Because somebody has to hold the real-time feed and delay it. Under the tape's delayed data policy a vendor that takes real-time information and converts it into delayed information pays an access fee for the privilege, monthly, per network and per data type, before any subscriber exists. What disappears at the delayed end is the per-user charge, not the vendor's cost of being there.

## Sources

1. [Delayed Market Data (Network A and Network B) Policy](https://www.ctaplan.com/publicdocs/ctaplan/notifications/trader-update/Policy%20-%20Delayed%20Market%20Data.pdf) — Consolidated Tape Association, read 2026-09-21
2. [Nasdaq US Equities and Options Data Policies, version 2.6](https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/content/AdministrationSupport/Policy/USEquitiesandOptionsDataPolicies.pdf) — Nasdaq, 2024-06-01
3. [Nasdaq US Equities Price List, rates effective 2025, 2026 and 2027](https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/content/ProductsServices/PriceList/Nasdaq_US_Equities_Price_List_2025_2026_2027.pdf) — Nasdaq, 2025-01-08

*Last updated 2026-09-21. A reference page, corrected in place — not a dated post.*