# End-of-day

Also written end of day.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/end-of-day · next to Stock Market Data APIs*

**Definition:** A price series carrying one record per instrument per trading day, and the phrase vendors use for the cheapest thing they sell. Which close it holds is not implied by the name: the closing auction price, the last print of the session, or a computed midpoint. When it is published, whose trading day it is stamped with, and whether it is adjusted all vary by vendor.

## How it works

One row per instrument per trading day: open, high, low, close, volume, often an adjusted close and
sometimes the split and distribution factors behind it. It is the oldest shape in the market and the
one nearly every card in this catalogue can produce, which is exactly why the unqualified phrase
hides so much.

Start with the close, because three different numbers answer to that name.

**The auction price.** Nasdaq's rule text is the clearest published statement of the mechanism. Under
Equity 4, Rule 4754(b), the Nasdaq Closing Cross begins at 4:00:00 p.m. EST, all orders executed in
it are executed at the cross price and reported anonymously, and that cross price "will be the Nasdaq
Official Closing Price for stocks that participate in the Nasdaq Closing Cross". This is a distinct
event with its own print, not the last ordinary trade of the day.

**The last print.** A security that does not close in an auction still has a close: the most recent
trade of the session. That is a legitimate number and a different one, and on an instrument that last
traded at 3:12 p.m. it is very different.

**A computed midpoint.** The same Nasdaq rule shows that an official closing price need not be a
traded price at all. Where a Nasdaq-listed exchange-traded product has no closing cross, or its cross
trade is less than one round lot, the rule uses the time-weighted average midpoint of the NBBO as the
Nasdaq Official Closing Price.

## When it is actually available

The bell is not the deadline people assume. Under the same rule, fifteen minutes after the close
Nasdaq disseminates via the network processor a trade message setting the Nasdaq Official Closing
Price as the official Consolidated Last Sale Price in each Nasdaq-listed security in which one round
lot or more executed in the cross and the closing price differs from the consolidated last sale
price. So the tape's idea of the close is corrected after the fact, as a matter of published rule.

Everything downstream inherits that, and then adds its own delay. Some vendors publish an end-of-day
file within minutes of the session; others build it overnight and post it the following morning; some
post a provisional file and replace it. This is the first question to ask of an end-of-day product
and the one least often answered on a pricing page.

Whose day it is matters as much. A file is stamped with the venue's trading day, not yours, and two
venues in two timezones do not cover the same hours under the same date. Joining one row per symbol
per date across markets silently lines up windows that do not overlap.

## Whether the file is adjusted, and whether it gets restated

An end-of-day series is adjusted, unadjusted, or both, and the vendors that give you both are a
minority. The reason it matters is that adjustment is retroactive. Nasdaq publishes a Daily List of
dividends, distributions and splits; every entry that lands changes the adjusted history *before* it,
so an adjusted close is a statement about the series as it stood on the day you downloaded it.

That makes an adjusted end-of-day file a moving record rather than an archive, which is the
[point-in-time](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/point-in-time) problem in its cheapest form. What each event does to the
series is [corporate action](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/corporate-action); why two vendors disagree about the same
adjusted close is [why adjusted close differs between providers](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/why-adjusted-close-differs).

## Why it matters here

End-of-day is also a licence, not only a shape. It is normally sold as delayed or historical data,
which exchanges price as their own product: Nasdaq's US equities price list carries delayed data
products at 50 dollars a month per firm with no per-user fee at all, against per-user fees for the
real-time equivalent. That is the whole reason an end-of-day API costs a few dollars and a real-time
one costs a few hundred, and it is unpacked in
[what real-time market data costs](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/real-time-market-data-fees).

So for any card here that advertises end-of-day data, three questions settle what you are buying.
Which close — auction, last print, or the vendor's own snapshot? Adjusted, unadjusted, or both, with
the factors? And how long after the session does the file exist? [EODHD](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/eodhd),
[Tiingo](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tiingo) and [Marketstack](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/marketstack) are built around this shape;
[Norgate Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/norgate-data) and [FirstRate Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/firstrate-data) sell the
adjusted-and-unadjusted pairing as the product.

The cheapest mistake is treating the close as a fact rather than a convention. It is the convention
the whole catalogue leans on, which is why it is worth knowing which one you have:
[how to download historical prices in Python](https://stockmarketstack.com/how-to/download-historical-prices-in-python) is where
most readers meet it first.

## Where you will meet this

- [EODHD](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/eodhd.md)
- [Tiingo](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tiingo.md)
- [Marketstack](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/marketstack.md)
- [Norgate Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/norgate-data.md)
- [FirstRate Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/firstrate-data.md)
- [2iQ Insider Transactions Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/2iq-insider-data.md)
- [Alpha Vantage](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/alpha-vantage.md)
- [AmiBroker](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/amibroker.md)
- [Barchart OnDemand](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/barchart-ondemand.md)
- [CSI Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/csi-data.md)
- [Databento](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/databento.md)
- [Equibles](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/equibles.md)

## FAQ

### Is the end-of-day close the official closing price?

Sometimes, and the word official is doing real work. On Nasdaq the closing cross price is the Nasdaq Official Closing Price for securities that participate in the cross, and the rule has fallbacks for the ones that do not. A vendor is free to publish the last print of the session instead, which is a different number on a thin day, and most do not say which they used.

### Does an end-of-day file change after it is published?

The file for a given day does not, but the history around it does. An adjusted series is restated every time a split or a distribution lands, so the adjusted close you stored for last month is not the number the same vendor will hand you next quarter. If a figure has to reconcile later, store the unadjusted print and the factors beside it.

## Sources

1. [Exhibit 5 to SR-NASDAQ-2025-047: Nasdaq Equity 4, Rule 4754, Nasdaq Closing Cross (Release No. 34-103341)](https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nasdaq/2025/34-103341-ex5.pdf) — The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (via US Securities and Exchange Commission), 2025-06-27
2. [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
3. [Daily List Product Description](https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=dailylistpd) — Nasdaq, Inc., read 2026-09-14

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