Book Imbalance (L1)
Bid vs ask volume imbalance at L1.
What it measures
Bid-versus-ask resting volume imbalance at level 1: (bid − ask) / (bid + ask), bounded in [−1, +1]. Positive values mean resting bid size dominates at the touch. L1 imbalance is one of the most-studied short-horizon book-pressure measures in the microstructure literature, and the natural companion to order-flow imbalance (which measures changes rather than levels).
References: Book imbalance Binance L1.
Point-in-time, leak-free
Like every QUANT_API feature, orderbook.book_imbalance is computed point-in-time: each value uses only data that had actually arrived at the timestamp you query — live or historical. No restatements, no backfills that quietly rewrite the past, no look-ahead. The value your backtest sees at a given stamp is the value the live API would have returned at that stamp. How we enforce this is documented on the methodology page.
Windows & transforms
The signal is computed over rolling windows; each window can be served raw or through a transform (z-score, percentile rank, delta…). Which windows and transforms you can query depends on your plan — the signal itself supports:
Plan & access
orderbook.book_imbalance unlocks on the Signal plan ($99/mo) and every plan above it. Every new account starts with a 14-day free trial of the Signal plan — no card required.
Example call
Resolve the latest value for BTC (5m window, delta transform — both available on the Signal plan):
curl -G https://api.quant-api.dev/v1/features/live \
-H "Authorization: Bearer fk_live_<your_key>" \
--data-urlencode "asset=BTC" \
--data-urlencode "features=orderbook.book_imbalance@5m:delta"Same key works on /v1/features/historical for point-in-time backtesting — see the API docs.