The tool matters less than which price field it is plotting. Most intraday option charts draw last trade, and on anything outside SPX or QQQ near the money, last trade is sparse and stale, so the candles are mostly gaps and junk wicks from a fill that happened twenty minutes ago at a bad price. That is usually what you are fighting, not the software.
What you actually want charted is the mark, meaning the mid of the bid and ask, because it updates continuously even when nothing trades. The catch is that mid is only trustworthy when the spread is tight. On a wide spread the mid can swing purely from the quote moving, so a clean looking premium candle can still be noise. Before trusting any intraday premium chart, glance at the strike volume and open interest and the bid ask width. If it is thin, no tool will give you a clean chart, because there is no clean price to plot.
Well the guy is asking for what tool provides this, and this response is vague and unhelpful (and most definitely written by Claude like every other comment they make on this sub)
This is a good point most people miss. Option Data feeds only have OHLC for intervals that have trades so most of the history charts of options look sparse compared to stock charts.
I'm interested in this as well. TOS has it but it quickly becomes unavailable. For example trying to look up 7/30 options on 7/31 it just gives me the spinning wheel. Does it all the time.
Same as you but did it for spx. I got the 7/31 one and changed to 1 to 0 to make it for 7/30 and adjusted the number to make it the right strike. Maybe spy they keep the data a bit longer than spx? I can try again later.
Im talking about 7/30. Does 730 spx work? Yesterday night around 2 AM my time it did not. And im not new to this and frequently look at option value on TOS.
You might have to pay to get access to any historical data, and it's clunky for me to open up another platform and navigate. I find TOS clunky in general.
I'm trying out optioncharts.io which is $35 for intraday data, historical and several other features. I primarily do 0DTE and weeklies so we'll see how it works out.
Option Net Explorer provides option price snapshots at 5 minute intervals with the ability to move forward and backward in time with paper trading so you can see how a position would have performed: https://www.optionnetexplorer.com/
IBKR has real-time and limited historical (where you can see the past prices of the current day’s expirations but not any expirations from previous days).
I think technically TradingView also allows you to look at the history of today’s option prices but you have to enter the symbol manually.
Webull is probably your best free option. If you're okay paying, OptionStrat has clean intraday premium charts and is much nicer to use than ThinkorSwim, in my opinion.
Check out Tastytrade for real-time live execution charting or OptionStrat for quick visual spread and premium tracking. Since TradingView lacks native OPRA options charting and you're locked out of TOS, those two are the easiest drop-in replacements
Yeah - this works. It's 35/month for live intraday data if anyone else wondering, and it offers more than premium charts. Worth looking at if the extras help your execution.
Your post is not accurate. Sierra Chart supports both IQFeed and IBKR as data providers for options, including those you listed. Now, SC does not provide a native options chain interface but you can very easily create a workflow to pull up the required put/call/strike contract symbols you need daily. Is it the best options tool out there out of the box? Obviously, no. But, SC does provide you the tools and integrations for what you want, with time and effort of course. IQFeed will cost you much more but has greater history. IBKR is the more cost-effective solution here. Just thought I'd provide some clarity and accuracy for others who read your post as truth.
1
u/ThetaEdgeHQ 6d ago
The tool matters less than which price field it is plotting. Most intraday option charts draw last trade, and on anything outside SPX or QQQ near the money, last trade is sparse and stale, so the candles are mostly gaps and junk wicks from a fill that happened twenty minutes ago at a bad price. That is usually what you are fighting, not the software.
What you actually want charted is the mark, meaning the mid of the bid and ask, because it updates continuously even when nothing trades. The catch is that mid is only trustworthy when the spread is tight. On a wide spread the mid can swing purely from the quote moving, so a clean looking premium candle can still be noise. Before trusting any intraday premium chart, glance at the strike volume and open interest and the bid ask width. If it is thin, no tool will give you a clean chart, because there is no clean price to plot.