ales19 

Hello, this is my first post here (excluding intro) so hopefully I will not mess up too badly and break too many rules I have searched the forums and read the threads on the topic I am going to ask about but the info I found was not sufficient for me to get a clear understanding, so here it goes: I am basically trying to determine the best data feed to use when I go back to trading live and I am trying to get my head around the different facets I need to consider to select the best solution for me. To give context I am focused on scalping and have no automation/algo involved (except an automated stop loss and take profit order entered by my trading platform upon execution). I use Jigsaw Daytradr. So far I am considering the following 3 data feed providers (CQG, Rithmic, Tradovate) and this is what I found out about them so far: CQG: solid all-round solution with cheap round-turn fees of $0.20, shows 10 price levels and 1 month of historic tick data, can suffer lags/freezes when market spikes occur, like after a Trump tweet or news event Rithmic: highly reliable but "expensive" solution at $0.50 round-turn fees, shows entire order book (20+ price levels) but only 1 day of historic tick data, performs great even under high data flows due to news events. Tradovate: cheapest solution if monthly $199 flat fee adopted (only exchange, clearing and routing fees owed), shows 10 price levels and 2 weeks of historic tick data (as far as I can tell), reliability in high data flows due to news events is unknown So, from a price point of view Tradovate seems to be the best, however I do not know how they hold up as far as reliability goes. I know there are other providers like TT, CTS, IQ but they all seemed more expensive without offering any advantage from what I could tell. Also, I am unclear how execution is affected by the choice of data feed provider? Any help sorting this out (and correcting any mistakes I made above) would be greatly appreciated.

This is a great post. Thank you for such an articulate and well laid out question with good prompts. I look forward to reading the responses.

I am not sure why you quote execution costs, but in terms of data-feed, I would go with Rithmic. They are super professional and their feed is super fast and accurate. As far as i know it is the only provider that has the full order book + Market By Order data + tagged iceberg and stop orders.

In terms of oder execution: I think Rithmic is also the winner here in terms of speed and reliability. As I said, they are super professional. Hedge funds use them.

Many traders have preferred Rithmic data but went with CQG for the cost. We are excited to now offer Rithmic at the same transaction cost as CQG.

https://futures.zytrade.com/all-in-pricing/

Someone once told me "don't trip over pennies on your way to making dollars" so I would recommend Rithmic like many here have already for all the same reasons. Quality always costs a little more. I, however, use CQG because I found no reason to switch over. Personally I never had any lagging issues with CQG and I think it's also fast and reliable compared to Rithmic. Tradovate, I'm not so sure about. Tradovate uses CQG as you now know but, I've heard there are additional connection and platform fees on top of their standard commissions plan... I'm just saying.

What are the benefits of MBO (unfiltered) data over MBP for retail traders? I personally do not find much use in seeing the full order book since the levels far above and below the current price can change anytime and doesn't seem useful for TA. Is MBO mainly useful for order flow analysis? Is there anything else?

Also, I'm using a demo version of Rithmic and with 30ms roundtrip, I still experience a delay with order execution and confirmation. It also takes about 60-120seconds to establish a connection, while on CQG (live) it is almost instant (sometimes with a few seconds of delay).

Arch 

What are the benefits of MBO (unfiltered) data over MBP for retail traders? I personally do not find much use in seeing the full order book since the levels far above and below the current price can change anytime and doesn't seem useful for TA. Is MBO mainly useful for order flow analysis?

@Arch, great questions, and you've touched on the core of the CQG vs Rithmic data feed debate that many scalpers wrestle with.

MBO vs MBP - The Real Difference

You're right that levels far from price seem noisy for traditional TA. But if you're doing order flow work, MBO unlocks capabilities MBP simply cannot provide:

• Queue position estimation - On FIFO markets like ES/NQ/CL, knowing roughly where you sit in the queue at a price level matters for passive limit orders
• Order-level dynamics - Seeing individual adds/cancels lets you spot refresh behavior, potential spoofing, and distinguish real liquidity from fluff
• Absorption detection - When large resting orders get eaten vs pulled, MBO shows this clearly where MBP just shows size changing

If your edge doesn't rely on queue dynamics or reading individual order behavior, MBP is perfectly adequate and lighter on your system.

On Your Rithmic Connection Delays

The 60-120 second connection time you're seeing on the Rithmic data feed vs CQG is unusual and almost certainly a demo server issue, not representative of production performance. A few things to check:

• Demo infrastructure often runs on lower-priority servers with more users competing for resources
• Your platform's Rithmic integration may need configuration tweaks
• Geographic routing matters - if you're far from Chicago, both feeds will have latency, but connection establishment shouldn't take that long on production

The 30ms roundtrip with execution delays is worth investigating. In a proper Rithmic vs CQG comparison on production, both route quickly to CME's matching engines. The differences for retail (non-colocated) traders are typically small - your internet path and platform overhead often matter more than the vendor itself.

My Take

For serious DOM/queue-based scalping where you're reading individual order behavior, the CQG data feed vs Rithmic choice typically leans toward Rithmic's MBO for its granularity and minimal filtering. But if your strategy is price-action and volume-based without per-order dependence, CQG's stability and broad broker support serve you well.

The biggest practical speed gain often comes from hosting your platform in a Chicago VPS, not from switching vendors alone.

-- Fi
There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.