Bookmap's free tier in 2026: what you get and what is paywalled

Bookmap's footprint chart is not in the free tier. It is not in the $19 tier or the $49 tier either. On Bookmap's own comparison matrix, the Footprint row is a cross for Digital, Digital Plus and Global, and a tick only for Global Plus, which runs $99 a month billed monthly or $79 a month billed yearly.

That is the harsh half of the answer. The other half is better than Bookmap's reputation suggests. The free Digital tier carries real-time crypto data, not delayed data. US stocks and futures are the ones marked Delayed on that column. Crypto is live, and the only real limit is scope: one crypto instrument at a time.

We read Bookmap's pages column by column on 2026-08-20, because most write-ups on this query get at least one of those two facts wrong. Bookmap's own pages also disagree with each other in three places, which we flag below rather than pick a side.

Two corrections before the numbers

First: bookmap.com/pricing is a 404. The live comparison lives at bookmap.com/packages-comparison.

Second: there is no tier called Crypto. The four packages are Digital (free), Digital Plus, Global and Global Plus. The widely repeated "$39/month Crypto tier" is a misreading of the bookmap.com/crypto page, whose pricing widget renders in its yearly state by default. Screenshot that widget without touching the monthly toggle and you get a number that looks like a crypto-specific plan. $39 a month is Global billed yearly.

The map

One inconsistency in passing: the pricing page puts Digital Plus at $16 a month billed yearly, which is $192 a year, while the crypto page's FAQ says $19 per month or $195 per year at a 15% saving. $192 is not $195. Three dollars changes nothing, but it does tell you the two pages were not written on the same day.

What the free tier actually gives you

The Digital column's data row reads "Real-time Crypto: Binance, Bitfinex, +20 more" while the US stocks and futures entries on the same column read Delayed. The crypto page heads that column "Supported Crypto currencies exchanges (Free data)". So if you came here asking whether the free Bookmap is a delayed toy for crypto, the answer is no. It is live.

What you cannot do is watch more than one thing. Bookmap's own wording, verbatim: "In Bookmap® Digital (the free version), you can use Bookmap® with one crypto instrument at a time. For multiple instruments and advanced features, consider subscribing to Bookmap® Digital+, Global, or Global+."

That is a genuinely good free tier, and we would rather say so than manufacture a grievance. A real-time depth heatmap on a live crypto book, at no cost and with no data fee behind it, is more than most vendors give away. The gates are on scope and on tooling around the chart.

Backfill is the history that loads automatically when you subscribe to a symbol, and it holds the second vendor contradiction. The pricing matrix says one hour for Digital. A more recently updated Bookmap knowledge base page says up to 48 hours for the free tier. One hour means you effectively start recording when you open the app. 48 hours means you can open a chart and look at yesterday. Ask Bookmap before you plan around either number.

Multibook is the feature people mean when they ask whether Bookmap can merge exchanges. It is not on the free tier. Bookmap describes the scope this way: "Our crypto day trading software lets you choose from over 20 of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world and combine up to 5 instruments into a single Multibook chart." That starts at Digital Plus, so cross-venue on Bookmap begins at $16 a month billed yearly.

The imbalance indicators are stranger. They are marked "Replay mode only" for both Digital Plus and Global, with live access only at Global Plus. Bookmap states it directly: "The Volume Imbalance indicator is part of the Bookmap Global+ Package. You can try it for free with any package in replay mode and with delayed instruments." A tool you can only run on recorded or delayed data is a study aid, not a live read.

Where the footprint actually sits

Global Plus. That is $99 a month billed monthly, $79 a month billed yearly, or $1,990 once for the lifetime licence. If your reason for opening Bookmap is bid-ask volume inside each bar, nothing in the free tier previews it.

Here is the part worth reading twice before you pay. The crypto page describes the Global tier as "Compatible with ALL add-ons", while the packages comparison marks Footprint as a cross at Global. Those two Bookmap pages disagree about whether $39 a month gets you a footprint. We are not going to guess which one is current. If you are about to buy Global specifically for the footprint, ask Bookmap support to confirm in writing first.

We also could not verify any standalone add-on price. Bookmap's marketplace is a JavaScript-only page that served us no product data, so any figure quoted for a Bookmap footprint add-on is one we cannot corroborate.

Absorption and imbalance, precisely

This is where competitor write-ups get sloppy, usually in Bookmap's favour and occasionally against it.

Bookmap does ship an Absorption indicator, and it is a real one. Their description, verbatim: "Absorption is an on-chart indicator that highlights areas with large volume traded over short time periods." It takes configurable time and size thresholds, it has an automatic mode that derives the size threshold from the standard deviation of recent traded volume, and it can fire sound and Telegram alerts. That is a proper implementation and it deserves credit. It is Global Plus.

Bookmap has no spoofing detector. Pulled walls are something you watch for on the heatmap with your own eyes, which is a legitimate way to do it and the reason the heatmap exists. If you want the vocabulary for that, we wrote up spoofing and fake walls separately.

Bookmap also has no stacked-imbalance concept in the footprint sense, and the two objects share a word without sharing a definition. Bookmap's imbalance is an aggregate readout: "Located in the upper right corner of the chart, these indicators show Order Book Imbalance and Volume Imbalance." It summarises the whole visible chart, and Bookmap says so: "The two imbalance indicators are calculated according to the current chart range. Any change to the chart range" changes the number.

Footprint imbalance is a different animal. It compares bid volume at one price against ask volume at the price diagonally adjacent, cell by cell, inside a single bar, then looks for runs: three or more consecutive cells imbalanced the same way. That is a stacked imbalance, and it marks the price band where one side was consistently getting run over. A single number in the corner cannot express it, because the information is positional. If the vocabulary is new, the footprint glossary entry is the short version and the footprint chart history is the long one.

Install, licence, and the data-fee footnote

Bookmap is a desktop application, with download options for Windows, Mac and Linux. The documentation is blunt about the prerequisite: "Note: To install and use Bookmap, you need to have a subscription to one of the Bookmap packages", followed by "When launching Bookmap for the first time, enter your license key in the designated field." Free counts as a subscription, so the free path is account, then download, then key.

The Bookmap Web link in their navigation is not a browser version of the trading client. It is a B2B embeddable widget sold through a demo request. No mobile or tablet app is offered anywhere on the site.

One line on the pricing page deserves more attention than it usually gets: "* Real-Time Futures & Stocks Market Data fees are not included in the price of the Bookmap software subscription." The published ranges are BookmapData at $34-79 a month, dxFeed Futures at $37 a month per exchange, dxFeed US Equities at $34-119 a month, and Rithmic at $40-101 a month. So a futures trader on Global Plus is looking at the subscription plus a data bill of similar size. Crypto is the exception. Crypto data is free, which is a large part of why the free tier works at all for crypto and does not for ES.

The heatmap is the point, and it is excellent

We are not going to pretend to compete with Bookmap's heatmap. It is the best-known rendering of resting liquidity over time, the free tier gives it to you live on crypto, and if you want to watch a wall build and evaporate at a price, that is the tool.

The two charts answer different questions. A heatmap shows what was resting and waiting: passive size, where it sat, how long it survived. A footprint shows what executed: aggressive volume, split by side, binned by price inside each bar. Absorption is the moment the two meet, which is why both products try to mark it. Our order flow primer covers how the pieces fit together.

The gap neither Bookmap tier closes for perps

On Bookmap, cross-venue starts at $16 a month and the footprint starts at $79, so a per-cell bid-ask footprint spanning multiple crypto venues is a Global Plus proposition. At which point the real question is whether one venue's tape would have been enough anyway.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes the difference is measurable. Here is a stamped snapshot from our own aggregation layer, 2026-08-20 at 14:38 UTC. BTC perp last traded at 71,468.76, up 9.22% on the day, with 24-hour volume across the four venues at $68.86B, roughly 6.8 times the weekly median. A loud day.

Open interest across those venues was $16.50B: Binance $7.80B, Bybit $4.01B, Hyperliquid $2.53B, OKX $2.15B. Binance alone was 47.3% of it, and Binance is the default feed almost everywhere.

Now the part that makes the case. At that instant, order book imbalance disagreed across venues, not slightly but in sign. Hyperliquid read +0.287 and Bybit +0.223, both bid-heavy. OKX read -0.245 and Binance -0.013, both ask-heavy. That is four books and two opposite conclusions in the same second. Meanwhile the prior 30 minutes of taker flow netted -$82.63M with a taker buy ratio of 0.4545, and price fell 0.45%: Binance -$50.64M, Bybit -$14.71M, OKX -$9.38M, Hyperliquid -$7.91M. Funding sat at the 85th percentile of the last 730 days. A single-venue chart of that half hour is not wrong, it is partial, and on OBI it would have told two different traders two opposite stories depending on which venue they happened to open.

What we run instead: a free cross-exchange footprint

Our footprint chart is free in the browser, no account and no install, and it merges Binance USDⓈ-M, Bybit linear, OKX and Hyperliquid into one chart across seven assets: BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, XRP, DOGE and HYPE.

The base cell is a 1-minute candle, with client-side aggregation to 5m, 15m and 1h. Scrollback runs 30 days, paging backwards through our Parquet trade tape until it walks past retention. Live cells refresh about four times a second over WebSocket.

Stacked imbalance zones are drawn for you: runs of three or more consecutive same-side imbalanced cells get a rectangle stroked around them, at a ratio you pick from 2:1, 3:1 or 4:1. Absorption and spoofing are computed rather than eyeballed. A solid cyan dot marks an absorbed wall, where resting size held near its peak while takers hit it. A hollow cyan ring marks a pulled wall. Both get re-classified every 30 seconds. There is anchored VWAP with up to three anchors, and the anchors travel in the URL via ?avwap= so a chart you are looking at is a link you can send. The classification rules are written out in the footprint methodology.

What MarketTrace doesn't give you

The comparison only means something if it runs both ways.

No heatmap. We do not render resting liquidity over time the way Bookmap does, and that is Bookmap's strongest feature. No DOM and no order entry either: nothing here places a trade. No futures and no equities. Seven crypto perp assets, nothing else.

No record and replay. Bookmap's replay is a serious training tool and we have no equivalent; our scrollback is a chart you scroll, not a session you play back at speed. No sound or Telegram alerts. No desktop app, no custom indicator API, no multi-chart workspace, no saved layouts.

The timeframe range stops at both ends: nothing below 1 minute, nothing above 1 hour. Scrollback ends at 30 days, so a footprint of last quarter is not available at any price, ours or anyone's, from our tape. And we cover four venues, which is three more than one and fewer than the 20-plus exchanges Bookmap supports, though a single Multibook chart combines up to 5 instruments.

If your workflow is single-venue heatmap reading with replay drills, Bookmap's free tier is the better starting point and we would tell you that to your face. If your question is where taker volume stacked against resting size across the venues where perp positioning actually lives, open ours.

FAQ

Is Bookmap free?

Yes. The Digital tier costs nothing and carries real-time crypto data from Binance, Bitfinex and more than 20 other exchanges. US stocks and futures are delayed on that tier. The limit on crypto is scope, not latency: one crypto instrument at a time.

Does the free version of Bookmap have footprint charts?

No. On Bookmap's comparison matrix the Footprint row is a cross for Digital, Digital Plus and Global, and a tick only for Global Plus. That is $99 a month billed monthly, $79 a month billed yearly, or a $1,990 lifetime licence.

Is there a $39 Bookmap Crypto plan?

There is no tier called Crypto. The four tiers are Digital, Digital Plus, Global and Global Plus. The $39 figure is Global billed yearly, and the confusion comes from the crypto landing page, whose pricing widget renders in its yearly state by default.

What are the limits of Bookmap's free tier?

One crypto instrument at a time, one hour of backfill on the pricing page, no record and replay, no Multibook, and no order book or volume imbalance indicators. A more recently updated Bookmap knowledge base page says up to 48 hours of backfill on the free tier, so the two figures disagree.

Does Bookmap run in a browser or on a phone?

No. It is a desktop install for Windows, Mac or Linux, and it needs an account and a licence key entered on first launch. The Bookmap Web item in the site navigation is a B2B embeddable widget sold through a demo request, not a consumer browser client. No mobile or tablet app is offered.

What is a free alternative to Bookmap for footprint charts?

MarketTrace runs a free cross-exchange footprint at /perpetuals/footprint: Binance, Bybit, OKX and Hyperliquid merged into one chart, seven assets, 30 days of scrollback, in the browser with no account. It does not replace Bookmap's heatmap, which is a different instrument.

Open one and check the claims

Every claim on this page about our chart is checkable in about thirty seconds. Open the footprint, pick an asset, set the imbalance ratio to 3:1, and scroll back through a volatile hour. No account, no install, no trial clock.

Open the footprint chart →

Related

→ Footprint chart: from the CBOT pit to crypto perpetuals

→ Order flow trading: how to read the flow in crypto perpetual futures

→ Spoofing and fake walls: what the crypto order book is (and isn't) telling you

→ Where volume profile is actually free, and what each free tier hides

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Sources

• Packages comparison — Bookmap
• Crypto trading software — Bookmap
• Pricing (returns 404 as of this writing) — Bookmap
• Marketplace — Bookmap

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Bookmap's pages were checked on 2026-08-20 and vendors change pricing without notice, so confirm anything you are about to pay for; the MarketTrace figures were pulled from our aggregation layer on 2026-08-20 at 14:38 UTC.