Compared with ORATS
An ORATS alternative with no monthly seat
Volatlas is the backtesting half on its own, bought once and run on your computer. The market data comes from your own vendor account, so the history you can test is the history you chose to buy.
Buy VolatlasPerpetual licence · lifetime updates · macOS and Windows
Side by side
What each one does with a backtest
| Volatlas | ORATS | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 once, rising to $99, with lifetime updates. The licence stays yours at the price you paid. | $99 a month for an individual licence, $199 a user for professional, with a fourteen-day trial at $29. |
| Market data | Bought from your own vendor and billed to you. $40 a month on ThetaData, cancel-anytime, or metered on Databento. | Included, and sourced by ORATS, who sell options data as their main business. |
| Underlyings | Any root your data vendor sells. SPX, SPXW, XSP, NDX, RUT, SPY, QQQ, IWM and single names load the same way. | Over 5,000 symbols end of day, about 140 with weekly options intraday. |
| Intraday coverage | 1-minute quotes across the regular session, 09:30 to 16:00 ET, for every date your pull covers. | 1-minute from 09:34 to the close, back to October 2020, on the intraday backtester. |
| End-of-day depth | Not a separate mode. An end-of-day study runs off the same 1-minute cache. | Back to 2007, priced from a quote snapshot taken fourteen minutes before the close. |
| Fills | Halfway between the mid and the side you are crossing to, plus commission on every contract, charged by default. | Configurable slippage and commission, documented at 75% travel across the bid-ask spread on a single leg, easing to 56% on a four-leg spread. |
| Stops and targets | Resolved inside the minute. The move from the previous mark is walked a second at a time and the fill is taken at the level itself. | Evaluated on every minute bar. |
| Backtest count | Unmetered, and a sweep grid of up to 10,000 cells runs in parallel as one job on your cores. | 2,000 backtests a month, which the Strategy Optimizer draws from as well. |
| Margin | Reg T, uncovered rules included. An entry the account cannot carry is skipped and counted rather than filled. | Not stated in the public documentation. |
| Beyond backtesting | Nothing. Volatlas is the research half and does not scan, screen or trade. | Option and stock scanners, trade ideas, ticker analysis, a trade builder, an AI agent, and broker connections to Interactive Brokers, TradeStation and Tradier. |
| Platform | macOS and Windows desktop, signed and notarized on Mac, computing on your own cores. | Web, so any operating system with a browser. |
ORATS figures come from its own published pricing and documentation, shown as of August 2026.
Cost over three years
Three years of the backtesting half
| What you pay | Three years |
|---|---|
| VolatlasLicence once, plus four research months a year on ThetaData | $529 |
| VolatlasLicence once, plus a year of 1-minute SPXW quotes on Databento each year | $862 |
| ORATS Trading ToolsIndividual licence, data and the rest of the suite included | $3,564 |
Volatlas rows are the $49 licence plus data billed to your own account, either four months a year of ThetaData’s $40 cancel-anytime tier or a year of 1-minute SPXW quotes on Databento at about $271 including contract definitions, metered, so it moves with what you pull. The ORATS row is its published individual price over the same thirty-six months, and buys the scanners and analytics alongside the backtester. Prices shown as of August 2026.
Which to pick
Where Volatlas lands
- Research runs in bursts and a year-round seat sits idle between them.
- Intraday testing needs to start before October 2020, as deep as your vendor's history goes.
- A 10,000-cell sweep matters more than a monthly backtest allowance.
- You want the engine on your own machine and the chain on your own disk.
- You already hold a ThetaData or Databento subscription.
- You want the trade log, equity curve, stats and sweep grid out as CSV.
Common questions
Switching and setup
- What does ORATS cover that Volatlas does not?
- ORATS sells the data as well as the tools, and the subscription carries option and stock scanners, trade ideas, ticker analysis, a trade builder and broker connections, plus end-of-day options history back to 2007 across more than 5,000 symbols. If the job is screening and analytics as much as backtesting, that is a wider product than this one.
- Can I point Volatlas at my ORATS data?
- No. Volatlas reads your own ThetaData Terminal running on localhost or your own Databento key, and those are the two sources it speaks. ORATS data stays inside the ORATS tools.
- Which one reaches further back?
- ORATS for end of day, at 2007 against Databento's OPRA history opening in 2013. For intraday the comparison flips, since the ORATS minute data starts in October 2020 while a Databento pull reaches 2013 and ThetaData covers four to twelve years by tier.
- What does the data cost on top of the licence?
- On Databento a year of 1-minute SPXW quotes runs about $265, plus about $8 of contract definitions, metered and billed to your own account. ThetaData starts at $40 a month for four years of history and is cancel-anytime. The data cost calculator prices your own window on both.
- Is there a trial?
- There is a thirty day refund instead. Write to us inside thirty days of buying and we refund in full, no reason needed.
- Does Volatlas place trades or scan for them?
- Neither. You build, test and sweep in Volatlas and trade wherever you already trade.
Pay for the engine, not the seat
A licence bought once, lifetime updates, and data you rent only in the months you research. The cache stays on your disk, so a study from two years ago still runs today at no cost.
Buy Volatlas