Questions we are asked

What This Is

Is ORTEX Charts the Same Thing as ORTEX?

No. ORTEX is a market-data and short-interest platform sold to investors at ortex.com, priced per user per month. ORTEX Charts is a JavaScript charting library sold to developers at ortexcharts.com, priced per product. The same company makes both. They are separate products with separate prices, separate licenses and separate customers: buying one does not include the other, and using ORTEX Charts does not require an ORTEX data subscription.

Is It Built on TradingView, Lightweight Charts or Highcharts?

No. ORTEX Charts is an independent rendering engine built from the ground up in TypeScript. It has no third-party runtime dependencies, and no line of it is copied, ported or adapted from any other library: no code, no icons, no styles. The algorithms it implements come from the published literature and are cited where they are used. It shares nothing with TradingView Lightweight Charts, TradingView Advanced Charts, Highcharts or ChartIQ, and is compared with all four on this site because those are the products a buyer is choosing between, not because it is built on any of them.

Browsers and Platforms

Which Browsers Are Supported?

Current versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox, on desktop and mobile. The requirements are Canvas 2D, ResizeObserver, Pointer Events, Intl and ECMAScript 2020 syntax, all of which have been available in every major browser since 2020. There is no Internet Explorer support and none is possible without a compilation step you would have to add yourself.

All three engines are in the automated suite: Chromium (Chrome and Edge), WebKit (Safari on macOS and iOS) and Firefox, each against its own pixel baselines, on desktop and, for Chromium and WebKit, phone emulation. If you find a rendering difference in any of them, report it; it is a bug rather than a limitation.

Does It Work on Mobile and With Touch?

Yes, and touch handling is in the engine rather than in the chrome, so it works on a bare createFinancialChart as well as in the shell. Drag pans, pinch zooms, a long press raises the crosshair, and a fast flick has momentum.

The shell adapts below 640 pixels: the toolbar drops its labels, the resolution strip scrolls horizontally, the drawing rail becomes a horizontal bar under the chart, and coarse pointers get 32-pixel targets.

Full screen uses the Fullscreen API where it exists and a fixed-position layer where it does not, which is the case on iOS Safari.

Is There a React Native or Native Mobile SDK?

No, and there is not going to be one. The honest answer for a mobile application is the web build inside a WebView — Capacitor, React Native WebView or the platform equivalent — which is the same code, the same license key and the same behavior.

Does It Work in Vue, Svelte or Angular?

Yes. The engine has no framework dependency at all; it takes an element and returns an object. The only framework-specific package is @ortex-charts/react, and it exists because ORTEX needed it, not because the core requires anything.

A binding in any framework is the same three steps: create the chart in a mount effect, call applyOptions or setData when props change, and call remove on unmount. Reading the React source is a reasonable template.

Rendering and Size

How Big Is It?

89.9 KB gzipped for the full chart with the toolbar, drawings, indicators and order flow; 59 KB for candles and volume, 32.5 KB for a line chart, and 3.3 KB for the sparkline build. All in one file each, with no chunk loading at runtime. See Performance for how those are measured and how they compare.

Is It Canvas or WebGL?

Canvas 2D. That is a deliberate choice and it has a real ceiling.

Canvas 2D with typed-array columns, visible-range-only work and decimation holds 60 Hz to a few hundred thousand visible points, which covers every normal financial size: a decade of daily bars is 2,500 rows, and a decade of minute bars is about a million rows of which only the visible window is drawn.

What it does not do is millions of points all on screen at once without decimation. If that is your product, SciChart's WebGL renderer is the right tool today. A WebGL path behind the same API is on the roadmap and is not implemented.

Why Is My Chart Blank?

Almost always one of three things: the container has no height, the timestamps are in seconds rather than milliseconds, or the chart was created during a server-side render. See the common problems in Quickstart.

Data and Privacy

Is Any Data Sent Anywhere?

No. There is no analytics call, no usage beacon, no license check over the network and no hidden call-home in the library. The license key is verified locally, by the library's own Ed25519 implementation, against a public key embedded in the bundle. Your bars, your symbols, your users and your layouts never leave the browser through anything the library does.

Two things are disclosed rather than hidden, and both are in the contract:

• The hosted kit's CDN logs. If you load the library from cdn.ortexcharts.com, that CDN sees the requests, which means which domain loaded which kit and when. It is a standard web server log with no user data in it. Registry customers who bundle the packages themselves do not touch ORTEX infrastructure at all.
• An optional license check-in. The agreement describes a documented check-in carrying { keyId, hostname, version } once per session, which enterprise customers may switch off. It is disclosed because a hidden one would be blocked by ad blockers and content security policies, would be a privacy liability, and would be the first thing a copier deleted. Nothing about it is covert.

There is no third position. If a privacy review asks "does this library phone home", the answer is no, and the two items above are the complete disclosure.

Do I Need a Data Subscription From ORTEX?

No. The library consumes data; it does not supply it. There is no bundled feed and no requirement to buy one. The ORTEX adapter preset exists because ORTEX is a customer of its own library, not because you have to be.

Can It Fetch Data Itself?

Only through what you give it. A datafeed is your code. An adapter spec tells the library which URLs to call and how to read the responses, using the browser fetch and WebSocket you would have used yourself. Nothing is requested that your spec did not name.

Where Are Layouts and Drawings Stored?

Wherever you put them. getLayout() returns JSON, getDrawings() returns an array, and list() on the alerts primitive returns a list. There is no ORTEX storage service and no save-and-load server contract. See The shell and layouts.

Licensing

What Happens When a License Expires?

The gate closes: the chart paints a licence notice naming the reason instead of its content. Nothing is written to the console. Keys carry a 14-day grace period beyond the subscription period end so a late renewal never closes it, and a renewal re-signs onto the same key id and the same kit URL, so nothing in your deployment changes from year to year. Renew before the grace period ends and nothing is ever seen.

Does the Chart Ever Stop Working?

Yes, on a deployment host without a valid key. Since 1.1.0 there is one state in which the library draws its content: a key that is valid. In every other state, no key, invalid key, expired key, wrong domain or revoked key, it paints a licence notice on its own background and nothing else. On localhost and its aliases the gate never closes, so development, tests and continuous integration are unaffected. See license keys.

Is the License Key a Secret?

No. It ships to the browser, it is bound to your domains, and anyone can read it out of your bundle. Treat it like a publishable API key. What is secret is the npm registry token in your .npmrc, which grants package downloads and belongs in your continuous-integration secrets.

Do I Need a License to Evaluate It?

Not on your own machine. On localhost the library draws without a key, with the ORTEX mark on, so local development, unit tests and continuous integration need nothing. The playground and every example on this site run the real library too. On any other host a chart with no valid key paints a licence notice instead of its content, so the first deployment is where a key is needed; every purchase carries a sixty-day money-back guarantee, which is the trial. There is no free plan.

Can I Remove the ORTEX Mark?

Only with a license that grants the whitelabel feature, which is every paid plan: Pro, Business and OEM. Setting branding.visible = false without it is ignored and logs one line. Replacing the mark with your own needs the brand feature, which is an OEM agreement. See The ORTEX mark and /pricing.

Is It Open Source?

No. It is a commercial library. Source access exists under OEM and enterprise agreements; see Installation and delivery. It has no third-party runtime dependencies and contains no third-party code: every package installs with an empty dependency tree, and the source drop is entirely ORTEX's own.

Can I Redistribute It Inside My Own Product?

Embedding it in an application you sell is what the Pro and Business plans are for. Redistributing the library itself — shipping it as a component your customers then build with — is an OEM matter, because it changes who the licensee is. Ask.

Features and Limitations

How Many Indicators Are There?

51 built in, plus 78 more in @ortex-charts/indicators-extra, a package you only pay for when you import it: 129 in all, more than TradingView Advanced Charts. roughly 110, and you choose which of them your users see. The built-in 51 alone is comparable to Highcharts Stock, which ships about 50, and short of TradingView Advanced Charts, which ships about 110 — the long tail there is mostly variations on what is here. Registering your own is about 20 lines and it then behaves exactly like a built-in one. See Indicators.

Is There Pine Script or Another Indicator Language?

No, and there is no plan for one. A scripting language is a decade of work and a permanent support burden. Indicators here are TypeScript, which is strictly more capable — and strictly less safe for end-user authoring, which is the trade-off. If letting your users write their own indicators is a product requirement, this library does not solve it.

How Many Drawing Tools Are There?

32, as of version 0.2.0: trend lines and rays, arrows, a polyline and a freehand brush, rectangles, ellipses and triangles, parallel and regression channels, six Fibonacci tools, a Gann fan, a pitchfork, measure and range tools, long and short position tools with a reward-to-risk readout, and four annotation tools. Every one of them has magnet snapping, handle editing, undo, redo and JSON serialization. The shell's tool rail shows nine of them until you ask for more, because the full set crowds a rail, and drawingTools names the ones you want. See Drawing tools.

Can I Show Several Charts in a Grid?

Yes, but the grid is your CSS. linkCharts synchronizes the visible time range and the crosshair across any number of charts, across resolutions, and a bar replay can drive higher-timeframe followers. There is no built-in two-by-two layout container. See Replay, linking and alerts.

Is There a Navigator Strip or Range Buttons?

No. Range presets are a few lines on setVisibleTimeRange and fit naturally as toolbar actions; there is an example on Time, sessions and resolutions. A navigator mini-chart is not built in.

Can the Chart Be Rendered on a Server?

No. The library is browser-only: it creates canvases, reads devicePixelRatio and observes element sizes. There is no headless rendering mode. Chart images for emails and social cards are better solved by a separate rendering service.

In React this means creating the chart inside an effect, which the components already do; the file still needs "use client" in Next.js. See Installation and delivery.

Is It Accessible?

Partially, and the gaps are worth knowing before you commit.

Implemented: the chart is focusable and responds to arrow keys, +, - and Home; toolbar buttons carry aria-pressed; menus are role="menu" with arrow-key navigation, aria-checked on toggles and focus return; dialogs are role="dialog" with aria-modal and a focus trap; icon-only buttons have accessible names; reduced motion is respected.

Not implemented: there is no screen-reader description of the chart data, no focusable data table as an alternative representation, and no high-contrast theme shipped. If conformance is a procurement requirement, weigh those; Highcharts Stock ships an accessibility module and this library does not. The CSV export plus a table of your own is the honest interim answer.

Is the Interface Available in Other Languages?

Dates and numbers localize through Intl and follow the chart's locale option. The interface strings — toolbar labels, menu entries, dialog titles — are English only, and there is no string table to supply. A host that needs another language today switches the toolbar off and drives the chart from its own controls, which are all public methods.

Does It Do Order Entry, Positions or Depth of Market?

No. Price lines and draggable alerts are as close as it gets. Order and position lines with drag handles are a small primitive on a documented interface and would be built if a customer needed them; a broker integration is deliberately out of scope.

Support and Process

How Does Support Work?

By email, at charts@ortex.com. Pro includes email support; Business includes priority support; OEM agreements name an engineer and carry a service-level agreement. Commercial questions go to sales@ortex.com.

When reporting a rendering problem, window.__ORTEX_CHARTS_KIT__ on a hosted kit carries the kit id, key id, plan and library version, which is the fastest thing to quote.

How Often Is It Released?

Within a major version, hosted kits pick up new releases automatically the next time the file is fetched; registry customers upgrade on their own schedule. A subscription buys the versions released while it runs, and the right to use them ends with it: the key stops verifying on its expiry date and the ORTEX mark returns with a warning naming the reason.

Can I Get the Source?

Under an OEM or enterprise agreement, yes: read access to a repository mirror with the TypeScript source, the tests and the playground. Outside that, published packages are minified with no source maps.

Something Is Missing That I Need. What Now?

Ask. The extension points — series types, indicators, primitives — are the same ones the built-ins use, so a lot of what looks missing is a day of work rather than an architectural change. Where the answer is genuinely no — Pine Script, native mobile, a broker integration — this documentation says so rather than implying a date.