Where do prop firms get their price data?

The source of prices matters because every rule decision is made against them. A daily loss limit is crossed at a specific price, a stop loss fills at a specific price, and a profit target is reached at a specific price. If the feed is unreliable, every one of those decisions becomes a potential dispute.

The main sources

• Platform feeds: platforms such as cTrader, MetaTrader or Match-Trader provide prices from their connected brokers or liquidity.
• Brokers and liquidity providers: a direct feed under a commercial agreement.
• Market data vendors: aggregated prices, sometimes with historical data included.
• Exchanges: for futures, licensed real-time data, with fees that depend on use.

What to check before choosing

• Coverage: every instrument you plan to offer, with sensible trading hours.
• Spreads: raw market spreads, or spreads widened by a markup.
• Continuity: gaps and freezes cause false breaches and missed stops.
• History: enough past data for traders to analyse on the chart.
• Licence: whether the data may be used to run simulated accounts.

A common mistake

Founders sometimes accept a feed with a hidden markup because the platform price looked low. Traders notice quickly that spreads are wider than at their own broker, and it becomes a reason to choose a competitor.

PropExecutor takes prices from a live cTrader feed at raw spreads and uses those same prices for the terminal, the fills and the rule engine. Charts for forex and metals carry history back to 2000, and Bitcoin back to 2015, so traders have real context on every timeframe.