Quick answer
Public market data is enough when the decision is "what did this symbol last print, how did it change versus the prior close, and what does the daily chart look like." Licensed terminal data is the right budget when you need fundamentals that survive a citation, depth of book, filings parsed as a product, or a history your compliance team will accept in a memo. Our hosted research terminal is on the public side whenever it shows Desk. The screen layout is explained in how the web research terminal works.
Key takeaways
- Match the dataset to the sentence you need to publish, not to the prestige of the screen.
- Last, change, volume, and a daily line can come from a public chart endpoint. Trailing PE often cannot.
- A professional terminal's value is the license and the functions, not the fact that it opens in a browser.
- If a field is blank, you do not have that field. Upgrade the source or drop the claim.
- The citation rule sits in cited numbers and Desk fallback.
Who this is for
- Founders and editors deciding whether a public quote board is honest enough for a research note.
- Buyers comparing a browser workspace with a seat on a licensed terminal.
Who should skip
- Procurement teams who need a contract review. This page does not quote fees or redistribution rights.
- Readers who want a leaderboard of data vendors. We did not score vendors.
The comparison that matters
| Job | Public chart and a news tape | Licensed terminal data |
|---|---|---|
| Last price and session change for a US listing | Usually yes, with a provider and a timestamp | Yes, often with a defined entitlement |
| Daily closes for about a year | Yes when the history host answers | Yes, plus corporate actions handled under the vendor's policy |
| Trailing PE, margins, segment detail | Not on our Desk path today | The usual reason to pay |
| Level 2 or a full wire | No | Only if that seat includes it |
| A headline with a link | Yes, as a tape item, not as a wire story | Depends on the news entitlement |
| Redistribute numbers inside a product | Do not assume you may | Read the contract |
What we actually get in Desk mode
When the OpenBB lab does not answer, the board fetches a public chart. For the focus name it asks for enough daily bars to draw 1Y. For the other names it asks for a short window so the table can show a recent volume. The fields we keep are last, change percent, volume when a bar includes it, currency, provider, endpoint, and as-of. Trailing PE is copied only if that payload contains it. On 2026-10-02 the chart metadata for the default universe did not contain it, so the column was empty on purpose.
Stooq is the fallback for the history file, not a second opinion you average with Yahoo. If Yahoo returns a series, that series is the chart. If it does not, Stooq may fill history and volume. The provider label tells you which one you are looking at. Do not merge them into a private "consensus close."
The news tape is separate from the quote. A headline can mention a symbol the quote request also uses. That coincidence is not fundamental data. It does not fill PE, revenue, or guidance.
When to stay on the public board
- You are doing the morning routine: leader, laggard, one range, headlines present or not.
- You are teaching the layout of a workspace, and the numbers are examples with sources.
- You can finish the sentence without a ratio, an estimate, or a claim about who is positioned in the name.
When to leave it
- The sentence needs a multiple, a margin, or a comparison to a company's own history of those figures.
- A reader will rely on the number in a filing, a client note, or a model. Public chart metadata is the wrong archive for that.
- You need pre-market, options, or depth. The board does not have them, even when the lab is up, unless that lab is configured with a provider that sends them. Hosted Desk does not.
Company filings, not a quote widget, are the public primary source for financial statements. The SEC's EDGAR system is the US distribution point for those filings (SEC EDGAR). A terminal that parses filings is a product on top of that public record. Our board does not parse filings.
Common mistakes
| Inference | Why it fails |
|---|---|
| "The screen looks like a terminal, so the data is terminal data." | Layout and license are different. Read the source column. |
| "Empty PE means the company has no earnings." | Empty means the field was not in the payload. ETFs and stocks can both be blank here. |
| "Two public sources should be averaged." | We pick one provider per series and name it. |
| "Headlines confirm the valuation." | Headlines are titles. Valuation was never on the board. |
FAQ
Is Yahoo a licensed terminal?
No. In this product it is a public chart endpoint used as Desk fallback. Treat the numbers as delayed or revised the way any public quote can be, and keep the timestamp.
If OpenBB is online, is the data suddenly licensed?
No. OpenBB is a platform that calls providers. The entitlement is still the provider key behind the lab, not the word OpenBB. The page should still show provider and as-of.
Can I put these prices in a newsletter?
Only if you also carry the source, the time, and a clear line that the figure is a public quote, not a redistributed terminal feed. When in doubt, link the board instead of copying the table.
Sources
- Board used for the Desk description: research terminal, default universe.
- US filings distribution: SEC EDGAR.
- How blanks are displayed: cited market numbers.