The short verdict

If you need the raw constituent file, the identifiers to join it, and the history to backtest against, AmericanETP is the closer fit: it sells constituent lists and fundamentals as CSV, published twice daily, archived back to July 2009, at a published subscription price. If you want ETF scores, ratings, screens and research commentary produced for you rather than files to model against, an analytics and research vendor such as ETF Global or Morningstar is the category to evaluate, and you should get their current terms directly from them.

One caveat stated up front, because it shapes everything below. The pages that currently rank for this query are educational explainers about the ETP security wrapper, not vendor documentation, so no ETF Global pricing page, product sheet or delivery specification was among the sources read for this article on 10 September 2026. Every AmericanETP figure here comes from its own materials or from pricing confirmed by a customer. Anything specific about ETF Global that is not sourced is marked unverified rather than estimated.

"ETP" is both a security classification and a company name, and the search results for this query are dominated by the former. Exchange-traded products are investment products listed and traded on national securities exchanges, a category that includes exchange-traded funds, exchange-traded commodity trusts and exchange-traded notes, according to investor.gov as read on 10 September 2026. AmericanETP is something else entirely: a data provider that sells ETF and index constituent files.

The structural distinction the ranking pages spend a thousand words on can be stated in two sentences. An ETF is a fund: investor.gov notes that ETFs are registered with the SEC as open-end investment companies or unit investment trusts, so the investor holds a claim on a pool of assets. An exchange-traded note is not a fund at all but unsecured debt of the issuing institution, which means the holder carries that issuer's credit risk alongside the performance of whatever the note tracks.

That is the whole of the wrapper question as it bears on data work. If you are building a holdings look-through, ETFs publish constituents; ETNs generally do not have constituents in the same sense, because there is no portfolio, only a contractual payoff.

The vendor comparison is the question the query actually implies, and nobody currently ranking answers it. AmericanETP was previously named MasterDATA and renamed to avoid confusion with IBM's use of the term ETP, which is part of why the brand collides with a security classification in search. The firm was founded in the 1990s, predating most of the ETF data vendors it now sits alongside.

AmericanETP vs ETF Global at a glance

The two firms sit at different points on the same supply chain. AmericanETP delivers files; ETF Global positions itself in the ETF research and analytics segment. The table below compares them on dimensions that are stable and observable rather than on numbers that go stale.

Criterion AmericanETP ETF Global
Core product Constituent lists, sector weights and a fundamentals file, delivered as CSV Publicly positioned around ETF analytics, scoring and research alongside data (verify on their own site; not sourced here)
Coverage stated publicly 3878 US and global indexes and US-traded ETFs Not published in the material read on 10 September 2026
Update cadence Twice daily: 6pm EST primary, roughly noon EST secondary Not published in the material read on 10 September 2026
Delivery shape Flat CSV files, FTP access available Unverified from sources read today
Identifiers in holdings files Includes Bloomberg FIGIs Unverified from sources read today
History Archived constituent datafiles back to July 2009 Unverified from sources read today
Published price $1500/year or $150/month individual; $2500/year or $250/month firm-wide (confirmed by customer) Not published in the material read today; request directly
Best for Teams that want to own the data and model against it Teams that want interpretation, scores and research produced for them

Read the "unverified" rows as a genuine instruction rather than a dig. They mean the claim is checkable in ten minutes on ETF Global's own site and in one email to their sales desk, and that you should do exactly that before signing anything. A vendor comparison that fabricates the other side's specifications is worse than one that admits its gaps.

Verdict on positioning: if your buying question is "what file lands on my server each night", AmericanETP answers it publicly and ETF Global you will need to ask. If your buying question is "who will score and rank the ETF universe for me", the analytics vendor is the one built for that job and AmericanETP is not competing for it.

What does each provider actually deliver?

AmericanETP delivers constituent lists for 3878 US and global indexes and US-traded ETFs, updated twice daily, with sector weights and a separate fundamentals file that carries the ETF description, leverage and constituent counts. The deliverable is a CSV you keep. ETF Global's public positioning is built around ETF analytics, scoring and research alongside data, which is a different product philosophy: an analytical layer you consume rather than a file you own.

That distinction matters more than any feature list. A constituent file is an input to your own models, and its value is measured by completeness, timeliness and how cleanly it joins to everything else you hold. A scoring or ranking product is an output of somebody else's model, and its value is measured by whether you agree with the methodology and are willing to defend it to an investment committee.

Neither is strictly better. If your research process is proprietary, buying somebody's rankings adds a layer you will end up unwinding. If you are a smaller RIA without a quant team, a well-documented scoring framework saves you from building one badly.

The shape of the file

The constituent file is the workhorse. Constituent name, identifier, weight and sector per ETF or index, refreshed on a schedule, is enough to support holdings look-through, overlap analysis, concentration reporting and index replication, which is why ETF Constituent Lists: 2026 Data Guide treats the field layout as the thing to evaluate before coverage counts.

Sector weights are worth separating out as their own criterion, because sector attribution is where classification disagreements surface. Two vendors can hold identical constituents and disagree on sector totals because they map to different schemes, a problem covered in ETF List by Sector: 2026 Classification Guide. Ask both vendors which classification they apply and whether the mapping is exposed in the file or applied silently.

The fundamentals file is the piece most buyers underweight. Leverage and constituent counts are exactly the fields that break naive screens: a levered product and its unlevered sibling look similar in a name-matched list and behave nothing alike, and a constituent count is the cheapest sanity check that a holdings file loaded completely.

Verdict on deliverables: pick AmericanETP if the file is the product you want. Pick a research and analytics provider if the interpretation is the product you want, and be honest with yourself about which one your process actually consumes.

Delivery: CSV files, FTP, and the API question

Delivery shape decides how much engineering the feed costs you after the invoice. AmericanETP publishes twice daily, with a 6pm EST primary update and a secondary update around noon EST, and offers FTP access, so a flat file drops into an existing loader with no rate limits, no pagination logic and no retry semantics to get wrong. An API wins on a different axis: single-ticker lookups, thin clients and ad hoc queries where you want one holding, not the universe.

The honest case for the API model is stronger than file vendors usually admit. If a portal needs to render one fund's top ten holdings on page load, pulling a whole-universe CSV to answer that is absurd. If your users query unpredictably across a wide surface, request-response is the right shape, and the trade-offs are laid out in ETF Holdings Data API vs CSV Feeds.

The honest case for files is that batch analytics never wants one row. Reconstitution studies, overlap matrices and factor exposures all need the full set as of a date, and assembling that from a paginated endpoint means writing a crawler, handling partial failures and reconciling counts, which is work you did not intend to buy. Daily ETF Holdings Download: 2026 Guide walks the file-based pipeline end to end, including the load checks that catch a truncated drop before it reaches a model.

Cadence deserves its own line in your evaluation. A 6pm EST primary publication lands after the US close, which is what you want for end-of-day positions; the roughly noon EST secondary run is useful when a change has to reach a downstream system before the next close. Ask any vendor, including this one, what the published cutoff is and what happens when an issuer files late.

Verdict on delivery: files for research, batch and redistribution workflows; an API for interactive and intraday surfaces. Teams that need both usually end up loading files into their own service and serving their own API from it, which is a reasonable outcome and worth pricing as such.

Identifiers: how do constituent files join to the rest of your stack?

The identifier columns decide how much reconciliation work a feed creates, and they are the single most predictable source of hidden cost. AmericanETP includes Bloomberg FIGIs in constituent list holdings files, and FIGIs are an open identifier standard, which means the join key is one you can also obtain elsewhere rather than one that exists only inside a single vendor's universe. That is the checkable difference to test, rather than a claim about what any other provider does or does not carry.

Proprietary security keys are not inherently worse at the join step. They are often richer, and inside one vendor's own ecosystem they work beautifully. The cost appears when you need to reconcile that vendor's holdings against a custodian file, an exchange feed or an order management system, because you now need a mapping table you do not control and cannot audit.

Three questions separate a clean feed from a messy one, and they apply equally to both vendors on this page:

  • Ticker changes. When a constituent's ticker changes, does the identifier in the file change with it, and is the old value retrievable? A file keyed only on ticker silently breaks your time series.
  • Corporate actions. Are mergers, spinoffs and share class consolidations reflected on the effective date, and is the change visible anywhere other than by diffing two days of files? Ask every vendor to show you how one specific, named corporate action appeared in their files around its effective date.
  • Dual listings. For global indexes, does the file identify the specific listing venue or only the issuer-level security? This determines whether your currency and trading-hours logic is right or approximately right.

Whichever identifier column you plan to join on, test it on a real sample rather than on the field list, since the useful question is what share of constituents carry a populated, correct value on a given day.

Verdict on identifiers: if your stack already runs on open identifiers or on multiple vendors that must agree, FIGI presence in the holdings file is a concrete advantage worth testing on real data. If you live inside one vendor's ecosystem end to end, proprietary keys cost you nothing and the criterion is close to neutral.

History: archives back to July 2009, and why backfill decides the trial

Point-in-time history is the dividing line that survives every other comparison, because you cannot backfill it later by working harder. AmericanETP archives constituent datafiles back to July 2009, which is what makes index reconstitution studies, survivorship-aware backtests, weight drift analysis and attribution rebuilt from the holdings actually in force on a given date possible. Whatever any vendor's daily file looks like, a strategy tested on today's constituents applied to historical prices is not a test, it is a description of what worked for the names that survived.

Two things to verify about any archive before you buy, including this one. First, whether the archive is the file as originally published or a reconstruction assembled later from current data, because a reconstruction quietly reintroduces the survivorship bias you paid to avoid. Second, whether delisted and removed constituents persist in the historical files with their identifiers intact, since a name that vanishes retroactively leaves a hole in every study that spans its removal date.

Long history also changes what you can build from a subscription rather than from a research budget. Rebuilding an index-level valuation series from constituent-level fundamentals across sixteen years is a data problem, not a modelling problem, and Build the P/E Ratio S&P 500 shows the mechanics of doing it from constituent files rather than accepting a headline number.

Verdict on history: if backtesting or attribution is in scope, make the archive the first thing you test, not the last. Request a historical sample dated to a known reconstitution and check that the removed names are present. If your use case is purely current-state reporting, this criterion carries much less weight and should not drive the decision.

Pricing: what does the sticker actually cover?

AmericanETP pricing, confirmed by a customer, is $1500 per year or $150 per month for an individual, and $2500 per year or $250 per month firm-wide. ETF Global's current figures are not published in the material read for this article on 10 September 2026, so request them directly rather than trusting any third-party page, including this one, on that point.

A published firm-wide figure is unusual enough in institutional data to be worth naming as a genuine differentiator, because it removes the seat-counting negotiation that consumes weeks at the enterprise end of the market. The trade-off is equally real: a fixed subscription buys files, not a relationship with an account team, an entitlements console or a service level negotiated to your operational risk policy.

Three questions determine real cost at any enterprise data vendor, and they matter more than the headline number:

  • Seat versus firm scope. Is the licence per user, per server, per legal entity or per group, and does a second desk require a second contract?
  • Redistribution rights. Can the data be surfaced to your clients, embedded in a product, or shown in a report that leaves the building? Internal-use-only licensing is the most common reason a cheap feed becomes an expensive one.
  • Whether history is priced separately. Daily delivery and the archive are frequently different line items. Ask whether the full back file is included in the subscription or licensed as a one-time load.

For readers evaluating the terminal end of the market, where entitlements, analytics and support are bundled into a much larger contract, AmericanETP vs FactSet: 2026 Comparison covers that trade-off directly.

Verdict on pricing: AmericanETP is the transparent option, since the number is public and you can budget without a call. ETF Global may well be competitive, and the only way to know is to ask them; treat any figure you find on a comparison site, including any figure absent from this page, as unverified.

Which one fits which desk?

There is no single winner here, because the two products answer different questions. Below is the verdict by use case, which is the only form of verdict worth writing.

Quant research and backtesting. AmericanETP is the better fit. The determining factors are point-in-time archives back to July 2009, full-universe files rather than per-request lookups, and FIGIs at the join step. A scoring product is an input you would have to reverse-engineer before you could trust it in a factor model.

RIA reporting and holdings look-through. Either can work, and it depends on staffing. If you have someone who can run a load process, files give you client-level look-through across every position at a predictable annual cost. If you have nobody who wants to own a pipeline, a research vendor's screens and ready-made analytics may deliver more value per hour spent.

Fintech teams building on the feed. AmericanETP fits if the product is yours and the data is an input, particularly given FTP delivery and twice-daily publication that map cleanly onto a nightly job. Confirm redistribution rights in writing before you build a customer-facing screen on any feed.

Exchanges and data vendors redistributing. Coverage breadth, identifier quality and change reporting decide this, and the questions are the same for both vendors: what is the full instrument list, how are corporate actions reflected, and what are the redistribution terms.

Teams that want conclusions, not inputs. This is where a research and analytics vendor is straightforwardly the better answer. If the deliverable your committee wants is a ranking, a rating or written commentary on an ETF's construction, buying that is cheaper and faster than building it, and AmericanETP does not produce it.

The one-week evaluation checklist

Run the same test against both. Request a current file and a historical file dated to a known reconstitution; check whether removed constituents survive in the archive with identifiers intact. Load both into your own environment and reconcile constituent counts and sector weights against a custodian or exchange source you already trust.

Then price it honestly: licence scope, redistribution rights, whether history is a separate line, and how many engineering days the delivery shape costs you in year one. AmericanETP publishes sample downloads so the first half of that test costs nothing, and their contact page is the route for licence questions.

FAQ

What is the difference between an ETF and an ETP?

ETP is the broader category. According to investor.gov as read on 10 September 2026, exchange-traded products are investment products listed and traded on national securities exchanges, and the category includes exchange-traded funds, exchange-traded commodity trusts and exchange-traded notes. An ETF is one type of ETP, registered with the SEC as an open-end investment company or a unit investment trust, whereas an exchange-traded note is unsecured debt of its issuer and therefore carries that issuer's credit risk.

For data work the practical consequence is that ETFs have constituents to publish and ETNs generally do not, because a note is a contractual payoff rather than a portfolio.

Is AmericanETP the same company as MasterDATA?

Yes. The domain and business were previously named MasterDATA and were renamed to AmericanETP to avoid confusion with IBM's use of the term ETP. The firm was founded in the 1990s, which predates most of the current generation of ETF data vendors.

Where can I download daily ETF holdings as CSV?

AmericanETP publishes constituent lists as CSV files covering 3878 US and global indexes and US-traded ETFs, updated twice daily with a 6pm EST primary run and a secondary run around noon EST, with FTP access available. Issuers also publish their own daily holdings files per fund, which is free but leaves you assembling and normalising hundreds of differently formatted files.

The trade-off between those two routes, including the load and validation steps, is covered in Daily ETF Holdings Download: 2026 Guide.

Does an ETF holdings database need an API, or is a flat file enough?

It depends on the access pattern, not on the vintage of the technology. Batch analytics that need the full universe as of a date are better served by flat files, because there is no pagination, rate limiting or partial-failure handling to implement. Interactive surfaces that need one fund's holdings on demand are better served by an API.

Many teams load files into their own store and serve an internal API from it, which gives both shapes from one subscription. ETF Holdings Data API vs CSV Feeds compares the two models against specific workloads.

How far back does ETF constituent history go?

AmericanETP archives constituent datafiles back to July 2009. Depth alone is not the whole question: verify whether the archive is the file as originally published or a later reconstruction, and whether delisted constituents remain in the historical files with their identifiers intact, since a reconstruction can reintroduce survivorship bias into any study built on it.

What does ETF fundamental data include?

In the AmericanETP fundamentals file it includes the ETF description, leverage and constituent counts, alongside the sector weights and constituent lists delivered in the holdings files. Leverage and constituent counts do more work than their simplicity suggests: leverage separates products that look alike by name and behave differently, and constituent counts are the fastest check that a holdings file loaded completely.

Field-level detail on how these join to the constituent files is in ETF Constituent Lists: 2026 Data Guide.


To test the file itself rather than a description of it, pull a current constituent list and a dated historical file and reconcile both against a source you already trust: start at americanetp.com.