The field, priced
What options backtesting software costs
Seventeen tools, each priced with the market data it needs to run. A hosted platform takes $468 to $1,188 for a first year. Volatlas takes $49 once, and the data is bought in your own name and stays on your disk.
Every tool, with its data bill
The first-year column multiplies each vendor’s own billing period out to twelve months for one person researching SPX. Where a vendor publishes no price, the row says so.
| Tool | What you pay | Market data | First year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volatlas | $49 once, lifetime updates | Bought from your own vendor and cached on your disk | $209 researching in bursts, $320 for a metered Databento year |
| QuantConnect Cloud, free tier | $0 | Included, minute resolution from January 2012 | $0, capped at 200 backtests a day |
| 0DTESPX | $0 with an account | Included, 1-second chains over 986 sessions from June 2022 | $0 |
| tastytrade backtesting | $0 with a tastytrade account | Included, 10+ years, resolution not published | $0 |
| eDeltaPro | $39 a month billed annually | Included, end of day from 2005 | $468 |
| Option Omega Essential | $49.99 a month billed annually | Included, 1-minute from 2013 | $599.88 |
| GreeksLab Premium | €49 a month | Included, 1-minute from 2012 | €588, plus what your card charges for euros |
| OptionNET Explorer | £500 plus VAT a year | Included, down to 5-minute intervals | About $660 |
| MesoSim Standard | $1,000 a year, plus a one-time $25 to open the subscription | Included, 5-minute resolution, SPX from 2010 | $1,025 |
| Option Alpha Pro | $99 a month billed annually, or $0 against a qualifying broker account | Included, 1-minute over a three-year window | $1,188, or $0 with $5k at Tradier or $10k at TradeStation |
| ORATS Trading Tools | $99 a month, $49 for students | Included, end of day from 2007, 1-minute from October 2020 | $1,188, capped at 2,000 backtests a month |
| Whispertrades | $0.50 a position from a prepaid balance | Included, from 2016 | Metered, 75 positions a backtest |
| OptionStack | Not published, an account is required to see it | End of day included, intraday bought from CBOE DataShop | Not published |
| LEAN run locally | $888 a year, the tier the CLI requires | Bought separately, $365.40 for a year of SPXW minute chains | Roughly $460 to $1,250 |
| QuantShare Advanced | $245 once, one year of updates | None sold, a community script scrapes chains from today forward | $245 |
| AmiBroker Standard | $299 once, 24 months of updates | Bought separately | $299 |
| StrategyQuant Starter | $1,290 once, one year of updates | Bought separately | $1,290 |
Every figure read from the vendor's own page in August 2026.
Buying outright
The other perpetual licences backtest stocks
Search for a backtester you buy once and three names come back. All three sell a perpetual licence and none of them prices an option chain, so a spread has to be modelled by hand before it can be tested.
QuantShare is the closest of the three, and its own guide to simulating options never opens a chain. It fixes a strike at 20% below spot and a cost at 2% of spot, then reduces the whole trade to one formula. That is a payoff sketch rather than a backtest against quoted prices.
Free
What nothing buys
Two of the free tools do the job. QuantConnect’s free tier runs SPX and SPXW at minute resolution back to January 2012, capped at 200 backtests a day, and the strategy is a Python or C# program you write. 0DTESPX runs SPX 0DTE at 1-second resolution over 986 sessions from June 2022, one trade per session, defined risk only. Both keep the data.
That last part is the difference worth pricing. Volatlas reads a vendor subscription bought in your own name, so the history lands on your disk as Parquet and replays after the subscription lapses. A study you ran last year still runs next year with nothing paid to anyone.
FAQ
Common cost questions
- What does options backtesting software cost?
- A hosted platform runs from $468 to $1,188 for a first year with the market data included. Volatlas is $49 once, and the data is bought from your own vendor at $40 a month cancel-anytime on ThetaData or metered on Databento, which puts a first year at $209 or $320 depending on how deep you pull. Two tools cost nothing, QuantConnect's free tier and 0DTESPX, and both trade something else for the price.
- Which options backtesters can I buy outright?
- Volatlas at $49. QuantShare at $245, AmiBroker at $299 and StrategyQuant from $1,290 also sell perpetual licences, and none of the three prices an option chain, so an options strategy cannot be built in them without supplying your own pricing model. OptionNET Explorer is a desktop tool sold by the year rather than once.
- Is the market data included in the price?
- On every subscription in the table, yes, and you stop having it when you stop paying. Volatlas ships no data and reads a subscription bought in your own name, so history you download is cached on your disk and keeps replaying after the subscription lapses.
- What is the cheapest way to backtest SPX 0DTE strategies?
- Nothing, if you write code. QuantConnect's free tier covers SPX and SPXW at minute resolution from 2012, capped at 200 backtests a day, and 0DTESPX covers SPX 0DTE at 1-second resolution from June 2022 with one trade per session. Among tools you drive without writing code, Volatlas is $49 once plus a $40 month of ThetaData.
- How were these figures worked out?
- Each was read from the vendor's own live page in August 2026, and the first-year column multiplies the vendor's own billing period out to twelve months. Where a vendor publishes no price, the row says so rather than quoting a review site.
- Why is a one-time price possible here and not on the platforms?
- Backtests run on your computer and market data is billed by your vendor to you, so there is no server to keep paying for and no data to license on your behalf. A hosted platform carries both costs every month whether you research or not.
Price the window you actually want
The data cost calculator takes the roots, the resolution and the date range you have in mind and prices them against ThetaData and Databento rates.