[ddeck]

>quotes ranging in the $10,000's a month range for real-time data.

That sounds excessive. You basically either subscribe to individual exchanges or a consolidated feed from a 3rd party that typically incorporates multiple venues.

For applications that need something professional and reliable, but don't need direct exchange connections (i.e. can deal with ~1-200ms latency), I recommend IQfeed [1]. Depending on exchanges, cost is probably around $100/month

Source: I've been using them for fully automated trading for a couple of years

[1] http://www.iqfeed.net/