How do Reamer Research and Reamer Server compare with QuantConnect?

QuantConnect is a full hosted platform: market data, a cloud IDE, backtesting on its open-source LEAN engine, and live trading through brokers it already supports. Reamer Research and Reamer Server are two libraries that run on your own machine, a research engine and an order management engine, that you build your own system around. QuantConnect runs the whole system for you. Reamer Labs supplies the two engines, and every part around them is yours.

What QuantConnect is

• A platform. Research notebooks, backtesting, optimisation and live trading in one place, run in its cloud or locally.
• LEAN, its engine, is open source (Apache 2.0), written in C# and scripted in Python or C#. The usual way to run it locally is through QuantConnect's command-line tool and Docker.
• Data included. Equities, futures, options, forex and crypto, from daily down to tick resolution depending on the tier.
• Brokers included. Live trading through supported brokers such as Interactive Brokers, Schwab and Alpaca.
• Monthly tiers, from a free plan up to an Institution tier that can run on your own premises.

How Reamer Labs differs

• Two products, not one platform. Reamer Research is the research engine. Reamer Server takes a strategy live. Each is a library with a stable C interface, licensed separately.
• Local only. After a one-time activation nothing leaves your machine: no strategy code, data or results. See Does my strategy code or data ever leave my machine?
• No data. You bring your own bars. See Does it include market data?
• Your own broker connection. Reamer Server runs your pre-trade gate on every order and sends accepted orders through a connector you write. The kit has a worked FIX 4.4 example and a paper broker. See Which brokers does Reamer Server connect to?
• A written execution specification. Reamer Research fills orders by a document that ships with the kit, and gives byte-identical output for a fixed rng_seed.
• Research and live are two engines joined by a relay. On QuantConnect the same algorithm runs in backtest and live. With Reamer Labs, reamer_relay_* sends the orders a Reamer Research strategy returns to Reamer Server, and indicators move from a bar window to running state. See What does it take to move from Reamer Research to Reamer Server?
• Narrower scope. Bars only, no options, no high-frequency or order-book strategies, Linux and macOS only (Reamer Server is Linux only).

Which to choose

• QuantConnect if you want data, brokers and hosting handled for you, need options or many asset classes, or want to start for free.
• Reamer Labs if you already have your data and broker, want each part of the system in your own hands and on your own machine, and trade systematic strategies on bars from minutes to days. See Who are Reamer Research and Reamer Server for?

Price

Reamer Research costs $1,800 per seat per year and Reamer Server $7,200, each paid once with no automatic renewal, and each with a 30-day paid trial. See pricing.