OPRA data cost
What options data costs
Price a window of 1-minute SPX options history on Databento and ThetaData side by side, 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$271
One year of 1-minute SPXW quotes at $1.04 a session, plus about $8 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.
Databento rates are per-session prices for the cbbo-1m quote schema on OPRA, priced against the live gateway and shown as of August 2026, 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 SPY is an order of magnitude past both.
The schema
Bars are cheaper than quotes and cannot price a fill. A year of 1-minute SPX bars is about $64 against roughly $144 for the same year of quotes, and only the quote schema carries the two-sided market a backtest needs.
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 are quotes dearer than 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. On Databento a year of 1-minute SPX bars is about $64 against roughly $144 for the same year of quotes.
- What about SPY, QQQ or single names?
- Far dearer, because the option surface is much larger. A year of 1-minute SPY option bars prices at about $1,442 on Databento, and the quote schema for the same root costs more again. Index roots are where intraday options research stays affordable.
- 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 Mac, and caches what you pull as Parquet so it replays after the subscription lapses. $49 once.