# Databento vs Tiingo (slim)

> Databento scores 60.3 (C) to Tiingo's 46.2 (D) for market prices. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-tiingo.md (~4,350 tokens) · this version ~2,630 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-tiingo.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/databento-vs-tiingo
- 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
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Databento scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Tiingo's 46.2 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Tiingo leads on reliability, 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
- Tiingo: D 46.2, rank #1099 of 1349 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tiingo.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 39; Agent ergonomics, 80 against 56; Security & auth, 61 against 32; Maintenance & community, 84 against 50.
- Tiingo, good for Agents that need clean US end-of-day composites with dividend and split adjustments, fund fees and news on a cheap plan, and anyone who values a long changelog. Ahead on Reliability, 60 against 50; Payments & pricing, 30 against 22; Transparency & trust, 57 against 49.

| Category | Databento | Tiingo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 50 | 60 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 75 | 39 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 80 | 56 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 61 | 32 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 22 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 84 | 50 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 49 | 57 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Databento | Tiingo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Databento, Inc. | Tiingo Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://hist.databento.com` | `https://api.tiingo.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, websocket |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (clients) | none |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-10-09 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-02-18 |
| Popularity | 309 stars | none |

Why the edge:
- Schema & documentation, Databento +36: 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.); Tiingo 39 (No OpenAPI document or MCP server was found (0 of 25). llms.txt and llms-full.txt are served, with product routing and licence notes (10). Each documentation page states the endpoint's purpose and timing, such as prices after 5.30 pm ET with corrections to 8 pm, with little on when not to use it (12 of 20). Parameters and response fields are tabled with names and meanings, but types, defaults and allowed values are partly in prose (8 of 15). Examples in Python, Node and PHP on every page; no error responses documented (7 of 15). A changelog dated by entry since 2017 and a one-year support commitment after breaking changes, with no version in the path (12 of 15). 0 + 10 + 12 + 8 + 7 + 12 = 39.)
- Maintenance & community, Databento +34: 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.); Tiingo 50 (Read as a closed service. The changelog's newest entry is 9 October 2026 (30). Entries dated 9 October and 8 September 2026 fall in the last 90 days, with 21 July just outside, and the status page adds a maintenance window on 28 September (12 of 20). A dated changelog, a support address and a blog, with the developer programme promising priority email support (8 of 15). No official SDK (0 of 15). No package to assess (0 of 10). 30 + 12 + 8 + 0 + 0 = 50.)
- Security & auth, Databento +29: 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.); Tiingo 32 (One token per account with no scopes, documented as `?token=` in the URL or an Authorization header, with rotation on the account page since May 2026 (20 less 10 for the query string, plus 2 for rotation, so 12). Every endpoint is a read (15 of 20). News is third-party text and no guidance was found (5 of 15). A usage page shows hourly and daily requests and bandwidth, not a per-call log (0 of 15, no log). security.txt redirects on www and is absent on api, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found (0 of 20). 12 + 15 + 5 + 0 + 0 = 32.)
- Agent ergonomics, Databento +24: 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.); Tiingo 56 (`startDate`, `endDate`, `resampleFreq`, `format=csv` and column selection on some endpoints size responses; no field selection on end-of-day prices (15 of 25). Date ranges throughout and limit and offset on news, no cursor (15 of 20). Errors are undocumented; a missing token answered 403 with a JSON `detail` field in our one test call (3 of 20). Every call is a read (16 of 20). Few required parameters, but no official SDK; the docs point to third-party packages (7 of 15). 15 + 15 + 3 + 16 + 7 = 56.)
- Reliability, Tiingo +10: Databento 50 (Graded as a hosted service. Atlassian Statuspage at status.databento.com with ten components, Portal, Historical, FTP and seven live feeds (20). The incident feed for the 90 days to 3 November 2026 lists a critical outage of the portal and Historical API on 6 August lasting about eight hours, critical live authentication timeouts in NY4 on 28 August for about seven hours, major batch job delays of about two days each opened on 6 and 12 October, a six-hour GLBX.MDP3 delay in the Historical API on 6 October, and a Frankfurt outage affecting XEUR and XEEE opened on 2 November and still in monitoring. Several majors (0 of 30). Per-IP limits are published with numbers (15). 429 with a Retry-After header and a code to sleep on it; streams cut off aren't billed for unsent data, batch jobs are billed once (15). No SLA found; the pricing page names none and the terms were unreadable (0). The HTTP API is at major version 0 and the docs say it is not considered stable (0 of 10). Total 50.); Tiingo 60 (Read with the hosted lines. A public status page on Instatus at status.tiingo.com lists 13 components with a notice history (20). The history in the 90 days to 3 November 2026 shows a 9 hour 59 minute outage of the Blue Ocean ATS endpoints on 21 October, a WebSocket issue on 21 September and two maintenance windows, with nothing recorded before 21 September; a long outage of one niche feed rather than the core price API (15). Limits are published with numbers, 50 and 10,000 requests an hour, 1,000 and 100,000 a day and 1 GB and 40 GB a month (15). No 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance was found (0). No SLA found (0). The end-of-day, news, crypto and forex APIs are generally available, while Equity Realtime and BOATS are in beta (10). 20 + 15 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 60.)
- Payments & pricing, Tiingo +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.); Tiingo 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Two plan prices public without login, $0 and $30 a month, sold by requests an hour and a day rather than per call; fundamentals and commercial licences by email (10). A free Starter plan at 1,000 requests a day with no card requirement stated (20). The token comes from a browser signup, and the developer programme forbids programmatic registration (0). 0 + 10 + 20 + 0 = 30.)