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By Fruit Stand Team · November 2, 2026 · Comparisons Snowflake’s free stock prices come from Snowflake Curated Data (Free): daily prices for 23,388 US tickers, three months behind. They often differ from the official close, because the free tier’s close is the after-hours price. Microsoft closed at $425.85 there on July 29, 2026, against an official $390.54. Fruit Stand’s paid listing matched the official close every time. For a prototype where three-month-old data is fine, the free tier works. For returns, backtests or anything compared with published figures, the price definitions matter more than the price tag. This post puts real prices from both side by side, with the SQL to check them yourself.
Fruit Stand publishes the Historical Stock Prices listing. We pulled every number below on November 1, 2026: Fruit Stand’s prices from its listing, Snowflake Curated Data’s from its free tier, and official closes from Nasdaq’s Nasdaq Official Closing Price history. To compare more listings, including CRSP, Bloomberg and EDI, see Stock Price Datasets on the Snowflake Marketplace, Compared.

Free vs. paid at a glance

Snowflake Curated Data also has a paid tier at $25,000 a year with no lag, but its prices use the same all-session definitions.

What the free tier doesn’t cover

Before comparing prices, check that your securities are there at all. We matched every US stock and ETF that traded on July 31, 2026, the free tier’s latest date: The missing days look like days with no trades on Nasdaq itself, which fits a dataset built from Nasdaq’s own feed. The Xtrackers ETF BHYB is an example: its last free-tier row is July 6, 2026, yet it traded $210 million across all venues on July 31. For thinly traded ETFs, that leaves holes in any return or time series built from the free tier.

What three months behind misses

On November 1, the free tier’s latest prices are from July 31. Here’s how far a few well-known tickers moved in the three months it can’t see, using official closes: Anything built on the free tier, a dashboard, a model input or a portfolio valuation, is that far out of date until the next quarter’s data arrives.

Closing prices on big after-hours days

Snowflake Curated Data’s documentation says its prices cover all trading sessions, so its “Post-Market Close” is the last price of the after-hours session. Most market data, from brokers to index providers, uses the official close at 4 PM. On a quiet day the two are close. When news lands after the bell, they aren’t: These are the largest gaps between the two for each ticker in May–July 2026. Fruit Stand’s close matched the Nasdaq official closing price to the cent on all of them.

What the gap does to returns

A close that’s already moved after hours takes that move out of the next day’s return. Here’s the next trading day’s return for the three biggest gaps, calculated both ways: Neither series is wrong: the move happened, just at a different time. But returns from after-hours closes won’t match published returns, index returns or a broker statement, and backtests that trade “at the close” will assume prices nobody could trade at 4 PM.

Volume: one exchange vs. all of them

The free tier’s volume is “Nasdaq Volume”, trades executed on Nasdaq only. US stocks trade on more than a dozen exchanges and off-exchange venues, so that’s a fraction of the total. On July 15, 2026: For stocks listed outside Nasdaq the share is much smaller, so volume-based measures (average daily volume, liquidity filters, VWAP) come out very different depending on which you use.

Adjusted prices: close, with one difference

Both publish split- and dividend-adjusted prices. The free tier’s are the adjusted versions of its all-session prices, such as “Post-Market Close Adjusted”. On dates before each stock’s most recent split, the adjustment factors line up closely: AAPL’s 4-for-1 split, TSLA’s 3-for-1 and NVDA’s 10-for-1 are applied in both, and JPM’s and SPY’s dividends too. The remaining differences mostly come from the starting price, after-hours versus official, not from the adjustment method. SPY shows the largest gap in the dividend adjustment itself, about 0.4%.

Check it yourself

With both listings in your account, one query lines them up. The free tier stores one row per ticker, date and variable, so pivot it first:
Run it with the Historical Stock Prices database selected, and change snowflake_public_data_free to the name you gave the free tier when you got it. To check official closes, Nasdaq publishes each Nasdaq-listed stock’s official closing price history.

Switching from the free tier

If you’ve built on the free tier, moving to Historical Stock Prices is a query change rather than a rebuild. The free tier stores one row per ticker, date and variable; Historical Stock Prices has one row per security per day, with a column for each price: So a query like this on the free tier:
becomes this on Historical Stock Prices:

Is the free tier enough?

  • Yes, for prototypes and schema exploration, where three-month-old prices and after-hours closes don’t change the answer.
  • Yes, for studying after-hours trading, such as how stocks react to earnings before the next open. All-session prices are built for that.
  • No, for returns, backtests or reporting that has to match published figures. Use official closes, such as Historical Stock Prices.
  • No, for volume or liquidity across venues. Nasdaq volume alone understates trading, most of all for NYSE-listed stocks.
  • No, for current prices or mutual funds. The free tier is three months behind and covers stocks and ETFs only.
  • No, for OTC stocks or thinly traded ETFs. OTC securities are almost entirely missing, and nearly one in five ETF trading days has no row.
Comparing more than these two? Stock Price Datasets on the Snowflake Marketplace, Compared covers nine listings, including CRSP, Bloomberg, EDI and the SEC Financial Analytics Kit, by coverage, columns and price.

F.A.Q.

Yes. Snowflake Curated Data (Free) has daily prices for 23,388 US stock and ETF tickers since 2018, three months behind, with after-hours closes and Nasdaq-only volume. Bright Data’s Finance Information listing is also free, with the last six months of prices scraped from finance websites. For current official closes, Historical Stock Prices has a free 30-day trial.
Its close is the after-hours close, and its volume counts only Nasdaq trades. Yahoo Finance and brokers show the official 4 PM close and consolidated volume. On days with news after the bell, the closes can differ by several percent.
Yes. It publishes adjusted versions of its pre-market open, all-day high and low, and post-market close, adjusted for splits and dividends. They’re adjusted all-session prices, so they still start from the after-hours close.
The official close. On every date in this post, it matched the Nasdaq Official Closing Price to the cent. Volume is consolidated across all US venues.
To compare official closes with the free data yourself, start a free 30-day trial of the Historical Stock Prices listing on the Snowflake Marketplace. It has daily raw and adjusted OHLC for 50,000+ US stocks, ETFs and mutual funds, with official closes and consolidated volume. The schema is in the dataset docs. Questions? Reach out at contact@fruitstand.dev.