For most of retail trading’s history, market data came from one of two places. The broker showed some for free, and serious traders bought more elsewhere and looked at it on a second screen. Robinhood’s Agents launch on 29 September 2026 added a third place: a store inside the broker’s app.

What launched

The store is called Agent Apps. Outside firms sell premium data and tools there, to plug into agents that run inside Robinhood. By our write-up of the launch, subscriptions began at $5 a month. The top of the range was $30. Robinhood bills them. The marketplace is curated, and there is no public listing form. Robinhood Agents, explained has the rest.

Data inside the broker

The appeal is distance. The data is where the agent is, and the agent is where the order is. Nothing has to be connected or configured. For a trader who wants one app, that is a real convenience.

The limit is the shelf. Inside Robinhood, an agent’s data is whatever the marketplace sells. Robinhood’s documentation does not describe its own agents calling out to a third-party connector.

Data you bring yourself

The other route runs outside the app. Robinhood operates a trading connector that agents built elsewhere can reach. A trader using their own AI app can attach that connector for action and any data connector they choose for reading. Pairing a market-data connector with your broker describes that arrangement.

This takes a little setup. In exchange, the trader picks the sources, and the reading side and the acting side stay separate.

Four checks for any data you pay for

Where the data is sold matters less than what it is. First, what does it measure. A label such as flow or sentiment can cover very different things. Second, how old is each number when it reaches you, and does the product say. Third, where does it come from: measured directly, or passed along from another source. Fourth, what happens when it stops. A feed that goes quiet without saying so reads as a quiet market.

How to tell whether market data is stale goes further on the second and fourth.

What not to assume

A place on a curated shelf says a provider was admitted. It does not tell a buyer what a given number means or how fresh it is. Those answers come from the provider’s own documentation. The same holds for data bought anywhere else.

Where NoVo sits

NoVo’s server at https://novo-options.trade/api/mcp speaks the Model Context Protocol, so any MCP client can connect to it. Many tools are free and need no key. Every reading carries as_of, age_seconds and as_of_kind. See the MCP & API for the list.