What is a footprint chart?

A footprint chart (also called a cluster or order-flow chart) shows the traded buy vs sell volume at each individual price level inside every bar.

Footprint vs candlestick

A candlestick summarizes a period with four numbers — open, high, low, close. A footprint chart goes deeper: it splits the bar into price rows and prints how much volume was bought at the ask and sold at the bid at each level. You see the actual order flow inside the bar.

How to read it

• Cells — each price row shows ask volume (buys) and bid volume (sells), colored by the dominant side.
• POC — the level with the most total volume; a magnet and a reference.
• Delta — buys minus sells; positive delta on a stalling price can signal absorption.
• Imbalance — a level where one side heavily outweighs the other diagonally.

Bar types

Footprints can be built on time bars (e.g. 5-minute), range bars (fixed price moves), or volume bars (fixed traded size) — each emphasizing different aspects of participation.

Try it on live crypto

Whalesprint shows live Bitcoin and Ethereum footprint charts with all three bar types and deep history.