BackLabOrder flow. In focus.
Trade futures from the order book.
Read liquidity, follow traded volume, and manage Tradovate orders in one desktop workspace. Built for twelve CME futures markets.
For Mac and Windows. Free to download. No website account.
01 / 06 The workspace
Your market.
One workspace.
Explore BackLab on a simulated Micro Nasdaq market. The previews below respond to you—change a view, switch a layer, or pause the action.
Interactive previewSimulated market · No real orders
02 / 06 The order book
The whole order book, drawn over time.
Every limit order waiting in the book is shaded by size, second by second. Bright bands are prices where size is resting. Trades are drawn on top where they printed, so you see what was offered and what actually traded.
Explore the order bookSimulated Micro Nasdaq
Switch the span, the palette and the layers, drag the contrast and floor, and point at the heat to read the size resting there.
- Look-back and colours
Show anything from the last minute to the last two hours. Pick the Deep, Gold, Heat or Mono palette and tune the contrast for the market you trade.
- Resting size
The brighter the band, the more size sat at that price, and the longer it stayed. Watch it get pulled or traded through.
- Trades, sized by volume
Green when a buyer took the ask, red when a seller hit the bid. The bigger the bubble, the bigger the print.
- The book
The live ladder: resting size at each price on the bid and the ask.
- Traded volume
How much has traded at each price this session, split by buyers and sellers.
- Session stats
Bid, ask, spread, book imbalance, session delta, the last print and the point of control, updated as they change.
03 / 06 Footprints
See inside every candle.
Open any candle as a footprint and see how much traded on the bid and the ask at each price. Point at a row to read it.
One-minute footprint: sellers on the left of each row, buyers on the right, imbalances shaded, delta and volume under each candle.
- Bid × ask: every trade counted on the side that crossed the spread
- Imbalances: a price where one side traded three times the other is shaded
- Delta and volume: under every candle, with the busiest price boxed
- Bars: seconds, minutes, ticks, range or Renko, built from real prints
- Split view: a second timeframe beside the first, or TradingView next to BackLab
04 / 06 Chart layers
Every level you trade, already drawn.
Switch layers on from one panel and BackLab keeps them current on every timeframe and every market. Try the switches.
- Sessions
Asia, London and New York, boxed and shaded, so you know whose market you are in.
- Key levels
Prior day high, low and close, the overnight range, initial balance, opening range, week and month.
- Volume profile
Session and TPO profiles with the point of control, value area and naked POCs from earlier days.
05 / 06 Trading
Your orders live on the chart.
BackLab trades through your Tradovate account. Right-click to place an order, drag it to move it, click × to cancel it. The chart only shows an order as working once Tradovate confirms it.
Working orders sit at their price with a line to the axis.
- Brackets: a take-profit and stop go on with every entry if you want them, and you drag them where you like
- Flatten and cancel: ⇧⌘F closes every position and ⇧⌘K cancels every order, on every armed account
- Risk limits: daily and weekly loss limits, a trailing drawdown and a contract cap that lock the account when hit
- Several accounts: arm more than one and trade them together. Logins are kept encrypted on your computer
- Demo first: orders go to Tradovate's demo environment until you switch live trading on
06 / 06 Alerts & sounds
Alerts you can hear from across the room.
Set an alert on a price, a line or any drawing. BackLab watches all twelve markets in the background, so an alert on gold still fires while you're on the Nasdaq.
Turn the voice on and press Test.
- Sounds, Mac notifications and a list of everything that fired today
- Alerts read aloud by a Mac voice or a natural-sounding Azure voice
- Copies sent to your Discord, with buttons to pause trading
- TradingView alerts received through a webhook on your computer
Years of history, stored on your machine.
BackLab keeps every one-minute bar and every trade it sees, and fills in older history in the background. Browse any market by year, month, day and session, and open any of them on the chart.
- The vault
Every one-minute bar and every trade BackLab sees is kept on your computer, and older history fills in behind it. Browse any market by year, month, day and session.
- Calendar
US economic releases with forecasts and prior values, holidays, early closes and contract rolls, with a countdown to the next session.
- Journal
Every trade recorded from your fills, with why it was placed and how it closed, plus an equity curve, drawdown and daily results.
Twelve markets, each with its own history.
Index, metals and energy futures on CME Globex. Each keeps its own drawings, alerts and stored bars, and rolls to the front contract on its own.
| Symbol | Market | Tick | Tick value | Point value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equity index | ||||
| MNQ | Micro Nasdaq-100 | 0.25 | $0.50 | $2 |
| NQ | E-mini Nasdaq-100 | 0.25 | $5.00 | $20 |
| MES | Micro S&P 500 | 0.25 | $1.25 | $5 |
| ES | E-mini S&P 500 | 0.25 | $12.50 | $50 |
| MYM | Micro Dow | 1 | $0.50 | $0.50 |
| YM | E-mini Dow | 1 | $5.00 | $5 |
| M2K | Micro Russell 2000 | 0.10 | $0.50 | $5 |
| RTY | E-mini Russell 2000 | 0.10 | $5.00 | $50 |
| Metals and energy | ||||
| MGC | Micro Gold | 0.10 | $1.00 | $10 |
| GC | Gold | 0.10 | $10.00 | $100 |
| MCL | Micro Crude Oil | 0.01 | $1.00 | $100 |
| CL | Crude Oil | 0.01 | $10.00 | $1,000 |
Get BackLab.
Mac or Windows. No website account needed.
MacBook & Mac
Apple silicon + Intel · Terminal installation
- Quit BackLab if it is open.
- Press ⌘ Space, type Terminal, then press Return.
- Copy below, paste with ⌘ V, then press Return.
curl -fsSL https://backlab.trade/install.sh | bashThe command picks your Mac’s build, installs BackLab, and opens it.
Windows
Desktop installer
Download the setup file, then open it to install BackLab.
Download for WindowsBackLab-windows-setup.exe
BackLab keeps itself up to date after installation.
Sorry for the extra Mac step. Apple may block the current package because BackLab is not yet signed and notarized. Terminal installs it directly. A future signed, notarized release will replace this step with the normal Mac installer.