# OPRA

Also written options price reporting authority.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/opra · next to Stock Market Data APIs*

**Definition:** The Options Price Reporting Authority: the securities information processor for US listed options, operating one national market system plan that disseminates consolidated last sale and quotation information from every exchange approved to list options. Because there is one processor, there is one fee schedule for the whole asset class — and the message volumes behind it are why options history is sold as files rather than streamed.

## How it works

OPRA describes itself as a securities information processor registered under Section 11A(b) of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934, disseminating consolidated last sale and quotation information
originating from the national securities exchanges approved by the SEC to provide markets in
exchange-traded options. Its plan is a limited liability company agreement, and the participants are
the exchange families that list options: BOX, Cboe, MEMX, MIAX, Nasdaq and NYSE, which between them
operate most of a dozen and a half separate options exchanges.

The important word is *one*. In US equities there is a genuine choice between the plan-run
[consolidated tape](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/consolidated-tape) and an exchange's own proprietary feed, two orders of
magnitude apart in price, and a card can be cheap because it chose the first. In listed options the
quote and the last sale come from one processor under one plan, so there is no cheaper consolidated
alternative to fall back on and no per-venue shopping to do. Options data prices as an asset class
because it is administered as one.

## What the schedule actually says

Its shape is worth knowing, because every options card's pricing page is downstream of it. On the
schedule dated February 2026:

- a professional subscriber with an agreement directly with OPRA pays a device-based fee of 31.50
  dollars per display device per month;
- non-professional subscriber fees are paid by the vendor and tier down with volume, from 1.25 dollars
  per non-professional subscriber to 60 cents above 500,000 of them;
- a vendor may instead elect a usage-based fee, charged at three quarters of a cent per "quote packet"
  or 3 cents per "options chain", subject to a stated monthly maximum;
- [redistribution](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/redistribution) is 1,500 dollars a month, or 650 for a query service
  only, and it does not apply to a vendor whose redistribution is limited solely to historical data;
- a professional receiving OPRA data indirectly, as a data feed transmission from a vendor, pays 600
  dollars a month, and that fee applies where the feed is taken solely for
  [non-display use](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/non-display-use).

Two things in that list explain most of what readers meet in the wild. The unit of the usage-based fee
is the options chain — the thing an application actually requests, one underlier's strikes and
expiries at once — which is why chain endpoints are rationed and metered in ways an equity quote
endpoint is not. And the historical carve-out from the redistribution fee is why a vendor will happily
sell you a year of prints as files while quoting a live feed at a different order of magnitude.

## Why it is the extreme case

OPRA is the largest message source in this market, by a distance nobody disputes. The plan's revised
capacity projections of 15 September 2025 project 13.575 billion messages a day effective July 2026,
rising to 14.964 billion by July 2027 — and that is for one of two redundant streams. What that does
to storage and query design is the subject of [tick data](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/tick-data) and
[storing tick data](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/storing-tick-data); what it does to products is simpler. Nobody sells a
hobbyist a full historical options feed. They sell files, by underlier and by date, with the
[NBBO](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/nbbo) attached at trade time.

## Why it matters here

For the options cards in this catalogue, OPRA is the reason they all look alike in the ways that
matter. [Cboe DataShop](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/cboe-datashop), [AlgoSeek](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/algoseek) and
[Tick Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tickdata) sell history as files because that is the cheap side of the schedule.
[ORATS](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/orats) and [Market Chameleon](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/market-chameleon) sell derived values — implied
volatility surfaces, skew, earnings-move statistics — partly because computation is theirs to keep
while the underlying quotes are not.

Three questions follow for any options product here. Is the live quote OPRA data, and therefore
carrying the plan's per-user or per-chain fee? Is what you are given historical, and therefore outside
the redistribution line? And if you intend to show it to anyone else, or feed it to a program, which
of the two expensive words applies? The
[options data collection](https://stockmarketstack.com/collections/options-data) is the listing;
[what real-time market data costs](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/real-time-market-data-fees) is the arithmetic; and
[how to get an options chain](https://stockmarketstack.com/how-to/get-an-options-chain) is where the metering above turns into a
rate limit somebody actually hits.

## Where you will meet this

- [Cboe DataShop](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/cboe-datashop.md)
- [ORATS](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/orats.md)
- [AlgoSeek](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/algoseek.md)
- [Tick Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tickdata.md)
- [Market Chameleon](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/market-chameleon.md)
- [Alpaca Market Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/alpaca-market-data.md)
- [Databento](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/databento.md)
- [IQFeed](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/iqfeed.md)
- [TC2000](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tc2000.md)
- [TradesViz](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tradesviz.md)
- [TrendSpider](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/trendspider.md)

## FAQ

### Do I pay OPRA or my data vendor?

Both, in a sense, and the split is on the schedule. A professional subscriber can hold an agreement directly with OPRA and pay a per-device fee, or hold one with a vendor, in which case the vendor pays a usage-based fee per quote packet or per options chain instead. Either way the number on your vendor's invoice started on the plan's schedule.

### Why is historical options data so much easier to buy than live options data?

Because the plan treats it differently and because of the volume. The schedule's redistribution fee does not apply to a vendor whose redistribution is limited solely to historical OPRA data, and delayed and historical requests are not counted for usage-based fees. A file of last year's quotes is a far smaller licensing problem than a live stream, and it is sold that way.

## Sources

1. [Options Price Reporting Authority Fee Schedule](https://cdn.opraplan.com/documents/OPRA_Fee_Schedule.pdf) — Options Price Reporting Authority, 2026-02-26
2. [OPRA plan overview and participant exchanges](https://www.opraplan.com/) — Options Price Reporting Authority, read 2026-09-21
3. [Revised OPRA Capacity Projections, notice to OPRA Multicast Data Subscribers](https://cdn.opraplan.com/documents/notices/OPRA_Capacity_Projections_Update_0925.pdf) — Securities Industry Automation Corporation (OPRA), 2025-09-15

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