Prop trading just got a significant infrastructure upgrade. Tickblaze, a technology platform built for professional and proprietary traders, has quietly rolled out a major integration — direct access to live CME Group futures market data — and it could reshape how retail prop firms operate day to day.
Real-Time Exchange Data, Straight to the Trader’s Screen
Rather than routing market data through third-party aggregators or intermediary feeds, Tickblaze has secured a formal market data distribution arrangement with CME Group directly. The result is that traders operating inside the Tickblaze environment can now pull real-time futures prices and order book information sourced straight from the exchange itself.
Two tiers of market data are available through this setup. The first is Level 1 data — the best bid and ask prices currently on the book, also called top-of-book pricing. The second is Level 2, or depth-of-market data, which gives a fuller picture of buy and sell orders stacked at different price levels across key CME futures products. For active futures traders, this depth of information is often considered essential for timing entries and reading short-term momentum.
A Broader Shift in Prop Firm Infrastructure
Tickblaze is not the first technology provider to move in this direction. The trend of prop-focused platforms building tighter connections to exchange infrastructure has been gaining momentum over the past year or two.
Devexperts, the firm behind the DXtrade platform used by a range of brokers and prop firms, took a similar step by adding CME futures trading capabilities to its system. That move was widely understood as a direct response to growing demand from prop firms that were expanding beyond forex and CFDs into regulated futures markets.
The most high-profile example of this shift came in 2025, when Plus500 struck a deal to provide both clearing infrastructure and technology support to Topstep — one of the best-known names in retail futures prop trading. That arrangement gave Topstep traders a path to CME-listed contracts through Plus500’s systems, marking a notable convergence between retail prop and institutional exchange infrastructure.
How Tickblaze Handles Compliance Behind the Scenes
One of the more notable aspects of Tickblaze’s approach is where the compliance burden sits. Under their model, the platform itself takes on responsibility for managing CME data entitlements, usage reporting, and the regulatory processes that come with distributing exchange data. Prop firms using Tickblaze do not need to set up their own data licensing arrangements with CME or maintain separate compliance reporting for market data use.
Importantly, Tickblaze has stated that it does not re-distribute CME data outward to external firms or downstream clients. The data stays within the platform’s own environment and is delivered directly to end users — the individual traders — rather than being pushed out more broadly. This distinction matters because CME, like most major exchanges, has strict rules around how its market data can be shared and used commercially.
Sean Kozak, Tickblaze’s CEO, described CME as operating the world’s leading derivatives marketplace and said that bringing its futures data natively into the platform was a meaningful step forward for the prop trading firms and professional traders the company serves.
Why This Matters for the Prop Trading Space
The futures prop trading segment has grown considerably over the past few years. Retail traders who previously focused on forex or equity CFDs have increasingly moved toward CME-listed futures products — particularly instruments like the Micro E-mini contracts, which offer lower capital requirements alongside real exchange-traded exposure.
As the user base in this segment grows, so does the scrutiny from exchanges and regulators around how firms are handling data licensing, trader classification, and reporting obligations. Integrations like the one Tickblaze has built represent one way the industry is professionalizing — shifting from informal data setups toward formal, exchange-sanctioned infrastructure that can hold up to compliance requirements as the sector matures.
For prop traders evaluating platforms, the availability of direct Level 2 CME data is increasingly a baseline expectation rather than a premium feature. The fact that more providers are building this natively into their offerings suggests the competitive bar is rising.
