Frequently Asked Questions
Product, licensing, and data questions — answered directly. Can't find what you need? Reach out.
What is VisualHFT?
VisualHFT is a real-time market microstructure analytics platform for electronic trading. It normalizes live order-book and trade data from multiple venues into institutional-grade visualizations — liquidity, toxic flow, market resilience, and execution-risk signals — as they develop, not after the fact in logs and post-trade reports.
Is VisualHFT a trading system?
No. VisualHFT doesn't place, route, or execute orders — there is no order-entry or algo-execution engine. It's an analytics and monitoring layer that sits alongside your existing execution stack, turning live order-book, trade, and infrastructure data into the liquidity, toxicity, resilience, and execution-quality signals that inform trading decisions. Think instrumentation for trading, not the trading system itself.
Is VisualHFT open source?
Yes. The core analytics engine has been open-source since 2019 and is publicly available on GitHub, with a growing base of community contributors and plugin developers. The commercial tiers (CORE, PRO, Enterprise) are built on top of that same open-source foundation, not a separate codebase.
What's the difference between the Community, CORE, PRO, and Enterprise plans?
Community is free and open-source, built for learners and hobbyists exploring market microstructure. CORE (L2) adds futures/equity L2 data, the Market Aggregator, and additional plugins for quant researchers and systematic traders. PRO (L3) adds GPU-accelerated charts, non-aggregated high-resolution data processing, the Replay Engine, and a license to develop and sell your own plugins — built for HFT/prop desks and institutional teams. Enterprise adds custom feeds, SSO, org-wide controls, and dedicated infrastructure. Full breakdowns are on the Pricing section of the homepage.
What's the difference between L2 and L3 market data in VisualHFT?
L2 is normalized, aggregated order-book depth per price level — what CORE and PRO both support today. L3 is raw, order-by-order depth: every individual order rather than just the aggregated size at each level, giving a more granular view of queue position and order flow. L3 is on the roadmap for Q4 2026–Q1 2027 as real per-venue L3 data pipelines go live.
What platforms does VisualHFT run on?
VisualHFT is a native Windows desktop application built on .NET 10 and WPF, designed for low-latency local processing and live monitoring.
Which exchanges and venues does VisualHFT support?
At launch: Binance, Bitstamp, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Kraken, Gemini, and KuCoin for crypto L2 data, with CME Group, Nasdaq, and Cboe connectors in progress. CORE and PRO add futures and equity L2 venues as they are published, plus multi-venue aggregation and cross-venue analytics.
Can I build my own connectors or studies for VisualHFT?
Yes. VisualHFT uses a plugin architecture — IDataFeed for market connectors, IPlugin for studies — with dedicated connector and study SDKs. PRO includes a license to develop and sell your own plugins through the Marketplace.
Does VisualHFT resell or mark up market data?
No. VisualHFT connects using your own exchange or data-vendor subscription. There are no data fees and no markup added by VisualHFT.
Is my market data and are my exchange credentials private?
Yes. Market data processing and exchange credentials stay local to your machine — VisualHFT's online services handle licensing and entitlements only, never your trading data. Limited product telemetry (usage events, crash reports, a one-way hashed machine identifier) is collected to improve the product and is automatically deleted after 90 days. See the Privacy Policy for the full detail.