The LSE Directory / Data providers
Rithmic, LLC builds and operates the order-routing, market-data, and risk-management infrastructure that sits between a trading application and the futures exchanges. Its R | Trade Execution Platform normalises raw exchange data feeds, applies pre- and post-trade risk checks, and routes orders to exchange gateways. Traders reach that platform either through Rithmic's own R | Trader Pro desktop, web and mobile application, or through one of roughly 32 third-party platforms that connect over its rails, including NinjaTrader, Quantower, Sierra Chart, MotiveWave, ATAS and Bookmap. The company is not a broker or a futures commission merchant; it licenses its infrastructure to brokers, FCMs, proprietary trading firms and individual developers, each of whom supplies their own front end or client. Rithmic specialises in low-latency, unfiltered connectivity rather than a retail-styled trading app. Its market data is delivered tick by tick with Market-By-Order depth, meaning the full order book rather than aggregated price levels, with no conflation and no artificial delay, and historical tick data is available back to December 2011. Risk controls are enforced server-side at the infrastructure layer rather than inside the client platform, so an account's position and loss limits stay active even if the trading application itself disconnects or crashes, a property that has made Rithmic the default connectivity layer for funded-account evaluation programs. Within the futures-execution category, Rithmic is generally positioned as the low-latency, desktop-oriented standard, set against CQG's institutional-grade, higher-priced feed and Tradovate's cloud-native, browser-based platform. It operates roughly 13 gateways across North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, with its primary hub in Chicago near CME's data centre, and provides connectivity into CME Group, Eurex and Nasdaq futures markets. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Orangeburg, New York. For developers it offers three tiers of programmatic access: R | API+ (C++ and .NET libraries with server-side bracket, OCO and trailing-stop order types), R | Protocol API (a WebSocket and Google Protocol Buffers wire specification usable from any language or operating system), and R | Diamond API, its high-frequency tier, which connects directly to Rithmic's exchange-facing gateways and market-data handlers and targets transit times, from reading market data to releasing an order, of under 250 microseconds. Rithmic's infrastructure underlies a large share of the retail futures proprietary-trading industry; firms including Apex Trader Funding, Topstep, Bulenox and MyFundedFutures route their funded-account evaluation programs over Rithmic as of mid-2026. Note that Rithmic, LLC is unrelated to Rithm Capital, the NYSE-listed mortgage REIT and alternative asset manager that acquired Sculptor Capital Management in 2023; the similarly spelled names belong to two distinct businesses. As of mid-2026, Rithmic offers prospective users a 14-day free paper-trading trial through its Exchange Simulator, which runs against live market data without requiring a funded account, an entry point that reflects how much of its distribution now runs through the funded-account evaluation channel rather than direct retail signup.
