Frequently Asked Questions

Three tiers, each with a 7-day free trial:

In short: Builder = US essentials, Quant = more US history + higher limits, Lab = global markets + unlimited API.

No separate subscription required. When you start your trial we provide $50 of AI credit for free so you can begin immediately, and you can top up the AI key later as needed. Alternatively, you can bring your own AI subscription/key if you prefer.

Yes. Without AI, you can use our API as a regular API — pull data and run things yourself. The AI layer is what lets you talk directly to the backtesting module, which knows how to run backtests and writes them for you. With AI, all you do is run the backtests or improve them through chat; without it, you build everything manually against the API.

We offer a 7-day free trial for all retail tariffs, allowing you to subscribe and request data via API without limits. For professional use, please contact sales@ivolatility.com.

In broad terms, professional usage relates to commerce or general business activity where market data is used in trading or adding other value on or behalf of businesses or entities. On the other hand, private usage refers to market data for personal use only.

We offer three retail plans:

• Builder — $79 / month — Getting started with US options backtesting + real-time data
• Quant — $199 / month — Everything in Builder, plus deeper US history and higher API limits
• Lab — $399 / month — Everything in Quant, plus global markets and unlimited API requests

For professional users, we offer tailored plans configured individually based on your needs. Both professional and non-professional users have access to the same data, but some endpoints are not available for retail plans. You can check availability here.

No — and there's no need to. Each plan includes everything from the previous tier: Quant includes everything in Builder, and Lab includes everything in Quant. Just pick the highest tier you need; you'll have full access to all the lower-tier features as well.

The IV Data Cloud Individual is a technical subscription — you don't need to do anything with it. You will never be charged for this subscription. You can simply ignore it.

You can cancel anytime in the Subscription Details section here, as long as you are subscribed to any of the retail subscriptions. For professional subscriptions, cancellation depends on the terms of the contract.

No, unfortunately, for technical reasons, you cannot use the API after cancellation, even if you still have paid time remaining. However, you can request a refund for the unused days by contacting. support@ivolatility.com

You can access all APIs immediately after signing up for a free trial.

No, programming skills are not strictly required. With IVolAI you can simply describe what you need in plain text — in any language — and the AI will generate and run the requests for you. You can also use Flashpost in VS Code or Postman to call methods directly from our documentation and get the data. Knowledge of programming languages is not mandatory.

VS Code (Visual Studio Code) is a free, widely-used code editor from Microsoft — it's the environment where the IVolAI chat and tools live. The basic configuration is included in your subscription at no extra charge — there's nothing additional to buy. Alternatively, you can use your own workspace and install the backtesting module there.

IVolAI is our Backtesting module — a set of pre-defined backtesting tasks that you don't need to code yourself. You talk to it through an AI like Claude: just describe what you want in plain English, and the AI calls the module to generate and run backtests on IVolatility historical data. The module already knows how to do (1) backtest generation (straddles, strangles, single calls/puts, spreads, earnings optimization) and (2) data navigation — what instruments, symbols, and listed options exist across regions.

Log in to your account, open VS Code, and in the upper menu select the Claude Code tab. Then just tell it what you want to test ("backtest a straddle on SPY"). That triggers /generate_backtest, and the agent walks you through a 5-layer interview before writing any code. No code is generated until all 5 layers are confirmed — this prevents silent default assumptions.

You can generate an API key directly from your Dashboard. Log in to your account and navigate to the Dashboard section to create your key. You can check out other methods of authorization here.

Yes, you can generate multiple API keys from your Dashboard. However:

• For personal use, all API keys must be used by a single user.

• For professional use, access is determined by your contract. Contact our support@ivolatility.com for further assistance.

Yes. IVolAI is an extension of the IVolatility API — to run backtests, it needs access to data through the API. You'll need an active API subscription and an API key for IVolAI to fetch and analyze the data.

You can top up directly from your account: go to API & AI Keys and use the Add Credits to your AI Key option.

Limits for professional use are subject to agreement. For retail plans, both history depth and monthly request volume depend on the tier:

Please note that retail subscriptions are not designed for downloading all market data. Attempts to do so may lead to account suspension. For large data requests, we suggest contacting support@ivolatility.com.

A 401 or 403 error usually means the endpoint you are trying to access is not included in your current subscription plan. You can view a detailed list of endpoints available under each plan here. If you'd like to change your subscription, please contact support@ivolatility.com.

If you are unable to access an endpoint, please double-check the following details in your request:

• Ensure the date, symbol, and other parameters match the required format outlined in our documentation here.

• Verify that you have included a valid API key here.

For additional troubleshooting, please refer to our API documentation here. If you still need assistance, contact us at support@ivolatility.com. In your email, include your request with all query parameters and the response.

Or simply ask IVolAI to help — it will suggest what's wrong.

We source our options data from the Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA), ensuring accurate and reliable market information.

🇺🇸 USA · 🇪🇺 Europe · 🌏 Asia · 🇨🇦 Canada · 🌎 Latin America. Stocks, indices, futures, and ETFs. Examples: region='ASIA' for NKY (Japan), region='EUROPE' for SX5E.

Log in, open VS Code, select the Claude Code tab in the left menu, then just ask the agent directly ("which European indices have listed options?"). The agent queries the live IVol API discovery endpoints, not local files. Local MY_BACKTESTS/* and dashboard configs are past results and US-centric UI lists — not the catalog of available data.

Yes, 1-minute snapshots are available on all three retail plans — Builder, Quant, and Lab — as well as on the professional tier. Please note that this data can be very large in terms of storage and access time. If you require significant amounts of intraday data, please contact sales@ivolatility.com to learn more about FTP solutions for 1-minute snapshots.

The questions the agent asks before generating:

• Layer 1 — Entry signal: when to open a position (IV Z-Score, term structure, earnings, etc.)
• Layer 2 — Implementation: which contract to trade (strike, expiration, type)
• Layer 3 — Optimization combos: what to sweep in a parameter grid
• Layer 4 — Risk management: when to exit (stop-loss, take-profit, EOD)
• Layer 5 — Universe: which symbols

Straddles, strangles, single calls/puts, spreads, selling and buying premium (volatility), and earnings optimization. Available as either a single run or a parameter-grid sweep.

• SINGLE — one run with fixed parameters (run_backtest_notebook()).
• OPTIMIZATION — a parameter-grid sweep (optimize_parameters()) to find the best combinations (strike/expiration/signal thresholds, etc.).

The most common is the IV Z-Score with different input_mode values:

• lean — Call IV − Put IV (skew, selling straddles)
• mean — average IV, "buy the fear" (volatility spike)
• call / put — one-sided volatility signal
• iv_term — term-structure slope (backwardation)

Plus earnings signals (entry around an earnings report).

Critical timestamps:

• 9:30 — previous day's close = stop-loss reference point
• 9:31 — first bar of the earnings day; SL monitoring starts
• 16:19 — EOD exit if the stop never triggers

⚠️ Stop-loss P&L is measured from the previous day's close (9:30), not from the intraday high.

A strategy tied to company earnings reports: enter before/after the report, exit by timing or stop-loss. Useful for trading the implied-volatility spike and crush around earnings.

Your choice. After all 5 layers are confirmed, the agent asks for the format: a Jupyter notebook (one cell: imports → configs → strategy → execution) or a Python script. Dates are always in 'YYYY-MM-DD' format.

Full results are exported to CSV (trades.csv and others). You can review them in the dashboard (users_data/basic/dashboard/), which also has IV screeners and Validate Today. P&L% is computed by the framework — no need to calculate it manually.

Usually the signal is too strict, the date range is wrong, there's no data for the symbol, or it has no listed options. Just point it out to the agent — it will diagnose what went wrong and fix the config. This is a normal part of the iterative process.

The dashboard is a single-page web app (Node.js + HTML) for viewing and working with backtest results without touching code. It's where you:

• Browse backtest output and trades.csv results visually
• Run IV screeners to find candidates by volatility metrics and presets
• Use IV Lab — screener + backtest + "Validate Today" + earnings filter in one place
• Click any number/metric to get an AI explanation of what it means

Think of the chat as where you build and refine backtests, and the dashboard as where you explore, screen, and review them. You'll find it under users_data/basic/dashboard/, served as a local web app.