# How to stream real-time stock quotes

Two free WebSockets will stream live US trades today. What they cost is not the subscription — it is which subscriber the exchange thinks you are.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/how-to/stream-real-time-quotes · next to Stock Market Data APIs*

**Answer:** Two free WebSockets will stream live US trades today: Alpaca on the IEX feed alone, and Finnhub for up to fifty symbols. Both are genuinely live and neither is the consolidated tape. The price of the full feed is set by the exchange rather than by the vendor, and the two words that move a data bill by an order of magnitude are professional and non-display. Decide both before you shop.

## The tools that do this

*In the order this page recommends trying them. Paid placement does not affect this order.*

1. [Alpaca Market Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/alpaca-market-data.md) — Free WebSocket on the IEX feed, 30 symbols. $99 a month is the full SIP with unlimited stock subscriptions.
2. [Finnhub](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/finnhub.md) — The free key streams live US trades for up to 50 symbols. It returns no OHLC candles at all.
3. [Massive](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/massive.md) — Direct-feed US equities, options and futures. The WebSocket starts at $29; real-time does not start until $199.
4. [Twelve Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/twelve-data.md) — 85 markets rather than one country. Streaming a symbol you chose yourself starts on the $99 Pro plan.
5. [IQFeed](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/iqfeed.md) — Tick-by-tick into a local Windows socket. $108.15 a month before any exchange's own fee.
6. [Databento](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/databento.md) — The venue feed itself, with the exchange fees itemised rather than averaged into a plan.

## The short way

[Alpaca Market Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/alpaca-market-data) streams live US trades on a free key, over
WebSocket, with no card:

```python
from alpaca.data.live import StockDataStream

stream = StockDataStream("YOUR_KEY_ID", "YOUR_SECRET")

async def on_trade(trade):
    print(trade.symbol, trade.price, trade.size, trade.timestamp)

stream.subscribe_trades(on_trade, "AAPL", "MSFT")
stream.run()
```

That is genuinely live. It is also genuinely partial: the free Basic plan carries the IEX feed
and nothing else, caps the stock WebSocket at 30 symbols, limits you to 200 requests a minute and
withholds SIP data from the last 15 minutes. [Finnhub](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/finnhub) is the same shape from the
other direction — the free key streams live US trades for up to 50 symbols, and returns no OHLC
candles at all.

Both are enough to build the thing and see it move. Neither is the consolidated tape.

## What the options are

**Free, live, narrow.** [Alpaca Market Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/alpaca-market-data) and
[Finnhub](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/finnhub) as above. Different limits, same bargain: a real feed with the coverage
or the symbol count cut down to where it costs the vendor nothing much.

**One flat price for everything US.** Alpaca's Algo Trader Plus is $99 a month for the full SIP
and OPRA at 10,000 requests a minute with unlimited stock subscriptions, with no per-asset-class
pricing. That flatness is the product.

**A direct feed with a ladder.** [Massive](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/massive), formerly Polygon.io, sells US
equities, options and futures from a direct exchange feed. Read the ladder carefully: the free
Basic plan is end-of-day at five calls a minute with no WebSocket at all, $29 Starter buys the
WebSocket but is still 15-minute delayed, and real-time trades and quotes do not start until the
$199 Advanced plan.

**Global rather than US.** [Twelve Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/twelve-data) covers 85 markets, and its
streaming has the same shape of catch: the free and $29 plans carry trial WebSocket credits
limited to one connection, eight symbols and the vendor's own trial symbol list. Streaming a
symbol you picked yourself starts on Pro at $99, or Venture at $149 if you are a company.

**Into a socket on your own machine.** [IQFeed](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/iqfeed) is not a hosted API at all — it
is a Windows client you launch, which you then talk to over TCP sockets on localhost, one port
for Level 1 streaming and another for market depth. $108.15 a month plus a one-time $50 startup
fee, and every real-time exchange's own fee on top of that, itemised. Any language that can open
a socket works; there is no HTTP endpoint.

**The venue feed, unaveraged.** [Databento](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/databento) is where you go when the
normalisation is the thing you want to control, and it itemises the exchange fees rather than
averaging them into a plan.

## Where this breaks

**You are not really buying from the vendor.** Nearly all of what a live quote costs is set one
layer above, by the exchange, and in US equities the price list is a public document. The NYSE
pricing guide dated 14 May 2026 prices the NYSE Integrated feed at $16.00 a month per
non-professional device and $78.00 per professional one — the same bytes, five times the price,
decided by a question about you rather than about the data.

**Professional versus non-professional.** The test is the exchange's and lives in its data
policy, not in your vendor's signup form. Broadly: a natural person, using the data for personal
non-business purposes, not registered or qualified with a securities regulator, not using it for
any business. A company of one does not qualify. A screen at work does not qualify. If any part
of that is shaky, you are professional, and you are on the other column of every schedule.

**Display versus non-display.** If a program acts on the quote and no person reads it, that is
non-display use, licensed separately and usually far higher, because it is billed per firm or per
platform rather than per screen. On the same NYSE guide, NYSE Integrated non-display is $22,400 a
month in each of three categories. Nobody looking at the data is the expensive case, not the
cheap one. [Twelve Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/twelve-data)'s free tier states this the other way round — it is
licensed internal non-display, meaning evaluation and development, not production and not shown
to users.

**Redistribution ends the side project.** The moment a live quote reaches anybody who is not
you — a public page, a bot, a free tier for friends — it is redistribution, and it is its own
line: $4,400 a month for NYSE Integrated on the May 2026 guide, beside an $8,400 access fee.

**The per-asset-class surcharges.** [IQFeed](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/iqfeed) is the clearest published example of
how this stacks, because it prints every layer: $108.15 for the core service, $60.90 for
real-time equity options as a surcharge, and then OPRA's own $7.35 non-professional fee on top of
that. Most vendors bury the same structure in one number, which is fine until you change asset
class.

[Why real-time stock data is so expensive](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/real-time-market-data-fees) is the full
version of all five of these, with the schedules.

## If you outgrow this

**Ask whether delayed breaks anything.** Screeners, trackers, dashboards and every backtest are
fine on data that carries no per-user fee at all, and that is most of what gets built. The
15-minute line is a licensing decision, not a technical one.

**Check what your broker already entitles you to.** Brokerages buy non-professional entitlements
in bulk and pass them through for a few dollars or nothing. Look there before buying the same
feed twice.

**Buy the tape rather than the direct feeds** if latency is not your product. The consolidated
tape is the regulated, cross-venue view; it is slower and dramatically cheaper per user than the
proprietary feeds, and a vendor bundling it is buying it at plan rates for you.

**Count symbols, not requests.** When a streaming plan starts to bind, the field to compare is
the simultaneous-subscription cap — 30 on Alpaca free, 50 on Finnhub free, 250 on Finnhub Basic,
unlimited on the paid tiers of both.

[Real-time market data tools](https://stockmarketstack.com/collections/real-time-data) is the catalogue narrowed to the cards
serving a live feed, and [market data APIs](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/market-data-apis) is the wider listing.

## FAQ

### Is a free real-time feed actually real-time?

Usually yes, and the catch is coverage rather than latency. Alpaca's free tier streams live trades from IEX, which is one exchange out of many, so it is a real quote from a partial view of the market. That is a different thing from delayed data and a different thing again from the consolidated tape, and which of the three you need depends on what you are doing with it.

### Do I count as a professional subscriber?

The test is the exchange's, not your vendor's, and it lives in the exchange's data policy rather than its price list. It generally requires a natural person using the data for personal, non-business purposes, not registered or qualified with a securities regulator and not using it for any business. A company of one does not qualify. On the NYSE pricing guide dated 14 May 2026 the answer is the difference between 16 and 78 dollars a month per device.

### Why is streaming cheaper than polling on some APIs and not others?

Because the two are metered differently. A REST plan counts requests, so polling a hundred symbols once a second is a hundred requests a second and you hit the ceiling immediately. A WebSocket plan counts simultaneous symbol subscriptions instead, which is why the interesting number on a streaming plan is the symbol cap rather than the rate limit. Compare those two fields, not the headline price.

### Can I put a live quote on a public web page?

Not without a redistribution licence, and it is a separate line on every exchange schedule. On the NYSE pricing guide dated 14 May 2026 the NYSE Integrated redistribution fee is 4,400 dollars a month, with an 8,400 dollar access fee beside it. Delayed data is what almost every free financial site displays instead, and it is priced that way deliberately.

## Sources

1. [About Market Data API](https://docs.alpaca.markets/docs/about-market-data-api) — Alpaca, read 2026-09-21
2. [NYSE Proprietary Market Data Pricing Guide](https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/data/NYSE_Market_Data_Pricing.pdf) — New York Stock Exchange, 2026-05-14

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