Bloomberg Terminal

The Bloomberg Terminal is Bloomberg L.P.'s subscription workstation for financial professionals, first released in December 1982 and still the company's core product. Bloomberg describes it as covering markets, industries, companies and securities across all asset classes, combining its own and third-party research and analytics with Bloomberg News, messaging and integrated execution. The Terminal is organised around functions typed into a command line, with Launchpad providing configurable monitors of securities, alerts, charts and news. Research comes from Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Intelligence, which Bloomberg says draws on more than 350 research professionals for industry and regional outlooks. Portfolio analytics, charting and pre- and post-trade analytics sit alongside order management and execution, which is what lets trading desks use the same screen for research and dealing. Instant Bloomberg (IB) is the messaging layer and, for many users, the reason the Terminal is hard to replace: Bloomberg puts its network at more than 350,000 decision makers, and IB supports persistent chat rooms, structured data that links into Terminal functions, and client-built chatbots through IB Connect. For quantitative work there is BQuant Desktop, Bloomberg Query Language (BQL), Office add-ins for Excel and the BLPAPI programming interfaces listed in Bloomberg's API library. ASKB, a conversational AI interface announced in beta, answers questions in natural language and returns the underlying BQL so analysis can be continued in Excel or BQuant. Access is via an installed Windows application or Bloomberg Anywhere, the remote subscription that works from a PC, home or mobile devices, and the Bloomberg Professional app for iOS and Android. Logging in requires biometric and multi-method authentication. Native installation is not available on macOS; Bloomberg directs Mac users to Bloomberg Anywhere in a browser. Bloomberg does not publish a price. The product page offers a demo request rather than plans, and figures circulating in the press are not confirmed by Bloomberg.

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  Bloomberg Terminalvs

  

  LSEG Workspace

  LSEG Workspace: The closest like-for-like terminal, with Reuters News and LSEG Messenger, plus native macOS, web and Microsoft Teams access that Bloomberg does not offer.

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  Bloomberg Terminalvs

  

  FactSet

  FactSet: Stronger in buy-side research workflows, screening and portfolio attribution, with less emphasis on real-time trading and messaging.

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  Bloomberg Terminalvs

  

  S&P Capital IQ Pro

  S&P Capital IQ Pro: Company fundamentals, transactions and credit research aimed at bankers and analysts rather than traders, without an execution layer.

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  Bloomberg Terminalvs

  

  Koyfin

  Koyfin: A browser-based charting and fundamentals tool with published self-serve pricing, for investors who do not need real-time trading data or messaging.