Non-display use

How it works

Display use means a person looks at the number. Non-display use means software consumes it without anyone reading it — an execution algorithm, a smart order router, a risk or margin system, an automated screener, a matching engine. Almost every exchange schedule carries the split, licences the two separately, and prices them on different units: display per subscriber, device or User ID, non-display per firm, per platform or per application.

The figures come off the schedules themselves. On the NYSE pricing guide dated 14 May 2026, NYSE Integrated is 16.00 dollars a month per non-professional device and 78.00 per professional one — against 22,400 dollars a month for non-display use in each of three categories, plus an 8,400 dollar access fee. Nasdaq's price list published in January 2025, with rates running through 2027, sets Nasdaq Depth non-display over direct access at 412.00 dollars per subscriber per month for the first 39. On the OPRA fee schedule dated February 2026, non-display use is 2,000 dollars a month for each of three categories, against 1.25 dollars a month per non-professional display subscriber. The London Stock Exchange's Schedule A, effective 1 January 2026, starts non-display use for trading as principal at 16,480 pounds a year at Level 1.

Two details do most of the damage. The categories are cumulative: a firm that trades on the data, routes on it and prices risk with it can be billed in more than one category for the same feed. And the unit has nothing to hold it down — there is no per-user counting to keep the figure small, so the same feed that costs one retail user 15 dollars costs an automated system a five-figure sum.

The carve-outs are narrow but real

Schedules do contain exemptions for the smallest users, and they are worth reading rather than assuming. OPRA's fee schedule carries one: its Category 1 non-display fee does not apply in a month where the recipient has a single User ID, is not a broker-dealer, and averages no more than 390 listed options orders a day for its own account. That is written for exactly one person with one script, and it stops being available the moment any of the three conditions breaks.

Why it matters here

This is the line that turns a 15-dollar-a-month subscription into a five-figure one, and it is crossed by writing a loop rather than by signing anything. A dashboard a person reads is display use. The same data feeding an automated entry, a live risk check or an alerting service that acts without a person is not, whatever the vendor's checkout page asked you.

Three things follow for anything on this site. A retail API tier is sold for display and internal use, which is why free tiers so often say so explicitly — the condition is not boilerplate. A vendor that itemises exchange fees rather than averaging them into a plan, Databento being the clearest example here, is the shape that lets you see which category you are being billed in. And delayed or end-of-day data sidesteps the question almost entirely, because the schedules price the delay as its own cheap product.

What real-time market data costs has the whole fee stack and the other words on it — professional versus non-professional, per-device counting, derived data and redistribution, which is the sibling of this one: redistribution is about the data leaving your organisation, non-display use is about a machine rather than a person consuming it. A public service that also trades on the feed is usually licensed for both.