# Databento vs TickerLayer (slim)

> TickerLayer scores 71.5 (BB) to Databento's 60.3 (C) for market prices. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-tickerlayer.md (~5,400 tokens) · this version ~1,230 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-tickerlayer.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-tickerlayer
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-11
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

TickerLayer scores 71.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Databento's 60.3 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Databento leads on security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do market prices. TickerLayer accepts x402. Databento doesn't.

- Databento: C 60.3, rank #663 of 1520 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/databento.min.md
- TickerLayer: BB 71.5, rank #160 of 1520 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tickerlayer.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 Security & auth, 61 against 49; Maintenance & community, 84 against 79; Transparency & trust, 49 against 38.
- TickerLayer, good for An agent that needs latest prices, bars and market hours across stocks, forex, crypto, indices, ETFs, commodities, bond yields and perpetual futures from one schema, and wants to pay per call without an account. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 50; Schema & documentation, 88 against 75; Payments & pricing, 92 against 22. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account; Free to start without a card.

| Category | Databento | TickerLayer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 50 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 75 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 80 | 79 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 61 | 49 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 22 | 92 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 84 | 79 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 49 | 38 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Databento | TickerLayer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Databento, Inc. | TickerLayer |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://hist.databento.com` | `https://mcp.tickerlayer.com/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, websocket |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.01/call |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (clients) | Proprietary hosted service under the TickerLayer terms of use, user agreement and market data disclaimer (all effective 3 November 2026), which name no legal entity or governing law. Free and Individual plans are for internal use, Business adds use inside the customer's own product, and redistribution needs a written Enterprise agreement. The agent plugin (github.com/tickerlayer/agent-plugin) and the npm client are MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 12 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `com.tickerlayer/market-data` |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Popularity | 309 stars | none |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, TickerLayer +70: Databento 22 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0).); TickerLayer 92 (x402 on the vendor's own gateway, x402.tickerlayer.com, for 41 GET routes.)
- Reliability, TickerLayer +20: Databento 50 (Graded as a hosted service.); TickerLayer 70 (Read with the hosted lines, on the REST API.)
- Schema & documentation, TickerLayer +13: Databento 75 (No OpenAPI document was found.); TickerLayer 88 (OpenAPI 3.1 at tickerlayer.com/openapi.json (TickerLayer Market Data API 1.0.0, about 386,000 characters), read in its first 100,000 and last 96,000 characters…)
- Security & auth, Databento +12: 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 an…); TickerLayer 49 (A plain account key with no scopes, shown once and replaced by regenerating it in the dashboard (20).)
- Transparency & trust, Databento +11: 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 Apac…); TickerLayer 38 (The editorial half.)
- Maintenance & community, Databento +5: Databento 84 (Python 0.89.0 on 28 October 2026 and data release notes dated 20 October (30).); TickerLayer 79 (Read as a closed service.)