{
  "slug": "firstrate-data",
  "name": "FirstRate Data",
  "aliases": ["FirstRateData", "firstratedata.com"],
  "vendor": { "name": "FirstRate Data LLC", "slug": "firstrate-data", "website": "https://firstratedata.com" },
  "homepage_url": "https://firstratedata.com/",
  "docs_url": "https://firstratedata.com/about/FAQ",
  "license_url": "https://firstratedata.com/about/license",
  "product_type": "data-service",
  "product_status": "active",
  "summary": "Vendor of historical intraday market data (1-minute to daily bars, tick and options) for US stocks, ETFs, futures, indices, crypto and FX, delivered as zipped CSV bundles under a perpetual licence",
  "description": "FirstRate Data is a Chicago-founded vendor (2017, now a remote team) of historical intraday market data aimed at traders, hedge funds, academic institutions and AI teams. Its catalog covers US stocks including thousands of delisted tickers, ETFs, the most active futures contracts with continuous series, US and international indices, cryptocurrencies, major FX crosses, end-of-day options chains with quotes and Greeks, tick data for recent years, and company fundamentals. Bars are offered at 1-minute, 5-minute, 30-minute, hourly and daily frequencies, with stock histories reaching back to 2000 and futures to 2008; stock and ETF series are adjusted for splits and dividends, futures continuous series for roll gaps, and timestamps are US Eastern (UTC for crypto).\n\nData are sold as one-off purchases or subscriptions to per-asset-class bundles and delivered as zipped CSV files from a personal download page, with daily end-of-day updates and a bundle API that returns archives rather than streaming data; there is no live feed. The site also packages dataset cards, an MCP server and training-data bundles for machine-learning use.\n\nThe licence agreement is notable for research use: it is perpetual once downloaded, allows storage on the subscriber's own or a service provider's servers, permits derivative works such as models, charts, reports and published academic papers, and allows internal redistribution under multi-user licences, while prohibiting resale or redistribution of the raw data and asking for attribution when research is published. Users should expect the quality caveats of any aggregated vendor feed (the agreement disclaims accuracy and completeness), the absence of order-book depth, and the need to manage large CSV archives locally, typically by converting them to Parquet for DuckDB or Polars.",
  "capabilities": ["Intraday bars from 1-minute to daily for stocks, ETFs, futures, indices, crypto and FX", "Delisted-ticker coverage for survivorship-bias-free studies", "End-of-day options chains with quotes and Greeks", "Tick data for recent history", "Split- and dividend-adjusted series; roll-adjusted continuous futures", "Daily end-of-day updates to purchased bundles", "Zipped CSV delivery via download page and bundle API", "Dataset cards and MCP server for AI workflows"],
  "workflows": ["Building a minute-bar Parquet lake for microstructure research", "Backtesting strategies across a survivorship-bias-free stock universe", "Teaching high-frequency finance with a departmental multi-user licence", "Event studies around earnings using intraday bars"],
  "advantages": ["Perpetual licence with explicit permission for published research", "Broad asset coverage in one vendor", "Simple CSV format usable from any language", "One-off purchase option without ongoing fees"],
  "limitations": ["No live or streaming data", "No order-book depth; bars and trades only", "Raw data may not be redistributed", "Large archives require local storage and conversion"],
  "prerequisites": ["Purchase of a bundle or subscription", "Storage for multi-gigabyte CSV archives"],
  "audiences": ["Academic researchers in market microstructure", "Quantitative traders backtesting intraday strategies", "Teams assembling ML training data"],
  "alternatives": ["polygon-io", "databento", "alpha-vantage", "yfinance", "wrds"],
  "comparison_notes": "Massive (formerly Polygon.io) and Databento deliver data through APIs with live feeds and, for Databento, full order-book schemas priced by usage, whereas FirstRate Data sells downloadable historical bundles under a perpetual licence. WRDS provides exchange-sourced TAQ data to subscribing institutions; yfinance offers free but unofficial daily data.",
  "categories": [{ "slug": "market-data-apis", "primary": true }, { "slug": "hf-finance-research" }],
  "tags": ["market-data", "time-series", "intraday", "csv", "options", "futures"],
  "use_cases": ["analyze-intraday-data", "access-market-data", "query-parquet-files"],
  "operating_systems": ["any"],
  "execution_modes": ["cloud"],
  "interfaces": ["web", "api", "mcp-server"],
  "deployment_models": ["saas"],
  "integrations": ["Excel", "Python/pandas", "R", "TradeStation", "NinjaTrader", "AmiBroker", "MetaStock"],
  "data_formats": ["CSV (zipped)"],
  "languages": [],
  "source_model": "proprietary",
  "pricing_model": ["paid", "academic"],
  "pricing_checked_at": "2026-11-02",
  "self_hostable": false,
  "sources": [
    { "url": "https://firstratedata.com/", "type": "official_site", "title": "FirstRate Data – Historical Intraday Market Data", "supports": ["name", "summary", "capabilities", "data_formats", "integrations"], "checked_at": "2026-11-02" },
    { "url": "https://firstratedata.com/about/license", "type": "license_page", "title": "License Agreement - FirstRate Data", "supports": ["description", "limitations", "advantages", "vendor"], "checked_at": "2026-11-02", "note": "Perpetual licence; derivative works and published research permitted; raw data redistribution prohibited" },
    { "url": "https://firstratedata.com/about/firstrate-data", "type": "official_site", "title": "About Us - FirstRate Data", "supports": ["description", "vendor"], "checked_at": "2026-11-02" },
    { "url": "https://firstratedata.com/about/FAQ", "type": "official_docs", "title": "FAQ - FirstRate Data", "supports": ["docs_url"], "checked_at": "2026-11-02" }
  ],
  "confidence": "high",
  "uncertainty_note": "pricing_url omitted: prices are shown per bundle rather than on a single pricing page. 'academic' pricing model reflects multi-user institutional licences described in the licence agreement, not a published academic discount.",
  "discovery_method": "editorial-research",
  "depth": "deep",
  "editorial_status": "reviewed",
  "visibility": "public",
  "featured": false,
  "author": "batch-E"
}