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Frequently Asked Questions

This is the technical FAQ -- operations, reliability, comparisons, and privacy.

How do I buy?

Two products, two ways in:

  • Lavender Terminal — the Windows desktop app, $390/seat/month, month to month, no exchange fees. Start a 7-day free trial (credit card required) at lavender-ts.com/terminal. See Lavender Terminal below.
  • Lavender Gateway — the REST API binary, $450/instance/month for up to 3 users, month to month, no exchange fees. Start a 7-day free trial (credit card required) at gateway.lavender-ts.com.

For other company / billing questions (founder, cancellation, procurement), see the marketing FAQ at lavender-ts.com/faq.

Lavender Terminal

These answers are Terminal-specific. The Gateway answers elsewhere on this page (multi-OS support) don't apply to Terminal.

What does Terminal cost?

$390/seat/month, month to month, no exchange fees. See Lavender Terminal.

How do I start a trial?

Start a 7-day free trial (credit card required) at lavender-ts.com/terminal. At first launch, enter the email you subscribed with; if it isn't recognized, email support@lavender-ts.com.

How do I download and install it?

Download the app from download.lavender-ts.com/Terminal.exe and run it. On first launch the freshly signed app may trip Windows SmartScreen — choose More info → Run anyway.

What are the system requirements?

Windows 10 or later. Terminal is a Windows desktop app only — unlike Gateway, there is no macOS or Linux build.

Does it work out of the box?

Yes. Terminal opens on Lavender's paper book the moment you launch it — nothing to configure, no data feed or broker required to start.

Do I need my own market data or broker?

No, not to start. Terminal runs on Lavender's paper book as-is. When you're ready, bring your own market-data feed (ThetaData, AlphaVantage, DataBento) and broker (Interactive Brokers, Tastytrade, Tradier) to light it up with live quotes and your live positions.

Trial and evaluation

Gateway offers a 7-day free trial (credit card required). Start at gateway.lavender-ts.com. (Looking for Terminal? It's a separate 7-day trial — see Lavender Terminal.)

For an even lower-friction first look at the engine, the public Lavender Discord is free and runs the same Greeks engine -- 100 commands per day, no credit card. If /greeks ticker:AAPL and /skew ticker:SPX produce numbers that match what you'd expect, the engine is producing them the same way for the API.

You can also evaluate without running anything:

Data and licensing

Do I need an OPRA license to run Gateway?

No. Lavender holds market-data licensing through its data partners; what Gateway returns to you is computed Greeks, not redistributed quotes. See Market Data & Reliability.

What about my fund's data-redistribution compliance review?

Gateway does not redistribute exchange data. For specifics required by your firm's data-redistribution review, contact support@lavender-ts.com.

Why are bid, ask, and volume fields zeroed?

Lavender computes Greeks; it does not redistribute OPRA quotes. Every vendor compat layer carries a "Differences" section listing the specific zeroed fields. See for example Differences from Polygon.io.

Operations

What OS does Gateway support?

Windows 10+, macOS 12+, and Linux (x64). See Quickstart. (Lavender Terminal is Windows-only — see Lavender Terminal.)

When does Gateway restart?

Every morning, 03:00-04:00 ET. Outside that hour Gateway is not otherwise restarted. See Housekeeping window.

What outbound network access does Gateway need?

Outbound HTTPS to prod-gateway.lavender-ts.com. See Network requirements.

Where do Gateway logs go?

To stdout/stderr by default. Redirect at launch (Gateway.exe -id=... > gateway.log 2>&1) for long-term capture. See Logs.

Can a trader install this without a developer?

Yes. Quickstart is three steps: subscribe, download Gateway.exe (or the macOS / Linux binary), run it. Excel users skip the API entirely -- Power Query and a copy-paste VBA module are designed for traders, not developers. No code, no terminal commands, no API keys.

If you get stuck, Discord and support@lavender-ts.com are both real channels.

What happens if my subscription validation fails?

Gateway keeps serving cached data for transient failures. Hard failures (revoked subscription, email mismatch) return 502 with a clear message. See License and entitlement-check failure.

Reliability

How do I get help?

For help, email support@lavender-ts.com. See Reliability.

What happens if Lavender's central infrastructure has an outage?

The Greeks engine runs locally on your machine -- once data inputs reach your binary, computation is local. Upstream feed outages surface as 502 with retry-after-seconds guidance. See Error handling.

Comparisons

How does Lavender's American-options pricing compare to a Black-Scholes vendor?

Lavender prices American options with discrete dividends and per-expiry implied borrow. Differences from a European / Black-Scholes vendor show up most clearly:

  • Near ex-dividend dates on equity options
  • On deep-in-the-money contracts where early exercise has value
  • In hard-to-borrow names where borrow cost moves the forward

See Verify the Greeks for the math. For a no-install visual on any ticker, run /bscomp ticker:<TICKER> on the public Lavender Discord -- it plots the difference between Lavender's American Greeks and the Black-Scholes equivalents directly.

Can I run Lavender alongside my existing vendor as a second source?

Yes -- that's the primary recommended pattern. The nine vendor-compat layers let you swap a host with a one-line change in your existing code; no auth changes, no field renames. Start there, then migrate to the native API when you want the full feature set. See Migration to native API for the field-rename tables.

What should I expect when I A/B Lavender against my current vendor?

For most contracts the numbers will be very close. Where they diverge, it's usually one of:

  • Theta -- Lavender splits theta (continuous) from decay (discrete next-trading-day P&L); a vendor that returns one number is computing one of these conventions.
  • Greeks near ex-dividend dates -- discrete dividends shift the early-exercise boundary on calls; expect delta and theta to differ from a continuous-yield vendor.
  • Deep-ITM American contracts -- early-exercise premium is real and a Black-Scholes-only vendor will miss it.
  • Hard-to-borrow names -- Lavender accounts for stock-borrow cost; a vendor with a fixed / zero borrow assumption will produce inconsistent call/put Greeks.

These are the load-bearing differences Lavender is designed around -- if you don't see them on contracts that don't touch dividends, exercise, or borrow, that's the signal both engines are producing the right answer.

Privacy

What information leaves my machine?

Both Gateway and Terminal run on your machine and compute Greeks locally. The only data sent to the Lavender cloud is the set of underlying tickers you query, plus a handful of reference tickers (SPX, QQQ, etc.) the engine always needs.

Specific contracts and position sizes never leave your machine. A portfolio with 100 options across 10 underlyings typically generates traffic to the Lavender cloud for just those 10 underlyings (plus reference tickers) -- the strikes you hold, the expiries, the contract counts, and your sizes are used locally to construct the response and are never transmitted.

See Network requirements for the outbound hosts.

What happens to my queries when I cancel?

Lavender keeps no client data. Cancellation ends the subscription -- there's nothing for you to migrate, archive, or recover.