Bookmap vs Jigsaw vs ATAS: heatmap, ladder or footprint, data extra

A futures trader who types "bookmap vs jigsaw" has already decided to read the order book rather than the indicator panel, and is down to the products that do nothing else. All three are desktop applications for a handful of contracts, usually CME. None has a screener, a scanner or a strategy backtester, and each one's replay is a recording you step through, not a test. ATAS belongs here as the third choice because it does the same job on the same feeds, and draws the book a third way. Exocharts is the crypto-first version of the same idea, and only places orders on Bybit.

The difference comes down to four things: what each draws, which tier is allowed to trade, who bills the CME feed, and what "bought once" really means on each.

What each one draws

Bookmap draws resting liquidity: the limit order book as a heatmap with time on the horizontal axis, so orders that sat, were pulled or got swept leave a trail. Traded volume sits on top as bubbles, with a conventional DOM, time and sales, and volume and delta columns around it.

Jigsaw daytradr draws the ladder. Its centre is the Depth & Sales ladder, a DOM with the tape beside it, plus Auction Vista, a reconstructed tape, footprint and reversal-footprint charts and a market profile.

ATAS draws executed volume inside the bar: footprint and cluster charts that open each candle into the volume traded at every price, split by buyer and seller, with delta, a Smart DOM and a Smart Tape.

So Jigsaw and ATAS overlap on the DOM, the tape and the footprint, and differ in which one they put first. Bookmap is the one whose main view is the resting book over time. Neither the Jigsaw nor the ATAS card lists a heatmap. If that view is what you are buying, the field is one product wide.

Watching and trading are sold separately

Each one sells a tier that shows you the market and a tier that lets you trade it, and the line falls in a different place on each.

Bookmap splits at the plan. Real-time stock and futures data starts at Global, $49 a month. Placing a stock or futures order from the chart or the DOM starts at Global Plus, $99. Global buys the heatmap on live CME data and no way to act on it except the simulator. The two tiers below it trade crypto and the simulator only.

Jigsaw splits at a subscription. The $579 Independent licence trades sim and demo accounts. Live, exchange-routed trading needs Active Trader at $50 a month or $500 a year, for as long as you trade live. Since V7 there is one exemption: Rithmic and Tradovate prop-firm evaluation and funded accounts run without it.

ATAS splits at the data. Start (free) and Plus (€24.95) cannot connect a real-time futures or stock feed whatever data you hold elsewhere. Pro, at €69.95, is the first tier that can. The ATAS card does not say whether order entry is gated by plan, only the data connection.

For the trader on a prop-firm account, these splits decide most of the bill. Jigsaw waives its live fee on Rithmic and Tradovate prop accounts. About half of ATAS's roughly 52 connectors are prop firms reached through Rithmic or dxFeed, but the account still needs Pro to see live futures. The Bookmap card names no prop-firm arrangement, so trading from the heatmap is Global Plus at $99 either way.

Who bills the CME feed

None of the three includes CME depth in its licence. Each card says who sends the second invoice.

Bookmap resells it. BookmapData, sold only against Global or Global Plus, is $34 a month per CME exchange or $79 for CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX, at non-professional rates. Professionals pay $159 per exchange and $599 for the bundle. This is the market-by-order route. dxFeed, the alternative, is $37 per futures exchange or $97 for the four, and carries depth by price. Bookmap also connects to Rithmic and CQG Continuum, but CQG means crude oil only. Routed through Plus500, Level 2 is included for eligible non-professionals and the data line disappears.

ATAS sends you to dxFeed or your broker. dxFeed runs an order page for ATAS where the subscription is locked to this one application: $39 a month for CME depth, $99 for the four-exchange bundle, non-professional. That is $39 that does not follow you if you move to Bookmap. The other route is a futures broker's Rithmic or CQG Continuum connection, where the broker bills the platform fee and passes the exchange fee through. Rithmic is also the only route to ATAS's market-by-order bundle.

Jigsaw sends you to your broker. It sells no data. You bring Rithmic, CQG, Tradovate, StoneX, NinjaTrader or IQFeed, and that vendor bills the feed and the CME fees. Only one of those routes has a card here. Our IQFeed card prices CME for a non-professional at $272.59 a month (core service, futures surcharge and CME), or about $138 at Level 1 under CME's non-professional Globex package, which needs a funded account at a broker on DTN's qualified list. That is before IQFeed's market-depth line, which DTN's own pages quote as either $20 or $24.15. A DOM product needs depth. For what a CME fee is and why it is billed this way, see why real-time data costs what it does.

One CME exchange, live, priced three ways

These are monthly figures for a non-professional who trades live on one CME exchange, from the cards' normalised prices.

• Bookmap: Global Plus $99 plus BookmapData $34, so $133. On the yearly licence rate of $79 it is $113. To watch without trading, Global plus BookmapData is $83, or $73.
• ATAS: Pro €69.95 plus dxFeed $39, so €69.95 and $39 on two invoices in two currencies. On the yearly rate of €39.95 it is €39.95 and $39.
• Jigsaw: Active Trader $50 plus the broker's feed, after $579 once. The feed is the number nobody quotes, and on the one route a card prices, IQFeed, it is larger than the licence.

Jigsaw publishes its own three-year comparison, dated July 2026: daytradr $579, Sierra Chart $2,736, Bookmap Global+ $3,924. Its stated basis is 18 months on sim, then 18 live, and the $579 leaves out the $900 of Active Trader those 18 live months need on Jigsaw's own terms. On that basis the Jigsaw figure is $1,479, before data.

What "bought once" actually buys

Jigsaw is the one sold as a licence bought once. It is also the only one of the three with no way to stop paying a licence fee while you trade your own account live. Over three years live on yearly billing, Jigsaw's licence lines come to $579 plus three years of Active Trader at $500, so $2,079, and the fee continues after that.

Bookmap and ATAS are sold as subscriptions, and both sell outright licences that end the licence bill:

• Bookmap: Global $990, Global Plus $1,990. Against Global Plus at $99 a month the lifetime licence pays for itself in about 20 months, and against the $79 yearly rate in about 25.
• ATAS: Plus €999, Pro €1,799, Ultra €1,999. Pro's lifetime licence covers about 26 months at €69.95, or 45 at the €39.95 yearly rate. Ultra's covers about 22 months monthly, or 40 yearly.

Two catches. No lifetime licence on any of the three includes data, so the $34 or $39 a month carries on as long as you use the platform. And ATAS's licence agreement states that updates are at the vendor's discretion and that features may not be maintained. The Bookmap card says nothing about updates on its lifetime licences.

The one case where Jigsaw's once really is once is a Rithmic or Tradovate prop-firm account: $579 and no Active Trader.

Where they plug in

Bookmap is not a broker. It routes through TradeStation and Interactive Brokers for stocks, and Tradovate, Plus500 and Rithmic for futures. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Add-ons are Java against its Layer 1 API, with an official Python bridge that can also place orders.

Jigsaw can sit in front of a platform you already run. Besides Rithmic, CQG, Tradovate, StoneX and IQFeed, it attaches directly to Interactive Brokers TWS, NinjaTrader 8 and MT5. It runs on Windows only, and has no API, scripting language or Python. Its Strategy Manager manages exit brackets on a fill and does not run a strategy.

ATAS has the longest connector list: Rithmic, CQG Continuum, dxFeed, IQFeed, Interactive Brokers, Trading Technologies, T4, NinjaTrader, MetaTrader 5 and others, plus the prop firms and its own simulator. It runs on Windows only, with ATAS X in beta for macOS. Extension is C#, and indicators can fire outgoing webhooks.

No card lists Sierra Chart as a connection for any of the three. It appears on these cards as an alternative, not as a host.

The learning curve, as far as the cards document it

Only Jigsaw's card documents training. A foundations course comes free with the licence, an applied course with Active Trader, and an institutional course at $1,547, which sells on its own or inside the $1,879 Institutional bundle with a year of Active Trader. The 14-day money-back guarantee covers the $579 of software, not the courses.

The Bookmap and ATAS cards say nothing about onboarding, documentation depth or courses. The ATAS card calls the footprint the older and more widely taught way of reading the tape, which is a statement about the method, not about ATAS's own material. What each card does document is a way to try before paying. Bookmap's free Digital plan shows delayed futures, one symbol at a time. ATAS's free Start plan does the same with two instruments, and its 14-day trial of the paid plans takes a card and converts automatically. Jigsaw has no trial, only the refund. All three include a simulator. Replay differs: ATAS includes Market Replay from Plus up, Bookmap's card describes its replay as a recording, and Jigsaw's Market Replay works on Tradovate connections only.

Where the cards were checked

All three cards were last verified in the same week. Pricing on each was checked on 14 September 2026, as were Jigsaw's and ATAS's capabilities and coverage. Bookmap's capabilities and coverage were checked on 13 September, and the IQFeed card quoted for Jigsaw's feed on 14 September. The three cards were verified a day apart, so no figure here was checked months before another. Two things on the Jigsaw card were moving when it was checked: V7 had just shipped, and Market Intelligence Alpha, which carries the options analytics, was dated late September 2026 and not yet out. The ATAS prices are in euros and the others in dollars, so any total that adds them across vendors is an exchange-rate estimate.

The recommendation

Jigsaw if you read the ladder and tape on Windows and trade a Rithmic or Tradovate prop-firm account. That is the one setup where $579 is the whole licence, and it can sit in front of the NinjaTrader 8 you may already run. The moment you trade your own funded account, Active Trader adds $500 a year: three years live on yearly billing come to $2,079 in licence fees, against €1,438.20 for ATAS Pro, and the feed is still yours to buy.

ATAS if the footprint is how you read the tape and you trade live on your own account. Pro plus dxFeed comes in under Bookmap's trading setup unless the euro is worth more than $1.34, and the connector list is the longest of the three. Market-by-order data means Ultra and a Rithmic account. Remember that the dxFeed subscription is licensed to ATAS alone.

Bookmap the moment what you want to see is resting liquidity over time rather than executed volume, because neither of the other cards offers that view. The same goes if you need macOS or Linux, or market-by-order CME depth bought from the platform vendor rather than through a broker. Budget Global Plus, not Global, if you mean to trade from it.

The rest of the category is on the trading platforms page.