OPRA data cost
What options data costs
Price a window of 1-minute options history on Databento and ThetaData side by side, across seven index and ETF roots, at the rates the two vendors publish.
SPX weeklies, the 0DTE and 1DTE root
252 trading sessions at 252 a year.
Months you keep a ThetaData subscription open. Databento is metered, so this does not change its bill.
Databento
Metered$272
One year of 1-minute SPXW quotes at $1.05 a session, plus $7.55 a year of contract definitions. Paid once for the pull, and new accounts start with $125 of credit.
ThetaData
Monthly$160
The Value tier at $40 a month reaches 4 years of history, held for 4 months and cancelled after. Pull as much as you like while it is open. Code VOLATLAS20 takes 20% off the first month.
Keep this estimate
The figures above, with what drives each one, sent to you for the next time this comes up.
Databento rates are the cbbo-1m quote schema on OPRA, each root priced against the live gateway over a trailing year and divided by the 252 sessions in it, as of August 2026. A single session runs above or below its root’s average, and the total moves with what you request. The ThetaData figure assumes the window pulls through inside the months you pay for, which depends on Terminal throughput and has not been measured here.
Reading the bill
What drives the number
The root
OPRA bills by the contracts in the file, so the size of the option surface sets the price. SPXW runs about twice SPX a session because the weeklies carry far more expiries, and RUT costs a tenth of SPXW. The ETF roots are not the dear ones for quotes, SPY prices between SPX and SPXW.
The schema
Only the quote schema carries the two-sided market a backtest needs, and which schema is dearer depends on the root. A bar exists only where a trade printed, so on the thin index surface a year of 1-minute SPX bars is about $64 against $145 of quotes, while on SPY the same year of bars is about $1,417 against $167 of quotes.
The window
A metered vendor bills the sessions you request, so a three-month study costs a quarter of a year. A monthly vendor bills the calendar, so the same study costs whatever you leave the subscription open.
How often you come back
Research arrives in bursts. Metered pulls suit one deep window you keep, and monthly tiers suit repeated pulls across many roots inside a short stretch.
The two vendors
How each one bills
Databento
Metered, billed per session of data you request, with OPRA history opening in April 2013. You pay for the pull rather than the calendar, and new accounts start with $125 of credit. Best when you want one deep window on a single root and intend to keep it.
ThetaData
A monthly subscription, cancel-anytime, from $40 for four years of history at 1-minute intervals and rising to twelve years on the top tier. Pull as much as you like while it is open. Best for repeated pulls across several roots inside a short research burst.
Common questions
About the numbers
- Why price the quote schema rather than the cheaper bars?
- A bar carries open, high, low and close of the trade price, and none of those is a price you could have been filled at. Quotes carry the bid and the ask, which is what a spread is priced from. Bars are not always the cheaper file either: they exist only where a trade printed, so a year of 1-minute SPX bars is about $64 against $145 of quotes, while on SPY the bars run about $1,417 against $167 of quotes.
- What about single names?
- Not priced here. The seven roots on the calculator are the index and broad ETF surfaces this kind of research runs on, and a single name has to be priced on the vendor's own cost endpoint before you budget for it.
- Which vendor comes out cheaper?
- It follows the shape of the work. One deep window on a single index root is usually cheaper metered on Databento, and repeated pulls across several roots inside a short burst are usually cheaper on a ThetaData month you then cancel.
- Do I keep the data after I stop paying?
- The files you pulled are yours to keep and re-read under both vendors' personal terms. What lapsing costs you is new history, not what you already downloaded, which is why pulling into a local cache is worth doing.
- Are these prices exact?
- They are the published rates and verified per-session prices as of August 2026, and both vendors revise them. Databento is metered, so its figure moves with exactly what you request. Price the window on the vendor's own tooling before you budget.
Something to point the subscription at
Volatlas backtests and sweeps multi-leg options strategies against either vendor, on your own machine, and caches what you pull as Parquet so it replays after the subscription lapses. $49 once.