LiveVol

What it is

LiveVol is Cboe's options analytics platform: a browser application of dockable windows — option montage, live and historical skew, volatility studies, a trade tape, earnings and dividend analysis, and a scanner with more than 60 pre-configured underlying scans plus option strategy and custom scans that refresh every 60 seconds. It is bought to watch and research the US options market from a screen, not to feed a program. Cboe sells the subscription through the Cboe DataShop cart, which is otherwise a separate per-file storefront for the same exchange's historical data.

What sets Pro apart is option time and sales. For any trading day back to January 2011 you can replay one underlying's option prints in trades-only mode, or with the quoting around them at three depths: every top-of-book update from each exchange, only the updates that touch the NBBO, or only NBBO changes. That is the tool for asking what the market looked like when a particular trade printed. Core has the scanners, charts and equity time and sales, but no option tape.

Pricing

Core is $105 a month or $1,050 a year. Pro is $420 a month per user month-to-month, or $350 on a one-year term, for one to four users; the per-user rate steps down with headcount to $170, or $140 on a term, from 126 users. These took effect on 13 February 2025. The DataShop page's own prose still quotes Pro at $380 a month; its fee table, its cart and livevol.com all say $420.

The platform fee is not the bill. The cart adds $14.95 a month in Cboe index fees for live data ($4.85 delayed) and a market data surcharge of $9 on Core or $20 on Pro. A professional subscriber — the cart decides with an eleven-question quiz — also pays $24 of UTP fees, and DataShop's SIP fee page estimates OPRA at $31.50 and US stocks at $66–92 a month per professional, against $1.25 and $3.00 for a non-professional, billed through the SIPs. CME futures data is $130.10 a month, Pro only.

Monthly fees are not prorated. Cancel an annual plan billed monthly and the remaining months' base cost is charged at once.

Data & coverage

US stocks, ETFs, index options and single-name options, plus real-time CFE futures including VIX and, for a fee, CME futures. End-of-day charts and historical snapshots run from January 2011; intraday charts cover the last 30 days.

LiveVol Excel is the add-in for pulling this into a spreadsheet: real-time option bids, asks, implied volatility and greeks, fixed-maturity IV blends from 30 to 360 days, and history. The Basic tier caps live data at 100 option underlyings and 550 stock quotes with six months of historical option quotes; Premium lifts that to 250 and 1,550 with two years; Unlimited to every option underlying and 4,000 stocks.

Integrations

No REST API and no webhooks on the platform. Time and sales exports the rows on screen to the clipboard or CSV, or emails them as a PDF, and a row can be copied as a URL carrying symbol, date and view. Alerts on stock or option fields fire inside the platform. LiveVol Excel works through real-time data formulas, needs Windows and administrator rights to install, and only updates while you are signed in to the web platform.

Limitations

• Option time and sales, the reason to buy Pro, is missing from Core at any price.
• Excel is Windows only — not compatible with Excel for Mac — and runs only beside a signed-in browser session.
• An export is what the window shows: one underlying on one trading day. Bulk history is a DataShop purchase, not a LiveVol one.
• One named person per account. The Pro and Core subscription agreement on livevol.com (version v1017) treats a shared login as a material breach, and has the data deleted when the subscription ends.
• US-listed markets only.

Alternatives

Market Chameleon covers the same earnings and scanner ground in a browser for $99 a month, 15 minutes delayed and with option trade detail sixty trading days deep. For option data you compute against yourself, ORATS and iVolatility sell it over REST, and Cboe DataShop sells the same exchange's options history as files.