Freshness contract
Agree the event timestamp available from each source, the observation age accepted by the application and the handling of delayed inputs. Low transport delay does not make an old source observation current.
Market data · deployment planning
Real-Time Market Data API
Define real-time behavior through measurable source, delivery and consumer timestamps rather than a single undifferentiated latency claim.
Acceptance measurements
Capture percentile distributions, message bursts and receiver processing delay in a representative environment. Separate clock synchronization errors from network and queue delay, and show stale or unavailable state when the agreed freshness threshold is crossed.
Requirements to confirm
- Timestamp availability and clock basis
- Observation-age thresholds
- Representative load measurements
- Stale and unavailable states
Bring the proposed instrument list, source documentation and consumer workflow to a technical discussion. The agreed integration specification defines coverage, fields, usage permissions and acceptance tests.
Integration brief
Real-Time Market Data API: what to agree before connecting
| Instrument scope | Identify the exact underlying, source identifier, quote currency and intended use. |
|---|---|
| Consumer workflow | List trading platforms, charts, risk tools and applications that need the output. |
| Delivery contract | Agree protocol, quote fields, timestamps, source status and recovery behaviour. |
| Production review | Confirm source rights, integration ownership, test evidence and commercial scope. |
Begin with a consumer and instrument inventory
For your instrument universe, define who consumes the prices and what each system needs to reconstruct a usable quote. An application dashboard, broker platform and historical process can require different delivery rules even when they share one normalized instrument model.
What to test
- Compare instrument definitions before combining or substituting sources.
- Exercise disconnects and confirm the status presented to each consumer.
- Review results with the source, adapter and consuming application owners.
{
"type": "quote",
"symbol": "EURUSD",
"bid": "1.10000",
"ask": "1.10010",
"source_time": "2026-10-18T12:00:00.000Z",
"received_at": "2026-10-18T12:00:00.012Z",
"source_id": "example-source",
"status": "illustrative"
}Illustrative engineering example, not live prices or a published API contract. Confirm field names and delivery rules during integration.