ATAS
Footprint charts and a market-by-order DOM for futures, with data bought separately.
Last updated
What it is
ATAS is a Windows desktop platform for order flow, built around the footprint — each candle opened up into the volume traded at every price inside it, split by buyer and seller — plus cluster statistics, delta, a Smart DOM and a Smart Tape. Where Bookmap draws resting liquidity as a heatmap over time, ATAS starts from executed volume inside the bar: the older and more widely taught way of reading the same tape.
The audience is narrow: futures, mostly CME, a handful of contracts at a time. There is no screener, no scanner and no strategy backtester — Market Replay is a recording you step through, not a simulation of a rule. A Trading Journal module tallies PnL, win rate, profit factor and drawdown from executed trades and exports the lists to CSV.
Pricing
Four plans billed in euros by a Latvian company, and the tier that matters is Pro, because it is the first one that can connect a real-time futures or stock feed at all. Start is free and permanent with no card; Plus at €24.95/month carries the same data restriction and buys six instruments, advanced indicators, Renko and Range frames and Market Replay. Pro is €69.95/month with 20 instruments and three connections; Ultra €89.95/month lifts every limit and adds the market-by-order bundle and two beta options modules.
Those are the month-to-month figures. An annual plan cuts them to €19.95, €39.95 and €49.95, and each tier also sells outright at €999, €1799 and €1999. Read the lifetime option carefully: the licence agreement grants updates at the vendor's discretion and states plainly that features may not be maintained on an ongoing basis. A 14-day trial needs a card and converts automatically.
Data & coverage
No plan includes market data, and this is the number a licence price hides. dxFeed runs an ATAS-specific order page where the subscription is locked to this one application. At non-professional rates it charges $39/month for CME market depth, $99 for the CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX depth bundle, $65 for Eurex futures Level 2, $74 for Nasdaq TotalView with NBBO, $74 for the NYSE Arca book, $64 for Cboe EDGX and $179 for the US equities bundle. Top-of-book-only tiers run $19 to $49. So a working Pro setup on CME is about €70 plus $39 a month, in two currencies, and a professional subscriber pays materially more.
The alternative is a futures broker's own Rithmic or CQG Continuum connection, where the broker bills the platform fee and the exchange passes its own market data fee through — cheaper on one exchange, and the only route to the MBO bundle, whose own description says it works with Rithmic and that dxFeed support is still in development.
Coverage is 25-plus exchanges and 3,000-plus instruments: CME, Eurex and HKEX futures, NYSE and NASDAQ equities and ETFs, options on both, and crypto spot and derivatives on Binance, Bybit, Bitget and OKX. US futures and equities are first-class here, not an afterthought behind crypto.
Integrations
Around 52 connectors, and their composition says who buys this: about half are funded-account prop firms — Apex, Goat Funded Futures, The Trading Pit, FunderPro and a long tail of smaller ones — reached through Rithmic or dxFeed. The rest are Rithmic, CQG Continuum, dxFeed, IQFeed, Interactive Brokers, Exante, Tai Pan, T4 (CTS), Trading Technologies, NinjaTrader, MetaTrader 5 and nine crypto venues, plus ATAS SIM for paper trading.
Extension is C# and only C#: indicators, calculation modules and automation strategies compile against the platform's own raw data, and finished ones can be sold through the ATAS marketplace. Indicators can fire outgoing webhooks to external services. There is no REST API, no Python binding and no MCP server.
Limitations
- No data at any tier, including lifetime. Budget the feed before the licence.
- Start and Plus cannot connect real-time futures data, so the two cheapest paid tiers are analysis-after-the-fact for anyone trading futures.
- Windows only. macOS means Parallels or the ATAS X beta, which is not feature-complete.
- The dxFeed subscription is licensed to ATAS alone and does not follow you to another platform.
- Market-by-order tools require Rithmic; on dxFeed they are listed as under development.
- No screener, no scanner, no backtester. Market Replay replays, it does not test.
- Options analysis is two beta modules on the top tier, not a mature options workflow.
- No spot forex. The vendor's instrument table does list an FX section, but it is CME currency futures — 6E, 6B, 6J, the micros and the dollar index; spot pairs appear only in its MOEX section, outside the markets this card covers.
Alternatives
Bookmap for the liquidity heatmap rather than the footprint, at a similar total once data is added. Sierra Chart is the cheap end of order flow, with C++ instead of C#; Quantower covers footprint, scanners and 60-plus connections with a free tier; NinjaTrader adds the backtesting ATAS does not have. The wider field is in charting platforms and screeners.
Specs
- Interfaces
- API, webhooks, C#
- Export
- CSV
- Asset classes
- Stocks, ETF, Options, Futures, Crypto
- Markets
- US, EU, Asia
- Platforms
- Desktop win
- AI features
- None
- Capabilities
- Charting, Automation, Live trading, Paper trading, Alerts, Options analysis
- Pricing verified
- Capabilities verified
- Coverage verified
Also worth comparing
- Bookmap — The limit order book as a heatmap, with full-depth DOM for futures and stocks.
- Exocharts — Crypto-native footprint and DOM order flow, with CME and Nasdaq on a separate dxFeed plan.
- Jigsaw daytradr — Windows DOM and order-flow platform for futures, bought once rather than monthly.
- Barchart.com — Stock, fund and options screeners sold as a $0-$29.95 website membership.
- Finviz Elite — Real-time quotes, advanced filters and CSV export on top of the free Finviz screener.
- justETF — A screener and portfolio planner for European UCITS ETFs — no US listings, no API.
FAQ
Is ATAS free?
The Start plan is free forever and needs no card, but it is not a free order-flow terminal. Futures arrive 15 minutes late and cannot be connected in real time at all, real-time stock data is unavailable, and you get two instruments and three basic indicators per chart. The only real-time data on it is crypto. Paid plans offer a 14-day trial that does require a card, once per user, and rolls into the paid plan unless you switch back first.
What does ATAS actually cost once market data is added?
ATAS sells no data at any tier, so the licence is roughly half the bill. The cheapest realistic setup for live CME order flow is Pro at €69.95/month plus a dxFeed CME Market Depth subscription at $39/month — about €70 and $39 on two separate invoices in two currencies. The four-exchange CME Group depth bundle is $99/month and Nasdaq TotalView with NBBO is $74/month, both at non-professional rates.
Which ATAS plan do I need for real-time futures?
Pro, at €69.95/month. Start and Plus cannot connect a real-time futures feed whatever data you hold elsewhere — the pricing page marks that row unavailable on both. Plus buys more instruments, advanced indicators, Market Replay and Renko or Range frames, not live futures data.
Does the ATAS lifetime licence include updates?
Not as a promise. The licence agreement says a perpetual licence lets you keep using the software and that the software or certain features of it may not be available, updated or maintained on an ongoing basis, with updates provided at the vendor's sole discretion. A lifetime licence also includes no market data — that is a separate bill for as long as you use it.
Does ATAS run on a Mac?
The classic platform is Windows 10 or later only; the vendor's own instructions for Mac users are to run it under Parallels Desktop or VMware. ATAS X, a rebuilt version that is native to macOS Tahoe or later, is in beta, is not a full replica of the classic platform, and is included for every user regardless of plan.