Order flow basics: what the DOM, footprint charts and volume profile actually show
Order flow is the record of who traded, at what price and how aggressively. A candlestick hides most of it: four prices and a volume bar per period. Order-flow tools open that bar up. This guide covers the views you will meet first and what each is good for. It assumes you trade futures or another market where the exchange publishes depth, because that is where these tools make the most sense.
The DOM ladder: resting orders
The depth of market (DOM) is a vertical price ladder. Each row shows the bids and offers resting at that price, with your own working orders beside them. It answers one question well: what liquidity is sitting near the current price right now.
Two habits help. Watch how size changes as well as how big it is; large orders that appear and vanish as price approaches tell you less than size that stays and gets traded. And keep the ladder for execution while you read context elsewhere. A DOM shows the present moment, and a few seconds of it is easy to over-interpret.
The SuperDOM at 
NinjaTrader is the best-known example in our ranking. DOM Trader at 
Quantower and the advanced DOM in the Order Flow edition of 
MotiveWave do the same job.
Heatmaps: the DOM over time
A liquidity heatmap records the ladder through time, so resting size becomes a band of colour across the chart. You can see where large orders sat for minutes, where they were pulled and where price finally traded through them. Quantower's DOM Surface is the heatmap in our six. It is a powerful view and a noisy one. On a fast market the picture changes quicker than you can read it, so learn it on a slower session or in market replay.
Footprint and cluster charts: volume inside the bar
Footprint charts, which Quantower calls cluster charts, split each bar into price levels and show how much traded at the bid and how much at the ask on each one. The difference between the two is delta. A bar that closes higher on negative delta, for example, suggests the buyers were not the ones driving the move, and that is worth a second look.
Read footprints at a level you already care about. Delta on its own, in the middle of a range, mostly tells you that people were trading.
Volume profile and VPOC: where business was done
A volume profile turns the chart on its side and stacks traded volume by price for a session or a range. The price with the most volume is the volume point of control, or VPOC. High-volume areas often slow price down; thin areas are where it tends to travel quickly. The TPO chart, also called market profile, is a cousin that counts time spent at each price instead of volume. Quantower offers both through its Volume Analysis and TPO extensions.
A practical way to start
- Pick one market and one session. Micro or E-mini index futures during regular hours are a common choice because depth and volume are high.
- Before the open, add a volume profile for the prior session and mark its VPOC.
- Watch the DOM only when price reaches one of the levels you marked.
- Review the footprint after the session instead of in real time, until you can read it at a glance.
A simulator is enough for all of this. NinjaTrader's simulator is free and unlimited on every plan, and Quantower and MotiveWave both offer trials, so learning costs time rather than money.
What order flow will not do
None of these views predicts price. They describe what has traded and what is resting now, and they are most useful at levels you chose in advance. Treat any single reading as a clue to check, not a signal to act on. If you want to compare the platforms in more depth, the full ranking lists their order-flow tools and prices side by side.