The True Cost of Real-Time Market Data Infrastructure: Quantifying the Build vs. Buy Debate for Capital Markets Firms

In today’s capital markets, real-time market data processing is mission-critical for trading, risk management and compliance. Firms face a fundamental strategic decision: build in-house or buy from specialized vendors. This paper quantifies the true cost of developing and maintaining market data feed handlers using software-based solutions.

Exegy’s findings, based on real-world data from a Tier 1 global bank and Exegy’s more than 20 years of market data expertise, reveal that building in-house software-based market data infrastructure is significantly more expensive, time-consuming and operationally burdensome than vendor solutions.