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FirstRate Data

In-depth entry

by FirstRate Data LLC · Data service · also known as FirstRateData, firstratedata.com

Vendor of historical intraday market data (1-minute to daily bars, tick and options) for US stocks, ETFs, futures, indices, crypto and FX, delivered as zipped CSV bundles under a perpetual licence

ProprietaryPaidAcademicCloud
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Link verified Nov 2, 2026

Overview

FirstRate Data is a Chicago-founded vendor (2017, now a remote team) of historical intraday market data aimed at traders, hedge funds, academic institutions and AI teams. Its catalog covers US stocks including thousands of delisted tickers, ETFs, the most active futures contracts with continuous series, US and international indices, cryptocurrencies, major FX crosses, end-of-day options chains with quotes and Greeks, tick data for recent years, and company fundamentals. Bars are offered at 1-minute, 5-minute, 30-minute, hourly and daily frequencies, with stock histories reaching back to 2000 and futures to 2008; stock and ETF series are adjusted for splits and dividends, futures continuous series for roll gaps, and timestamps are US Eastern (UTC for crypto).

Data are sold as one-off purchases or subscriptions to per-asset-class bundles and delivered as zipped CSV files from a personal download page, with daily end-of-day updates and a bundle API that returns archives rather than streaming data; there is no live feed. The site also packages dataset cards, an MCP server and training-data bundles for machine-learning use.

The licence agreement is notable for research use: it is perpetual once downloaded, allows storage on the subscriber's own or a service provider's servers, permits derivative works such as models, charts, reports and published academic papers, and allows internal redistribution under multi-user licences, while prohibiting resale or redistribution of the raw data and asking for attribution when research is published. Users should expect the quality caveats of any aggregated vendor feed (the agreement disclaims accuracy and completeness), the absence of order-book depth, and the need to manage large CSV archives locally, typically by converting them to Parquet for DuckDB or Polars.

Editorial note on uncertainty. pricing_url omitted: prices are shown per bundle rather than on a single pricing page. 'academic' pricing model reflects multi-user institutional licences described in the licence agreement, not a published academic discount.

Capabilities

  • Intraday bars from 1-minute to daily for stocks, ETFs, futures, indices, crypto and FX
  • Delisted-ticker coverage for survivorship-bias-free studies
  • End-of-day options chains with quotes and Greeks
  • Tick data for recent history
  • Split- and dividend-adjusted series; roll-adjusted continuous futures
  • Daily end-of-day updates to purchased bundles
  • Zipped CSV delivery via download page and bundle API
  • Dataset cards and MCP server for AI workflows

Typical workflows

  1. Building a minute-bar Parquet lake for microstructure research
  2. Backtesting strategies across a survivorship-bias-free stock universe
  3. Teaching high-frequency finance with a departmental multi-user licence
  4. Event studies around earnings using intraday bars

Strengths

  • Perpetual licence with explicit permission for published research
  • Broad asset coverage in one vendor
  • Simple CSV format usable from any language
  • One-off purchase option without ongoing fees

Limitations

  • No live or streaming data
  • No order-book depth; bars and trades only
  • Raw data may not be redistributed
  • Large archives require local storage and conversion

Prerequisites

  • Purchase of a bundle or subscription
  • Storage for multi-gigabyte CSV archives

Who it is for

  • Academic researchers in market microstructure
  • Quantitative traders backtesting intraday strategies
  • Teams assembling ML training data

Alternatives & comparison

Massive (formerly Polygon.io) and Databento deliver data through APIs with live feeds and, for Databento, full order-book schemas priced by usage, whereas FirstRate Data sells downloadable historical bundles under a perpetual licence. WRDS provides exchange-sourced TAQ data to subscribing institutions; yfinance offers free but unofficial daily data.

  • Alpha Vantage

    REST API for stock, ETF, options, forex, crypto, commodity and economic data plus fundamentals, news sentiment and technical indicators, with a free key tier and premium plans

    ProprietaryFreemium
  • Databento

    Usage-priced market data platform with normalized order-book (MBO/MBP), trades, OHLCV and reference schemas for futures, options and equities, delivered via historical, live and batch APIs in the DBN format

    MixedUsage-based
  • Massive (formerly Polygon.io)

    Market data platform (renamed from Polygon.io in October 2025) with REST and WebSocket APIs, flat files and SQL access for US stocks, options, indices, forex, crypto and futures

    ProprietaryPaid
  • Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS)

    Institution-subscribed research data platform from Wharton hosting CRSP, Compustat, TAQ, OptionMetrics and dozens of other vendors' databases with web queries, SQL, SAS, Python and R access

    ProprietaryEnterprise
  • yfinance

    Open-source Python library that downloads price history, fundamentals, options chains and fund data from Yahoo Finance's unofficial endpoints for research and education

    Open sourceFree
Compare FirstRate Data with its alternatives →

Sources & verification

Primary sources consulted for this record. Claims are tied to the fields each source supports; the automated link checker re-verifies every URL on a schedule.

  • License
    License Agreement - FirstRate Data

    https://firstratedata.com/about/license

    Supports: description, limitations, advantages, vendor

    Perpetual licence; derivative works and published research permitted; raw data redistribution prohibited

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official documentation
    FAQ - FirstRate Data

    https://firstratedata.com/about/FAQ

    Supports: docs_url

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official site
    FirstRate Data – Historical Intraday Market Data

    https://firstratedata.com/

    Supports: name, summary, capabilities, data_formats, integrations

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official site
    About Us - FirstRate Data

    https://firstratedata.com/about/firstrate-data

    Supports: description, vendor

    checked Nov 1, 2026
Confidence
High
Reviewed
Nov 1, 2026
Links
Verified · Nov 2, 2026

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