Range bars
Range bars are chart bars that close when price has travelled a fixed distance, measured in ticks, instead of when a clock interval ends. Every bar has the same high-to-low range, so a fast market prints many bars and a quiet market prints few.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
How a range bar is built
A range bar has one parameter: its range, expressed in ticks of the instrument. The bar opens at the first trade after the previous bar closed. Each incoming trade extends the bar's high or low. The moment the distance between high and low reaches the configured range, the bar closes and the next trade opens a new one.
Because the close rule depends only on price movement, range bars do not have a fixed duration. A bar can last a few seconds during a news release and ten minutes during lunch. The timestamp shown on the axis is the time the bar closed, not a regular grid.
- Every completed bar has the same height; the open and close vary inside it.
- Gaps larger than the range produce a bar that closes immediately, and some platforms fill the gap with phantom bars. Check how a platform treats such gaps before comparing charts; bars for prices that never traded are a construction choice, not a measurement.
- A bar in progress has not yet reached its range; it is shown as forming and may still extend on either side.
How to read them on a footprint
- Each bar covers the same number of price levels, so the traded levels per bar are comparable across the session without normalising for volatility.
- Bar count per hour is a direct reading of activity: many range bars in a short span mean price is moving; few bars mean it is rotating inside a narrow band.
- Delta per bar is comparable in one dimension only: the price distance is fixed, but volume and duration still vary from bar to bar.
- Time-of-day comparisons need care. Indicators that key on the session minute, such as Time-of-Day Volume, are built to match bars across sessions regardless of bar type; indicators that assume equal bar durations are not.
Range bars compared with other counter bars
| Bar type | Closes when |
|---|---|
| Time | A clock interval ends |
| Tick | A set number of trades has printed |
| Volume | A set number of contracts has traded |
| Range | High minus low reaches a set number of ticks |
| Delta | Net aggression (ask volume minus bid volume) reaches a set threshold |
In Senzoukria
Range bars are one of the five bar types in the grain menu next to the pinned timeframes on the Footprint page. The guided tour introduces the menu under the step titled "Timeframes and bar types": time, tick, volume, range and delta bars live there, and the star pins the grains you use most.
On Rithmic feeds, counter bars are rebuilt from the tick stream anchored at the 17:00 CT session open, so the first bar of a session starts at the open rather than carrying activity across the reset. Replay lists the same grains under "Grains", which means a range-bar chart can be replayed bar by bar exactly as it would have formed live.
Common mistakes
- Reading the horizontal axis as time. Two adjacent range bars can be seconds or minutes apart.
- Comparing a 10-tick range chart on NQ with a 10-tick range chart on ES. Tick value and typical daily range differ; the same number of ticks is a different fraction of the day's movement.
- Assuming an indicator with a period of N bars means N minutes. On range bars, N bars is a variable span of time.
- Changing the range mid-sample while testing a rule. The NQ/MNQ order flow guide notes that no bar type is correct for everyone; whichever one you pick, keep it fixed for a whole sample and change it only between samples.
Related
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Frequently asked questions
- Are range bars better than time bars for order flow?
- Neither is better in general; they answer different questions. Range bars keep the price distance constant, which makes traded levels and the shape of each footprint bar comparable. Time bars keep duration constant, which makes them easier to align with the session clock and with data from other sources. Many traders keep both open and read them for different things.
- Why do my range bars have different timestamps than another platform?
- Range bars depend on the exact tick sequence and on the platform's rule for gaps and for the session anchor. Two platforms that receive the same trades but start counting from a different moment, or that handle a gap larger than the range differently, will produce bars that close at different times. Compare the bar-building rules before comparing the charts.
- Does a range bar always have the same volume?
- No. The range is fixed; volume, trade count and duration are free. A range bar that took a lot of volume to complete is a different observation from one that completed on thin trading, and that difference is often what the footprint is used to see.