Order flow · Time and sales
Free time and sales: the live tape of every trade
Time and sales, also called the tape, lists every trade as it happens: the time, the price, the size and whether a buyer or a seller was aggressive. Swiftedge Terminal has a free live tape with size filters, highlighted large prints, optional sound and a bar of market buying against market selling over the last minute. It runs in your browser with no account.
Open it nowSwiftedge Terminal: the order book ladder, the tape, the chart, the heatmap and the footprint on one screen. Free, no sign-up.
Open Swiftedge TerminalWhat time and sales shows
Each line on the tape is a trade: a market order that crossed the spread and matched a resting order in the book. Buys, where a buyer paid the ask, are teal; sells, where a seller hit the bid, are violet. The side is not guessed: every trade arrives with its aggressor side.
Reading the tape means watching the pace and the size of those trades: a burst of large buys at one price, sells that keep hitting a bid without moving it, or a sudden pause. It is the most direct record of what is trading, without any averaging.
The tape in Swiftedge Terminal
| Setting or detail | What it does |
|---|---|
| Prints | Trades at the same millisecond and on the same side are added together into one print, the way a large order that fills several resting orders shows up |
| Columns | Time, price and size, colored by the aggressor side; the newest 60 prints are shown |
| Size filter | Hide trades under $1k, $10k, $50k or $250k, or show all |
| Large prints | Highlighted from a size you choose ($50k to $1M), or Auto, which adapts to each market's own trade sizes |
| Sound | An optional tone on highlighted prints, higher for buys and lower for sells |
| Flow bar | Market buys against market sells in dollars over the last 60 seconds |
| Marks and time zone | Click a print to mark it on the chart; times in UTC, your local time or India (IST) |
| Markets | The Bitcoin, gold, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, US 500, US 100, silver and WTI crude oil perpetual futures, each with its own Terminal |
The tape is a panel in the standard layout at swiftedge.uk/terminal; layout L3 (Order flow) puts it next to the chart, the DOM and liquidations. On a phone it is the Tape tab. Settings are under F2.
The same trades, four ways
- The tape lists each print as it happens.
- Trade bubbles in Swiftedge Depth draw each trade at its price and time over the order book heatmap, sized by volume: order flow bubbles.
- The footprint chart adds them up per price inside each candle: footprint chart.
- CVD keeps the running total of buying minus selling: CVD chart.
For large trades while you are away, Swiftedge Alerts can send whale trades by browser push, Telegram or a webhook, free.
What it does not do
- No full history. The tape is live; it lists the latest prints, not a searchable record of every past trade.
- Its own markets only. It shows the trades in the perpetual futures books Swiftedge records, not every venue, and no exchange-listed futures.
Common questions
Is there free time and sales for crypto?
Yes. Swiftedge Terminal has a live tape for every market it covers, free in the browser with no account: time, price, size and side of every trade, with size filters and highlighted large prints.
What is a print on the tape?
One trade, or several trades at the same millisecond on the same side added together. A large market order that fills against several resting orders appears as one print.
How do I see only large trades?
Open the settings (F2) and set Hide trades under to $10k, $50k or $250k, and choose a size for Highlight trades from. Auto adapts the highlight to each market's own trade sizes.
Is tape reading a trading signal?
No. The tape describes what traded. Swiftedge shows it for information and education; it is not a signal, a forecast or financial advice.
Which data does Swiftedge use?
Public perpetual futures data from Hyperliquid and Lighter: the order book and every trade with its aggressor side. Everything shown is Swiftedge's own calculation; the FAQ lists the sources.