Introducing RPI (Retail Price Improvement) Orders
We’re excited to introduce RPI (Retail Price Improvement) orders — a new order type built to make trading fairer, clearer, and more cost-efficient. With deeper liquidity, better execution, and stronger market integrity at its core, RPI ensures your fills feel smoother, and your strategy stays consistent.
Enjoy deeper liquidity and smarter pricing with RPI orders
What Are RPI (Retail Price Improvement) Orders?
An RPI order (Retail Price Improvement) is a special type of order that provides the market with the necessary liquidity, helping traders get the best execution price.
On WhiteBIT, RPI orders run across Spot, Margin, and Futures, matching eligible traders exclusively with non-algorithmic, approved market-maker quotes. Orders are post-only (always adding liquidity) and available only via API at launch, with corresponding flags and full history/pending views in the terminal.
This setup improves liquidity and pricing for users while protecting market integrity and keeping liquidity fair, targeted, and balanced.
How to Place an RPI Order?
- Open API only. RPI orders can be submitted exclusively via OpenAPI. See technical details and examples in [Orders / API].
- Approved market makers only.Only approved market-maker partners are permitted to submit RPI orders. Attempts by unauthorized participants will be executed as a plain Limit order.
Note! Retail traders receive price improvement by trading against RPI orders provided by approved market makers.
How RPI Orders Work?
RPI is available on Spot, Margin, and Futures and functions as a post-only maker order. It always adds liquidity and never lifts the order book.
The mechanics of the RPI orders:
- Placement (by market makers ONLY): After RPI is enabled, approved market makers submit inside-spread, post-only orders via API.
- Resting: The RPI order rests on the book. If it’s better than the top of the book, it becomes attractive liquidity within the spread.
- Execution (retail flow): Retail orders (market or marketable limit) can trade against these RPI orders, receiving price improvement versus the public order book. Partial fills are possible; any remainder keeps resting.
- Post-only protection: If any change would cause the RPI quote to take liquidity, it will not execute.
In the trading terminal, the market maker will see RPI tags, pending RPI orders, and full history for transparency.
How to Differentiate an RPI Order from a Retail Order?
In the terminal:
- RPI: Limit orders tagged “RPI” in Open Orders and Order History (submitted via API by approved market makers).
- Retail: Standard limit/market orders without the RPI tag (placed from the web, mobile app, or TradingView).
Matching Logic: Who Can Trade With RPI Orders?
To protect retail flow and keep RPI behavior transparent, we apply strict matching rules:
- RPI can only be taken by retail orders.
An RPI order may be *taken* by an incoming Retail order at the same price.
Example:
RPI SELL 85,000
Retail BUY 85,000
→ Trade: Retail BUY takes RPI SELL
- RPI can never act as a taker against Retail.
If an order causes RPI to raise a retail rate, it will be rejected.
- RPI doesn’t match against other RPI.
If both sides are RPI at the same price, they simply rest on the order book. The spread may temporarily collapse to zero, but no trade happens between RPI orders.
- If a regular maker order tightens the spread, the opposite RPI is cancelled.
When a non-retail maker order narrows the spread against a resting RPI, that RPI is automatically cancelled to keep the order book clean.
- If the spread is tightened by taker flow, RPI stays.
When price improvement comes purely from taker activity between regular orders, existing RPI orders remain resting.
PAY ATTENTION! Retail traders cannot place RPI orders. They are submitted exclusively via API by approved market makers. While retail users do not place RPI orders, the feature improves inside-spread liquidity, helps reduce slippage, and enhances the trading experience across WhiteBIT markets.
What Benefits Does RPI Provide to Retail Traders?
RPI channels high-quality maker liquidity directly to retail flow, improving execution and reducing costs across Spot, Margin, and Futures.
As a retail trader, you get:
- Better prices inside the spread from approved market makers.
- Cleaner order execution with lower slippage since RPI is post-only and always adds liquidity.
- Retail-only interaction — price improvement without competition from institutions or HFT (high-frequency trading using algorithms/bots that place and remove thousands of orders in milliseconds).
- More consistent fills in volatility: when others rush in with market orders (widening spreads and causing slippage), RPI rests and captures improved orders, smoothing your entry price.
- Tighter effective spreads and more predictable entries/exits.
Therefore, the introduction of RPI orders provides a more predictable trading environment and an improved experience for traders on WhiteBIT.
Enjoy deeper liquidity and smarter pricing with RPI orders
