Rithmic plants (ticker, order, history, PnL)
Rithmic plants are the separate services behind one Rithmic login: the ticker plant streams market data, the order plant handles accounts and order routing, the history plant returns past ticks and bars, and the PnL plant reports positions and profit and loss. Each plant has its own session, heartbeat and entitlements.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
Four services, four sessions
A client logs in to each plant separately and keeps each session alive with its own heartbeat. Paper and live environments are different plants again, so a market-data entitlement bought on one does not follow the login to the other. This architecture is why an account that opens the broker's own platform with every plant green can still be refused by the API, and why history can fail while live data flows.
| Plant | Provides | Typical failure that only affects it |
|---|---|---|
| Ticker | Live trades and depth per subscribed instrument | No ticks on an unsubscribed exchange |
| Order | Accounts, order entry, fills, working orders | Routing refused on a funded stage |
| History | Historical ticks and bars on request | Permission denied on bars, empty archive |
| PnL | Positions and realised or open profit and loss | Balances shown without market data |
Reading a partial connection
- Ticker connected, order plant refused: analysis works, manual routing is not available on this account.
- History accepted but silent on every window: the archive does not reach that far back, or the history plant is down; retry when the market is open.
- History returns permission denied on bars: historical bars are not enabled on the account, which is a broker entitlement. Historical ticks may still work.
- PnL without ticker: balances update but the chart cannot draw.
In Senzoukria
The Rithmic Direct connection opens the plants independently and reports them independently, so the status badge and the connection diagnostic can name which one failed. The tour notes that paper and live plants are separate and that the feed needs a market-data entitlement on that plant. The history download panel distinguishes a broker that refused the request with permission denied from a broker that accepted the login and sent nothing at all, and says in each case that the cause is an entitlement or an archive, not an app setting.
Order routing goes through the order plant only when the Allow order routing on this connection toggle is enabled on the card; on a funded account it stays off until you turn it on. Fills detected from the broker's order feed drive the trade journal and the fill sounds, including orders placed on the broker's own platform.
Common mistakes
- Concluding the connection is broken because one plant is refused while the others stream.
- Expecting the paper plant's data entitlement to apply to the live plant.
- Retrying a permission-denied history request instead of asking the firm to enable it.
- Reading an empty history window as a session with no trades.
Related
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Frequently asked questions
- Why does my footprint stream live while history stays empty?
- The ticker plant and the history plant are entitled separately. Live executions arrive on the ticker plant; past ticks or bars must be requested from the history plant, which the firm may not have enabled or whose archive may not reach the requested dates. The chart keeps running on live and cached data and states which case applies.
- Do I need the order plant for analysis only?
- No. Charts, delta, profiles and the heatmap read the ticker plant. The order plant is only needed for manual order entry or the armed strategy autopilot, and on a prop firm account both require permission from the firm regardless of whether the software can technically connect to that plant.