Real Time and Delayed on Your Plan
Which surfaces run on real-time data and which run delayed depends on the products held. This is what the delay affects and what it does not.
MadStockAlerts Research · Updated August 28, 2026
What to take away
- The Market Dashboard, Scanner and Charting each have a real-time and a delayed variant.
- Which one renders is decided by the products on the account.
- Heatmap and Sectors are the same for every paid product.
- 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 Stock Alerts + Tools plan.
How the split works
Three surfaces exist in two variants. Premium Stock Analysis Tools and Premium Membership get the real-time version of the Market Dashboard, the Scanner and Charting. Premium Stock Alerts gets the delayed version of the same three.
The tab 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 nav does not hide anything: there is nothing to unlock, only a feed to upgrade.
What is the same for everyone
- The Heatmap and Market Sectors, which are on every paid product.
- The news wire itself, which is identical for every member.
- 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. A member on a delayed feed sees exactly the same detection results as a member on a real-time one.
Where it is labelled
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.