ORTEX documents short-interest estimates and securities-lending analytics. Dilution Tracker and Dilutracker document financing research. Start with the question you need to answer: short positioning, borrowing conditions, or potential issuer share supply. These datasets serve different purposes, even when you research the same ticker.
Dilutracker publishes this comparison and sells one of the services discussed. We reviewed public documentation on October 31, 2026; we did not conduct independent hands-on accuracy or performance testing.
Which product addresses your research task?
| Product | Documented task | Evidence to inspect | Limit to verify |
|---|---|---|---|
| ORTEX | Monitor short-interest estimates, cost to borrow, and days to cover. | Reported versus estimated fields, timestamps, float denominator, and account data delay. | The platform page distinguishes delayed Basic short data from Advanced real-time short-interest and borrow-cost data. An estimate is neither an official report nor a guaranteed broker locate. |
| Dilution Tracker | Inspect historical outstanding shares and conditional potential additions from ATMs, S-1 offerings, warrants, equity lines, and convertibles. | Historical share counts versus potential shares calculated under stated assumptions; source dates and completed issuance. | The O/S chart guide, dated December 13, 2022, says potential sources need not be used. It does not establish current subscription entitlements. |
| Dilutracker | Research financing instruments, float, and estimated cash runway from SEC filings. | Instrument terms, remaining amounts, as-of dates, assumptions, and filing references in the REST/MCP modules. | Dilutracker does not provide short-interest estimates, utilization, borrow costs, or borrow availability. |
Vendor documentation describes offered functionality; it does not establish measured accuracy, completeness, or latency. Check current access through ORTEX, Dilution Tracker, and Dilutracker before subscribing. We leave undocumented competitor features unasserted.
Keep reported positions, estimates, and loans separate
FINRA collects short-position reports twice monthly, based on designated settlement dates, and provides the compiled data for publication on the seventh business day afterward. A report therefore describes positions on its settlement date, not the moment you open a dashboard.
ORTEX explains that it estimates short interest from securities-lending data and updates that estimate through the trading day. A modeled intraday value is not a new official report. Shares on loan and shares sold short are different quantities; lending observations do not identify each borrower's motive. Fees, utilization, and available shares describe observed lending conditions, not guaranteed market-wide supply. See our short-interest data guide for fuller definitions.
Run two independent checks on the same ticker
For positioning, record the reported short-share count and settlement date separately from the modeled estimate and observation time. Check the float definition and date before comparing short-interest percentages. Check the average-volume window behind days to cover. If borrowing matters to your task, confirm actual conditions with your broker: a provider's observations may differ from your account's fees and availability.
For financing, open the cited document and subsequent relevant filings in SEC EDGAR. Separate historical shares, registered amounts, remaining instrument capacity, and completed issuance. Inspect exercise and conversion terms; distinguish existing-holder resale from newly issuable shares, because resale need not fund the issuer. Shelf and ATM capacity may overlap. Compare cash and burn dates when reading estimated runway. Dilutracker's documented process describes extracting financing terms and calculating float and runway; inspect the underlying evidence for the specific ticker.
Compare the two dilution services against the same instrument and filing, preserving each dataset's dates and definitions. Positioning and potential issuer supply answer separate questions. Neither financing capacity nor estimated runway establishes when financing will occur, and combining these datasets does not establish a trade outcome. For deeper financing comparisons, see dilution research tools and Dilutracker vs Dilution Tracker.