Real Time and Delayed on Your Plan
Every member plan runs on real-time data; the public site runs about fifteen minutes behind. This is what the delay affects and what it does not.
MadStockAlerts Research · Updated September 23, 2026
What to Take Away
- The Market Dashboard, Scanner, Charting and the News wire each have a real-time and a delayed variant.
- Every member plan renders the real-time one; the public site renders the delayed one.
- MAD Academy reads the real-time Market Dashboard, Stock Scanner, Charting and Market News Feed, the same as every other member plan.
- Heatmap and Sectors are the same for everyone, signed in or not.
- The delay affects the right-hand edge and nothing else.
- Surfaces running on delayed data say so on the card title row.
MAD Academy Training Video · 0:45
Know Which Data You Are Looking At
Different products carry different data timeliness, and knowing which you have decides what you can safely do with it.
This lesson is part of a MAD Academy plan.
How the split works
Four surfaces exist in two variants. Every member plan gets the real-time version of the Market Dashboard, the Stock Scanner and Charting. The public site, with no account, gets the delayed version of the same surfaces, about fifteen minutes behind the market.
The News wire follows the same rule. The Market News Feed tab carries the real-time wire on every member plan, MAD Academy included, and the free news page carries the same wire at the public delay.
The page is in the same place either way and the surface is the same surface. What differs is the age of the most recent data point, which is why the free site hides nothing: there is nothing to unlock, only a feed that a paid plan brings up to date.
What is the same for everyone
- The Heatmap and Market Sectors, which read the same feed for everyone, signed in or not.
- The news wire itself, which is identical on every plan holding the Market News Feed tab; the public copy runs behind.
- Historical bars, which are the same once the period has settled.
- Filings, corporate events and institutional data, which are not real-time feeds in the first place.
The last is worth stressing. Form 13F data is six weeks old by construction and an 8-K is published when it is filed; neither has a real-time variant to be on the wrong side of.
What the delay actually affects
Delayed data is not less accurate. It is the same data, behind. A 200-day moving average, a 52-week range, a valuation multiple and a filing-based analysis are all identical on either feed. What a delayed feed cannot answer is where price is right now.
| Task | Delayed data sufficient? |
|---|---|
| Reading filings and fundamentals | Yes, entirely |
| Identifying levels and structure | Yes |
| Reviewing a setup after the close | Yes |
| Judging whether price is through a level now | No |
| Anything in the minutes around a release or the open | No |
Because the nightly setup sweep runs on completed daily bars, it is unaffected by the delay entirely. The setups playbook on the free site and the sweep inside the product are read off the same completed bars.
Where it is labeled
Surfaces running on delayed data say so on the card title row, next to the heading, so the state of the data is visible without hunting for it.
The concept article covers why delayed feeds exist at all, which is a licensing question rather than a technical one.
What a delay costs on each kind of surface
The delay is the same length everywhere and its consequences are not. Some surfaces are unaffected by construction, and being specific about which is more useful than a general statement about data quality.
| Surface | Effect of a delay |
|---|---|
| Filings, fundamentals and ownership | None. These are not market data |
| Daily and weekly charts | None after the close, and the last bar is fifteen minutes behind intraday |
| Technical readings and levels | None. They are computed from completed bars |
| Scans and rankings | Ordering can differ slightly intraday, and not after the close |
| A live quote or spread | Directly affected. This is the question a delay is about |
| Anything in the minutes around a release | Directly affected, and this is where it matters most |
Most of what the platform does falls in the first four rows. That is not an argument that the delay does not matter; it is a statement about which specific questions it touches, so the decision to upgrade can be made against a real constraint rather than a general unease.
Why a delay exists at all
The delay is not a technical constraint and it is not a product decision made here. Exchanges own their market data and license it, and real-time distribution carries per-user fees that delayed distribution does not.
- Each exchange sets its own terms, and the fees are charged per entitled user rather than per platform.
- Delayed data, conventionally fifteen minutes for US equities, is licensed on far cheaper terms.
- The distinction between a professional and a non-professional subscriber carries different fees again, which is why entitlement forms ask.
- The delayed feed carries the same prints, in the same order, released later.
This is why every platform in the market has the same split, and why the boundary sits in roughly the same place everywhere. It reflects a licensing structure rather than anything about how the data is produced or transmitted.
It also explains why historical data is not affected. Yesterday's prices are licensed differently from today's, which is why a delayed plan has a complete and current chart history and a fifteen-minute-old last bar.
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