Is it legal to rebuild Ortex (short interest analytics) from public data?

Facts and public-domain government data are not copyrightable, but there are real traps here: None on the public layer This is research, not legal advice.

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Ortex (short interest analytics): what you're actually paying for

Q: Is there a cheap alternative to Ortex (short interest analytics)?

Not really — Ortex (short interest analytics)'s moat is proprietary data that does not exist in public records, so "free alternatives" cannot replicate it. Real-time short-interest ESTIMATES built from paid securities-lending data feeds. The free public record (FINRA/exchange short interest) is twice-monthly and lagged — the real-time layer is genuinely proprietary.

No — the moat is real proprietary data

Short answer: there is no true free alternative to Ortex (short interest analytics) ($39–$500+/mo), and this page explains why honestly. Real-time short-interest ESTIMATES built from paid securities-lending data feeds. The free public record (FINRA/exchange short interest) is twice-monthly and lagged — the real-time layer is genuinely proprietary.

The free public data underneath

Source	License	Access
FINRA/exchange short-interest reports	public	twice-monthly, lagged — a different (slower) product

Rebuild recipe

The lagged public layer is rebuildable and cheap; the real-time estimate layer is not. In cheap-retail categories like this, the agent-native angle (per-call, no seat) is the edge — not price

DIY difficulty: low for the lagged layer; the real-time layer requires the same paid feeds

The price math

public-layer lookups at $0.05–0.10; do not promise real-time

Licensing and legal traps

None on the public layer

Our coverage: AlphaPulse / FilingsPulse (public short-interest layer)

Decompose any data product programmatically: GET https://pulse.theaslangroupllc.com/api/unbundle?product=Ortex — $1.00 per call via x402. 22 products decomposed; honest misses for everything else.

Research as of 2026-07-06 by The Aslan Group LLC (info@theaslangroupllc.com). Product names are used nominatively to identify the products analyzed; all trademarks belong to their owners. Pricing is as publicly reported or contract-disclosed at research time and may change. This is research for build-vs-buy evaluation, not legal advice — verify licenses against the primary source before building.