Out-of-hours support will cost more than access to bond consolidated tape data under Etrading Software’s pricing and licensing framework.
The maximum cost for a combined real-time and historical license fee, applicable to enterprises with more than £1 billion in annual revenues, is £4,500 annually. An out-of-hours support fee for this group costs £12,000 each year.
Etrading Software’s real-time feed will operate 24/5, with continuous support available from 8am to 5pm in the UK and out-of-hours support available on a 24/5 basis.
A penny for your tape?
Enterprise users of the UK consolidated tape for bonds with less than £50 million in annual revenues will be charged a penny for the real-time and historical licences in the tape’s first year. Etrading Software intends to charge fintechs and small firms with annual revenue below £50 million nothing for access to the tape.
The highest cost of the tape, for enterprises whose annual revenue exceeds £1 billion, is £3,600. Those under £1 billion will pay £720, and firms below £250 million will be charged £72 annually. Historical licence fees for these groups are £900, £180 and £18, respectively.
Academic or non-commercial real-time and historical licences are free. The operational out of hours support fee is £24, and £12 per end user for redistributors.
The operational out of hours support fee will cost £24 for individual users and £3,000 for other sub-£50 million enterprises. For £250 million to £1 billion firms, the charge will be £6,000.
For redistributors, a further out of hours support fee may be added at half of the above figures for each end user in addition to a £50,000 charge if one or more of their clients are accessing the support. These fees are waived if the redistributor opts not to give their clients ’all-in’ support access.
Etrading Software won the contract with a weighted average price cap of 68p, limiting what they can charge for – the profits they can reap from – tape access fees.
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The UK bond tape is significantly cheaper than its US counterpart, TRACE. Access to TRACE’s real-time data feed is US$1,500 monthly, with an enterprise license for data display transaction information costing a further US$7,500. Enhanced historic data incurs a US$2,000 set-up fee and US$2,000 annual fee, with redistribution costs priced at US$1 per CUSIP annually.
While market participants may welcome the lower costs in the UK, some have raised concerns about the sustainability of the operation.
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Sharing the data
Redistributors of the tape are able to share its data with third parties. These third parties can purchase either an individual, enterprise or re-distributor sublicence.
As a redistributor, licensees cannot “create, develop or make available to any person any Value-Added Service.”
Enterprise sublicensees, who receive the tape’s data through the redistributor, may allow authorised users to use the data for internal purposes and “may allow authorised users to develop and make use of Value-Added Services”. This would be added to the chain as an enterprise sub-sublicense, holders of which may access and use the tape’s data for internal purposes and to develop value-added services.
Etrading Software has named 22 June 2026 as the go-live date for its bond consolidated tape.
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The tape will be available as an API or comma-separated value format as non-display data, and as a graphical user interface as display data.
The FIX Trading Community’s Consolidated Tape Working Group published a series of recommended practices for the tape operator last week. Etrading Software has since proposed that it will be exclusively adopting these recommended practices as its sole API. Final API rules will be confirmed on 31 March, following a review.
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