# Databento vs Financial Modeling Prep (slim)

> Databento scores 60.3 (C) to Financial Modeling Prep's 48.7 (D) for market prices. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-financial-modeling-prep.md (~4,450 tokens) · this version ~2,580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-financial-modeling-prep.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-financial-modeling-prep
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-04
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Databento scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Financial Modeling Prep's 48.7 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Financial Modeling Prep leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do market prices.

- Databento: C 60.3, rank #592 of 1349 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/databento.min.md
- Financial Modeling Prep: D 48.7, rank #1020 of 1349 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/financial-modeling-prep.min.md
- Databento, good for An agent that needs exchange-level trades, quotes, order book and bar data for US and European futures, options and equities, or corporate actions and a security master, and can budget per GB. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 75 against 61; Agent ergonomics, 80 against 59; Security & auth, 61 against 30; Maintenance & community, 84 against 60.
- Financial Modeling Prep, good for Agents doing company research on statements, ratios, DCF, filings, transcripts and calendars with one key, and US coverage on cheap plans. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 30 against 22; Transparency & trust, 57 against 49. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | Databento | Financial Modeling Prep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 50 | 50 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 75 | 61 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 80 | 59 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 61 | 30 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 22 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 84 | 60 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 49 | 57 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Databento | Financial Modeling Prep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Databento, Inc. | Financial Modeling Prep |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://hist.databento.com` | `https://financialmodelingprep.com/stable` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (clients) | none |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-02 |
| Popularity | 309 stars | none |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, Databento +31: Databento 61 (Named API keys, up to 100 per account, rotated or deleted in the portal, with per-member permissions, sent only as the Basic auth username; no scopes per key and no expiry (25 of 30). Every API call is a read, and a monthly historical limit caps what a leaked key can spend; live usage is not capped (14 of 20). The API returns market data and reference records, not free text from third parties (10). A data usage page in the portal and a billing page per cycle, with no per-key call log documented (8 of 15). The vendor revokes keys it finds in public and documents key hygiene; security.txt returns 404 and no bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001 was found on readable pages (4 of 20). Total 61.); Financial Modeling Prep 30 (One key per account with no scopes, accepted as a header or as `?apikey=`, and the documented MCP address carries it in the URL (20 less 10 for the query string, so 10). Every endpoint is a read (15 of 20). News, press releases, transcripts and filings are third-party text and no guidance on treating them as untrusted was found (5 of 15). No usage log or per-call record for the key holder was found (0 of 15). security.txt returns 404, the Trust Center link returns 404, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found (0 of 20). 10 + 15 + 5 + 0 + 0 = 30.)
- Maintenance & community, Databento +24: Databento 84 (Python 0.89.0 on 28 October 2026 and data release notes dated 20 October (30). Python 0.85.0 (25 August), 0.86.0 (1 September), 0.87.0 (22 September), 0.88.0 (21 October) and 0.89.0, plus Rust 0.64.0 and C++ 0.69.0 on 27 October and four dated data notes since 8 August (20). A Slack community, Intercom chat, support@databento.com, a public roadmap and a public issue tracker linked from the release notes; GitHub issue replies were not read because the GitHub API rate limit was reached (12 of 15). Official clients in Python, C++ and Rust released the same week as each other (15). The Python client is Apache-2.0 with releases on GitHub and PyPI; CI and dependency pins were not checked (7 of 10). Total 84.); Financial Modeling Prep 60 (Read as a closed service. The changelog's newest entry is 2 November 2026 (30). Entries dated 6, 8, 12, 28 and 29 October and 2 November 2026, more than three in 90 days (20). A public changelog, a help centre, FAQs and a support address, with issues reported through a site chatbot per the FAQ (10 of 15). No official SDK; the FAQ points at third-party packages (0 of 15). No package to assess, and nothing else to show for CI or dependency health (0 of 10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 0 + 0 = 60.)
- Agent ergonomics, Databento +21: Databento 80 (`limit`, time ranges to the nanosecond, schema choice from trades to daily bars, encoding choice and `metadata.get_cost` to size a request before paying (20 of 25). Symbol, date and schema filters, batch jobs listed and fetched by id, no cursor pagination because ranges are split by time (16 of 20). Errors carry an HTTP code, a named identifier, a message and a docs link, with 206 for partially resolved symbols (17 of 20). Reads only on the historical and reference APIs; a duplicate streaming request is charged twice, batch is billed once, and the portal can cap monthly spend (12 of 20). Few required parameters, and official clients in Python, C++ and Rust (15). Total 80.); Financial Modeling Prep 59 (The REST API is the surface graded. `limit` and `page` on list endpoints, `from` and `to` on series, and batch quote endpoints size responses, with no field selection (15 of 25). Page and limit parameters on lists and date filters on series, no cursor (15 of 20). A missing key returned 401 with an `Error Message` text field in our one test call, and no error reference exists (5 of 20). Every call is a GET read; the MCP server's annotations were not read (16 of 20). Few required parameters and sensible defaults, but no official SDK in any language (8 of 15). 15 + 15 + 5 + 16 + 8 = 59.)
- Schema & documentation, Databento +14: Databento 75 (No OpenAPI document was found. The contract is the per-endpoint reference with typed parameters, the DBN schemas with field tables and enums, and a .http.md variant of every page (8 of 25). llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page with language variants (10). Endpoint pages say what each call returns and the basics pages say when to use streaming against batch (15 of 20). Typed parameters with enums for schema, encoding, symbology type and split duration (13 of 15). Code in Python, C++, Rust and curl on every page, and an error table with codes, named error identifiers and a docs link in each body (14 of 15). Semantic versioning with dated release notes per component, breaking changes and deprecations called out (15). Total 75.); Financial Modeling Prep 61 (No OpenAPI document was found. The MCP page says the server supplies strict parameter definitions, but the tool list needs a key and was not read (5 of 25). llms.txt links api-docs.md and pricing.md, Markdown written for agents (10). Each of the 199 endpoints in api-docs.md has a purpose paragraph and a plan marker in pricing.md, with little on when not to use it (13 of 20). Parameters are tabled with type, example and a required star, but allowed values sit in prose and no enums are given (8 of 15). Every endpoint has an example request and response; no error responses are documented anywhere we read (10 of 15). A /stable path, legacy /v3 and /v4 marked discontinued, and a changelog dated by day through 2 November 2026 (15). 5 + 10 + 13 + 8 + 10 + 15 = 61.)
- Payments & pricing, Financial Modeling Prep +8: Databento 22 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plans are public ($199, $1,750 and $4,500 a month) and historical data is metered per GB, but the per-dataset rates are in the portal catalogue behind a login and the pricing page's estimator shows only an example (12 of 20). $125 of credits for every new user, expiring after six months; whether a card is needed at signup was not found on the pricing, credits or billing pages (10 of 20). A person signs up in a browser and creates keys in the portal; no key API (0). Total 22.); Financial Modeling Prep 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Four personal plans priced per month by calls a minute, public without login, with per-endpoint plan limits in pricing.md; commercial prices are by agreement (10). A free Basic plan at 250 calls a day with no card stated (20). The key comes from a browser signup and no key API was found (0). 0 + 10 + 20 + 0 = 30.)
- Transparency & trust, Financial Modeling Prep +8: Databento 49 (A closed service whose terms could not be read, because databento.com/legal and its /terms and /privacy pages are drawn by script; the client libraries are Apache-2.0 (10 of 30). The privacy policy was unread for the same reason, and the docs say nothing about retention of account data (0 of 30, unchecked). Dated release notes carry deprecations, and the versioning policy keeps a prior major version for a year after the next (18 of 20). No subprocessor list or data location statement was found on readable pages; the architecture docs name the company's own data centres (0 of 20). Total 28.); Financial Modeling Prep 57 (A closed service under terms that are clear on personal and commercial use and on display licensing, last updated 1 August 2023, but that name no legal entity, address or governing law (12 of 30). The privacy policy is undated, keeps data for as long as necessary with no periods, says no third parties receive data while naming Google AdSense and Analytics, and no DPA was found (8 of 30). The docs keep a Legacy section and api-docs.md says /v3 and /v4 are discontinued, with no notice period stated; behaviour changes such as the Economics Indicators default window appear in the dated changelog (8 of 20). Google services are the only processors named and no data location is given (5 of 20). 12 + 8 + 8 + 5 = 33.)