Slippage: How to Tell If Your Broker Is Actually Fast

If you trade options or futures actively, execution speed isn't a nice-to-have. It's the gap between the price you meant to get and the price you actually got. That gap is slippage, and on a fast day it compounds across every order you place.

The problem is that execution speed is hard to compare. Most brokers don't publish a number at all. The ones that do often measure different things, so the figures aren't comparable side by side. A "fast" claim with no method behind it tells you nothing.

So here's a checklist. Use it to cut through the marketing and work out whether a broker is actually quick, or just says so.

1. Does the broker publish a latency figure at all?

Start here. Speed you can't see is speed you can't trust. If a broker won't put a number on its execution, you're taking "fast" on faith. Transparency is itself a signal: a broker that measures its own latency and publishes it is a broker that watches the thing closely.

2. What exactly is being measured?

This is where most comparisons fall apart. "Latency" can mean very different journeys:

• Order placement from a cloud server to the exchange
• The broker's own internal processing time
• A full round trip from your tap to the confirmation

These aren't the same, and a small number measuring a short journey can look better than a bigger number measuring the whole path. Always ask what the two endpoints are. The honest figure covers the full server-side journey, from the moment your order hits the broker's system to the moment it's placed on the exchange.

3. Is it a percentile, or an average?

An average hides the worst days. If a broker quotes a mean, ask for a percentile instead, like P95 or P99. A P95 of X milliseconds means 95 out of 100 orders were at least that fast. That matters, because the orders that hurt you are the slow ones in the tail, the ones an average quietly buries. On expiry, the tail is exactly where you live.

4. Over how many orders, and how recently?

A number needs a sample. "Six milliseconds" across a few test trades in a quiet session is not the same as the same figure across millions of real orders during live market hours. Ask two things: how many orders the figure is based on, and over what dates. Real orders, large sample, recent window. If it's a lab test rather than live trading, treat it as indicative at best.

5. Can you see the raw data?

This is the one that separates a real claim from a good-looking one. The strongest form of proof isn't a headline number, it's the underlying data, made public, so you can check it yourself. Every order, timed and published lets you verify the claim order by order instead of taking it on trust. If a broker is willing to open its execution data, that tells you more than any single figure can.

6. How does it hold up under load?

Speed in a calm market is easy. The test is the last 90 minutes of an expiry session, when volume spikes and everyone wants to trade at once. Look for two things: a latency figure measured during real, busy sessions, not just quiet ones, and a clean record of no technical halts when it mattered. A broker's behaviour under peak load is the most honest signal of its infrastructure.

7. What's the architecture behind the number?

Fast execution isn't luck. It comes from design. Slow platforms are often slow because an order hops through several systems on its way out: a third-party charting tool, a separate order manager, then the exchange gateway. Every handoff adds time, and every handoff is a place things can break. A broker that runs its charting and order systems on one stack, and sits physically close to the exchange, removes those handoffs. Ask what's under the hood, not just what the stopwatch says.

The checklist, at a glance

Before you commit to a platform, it should be able to answer yes to all of these:

• It publishes an execution-speed figure.
• It's clear about exactly what's being measured, end to end.
• It quotes a percentile, not just an average.
• The figure comes from a large sample of real, recent orders.
• The underlying data is public and checkable.
• It holds up under peak, expiry-day load, with a clean stability record.
• The speed is built on a tight, integrated architecture, not a chain of handoffs.

Where SAHI stands

We built this checklist around what we'd want to know as traders, and then we held ourselves to it.

We published a P95 latency of 6.61 milliseconds from our execution system to the exchange, measured across more than 9 million real orders over a stated window, not a lab test. We showed the full per-hop breakdown, and we made the entire dataset public, every order, so you can check the number yourself rather than take our word for it. Our charting engine and order system run on the same in-house stack, sitting close to the exchange in Mumbai, which is why the handoffs that slow other platforms down simply aren't there. And you can see how the platform has held up through recent expiry sessions, the days that test infrastructure hardest. 

That's the whole checklist, answered with data. See the execution-speed numbers for yourself.

Execution figures reflect the published measurement window and can vary with market conditions. Fast execution reduces friction; it does not remove the risks of F&O trading.