FactSet cost: FactSet pricing, FactSet subscription cost per user, and FactSet cost per year from its own SEC filings
Every page that ranks for this search quotes a per-seat figure it cannot check, because FactSet publishes no rate card. There is one thing FactSet cannot decline to publish. It is a listed company, so it files its total subscription value and its user count every quarter, and those two numbers put a hard ceiling on what the average seat can be.
- 1 THESIS
- 2 EVIDENCE
- 3 BACKTEST
- 4 RISK
- 5 VERDICT
02 EVIDENCE · FUNDAMENTALS
04 RISK · IN PLAIN ENGLISH
Sample scenarios, not a live backtest of what you typed. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Educational analysis only, not financial advice.
In short
FactSet does not publish a price. Its own page titled FactSet Pricing, which ranks on the first page for this search, carries no dollar figure at all. FactSet is a public company, though, and that bounds the answer in a way no other terminal vendor can be bounded. In the 10-Q for the quarter ended May 31, 2026, FactSet reported Annual Subscription Value of $2,484.3 million, 9,130 clients and 247,766 users. Divide the first by the third and the average FactSet user accounts for $10,027 of subscription value a year, about $836 a month. Read that as a ceiling rather than a seat price, because ASV also covers data feeds, CGS and enterprise solutions that are attached to no named user, which pushes the figure up. It still sits below the $12,000 a year most pages quote as FactSet entry pricing, and well below the $14,000 to $22,000 and $24,000 to $50,000 figures that circulate. Run the same arithmetic back three years and the average is falling: $11,447 in fiscal 2023, $10,136 in fiscal 2025, $10,027 in May 2026, because users are growing 12.4% a year while ASV grows 6.4%. AgentTrading is not a FactSet competitor. It is a research and backtesting bench starting at $19 a month, with no execution, no brokerage connection and no personalized advice.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
SIDE BY SIDE - PRICING CHECKED SEPTEMBER 11, 2026
What FactSet sells, what the seat-priced alternatives cost, and which of them will tell you a number before a sales call
FactSet is not one product with one price, which is the main reason the public figures scatter. The first two cards are the two shapes FactSet actually sells. The rest are the platforms a firm weighs against it, sorted by one test that matters more than the sticker: whether you can find out what it costs without booking a call.
| Tool | Best for | Price (September 11, 2026) | The honest limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| FactSet Workstation | An analyst who works inside one application all day: company fundamentals, estimates, screening, charting and Excel models | Not published. Vendr's live buyer guide shows a median of $25,160 a year with a range of $4,200 to $28,179, last updated February 2026 | Modular. The workstation is a base, and estimates, news, portfolio analytics, risk models, exchange feeds and API access are each licensed on top of it. |
| FactSet data feeds, APIs and CGS | A quant or engineering team that wants the data inside its own systems rather than inside a vendor application | Not published, and quoted per data set and per use case rather than per person | This is the part of ASV that sits behind no named user, which is exactly why dividing total ASV by user count overstates the average workstation. |
| Bloomberg Terminal | Real-time markets, fixed income analytics and the messaging network, none of which has a real substitute | Not published. Roughly $24,000 to $32,000 a seat a year by third-party reports, which is about $2,000 to $2,665 a month | Bloomberg is privately held and files nothing, so unlike FactSet there is no audited figure anywhere to check those third-party numbers against. |
| S&P Capital IQ Pro | Valuation, banking and corporate finance teams whose work is company, credit and transaction data rather than live markets | Not published. Vendr reports a median contract of $51,672 a year across 56 purchases, from $13,500 to $215,000 | Sold per seat and negotiated per firm, so it carries the same opacity as FactSet without the listed-company filings to bound it. |
| Koyfin Advisor Core | A small firm whose FactSet use is research, screening, macro and client reporting rather than analytics and feeds | $209 a month billed annually, which is $2,508 a year. Advisor Pro is $299 a month. Re-read at source September 10, 2026 | No backtesting at any tier, no real-time depth of book, no fixed income analytics at FactSet coverage, and no Excel add-in of that depth. |
| TIKR Ultimate | Global fundamentals, estimates and earnings call transcripts at the lowest published price in this category | $79.95 a month billed annually, $119.95 month to month. Read at source September 6, 2026 | No portfolio analytics, no risk models, no deal database, and nothing resembling a FactSet data pipeline into your own systems. |
| AgentTrading | Testing whether a specific, stateable rule has actually worked, which is not what a FactSet seat is bought for | Starter $19 a month | Not a market data platform: no real-time quotes, no estimates database, no portfolio analytics, no risk models, no news, no Excel add-in. |
Prices are the vendors' public list prices, checked September 11, 2026, and vendors change them. Verify current pricing and capabilities with each vendor before you buy.
FactSet Workstation
An analyst who works inside one application all day: company fundamentals, estimates, screening, charting and Excel models
This is what people mean by a FactSet seat, and it is the reason two firms with the same headcount quote out thousands of dollars apart. The base does not include the pieces most teams end up needing. Real-time exchange data carries its own fees, set by the exchanges rather than by FactSet, and those follow the same professional and non-professional distinction every market data vendor applies. A useful discipline before the call is to write down the four or five data sets you would actually open every day, because the quote is built from that list rather than from a tier you pick off a page. FactSet's filings say the majority of client contracts run one year, and that in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 enterprise renewals extended in length by 30% on average, so longer terms are what the sales side is pushing for.
FactSet data feeds, APIs and CGS
A quant or engineering team that wants the data inside its own systems rather than inside a vendor application
FactSet sells content the same way it sells workstations, by negotiation, but on a different unit. Feeds, the API and CUSIP Global Services are licensed against data sets and permitted uses, so headcount is not the driver and a two-person shop can spend more here than a twenty-person shop does on seats. Two practical notes. First, redistribution rights are usually the expensive clause, so be explicit about whether the data will reach clients or only your own screens. Second, a feed is not a product until it is loaded. Firms that take this route usually discover that the vendor chain is an integration project before a single model runs, and that the cost of moving and reconciling the data lands on their own engineers rather than on the invoice.
Bloomberg Terminal
Real-time markets, fixed income analytics and the messaging network, none of which has a real substitute
This is the comparison most FactSet buyers are really running, and it is the one where the evidence quality differs most. FactSet's numbers can be bounded from SEC filings. Bloomberg's cannot be bounded at all, which is why the published figures for a Terminal disagree by around $8,000 a seat and nobody can settle it. Bloomberg also counts licenses on two different units, per person for Bloomberg Anywhere and per machine for an Open Terminal, so the number of licenses a team needs depends on how its people work rather than on headcount alone. On the rate itself, a Terminal seat runs roughly two and a half to three times FactSet's average subscription value per user.
S&P Capital IQ Pro
Valuation, banking and corporate finance teams whose work is company, credit and transaction data rather than live markets
S&P Global reports Market Intelligence as a division inside a much larger company, so there is no Capital IQ ASV and no Capital IQ user count to divide. The nearest thing to a per-user figure comes from five real contracts published by a competitor, which work out between about $1,500 and $18,750 per user depending on firm type and seat count, with the three smallest firms landing between $7,875 and $18,750. Against FactSet, the split is roughly this: Capital IQ is stronger on private companies, credit and deal comparables, FactSet is stronger on portfolio analytics, risk models and the Excel and API pipeline into a firm's own models.
Koyfin Advisor Core
A small firm whose FactSet use is research, screening, macro and client reporting rather than analytics and feeds
Included because it is the cheapest platform on this page that publishes every tier on a public page, on both billing terms, without a call. At $2,508 a year it costs about a quarter of FactSet's average subscription value per user. The trade is coverage and depth, and the honest version is that Koyfin replaces the screens a generalist analyst opens, not the analytics a portfolio team runs. Firms registered as advisers should note that the advisor features start at Advisor Core rather than at the $39 Plus tier most roundups quote, which is the single most common pricing error made about this vendor.
TIKR Ultimate
Global fundamentals, estimates and earnings call transcripts at the lowest published price in this category
Worth knowing about because it prices the specific thing many FactSet buyers actually open first, which is company financials with history and consensus estimates attached. At $959 a year it is under a tenth of FactSet's average subscription value per user. TIKR is also the only vendor we have found whose annual discount scales with the tier rather than being flat, at 39%, 45% and 50% across Plus, Pro and Ultimate, so the bigger the plan the more the annual term saves. It is a research tool and not an institutional platform, and it does not pretend otherwise.
AgentTrading
Testing whether a specific, stateable rule has actually worked, which is not what a FactSet seat is bought for
The disqualifying facts go first, because they rule us out for nearly everyone pricing FactSet. We are not a terminal. What it does is narrow and specific. You state a thesis in plain English, it restates that as an explicit rule and shows you the rule before anything runs, then tests it across 20-plus years of split and dividend adjusted daily data with a 0.1% cost per trade charged by default, plots the result against buy and hold, and stamps a verdict that includes UNDERPERFORMED when the idea loses. It runs in a browser with no license to count per person or per machine. Research and analysis only: no execution, no brokerage connection, no personalized advice.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
THE ONE PRICE A TERMINAL VENDOR CANNOT DECLINE TO PUBLISH
FactSet's reported subscription value, clients and users, and the price per user each period implies
The first four columns are FactSet's own figures, taken from its 10-K and 10-Q filings with the SEC. The last two are arithmetic on those figures and nothing else. Read the per-user column as a ceiling on the average seat, not as a rate card: ASV includes data feeds, CGS and enterprise solutions that no named user sits behind, so the true average workstation is lower than the number in that column.
| Period | ASV as FactSet reports it | Clients (ASV of $10,000 and above) | Users | ASV per user, derived | ASV per client, derived |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiscal 2023, at August 31, 2023 | $2,174.6 million, reported as ASV plus professional services and including $22.7 million of professional services | 7,921 | 189,972 | $11,447 a year, $954 a month | $274,536 |
| Fiscal 2024, at August 31, 2024 | $2,276.0 million, reported as ASV plus professional services and including $18.3 million of professional services | 8,217 | 216,381 | $10,518 a year, $877 a month | $276,987 |
| Third quarter fiscal 2025, at May 31, 2025 | $2,335.1 million | 8,811 | 220,496 | $10,590 a year, $883 a month | $265,021 |
| Fiscal 2025, at August 31, 2025 | $2,405.6 million. From fiscal 2025 FactSet reports Organic ASV rather than Organic ASV plus professional services | 8,996 | 237,324 | $10,136 a year, $845 a month | $267,408 |
| Third quarter fiscal 2026, at May 31, 2026, the most recent reported period | $2,484.3 million, with Organic ASV of $2,485.6 million, up 7.1% year over year | 9,130, up 3.6% year over year | 247,766, up 12.4% year over year | $10,027 a year, $836 a month | $272,103 |
| AgentTrading, this site, for comparison | Starter $19 a month. | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Three things come out of this table that no page quoting a FactSet seat price mentions. The first is the ceiling. If the average user accounted for $12,000, FactSet would be reporting roughly $2,973 million of ASV at its May 2026 user count, and it reported $2,484.3 million. The commonly repeated $12,000 entry figure is above FactSet's own average, which does not make it wrong for a loaded workstation but does tell you most FactSet users are not on one. The second is the direction. Users grew 12.4% in the year to May 2026 while ASV grew 6.4%, so the average keeps falling, and FactSet names wealth management users as the growth driver in quarter after quarter. Those are cheaper seats than an institutional workstation, and they are diluting the average. The third is the gap between the average client and the numbers procurement sites publish. FactSet's average client holds $272,103 of ASV across about 27 users. Vendr's median FactSet contract is $25,160. That median is roughly a tenth of FactSet's average client, which means the procurement medians are not describing FactSet's business at all. They are describing its small end, which is exactly where a boutique firm sits, so they are the right reference point for a small buyer and the wrong one for anybody trying to describe what FactSet costs in general.
Sources: FactSet Research Systems Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended May 31, 2026 and Form 10-K for fiscal 2025, 2024 and 2023, filed with the SEC under CIK 0001013237 and read at sec.gov on September 11, 2026; the Q3 fiscal 2026 earnings release filed on Form 8-K. The client count is FactSet's own and its filings footnote it as including clients with ASV of $10,000 and above, so customers below that line exist and are not counted. ASV is defined by FactSet as the forward-looking revenues for the next 12 months from all subscription services currently supplied to clients. The per-user and per-client columns are our arithmetic on FactSet's reported figures, not figures FactSet publishes, and FactSet discloses no average or typical contract value anywhere in these filings. None of this is a quote, and a price FactSet gives you supersedes everything here. Vendr figures read on vendr.com on September 11, 2026. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
WHAT YOU GET - FACTSET COST
FactSet cost, run on the bench
The one number FactSet is required to report
FactSet publishes no rate card, but as a listed company it files Annual Subscription Value, client count and user count every quarter. At May 31, 2026 those were $2,484.3 million, 9,130 clients and 247,766 users, which puts the average user at $10,027 of subscription value a year. Read it as a ceiling on the average seat, not a price, because ASV also covers feeds and enterprise solutions that no named user sits behind. It is the only checkable bound on any terminal price in this category.
Why the published FactSet figures disagree, traced to source
Vendr's live buyer guide shows a median of $25,160 and a range of $4,200 to $28,179, last updated February 2026. CostBench publishes a median of $27,500 from six verified purchases, last verified June 9, 2026, and in the same breath attributes a range of roughly $4,000 to $50,000 per user to Vendr. Vendr's own live page does not carry a $50,000 figure anywhere. That is the normal fate of a price with no vendor rate card behind it: a number gets copied, attributed, and then nothing forces anyone to re-read the source.
The only dollar figure FactSet attaches to a subscription
It is not on a pricing page. It is a footnote under a table in the 10-Q, and it reads that the client count includes clients with ASV of $10,000 and above. That is a reporting threshold rather than a minimum you must spend, so it does not tell you a floor. What it does tell you is where FactSet itself draws the line between a client and a small account, and it is the only dollar amount the company puts next to the word client in any public document.
Where we lose, stated plainly
AgentTrading is not a FactSet competitor and does not replace a workstation, a feed or a risk model. What we do is test one idea you can state in a sentence against 20-plus years of adjusted daily history, with costs charged, and tell you honestly whether it held up.
HOW IT WORKS - 4 STEPS
From a sentence to a stamped verdict
Decide whether you are buying seats or data
These are two different quotes with two different units. A workstation is priced against people and the data sets they open. A feed, the API or CUSIP Global Services is priced against data sets and permitted uses, and headcount barely enters it. Firms that mix the two questions on one call get a bundled number they cannot compare with anything. Ask for them separately, and ask explicitly whether redistribution to clients is included, because that clause moves the price more than most line items.
Anchor to the small end of the book, not to the average
FactSet's average client holds $272,103 of subscription value across about 27 users. If you are buying two to five seats you are nowhere near that, and the average tells you nothing useful. Vendr's median contract of $25,160 is roughly a tenth of FactSet's average client, which makes it a far better anchor for a boutique. Walk in expecting a number in the low tens of thousands for a small multi-seat deal and treat anything at the $4,200 end as a stripped configuration.
Ask for the per-user rate at your exact seat count, and the term
Every negotiated platform prices lower per seat as the count rises, so a rate quoted at ten seats is not the rate at three. Ask what the per-user price becomes at the exact number you plan to hold, what it becomes if you add one, and what the renewal uplift is. FactSet's filings say the majority of client contracts run one year and that enterprise renewals extended in length by 30% on average in the quarter to May 31, 2026, so expect a push toward multi-year terms and price the flexibility you are giving up.
Price what the seat does not cover before you sign
A workstation answers what is true about a company now and what the estimates say. It does not tell you whether a rule you want to follow has worked across two decades, and it does not turn a client's scanned financials into data. Both of those are separate line items in practice, and firms routinely discover them after the contract is signed. List them, cost them, and then decide how much of the research budget the seat should take.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
On the same bench
The other seat-priced platform with no rate card is Bloomberg, and the public figures for it disagree by about $8,000 a seat for reasons set out in Bloomberg Terminal cost. Bloomberg also counts licenses two different ways, per person for remote access and per machine for a shared desk, which is worked through on Bloomberg Anywhere subscription cost, and the advisor-eligible replacements are priced on Bloomberg Terminal alternative for financial advisors. On the deal and valuation side, Capital IQ cost reconstructs a per-user figure from real contracts, and YCharts pricing does the same for a vendor that publishes a feature matrix and no number. Koyfin pricing shows what it looks like when a vendor puts every tier on a public page. The same filings arithmetic works on one other vendor, and with a cleaner denominator: Morningstar Direct cost divides Morningstar's reported Direct revenue by its reported Direct license count and runs it back to the year Morningstar last printed a rate card. If the choice is between FactSet and Capital IQ rather than FactSet and Bloomberg, Capital IQ vs FactSet cost per seat for small firms puts the five public Capital IQ contracts next to the audited FactSet average. LSEG can be bounded from its own reports too, and LSEG Workspace pricing finds an average of about $7,500 a user, while FactSet competitors and what each costs per seat lines every alternative up on one table. If the reason you are pricing FactSet is research output rather than market data, start at investment research software and AI equity research, and the testing step none of these platforms covers is on backtesting software for financial advisors. The whole category, from $19 a month to a six-figure contract, is sorted in how much stock analysis software costs.
QUESTIONS - ASKED AND ANSWERED
FactSet cost: the common questions
How much does FactSet cost?
FactSet publishes no price and quotes every customer individually. The best public evidence is Vendr's buyer guide, which shows a median contract of $25,160 a year with a range of $4,200 to $28,179, and CostBench, which reports a median of $27,500 from six verified purchases. FactSet's own SEC filings bound the average: $2,484.3 million of subscription value across 247,766 users at May 31, 2026 is $10,027 per user a year.
How much does a FactSet subscription cost per year?
For a small firm, plan on the low tens of thousands a year for a multi-seat deal, because Vendr's median FactSet contract is $25,160 a year and its range runs from $4,200 to $28,179. A single stripped configuration can sit near the bottom of that range. Large institutions are in a different bracket entirely: FactSet's average client holds $272,103 of annual subscription value across roughly 27 users.
How much does FactSet cost per user?
FactSet does not publish a per-user rate. Its own filings put a ceiling on the average: $2,484.3 million of Annual Subscription Value divided by 247,766 users is $10,027 a year, about $836 a month, at May 31, 2026. That is an upper bound rather than a seat price, because ASV also includes data feeds and enterprise solutions that no named user sits behind, so the average workstation is lower than $10,027.
Does FactSet publish its prices?
No. FactSet runs a page titled FactSet Pricing at factset.com/factset-pricing, and the rendered page carries no dollar sign and no price. Its headline is Flexible Tools, Tailored Pricing, and the only numbers on it are 100 and 40, counting third-party and proprietary data sets. The single instruction on the page is to contact the sales team to discuss the cost of FactSet, under a button reading Contact Us For A Personalized Proposal. Checked September 11, 2026.
How much does FactSet cost per month?
There is no month-to-month FactSet plan, so any monthly figure is an annual contract divided by twelve. On Vendr's median of $25,160 a year that is about $2,097 a month for the whole contract. On FactSet's own reported figures, the average user accounts for about $836 a month of subscription value. FactSet's filings say the majority of client contracts run one year, so the monthly number is an obligation rather than a plan you can cancel.
Is FactSet cheaper than Bloomberg?
On the evidence available, yes, by roughly two and a half to three times per seat. Bloomberg publishes nothing and third-party reports put a Terminal at $24,000 to $32,000 a seat a year, while FactSet's own filings cap its average user at $10,027 of subscription value. The more useful difference is evidentiary. FactSet is listed and files ASV and user counts, so its average can be checked. Bloomberg is private and files nothing, so no figure for it can be checked at all.
Why do FactSet price estimates disagree so much?
Three reasons. The sources measure different things: Vendr reports whole contracts, other pages report a per-seat configuration, and FactSet's own filings report a company-wide average. The product is modular, so a workstation with estimates, analytics, exchange feeds and API access is a different purchase from a bare one. And figures get copied without being re-read, which is how a range of roughly $4,000 to $50,000 per user comes to be attributed to a Vendr page that does not carry a $50,000 figure.
Does FactSet have a free trial?
There is no self-service sign-up and no published plan to start, so there is nothing to trial without talking to FactSet. The vendor's pricing page has one action on it, which is to contact sales for a personalized proposal. If you want to evaluate it, ask on that call for trial access to the specific data sets you would open every day, since those are what the quote is built from and a demo on a different configuration will not tell you much.
What does FactSet charge extra for?
The workstation is a base and the useful pieces are licensed on top: estimates, news, portfolio analytics, risk models, API access and exchange data feeds. Real-time exchange fees are set by the exchanges rather than by FactSet and follow the professional and non-professional distinction every market data vendor applies, which means a registered firm pays the professional rate. CostBench documents market data and exchange fees as the one hidden cost it has verified for FactSet.
Is FactSet worth it for a small investment firm?
It depends which part you would use. If the work is portfolio analytics, risk models, estimates at scale or a data pipeline into your own models, there is no cheap substitute and the seat earns its money. If the work is company financials, screening, charting and client reporting, platforms that publish their prices cover that for $2,508 to $959 a year, which is a quarter to a tenth of FactSet's average subscription value per user. Price the specific screens you open daily, not the platform.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
Your next idea deserves a verdict, not a hunch.
Bring a thesis or a ticker. AgentTrading restates the rule, shows the evidence, runs 20+ years of history, and stamps an honest verdict. You decide.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.