How these cards are made

What a card is based on

Every card is compiled from the vendor’s own primary sources — its pricing page, its documentation, its terms — and each block records the day it was read. The markets a card lists are the ones that documentation names: “global” on a marketing page is not a market list, and a card does not turn it into one.

A card marked Claimed has had its facts confirmed or corrected by the vendor. Claiming is free and buys nothing else: a vendor’s correction is checked against its own documentation before it goes in, the description stays ours, and any wording the vendor wants in its own voice sits in a separate block headed From the vendor.

The same questions on every card

Whatever its category, a card answers the same five: what it costs and what each tier unlocks, where the free tier stops, which markets it covers, how live the data is and who pays the exchange for it, and what the licence lets you do with it. That is what makes two cards comparable and the listings filterable.

Dates are per block

Pricing changes in weeks and asset coverage in years, so each block carries its own verification date rather than one “last reviewed” date for the whole page. Dates that have gone old are flagged.

Blank, and “None”, are different answers

A field we have not checked is left empty and renders as an em dash. A field that does not exist — a library with no paid tier, a screener that offers no API at all — is recorded explicitly and renders as None. The two look alike and mean opposite things, so the build keeps them apart: free-tier limits we could not pin down stay empty and the validator records the gap, rather than publishing “None” and claiming there is no limit.

What a card means by real-time

Every card states one of real-time, delayed or end-of-day, and on US equities that is a licensing fact rather than a feature of the software. Real-time means the vendor holds an exchange licence and is passing the exchange’s fee on to you, usually per display device and usually on top of the subscription printed on the pricing page. Delayed is the same data licensed as a separate, far cheaper product — usually fifteen minutes behind, though the exact delay is each venue’s to set. So a card that says real-time is not claiming the price on its tier list is what you will end up paying — what real-time market data costs is the explanation, and it is why the field is worth filtering on.

Prices are in the currency the vendor charges

A tier carries an amount and the currency it is billed in, never a conversion. Converting would publish a number the vendor has never charged and that is wrong again by Monday; leaving it out would claim the product has no price. So a euro-only vendor shows euros, and the comparison you make across two cards in different currencies is one the page leaves to you rather than faking with a rate it cannot date.

The hands-on badge

A card can also carry Tested hands-on: we held an account or an API key and used the tool, and a note on the card says what was done. It is an extra on top of the sources, not the basis of any card, and none of the 289 cards carries it yet.

Paid placement

Nothing in the catalogue is sponsored today and no card carries an affiliate link: all 289 of them are free listings pointing straight at the vendor. The rules below are the ones a paid placement would run under, written down before there is one to argue about.

A sponsored card is marked Sponsored wherever it appears, and an affiliate link is labelled at the link itself rather than only in a footer. Every sponsorship carries an end date, because an undated sponsorship never ends.

A sponsor may also supply its own copy, which is stored apart from ours and rendered in its own block headed From the vendor. It is never edited into our description, and our description is never written from it.

That label and that block are the whole of it. Money does not buy a position in a listing, inclusion in the catalogue, a rating, or a single extra field on the card — a paid card is filled in against the same blocks as a free one, and a limitation described on it stays described.

Listings sort by name, never by tier. The one ranked list on the site is the picks on an alternatives page, and each of those prints the rule it was ordered by at the top of the list; sponsorship is not part of any of them.

That is how the site is run today, and this page is where a change to it would be written down. The affiliate disclosure covers the links themselves, and advertising covers the terms from a vendor’s side.