Investables.ai

Research & analysis · Data providers

Financial data providers: market data providers compared on coverage, cost and fit

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Thesis, bull and bear case, key metrics, comparables and risk flags, synthesized into one structured tear-sheet.

Sample output is illustrative. Not financial advice.

Illustrative only

Thesis

Bull case

Bear case

Key metrics

illustrative

illustrative price trend, not live data

Comparables

Risk flags

Informational only · sample output, not live market data · not financial advice.

Every shortlist of financial data providers you will find online has the same problem. The vendors do not publish prices, the review sites recycle each other's estimates, and the comparison tables describe products in the vendor's own marketing language, which is designed to make nine different companies sound like they all do the same thing. They do not.

This page takes a different approach to the money question. Federal contract awards in the United States are public records, so we pulled what US government agencies actually paid these vendors from USAspending.gov and annualized each award across its stated period of performance. Those are real, audited, negotiated US dollar figures rather than estimates. They are institutional licenses, not list prices, and federal buyers negotiate under their own rules, so read them as evidence of scale and structure rather than as a rate card you can quote back to a salesperson.

Investables.ai is at the small end of this market on purpose, at $29 to $249 per month. Enter a ticker and you get a structured research card: what the business does, the metrics that matter with peer context, the bull case, the bear case, comparables and labeled risk flags. It is not a market data feed, it carries no real-time prices and no redistribution rights, and it is informational research only rather than investment advice.

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Both sides bull and bear

Risk flags on every card

The short answer

Who are the major financial data providers?

The major financial data providers are Bloomberg, LSEG (formerly Refinitiv), S&P Global Market Intelligence, FactSet, Moody's Analytics, Morningstar, and in private markets PitchBook, Preqin and CB Insights. Bloomberg and LSEG dominate real-time market data; S&P, FactSet and Moody's lead in company fundamentals and credit; PitchBook, Preqin and CB Insights cover private companies and funds. US federal contract awards show agencies paying roughly $21,000 to $6.9 million per year depending on the provider and the scope.

Last updated August 2026

Why it works

How to read this market before you shortlist

Market data and company data are different purchases

The expensive thing in a Bloomberg or LSEG contract is licensed real-time exchange data and the right to use it, priced per named user by the exchanges themselves and passed straight through. Company fundamentals, credit models and private market records carry no exchange fees at all. If you do not need intraday prices, you are shopping in the wrong half of this market and paying several times over for it.

Nearly every provider prices per named user, with bands

The one published rate card in this market, Moody's for Orbis, shows the pattern clearly: a single named user costs more than eleven times what a seat costs inside a hundred user deal. Every vendor here works the same way. That is why a two person team often pays close to what a ten person team pays in total, and why sitting one seat above a band boundary is one of the most expensive mistakes in a renewal.

Modules and add-ons move more money than the headline rate

Providers quote a base and then attach entitlements. Orbis modules are priced as a percentage of base, from 5% for news up to 40% for risk flags, so unused modules get more expensive every time you add a seat. The same logic runs through Capital IQ Pro focus packs and FactSet configurations. Audit what your team actually opens before you argue about the base rate.

What you get

A structured first pass on every name

Enter any ticker or asset and the research card synthesizes the thesis, lays out the bull and bear case, surfaces the key metrics and comparables, and flags the risks, so your own diligence starts further along.

  • Turns any US ticker into a structured research card in seconds
  • Costs $29 to $249 per month against $23,000 or more for a single professional seat
  • Puts the bull case and the bear case side by side with explicit risk flags
  • Covers small and mid caps that get little or no sell-side coverage
  • Needs no procurement cycle, no seat minimum and no multi-year commitment
  • Complements a data provider rather than replacing the feed
NVDA NVIDIA Corp. Illustrative

Thesis

Dominant AI accelerator supplier. The debate is the durability of data-center demand versus a cyclical capex peak.

Bull

CUDA moat, near-monopoly share

Bear

Customer concentration, cycle risk

P/E 46.2 Rev +94% 3 risk flags

Side by side

Financial data providers compared, with what US federal agencies actually paid

Dollar figures are real US federal contract awards from USAspending.gov, retrieved August 2026, annualized across each stated period of performance. These are negotiated institutional licenses rather than published list prices, and the low and high ends usually reflect scope and seat count rather than discounting.

Provider What it actually sells US federal awards, per year Best fit
Bloomberg Real-time cross-asset market data, news, Bloomberg Chat, analytics, delivered through the Terminal and Anywhere licenses About $459,000 to $3.46 million. Commerce paid $3,019,940 for twelve months of Anywhere licenses and terminals Trading desks and anyone who needs intraday prices and the chat network
LSEG (formerly Refinitiv) Real-time cross-asset data, fixed income and FX depth, Datastream history, Workspace desktop. Eikon was retired in June 2025 About $485,000 to $4.56 million. The SEC market information data and analytics system ran $4.56 million a year Cross-asset and fixed income desks pricing against Bloomberg
S&P Global Market Intelligence Public and private company financials, Capital IQ Pro screening, transaction comps, SNL industry data, RatingsDirect About $459,000 to $6.9 million. The DOJ paid $515,081 a year for Capital IQ financial data access Investment banking, private equity and corporate development
FactSet Global fundamentals, portfolio analytics, performance attribution, ownership data, Office add-ins About $21,000 to $503,000. Treasury paid $408,765 for up to seven premium workstations from October 2023 to March 2026, roughly $23,600 per seat per year Asset managers, hedge funds and sell-side research
Moody's Analytics Orbis global company database, CreditView credit research, CreditEdge, CreditLens, RiskCalc, REIS commercial real estate, Economy.com About $17,000 to $4.85 million. It is the only provider here with a published rate card, filed for Orbis on the UK Digital Marketplace Credit risk teams, lenders, compliance and private company research
Morningstar Fund and manager data, equity research, Direct analytics, Investment Research Center, data APIs About $179,000 to $1.06 million. The SEC paid $582,000 a year for Morningstar API data alone Wealth managers, advisors, retirement plans and fund selectors
PitchBook Private market deal terms, valuations, cap tables, VC and PE fund and LP intelligence. Owned by Morningstar About $258,000 to $1.01 million. The State Department renewal for 2025 alone was $719,822 Venture capital, private equity and corporate development
Preqin Alternative assets: fund performance, LP commitments and GP benchmarking across private asset classes. Owned by BlackRock since March 2025 About $31,000 to $175,000. The SEC paid $175,288 a year for private equity fund data LPs, fund of funds, placement agents and allocators
CB Insights Private company, startup and technology market intelligence, funding rounds, tech landscapes About $60,000 to $174,000. The NSF paid $60,000 for a twelve month team license on the core analytics plan Corporate strategy, innovation teams and venture scouting
Investables.ai A structured AI research card per public ticker: thesis, bull case, bear case, key metrics, comparables and risk flags $29, $79 or $249 per month, published. No real-time data and no redistribution rights Investors and analysts who need the written analysis rather than a data feed

Federal award figures are annualized by dividing the obligated amount across the stated period of performance, which is our arithmetic rather than a vendor disclosure. Award scope varies widely between agencies, so the range within a single provider mostly reflects how much was bought. Investables.ai pricing is our own published rate. Investables.ai is informational research only, not personalized investment advice.

Why Investables.ai

One research card that compresses the reading

Not a wall of raw data, not a one-sided opinion, and not a six-figure terminal. The thesis, both sides of the argument and the risks, in one structured tear-sheet you can act on. You stay in control of every decision.

Both sides, every time

The bull case and the bear case sit side by side, so you weigh the argument instead of reading a single take. Informational only, never a recommendation.

Risks on the page

Valuation, concentration and regulatory risks are flagged explicitly, so the downside is visible up front rather than buried in a footnote.

Faster diligence

A structured first pass in seconds means you spend your time on judgement, not on gathering, across stocks, ETFs, crypto and startups.

Good questions

Questions about data providers

By revenue the largest are Bloomberg, LSEG, S&P Global and FactSet, followed by Moody's Analytics and Morningstar. Bloomberg is generally reckoned the largest single provider and is privately held, so it publishes no segment revenue. Moody's Analytics reported $3,599 million of revenue in 2025, up 9%, which gives you a sense of the scale involved. In private markets the leaders are PitchBook, Preqin and CB Insights, all of them an order of magnitude smaller than the public market vendors.
US federal contract awards put real subscriptions between roughly $21,000 and $6.9 million per year, with most professional deployments landing between $50,000 and $500,000. A single professional seat generally runs $10,000 to $32,000 per year depending on the vendor and configuration. Bloomberg publishes $31,980 per seat per year for a single terminal, falling to $28,320 at two or more seats, and is one of the very few vendors here that publishes anything at all.
Almost none. Bloomberg publishes a terminal seat price. Moody's filed a full Orbis rate card on the UK government Digital Marketplace, which runs from GBP 98,000 for one named user to GBP 900,000 for up to a hundred, and it is the only genuine price list in this tier. Everyone else quotes only after a sales call. Morningstar published a US Direct price list in its 2016 annual report and then removed it from later filings, which is why decade old figures still circulate as current.
Market data means live or delayed prices, quotes, trades and order book depth coming off exchanges, and it carries per user exchange licensing fees that the vendor passes on. Financial data is the broader category and includes company fundamentals, filings, estimates, ownership, credit models and private company records, none of which carry exchange fees. Bloomberg and LSEG lead the first category. S&P, FactSet, Moody's and Morningstar lead the second. The distinction matters because it is the single biggest driver of what you will be quoted.
It depends on the geography and the question. Moody's Orbis has the widest raw coverage at more than 500 million companies globally, built from over 200 national registries, and is the strongest choice for non US private company financials and ownership. PitchBook is better for venture and private equity deal terms, valuations and cap tables. Preqin is built for fund level performance and LP commitments rather than companies. CB Insights is strongest on startups and technology markets. Firms that buy two of these usually find the overlap is in company financials rather than in deal data.
For some things, yes, and it is worth knowing where the line falls. SEC EDGAR carries every US public company filing at no cost, which covers historical financials, ownership and disclosure. What free sources do not give you is normalized comparability across jurisdictions, consensus estimates, private company financials, real-time prices or redistribution rights. Those four things are what you are actually paying a provider for, and if none of them matter to your workflow, a paid feed is hard to justify.
Three levers move real money. First, negotiate the annual escalator and get a cap in writing: public federal award records show the same Moody's lines renewing at exactly 4.5%, 5.0% and 8.0% per year, and over five years the difference between an 8% uplift and a 3% cap is around a quarter of your total spend. Second, audit module and entitlement usage and drop anything nobody opened last quarter, since removing an unused module costs no user their access. Third, right-size named seats against login data rather than headcount, because trimming two seats can drop you into a cheaper price band entirely.
If you trade intraday, run a regulated lending process, or need to redistribute data inside a product, yes, and there is no substitute. If your job is understanding a listed company and forming a defensible view, the answer is often no. That work needs filings, fundamentals with peer context, and a clear statement of what could go wrong, none of which requires a real-time feed. That is the gap tools like Investables.ai are built for, at a monthly rate rather than an annual procurement cycle.

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Enter any ticker or asset and read the thesis, both sides of the argument and the risk flags in seconds. Built to make your own diligence faster. You decide, every time.

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Informational only, not financial advice · past performance does not guarantee future results