Interactive Guide
Shown: an illustrative order book over time, bids below the mid and asks above it.
Imagine a room where buyers line up on the left and sellers on the right. The person at the front of each line sets the best bid and best ask. The gap between them is the spread. When a buyer gets impatient and crosses over to the seller's side at their price, a trade happens.
Mid price
A market order hits
Try placing a market buy with a large size. Watch how the order eats through the ask side, consuming liquidity level by level. The spread widens. The midprice shifts. This is in its most elemental form.
The book above is simulated. Our measures the depth of real books, and there's a free sample to try.
Trades
Consecutive same-direction trade run lengths, imbalance, flip rate, and price change on direction flip.
Need the ticks behind this metric? Prime + Raw includes raw trades.
Shown: flip_rate, hourly, 1–31 January 2024, from this page's Sample CSV · extreme: 0.134, 3 Jan, 12:00 UTC · built with run_structure
buy_run_max_lenMax Buy Run Length records the longest uninterrupted sequence of buyer-initiated trades in the interval.
Long runs are often a signature of urgency, persistence, or systematic execution that keeps leaning in one direction.
sell_run_max_lenMax Sell Run Length is the bearish mirror image, tracking the longest consecutive stretch of sell-initiated prints.
It helps identify intervals where downside pressure arrived as a continuous wave rather than as isolated bursts.
run_imbalanceRun Imbalance summarizes whether buy sequences or sell sequences dominated the structure of trading within the bar.
Unlike plain volume imbalance, it captures persistence and sequencing, which can be more informative about trader intent.
flip_rateFlip Rate measures how frequently the trade direction switched between buy-led and sell-led prints.
High flip rates usually correspond to choppy, back-and-forth microstructure, while low flip rates indicate more persistent pressure.
price_change_on_flipPrice Change on Flip measures how much the market moved when control passed from one side of the tape to the other.
Large changes on flips can imply that turning points were costly and that reversals happened only after meaningful price concessions.
Here's a microstructure concept that rarely gets discussed outside market-making desks: trade runs — consecutive sequences of same-direction trades. Their statistical properties reveal the hidden structure of order flow in ways that aggregate volume metrics completely miss.
/api/v1/data/run_structure| Field | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
buy_run_max_len | Max Buy Run Length | Longest consecutive run of buy-side trades |
sell_run_max_len | Max Sell Run Length | Longest consecutive run of sell-side trades |
buy_run_mean_len | Mean Buy Run Length | Average length of consecutive buy-side runs |
sell_run_mean_len | Mean Sell Run Length | Average length of consecutive sell-side runs |
run_imbalance | Run Imbalance | Normalized difference between the longest buy run and longest sell run |
flip_rate | Flip Rate | Share of trades whose side flipped versus the previous trade |
price_change_on_flip | Price Change on Flip | Average absolute price change when trade direction flips |
# Install the Aperiodic CLI into ~/.local/bin
mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aperiodic-io/cli/main/install.sh | INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/.local/bin" bash
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
# Free preview — no API key required
aperiodic run_structure --preview \
--exchange binance-futures \
--symbol perpetual-BTC-USDT:USDT \
--interval 5m \
--timestamp exchange \
--start-date 2025-05-01 \
--end-date 2025-05-31 \
--output-dir ./data && echo "Saved to $PWD/data"Every new row as it is computed, over WebSocket at wss://stream.aperiodic.io/v1/stream. Authenticate with your API key in the X-API-KEY header and subscribe to channels named run_structure.<exchange>.<interval>, on intervals 15s, 30s, 1m, 5m, 15m, 30m, 1h, 4h, 1d (15s and 30s on Institutional Live only). Streaming is included on Live plans.
pip install "aperiodic[stream]"import os
from aperiodic import stream
for message in stream(
api_key=os.environ["APERIODIC_API_KEY"],
dataset="run_structure",
exchange="binance-futures",
interval="1m",
symbols=["perpetual-BTC-USDT:USDT"], # omit for every symbol on your plan
):
print(message.channel, message.snapshot, message.data)timestampreqstringTimestamp source. 'exchange' uses the exchange-reported timestamp, 'true' uses actual arrival time at our servers.
exchangetrueintervalreqstringAggregation time interval for the data. Sub-minute intervals (15s, 30s) require an Institutional plan.
15s30s1m5m15m30m1h4h1dexchangereqstringSource exchange for the data.
binance-futuresokx-perpshyperliquid-perpssymbolreqstringTrading pair symbol in the format of Atlas' universal symbology: https://github.com/aperiodic-io/atlas
start_datereqstring<date>Start date for the data range (YYYY-MM-DD format). A metric series starts on the first day of the raw series it is computed from (see /metadata/raw); raw trades and quotes start binance-futures from 2020-01-01, okx-perps from 2019-09-01, hyperliquid-perps from 2025-01-01. Earlier days return no files. How far back you can go depends on the plan: 5 years on Pro, full history on Prime, Prime + Raw and Institutional. An earlier start_date than the plan reaches returns 403.
end_datereqstring<date>End date for the data range (YYYY-MM-DD format). Must be greater than or equal to start_date.
Successful response with download URLs for every existing file covering the range from the series' published start — one per month before 2026-08-01, one per day from 2026-08-01 onwards
filesobject[]requiredFiles covering the requested date range, in chronological order. Data before 2026-08-01 is split by month (one file per calendar month, no `day`); data from 2026-08-01 onwards is split by day (one file per calendar day, with `day` set). The changeover falls on a month boundary, so a given month is served entirely one way or the other; a range spanning it returns the earlier months as monthly files followed by a daily file per day.
yearintegerrequiredYear of the data file
monthintegerrequiredMonth of the data file (1-12)
dayintegerDay of the data file (1-31). Present only on daily files, i.e. those covering 2026-08-01 onwards. Absent on monthly files, which cover an entire calendar month.
urlstring<uri>requiredPresigned URL for direct file download (valid for 5 minutes). URLs are served from dataset-specific subdomains, e.g. ohlcv.aperiodic.io, trade-metrics.aperiodic.io, l1-metrics.aperiodic.io, l2-metrics.aperiodic.io, derivative-metrics.aperiodic.io.
{
"files": [
{
"year": 2026,
"month": 6,
"url": "https://ohlcv.aperiodic.io/binance-futures/1h/BTCUSDT/2026-06.parquet?X-Amz-Expires=300&..."
},
{
"year": 2026,
"month": 7,
"url": "https://ohlcv.aperiodic.io/binance-futures/1h/BTCUSDT/2026-07.parquet?X-Amz-Expires=300&..."
},
{
"year": 2026,
"month": 8,
"day": 1,
"url": "https://ohlcv.aperiodic.io/binance-futures/1h/BTCUSDT/2026-08-01.parquet?X-Amz-Expires=300&..."
},
{
"year": 2026,
"month": 8,
"day": 2,
"url": "https://ohlcv.aperiodic.io/binance-futures/1h/BTCUSDT/2026-08-02.parquet?X-Amz-Expires=300&..."
}
]
}
Prefilled with the shared DEMO-KEY and a free preview slice — send the request to see live data, no account required.
/api/v1/data/preview/run_structure?timestamp=exchange&interval=5m&exchange=binance-futures&symbol=perpetual-BTC-USDT%3AUSDT&start_date=2025-05-01&end_date=2025-05-31