# Databento (slim)

> Databento is a market data platform with historical and live tick, order book and bar data for US and European equities, futures, options and indices, through HTTP and streaming APIs with Python, C++ and Rust clients.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/databento.md (~7,150 tokens) · this version ~1,780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/databento.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/databento
- 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 · pricing https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/databento#pricing · reviews https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/databento#reviews
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

**C · 60.3/100 · rank #578 of 1349 · #4 in Financial market data · not agent-ready · confidence medium**


Assessment: Exchange-level tick and order book data metered per GB, with published per-IP rate limits, Retry-After on 429, dated release notes and clients in three languages. The HTTP API is still at major version 0, the status page lists two critical and several major incidents in 90 days, there is no OpenAPI document, and the legal pages were unreadable.

## Facts

- Kind: HTTP API · vendor: Databento, Inc. · category: Financial market data · legal entity: Databento, Inc. · provenance 70/100
- Endpoint: `https://hist.databento.com` (HTTP)
- Auth: API key · pricing: Pay per use · x402: no · licence: Apache-2.0 (clients)
- Probe metrics: not measured yet (probes haven't run)
- Surface listed: The Historical HTTP API at hist.databento.com/v0 and the Reference API, read from databento.com/docs (llms.txt and Markdown pages), the pricing, about, support, blog and legal pages, status.databento.com, PyPI and GitHub on 3 November 2026. The Live API (a raw TCP gateway) is noted. No account was made and no request was billed
- Plans: Usage-based (historical only, per GB). Standard $199 a month with live data and no licence fees. Plus $1,750 a month in licence fees, annual contract, external distribution and dedicated connectivity. Unlimited $4,500 a month in licence fees, annual contract, 16 or more years in all schemas. Licence fees passed through with no mark-up
- Free credits: $125 for new users, historical data or the first month of a plan, six-month expiry, one set per team. Whether a card is needed at signup was not found
- Rate limits: Per IP, 100 concurrent connections, 100 time series requests a second, 100 symbology requests a second, 20 metadata requests a second, 20 batch list requests a second, 20 batch submissions a minute, 100 corporate actions requests a second. 429 with Retry-After
- Errors: 2xx success, 206 for partially resolved symbols, 4xx client errors and 5xx server errors with a code such as `auth_invalid_username_in_basic_auth`, a message and a docs link; 402 for payment, 422 for unprocessable requests
- Datasets: CME Globex, ICE Futures US and Europe, Eurex, EEX, OPRA, Nasdaq TotalView-ITCH and Basic, NYSE Integrated, Cboe, MEMX, MIAX Pearl, IEX, Blue Ocean, Databento US Equities, Databento Core Indices, plus corporate actions, adjustment factors and a security master
- Clients: Python 0.89.0 (28 October 2026), C++ 0.69.0 and Rust 0.64.0 (27 October 2026), Apache-2.0; HTTP API 0.36.0 (21 April 2026) with 0.37.0 pending; Raw API 0.9.3 (1 August 2026)
- Legal entity: Databento, Inc., per the about page footer and the GitHub organisation; the terms could not be read
- Prices: Standard plan $199 per month (plan); Plus plan licence fees $1750 per month (plan); Unlimited plan licence fees $4500 per month (plan)

- Scores: Reliability 50, Performance pending, Schema & documentation 75, Agent ergonomics 80, Security & auth 61, Payments & pricing 22, Task success pending, Maintenance & community 84, Transparency & trust 49 · total over the 7 assessed categories
- Why: Reliability, Graded as a hosted service. · Schema & documentation, No OpenAPI document was found. · Agent ergonomics, `limit`, time ranges to the nanosecond, schema choice from trades to daily bars, encoding choice and `metadata.get_cost` to size a request b… · Security & auth, 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… · Payments & pricing, No x402, MPP or L402 (0). · Maintenance & community, Python 0.89.0 on 28 October 2026 and data release notes dated 20 October (30). · Transparency & trust, A closed service whose terms could not be read, because databento.com/legal and its /terms and /privacy pages are drawn by script; the clien…
- Sources: 21, open questions: 6, both in the full twin
- Capabilities: market.prices, market.history, market.indices, data.markets
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/databento.json
- Verify (for the vendor): the badge `https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/databento.svg` or a link to https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/databento from a page on databento.com or one of its subdomains, or the README at the root of github.com/databento/databento-python, then `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` `{"slug", "url"}` or `verify_listing` at /mcp; re-checked weekly, no effect on the grade. Snippets in the full twin.
- Support: support@databento.com; https://databento.com/support; https://databento.com/docs/; https://status.databento.com; more in the full twin

## Before you call it

1. Call `metadata.get_cost` before `timeseries.get_range`, and set a monthly historical limit in the portal; a duplicate streaming request is charged twice
2. Send the key as the Basic auth username (`-u $DATABENTO_API_KEY:`) to hist.databento.com/v0; never put it in the URL or source code
3. On 429 wait for the Retry-After header; keep under 100 time series requests a second and 20 batch submissions a minute per IP
4. Check status.databento.com before retrying a slow or 504 Historical request, since several incidents since August were API outages or batch delays
5. Use batch download for requests over 5 GB, split by time range or `limit`, and read `schema` and `stype_in` from the dataset page before querying

## Connect

```bash
pip install databento
```

```bash
curl -G 'https://hist.databento.com/v0/metadata.list_datasets' -u $DATABENTO_API_KEY:
```
Full config and headless snippets are in the full page. Through letme (picks today, calling later): https://letme.dev/databento

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