How to set up a footprint chart in Quantower

Quantower calls its footprint chart the Cluster chart, and it is part of the platform. Here is how to turn it on and set up the views most people want.

Quantower's footprint is the Cluster tool in the volume analysis toolbar. You do not need a third-party indicator for it. The labels below follow Quantower's own help pages for the cluster chart and the volume analysis tools. Menus can move between versions, so if a label differs on your build, those pages are the reference.

Turn it on

1. Open a chart for the instrument you trade.
2. Click the Magnifier icon in the upper right corner of the chart panel. A toolbar with the volume analysis tools appears at the bottom of the chart.
3. Click Cluster.
4. Let it load. Green means the tool has downloaded its data; yellow means it is still downloading.

Choose what each bar shows

• View — Single, Double or Imbalance. The Imbalance view puts sell volume (bid) on the left of each bar and buy volume (ask) on the right: the bid × ask layout.
• Data type — one or two at once: trades, buy/sell trades, volume, buy/sell volume (also as a percentage), delta (also as a percentage), average size, average buy/sell size, max one trade volume, filtered volume and buy/sell filtered volume.
• Mode — Cluster (numbers) or Histogram (bars).
• Colouring — by delta, by volume, by trades and more.

Three common starting points:

Make it readable

• Zoom in. The numbers need bars wide enough to hold them.
• Custom step adds up as many price levels as you set into one row. It helps when the tick size is small compared with the bar's range.
• Filtered volume is a data type: values below the threshold you set are shown as zero. Set the threshold per instrument, because the right level depends on its liquidity.
• More settings are behind the gear icon.

Setting it up for NQ, MNQ and ES

The steps are the same on every futures contract. What changes is how many ticks one bar covers, so the row grouping is the setting to adjust:

• NQ and MNQ move in 0.25-point ticks, and an ordinary bar can span dozens of them. With one row per tick the numbers get too small to read at normal zoom. Use Custom step to merge rows (for example 4 ticks = one point) and adjust until a typical bar shows a readable ladder.
• ES and MES also tick in 0.25 points but usually cover fewer ticks per bar than NQ, so they often need less grouping.
• Filtered volume: set the threshold separately for each contract. NQ, MNQ and ES trade very different sizes, so a number that hides noise on one hides real trades on another.

These are starting points, not rules — the right step depends on the bar type and the day's volatility.

NAS100, US100 and other CFDs

A footprint counts trades at each price, split by the side that initiated them. That comes from exchange trade data. A CFD such as NAS100 or US100 is priced by your broker, and many CFD feeds carry no exchange trades or bid/ask split, so the cluster chart has little or nothing to count. If your NAS100 footprint is empty or looks wrong, check whether the feed provides time & sales; to see the actual order flow, use NQ or MNQ futures data, which is where the Nasdaq-100 futures volume trades.

Is the footprint chart free in Quantower?

Not on the free licence. Quantower's licence comparison lists the cluster chart (footprint) for the Crypto, Multi-Asset and All-in-One licences, not for Free (checked October 2026 — licences change, so that page is the reference). What else ships with the platform is on What Quantower gives you free.

If it is slow or empty

• Slow to fill in: the volume analysis is calculated for the history loaded on the chart, so the more days you load, the longer it takes. Load fewer days on that chart.
• No numbers at all: the cluster chart counts trades, so the instrument needs trade (time & sales) data from your data feed.

Adding OrderVane on top

This part is optional. OrderVane Lite adds markers only — bubbles for large prints, aggression clusters, absorption bars and volume shelves — on top of the cluster chart and leaves it as it is. OrderVane Pro draws its own footprint cells and candles instead; to keep Quantower's cluster chart with Pro, see running it next to the tools you already use.

Related

• What Quantower gives you free
• How to read a footprint bar
• How to add a custom indicator to Quantower