Hosting
Every part of this business — the API, the market-data ingest, the gamma engine, the databases, this website — runs on one dedicated machine in Chicago, rented from QuantVPS. This page is what I know about that machine and about hosting a trading platform generally, including the parts that argue against it.
Chicago · where Sharpnel itself runsThey build for trading workloads rather than general hosting, which is the part that matters: Chicago metro, Windows images sized for an always-on charting desk, and machines meant to hold a live book open all session. They have also written up this exact setup on their own site, and they list Sharpnel among the platforms they support.
Disclosure first, because you should have it before you click rather than after: the link below is a partner link and SHARPNEL is my code. If you sign up through it they pay me a commission, and the code takes 60% off your first month — so it costs you less than going direct, not more. I would recommend them either way, because this is where Sharpnel actually lives, but you are entitled to know the arrangement before it influences you.
See the plansThe argument
Slippage is the gap between the price you expected and the price you got. It is worth being precise about where that gap comes from, because most of the marketing on this subject is not, and a claim you can't defend is worse than no claim.
The dominant term. What is resting at your price when you hit it, and how thin the book is. A VPS changes this not at all.
Two to three hundred milliseconds for a human being, from seeing to clicking. Larger than any network effect on this list. A VPS changes this not at all either.
Your machine to your broker's gateway to the exchange. Tens of milliseconds from a home connection, low single digits from a box in Chicago. Real, and genuinely smaller — but modest next to the two terms above if you are clicking the mouse yourself.
The Wi-Fi hiccup, the ISP reroute, the surprise Windows update, the two seconds where nothing moves and the market does. Unbounded, and this is where the money actually goes. A datacenter machine on redundant transit does not do this to you.
So the honest version is not that hosting makes you faster than the market. It is that it collapses the third term and largely removes the fourth. Tail latency is what takes money out of an account, not average latency — the stall costs you nothing at three in the morning and everything on a CPI print.
If you automate anything. A machine reacts in microseconds, so your reaction time stops being the dominant term and network latency becomes it. This is the case where colocation is not a nice-to-have.
If your stops live in the platform rather than the exchange. An exchange-resident stop survives your laptop dying. One your software holds locally does not. If Sharpnel is watching a level on your behalf, the machine it runs on has to be awake to do it.
If you trade the events. Opens, prints, and the first minute after a number are exactly when a home connection is most likely to hesitate and least affordable to.
If your trading machine has another job. A PC that also runs the household sleeps, updates, and gets used by someone else. A VPS has one job and no other user.
And the honest counterweight: if you trade a handful of times a week, by hand, on a stable connection, from a machine that is already yours alone — a VPS is a convenience rather than an edge, and I would rather tell you that than sell you one.
What I run
Not a recommendation I researched — the actual host, read off the machine itself. Everything that serves Sharpnel runs on hardware from them: the live market-data side, the parts that answer your terminal, and the site you are reading now. I won't publish the shape of it beyond that, for the same reason you don't list your own, but the specification is worth showing because it is what carrying a platform actually costs.
That is their Dedicated tier, and it is deliberately far more machine than a trading desk needs — it is sized to carry a whole platform, not a workspace. If you are running the terminal rather than running Sharpnel, look considerably further down the list.
Plans
Specifications and prices below are transcribed from their own pricing cards on 31 July 2026. The sizing notes are mine, written against what Sharpnel actually asks of a machine. Every plan is Chicago, Windows or Linux, with a dedicated IP, DDoS protection, 24/7 monitoring, unmetered bandwidth and automatic backups; annual billing takes 20% off.
$79.99 / month
One or two charts and the levels. Comfortable for a trader who wants the terminal awake and alerting without running a wall of panels.
$129.99 / month
The realistic default for a working Sharpnel desk: three or four charts, the DOM open, footprint on, and enough headroom that a fast open does not cost you frames.
$199.99 / month
Multi-panel workspaces across several instruments, or anyone leaning on the backtest and replay side where cores and memory stop being decorative.
$399.99 / month
This is the tier Sharpnel itself runs on, and it is more machine than a trading desk needs — it is sized to carry the whole platform, not a workspace.
They publish a latency figure of 0.52 ms to CME and an uptime figure of 99.999% across these plans. Both are their measurements rather than mine — I have no way to time a matching engine from outside it, and I would rather attribute a number than adopt one.
Setup
Install from the download page exactly as you would locally. Sign in, and your workspaces and entitlements follow your account — there is no separate licence to move.
Set the terminal to start with Windows, so a host reboot brings your desk back without you being there to do it.
Disconnect from RDP at the end of the day rather than signing out. Signing out closes the session and takes the terminal with it, which defeats the point.
Put Windows Update on a schedule you choose. A patch window after the Friday close costs nothing; one at 09:31 costs a great deal.
The longer version, including what to pick if you run very large multi-panel workspaces, is in the hosting guide.
Because I am already a customer, and I was one before there was any arrangement between us. Sharpnel has run on their hardware since the terminal went live, through every session, and when I asked whether they would put something together for my traders they had a page up the next day. I would rather point people at a company I actually pay than at whoever pays the most for the placement — which is the same reason the disclosure sits at the top of this page instead of the bottom.
