The LSE Directory / Data providers
DTN IQFeed is a market data feed and developer API for US and select international markets, delivered not as a standalone trading platform but as infrastructure that other software plugs into. It streams real-time Level 1 quotes and Level 2 / market depth, options chains, tick data, intraday bars and news, and separately serves historical data covering minute bars in forex back to February 2005, E-mini futures back to September 2005, and stocks, other futures and indices back to May 2007, with tick-level history retained for 180 calendar days. Access is through a Windows client application (IQConnect) that exposes a socket-based interface for streaming data and COM or TCP/IP interfaces for symbol lookups, historical retrieval and news, so it is consumed programmatically rather than through its own trading screen. Its differentiation within the market-data-vendor category is architectural and commercial rather than feature-based: instead of selling a closed platform, DTN licenses the feed itself to be embedded, and lists more than 70 third-party charting, trading and backtesting applications as certified-compatible, including Sierra Chart, NinjaTrader, MultiCharts, AmiBroker, WealthLab and Medved Trader. Pricing is unbundled and metered by data type: a core service subscription plus separate monthly add-on fees per exchange group (US and international futures, equity options, market depth, individual exchanges), which lets a customer pay only for the specific markets their software needs rather than a flat all-in package. This targets active retail and professional traders building or running their own analytics, alongside software vendors who license the feed for their end users, rather than a discretionary retail audience wanting an out-of-the-box terminal. IQFeed is operated by DTN, a private Bloomington, Minnesota-based data and analytics company originally founded in 1984 in Omaha, Nebraska as a Scoular Grain subsidiary and taken public in 1987 as Data Transmission Network Corporation. DTN's move into real-time financial market data traces to an April 1998 asset purchase agreement with SmartServ Online Inc., the lineage that became its DTN.IQ and IQFeed product line. DTN itself changed hands several times after its original public listing: Telvent, a Madrid-based IT company, acquired it in 2008 for 445 million dollars; Telvent was in turn bought by Schneider Electric in 2011; and TBG AG, the Zurich-based investment vehicle of the Thyssen-Bornemisza family, acquired DTN from Schneider Electric in 2017 for approximately 900 million dollars. As of mid-2026 the IQFeed core service lists at 108.15 dollars per month plus a 50 dollar setup fee, with a separate forex-only tier at 50.47 dollars per month, on top of which customers add per-exchange real-time data fees; the feed advertises more than 2,300 market breadth and statistical indicators alongside its raw quote data. DTN's wider business today spans three divisions, weather, agriculture and energy, of which IQFeed sits inside the trading and energy-facing data offering; the company remains active in acquisitions outside the trading-data business, including a November 2025 deal for Tandem Concepts, a fuel-logistics automation platform, that has no direct bearing on IQFeed's own product but reflects DTN's continued M&A activity as an owner.
