I Priced Out a 0DTE Gamma Tool Before Writing Code

I was going to build a cheaper SpotGamma. The reasoning felt sound: SpotGamma runs $67–299 a month, the average new options account holds about $4,200, and 2.1% of your account per month is not a price most of those traders can pay. So there ought to be room underneath at $15–19.

I did not write any code. Here is what I checked first, and why the idea did not survive it.

The floor is already free

GammaLens gives away, at no charge, roughly what I had sketched as version one:

• Daily refresh, 9:45 ET
• Fifty-plus tickers
• Gamma flip, call walls, put walls
• Dealer concentration
• Sector-level gamma aggregation across eleven sectors
• An earnings-plus-gamma view

I had planned a daily-refresh product. That is the same cadence, with broader coverage than a first version of mine would have had.

The tier above is being taken too

TanukiTrade is launching an options analytics API: 250-plus symbols, 0DTE boxes, historical replay, TradingView indicators, a Discord, a REST API, an MCP server. From $49.90 a month.

So the space between free and SpotGamma is not empty. It has a free incumbent below and a well-equipped entrant above.

Then the fee schedule

This is the part I would have discovered late and expensively. Several vendor blogs say delayed options data is free to redistribute. The OPRA fee schedule itself says otherwise:

Redistribution Fee: Monthly fee payable by every vendor that redistributes OPRA Data to any person, whether on a current or delayed basis, except that this fee does not apply to a Vendor whose redistribution of OPRA Data is limited solely to "historical" OPRA Data.

$1,500; $650 (Query service only)

Delayed data does not escape the fee. Only historical-only redistribution does.

Per-user display fees and non-display fees genuinely are waived for delayed and historical data — that part of the folklore is right. But the fixed redistribution line is not waived, and it does not scale down for a small operator.

At the best case of $650 a month, a $15 product needs roughly forty-three paying subscribers just to cover data. Against a free competitor that is currently better than my version one.

What I still think is true

The demand is real. 0DTE is about 65% of SPX volume now, up from 22% in 2022. Average daily 0DTE volume is around 3.1 million contracts, up 48% year over year. The pattern day trader rule was repealed in June 2026, which puts far more small accounts into same-day trading.

None of that is in doubt. The market exists. I just do not have a way into it that survives contact with the fee schedule and the free tier.

What I do not know

• Whether the "historical only" exemption would cover a product built strictly on the prior session's close. The wording suggests it might. I did not pursue it, because the competitive problem was already fatal and there was no point resolving the cheaper question second.
• Whether GammaLens is sustainable. A free product with real infrastructure costs has to be funded somehow. If it changes, this analysis changes.

An afternoon of reading cost me nothing. Building first would have cost months.

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This is a record of my own research, not investment advice or a recommendation of any product.