# What a long/short ratio actually counts

Every futures long has a short on the other side, so a long/short ratio cannot be measuring positions. What Binance, OKX and Bybit actually count, and for whom.

*https://cryptomarkets.tools/guides/what-a-long-short-ratio-counts · background to Crypto Charting Platforms & Screeners*

**Answer:** Long and short open interest on a contract are always equal, so a long/short ratio is never the market's positions. It counts accounts, or the positions of a slice the venue chose. Bybit counts all position holders. Binance publishes an account ratio and two ratios for the top 20 percent of users by margin balance. OKX uses the top 5 percent by open position value. The same label covers different populations and different history depths.

Somewhere on every derivatives dashboard there is a number labelled "long/short ratio", and it is
usually read as though the market were leaning one way. It cannot be. Every futures contract is
made by one party agreeing to buy and another agreeing to sell, so on any contract the longs and the
shorts are the same quantity by construction. What the ratio counts instead is a decision the venue
made, and the three largest venues made it three ways.

## How it works

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's notes on its own positioning reports say it in one
sentence: "The aggregate of all long open interest is equal to the aggregate of all short open
interest." [Open interest](https://cryptomarkets.tools/glossary/open-interest) is one total, not two.

So a ratio of longs to shorts, taken over everyone holding a contract, is always exactly one if it
counts contracts. Any published ratio that is not one is therefore counting something else, and
there are only two somethings available:

- **Accounts, not contracts.** Count the people who are net long and the people who are net short.
  An account with one contract weighs the same as an account with ten thousand. This number can be
  anything, and it has an arithmetic consequence: on one venue's contract, if more holders are long
  than short while the contract totals are equal, the average short is bigger than the average
  long.
- **Contracts, but for a slice.** Take a subset of traders the venue selects and compare their long
  contracts with their short contracts. This can differ from one because the subset's
  counterparties are outside it. If the selected group is net long by some quantity on a contract,
  everyone else on that venue's contract is net short by the same quantity.

Neither is a reading of the market's direction. One is a headcount and the other is a partition, and
in both cases what you are looking at depends on how the venue drew the line.

## What each venue counts

### Bybit

One series, over everyone. The V5 endpoint `GET /v5/market/account-ratio` describes itself as "the
net long and short positions as percentages of all position holders during the selected time" and
gives the arithmetic: "Long account ratio = Number of holders with long positions / Total number of
holders", the same for short, and the long-short account ratio as one divided by the other. The
response carries `buyRatio` and `sellRatio`, not the ratio itself — you divide.

It covers `linear` and `inverse` contracts, at periods of `5min`, `15min`, `30min`, `1h`, `4h` and
`1d`, up to 500 rows a page with a cursor, and states that "the earliest query start time is July
20, 2020". It also warns that during extreme volatility the interface "may experience increased
latency or temporary delays in data delivery".

What the page does not say is how a holder with a long and a short open at the same time is
counted. That is an unaddressed case, not a known answer.

### Binance

Three series on USDⓈ-M futures, two populations, and a short memory.

- **`globalLongShortAccountRatio`** — described on Binance's developer portal only as "Query
  symbol Long/Short Ratio", returning `longAccount`, `shortAccount` and `longShortRatio`. The page
  does not define the population beyond the endpoint's name.
- **`topLongShortAccountRatio`** — "The proportion of net long and net short accounts to total
  accounts of the top 20% users with the highest margin balance. Each account is counted once
  only."
- **`topLongShortPositionRatio`** — "The proportion of net long and net short positions to total
  open positions of the top 20% users with the highest margin balance."

All three take periods from `5m` to `1d`, and all three carry the same note: "Only the data of the
latest 30 days is available", with an IP rate limit of 1,000 requests per five minutes. The two
top-trader descriptions are quoted from Binance's own published SDK on GitHub, which carries the
endpoint documentation verbatim, because the portal page could not be read in full by automated
means.

Note the selector: margin balance, which is the size of the account's collateral, not the size of
its positions.

### OKX

Four series, two populations, a different selector and a different history rule. All sit under
`/api/v5/rubik/stat/` and answer unauthenticated at five requests per two seconds.

- **`contracts/long-short-account-ratio`** — "the ratio of users with net long vs net short
  positions for Expiry Futures and Perpetual Futures", per currency rather than per contract. Its
  window depends on the period: five-minute data "within two days at most", hourly within 30 days,
  daily within 180 days.
- **`contracts/long-short-account-ratio-contract`** — the same account ratio for one contract,
  returning "the latest 1,440 data entries".
- **`contracts/long-short-account-ratio-contract-top-trader`** and
  **`contracts/long-short-position-ratio-contract-top-trader`** — the account and position ratios
  for top traders, where "top traders refer to the top 5% of traders with the largest open position
  value", again the latest 1,440 entries.

The documentation gives each contract-level endpoint a data time range as well — "up to March 22,
2024" for the two top-trader series, and for the contract account ratio "up to January 1, 2024"
at daily resolution and "early February 2024" at other periods. The page states those dates without
saying which end of the range they mark; read them against the data before relying on either
reading.

There is also a `margin/loan-ratio` endpoint labelled "margin long/short ratio" in the navigation.
It is "the ratio of cumulative amount of quote currency to base currency" borrowed on spot margin —
a lending statistic, not a derivatives positioning one, under nearly the same name.

## Why the same label gives different numbers

Put the three side by side and "top trader long/short ratio" turns out to be two different
selections: the top 20 percent by collateral on Binance, the top 5 percent by position value on
OKX. Bybit's V5 market endpoints list no top-trader series at all. A fund with a large balance and a small position is
inside one slice and possibly outside the other.

The account ratios differ again: Bybit counts all holders, OKX counts users net long against net
short, and Binance's global series does not define its population in the text at all. The history
differs by an order of magnitude — 30 days on Binance, 1,440 rows on OKX, back to 2020 on Bybit.
A chart that overlays them is overlaying three definitions.

Aggregators inherit this. A site that shows one cross-venue long/short figure has either picked one
venue's series or combined several, and the combination is its own method. [CoinGlass](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinglass),
[Coinalyze](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinalyze) and [Hyblock Capital](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/hyblock-capital) all carry long/short
data; which series sits under a given chart is a question for each of them, not something the label
answers.

## What it costs

The data itself is free. On 23 October 2026 Bybit's account ratio, OKX's top-trader account ratio
and all three Binance series each answered a request sent with no key at all; the venues' own data
APIs are on their cards ([Bybit](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bybit-api), [Binance](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/binance-api),
[OKX](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/okx-api)). One quirk surfaced on the way: Binance's top-trader *position* ratio returns
its two shares in fields named `longAccount` and `shortAccount`, the same names the account series
uses, so a parser that keys on field names cannot tell the two apart.

What costs something is history. Binance keeps 30 days and OKX 1,440 rows per series; past that the
only source is somebody who called the endpoint every period and kept the answer, which is a job you
either run yourself or buy. A thousand requests per five minutes on Binance is generous for one
symbol and tight for every symbol at five-minute resolution.

## What you can do about it

**Read the endpoint, not the label.** Before using any long/short figure, find out three things: is
it accounts or contracts, who is in the population, and which venue's contract it describes. If a
chart cannot answer all three, it is showing you a number without a definition.

**Never compare a top-trader series across venues as if it were one quantity.** Binance's top
traders are chosen by margin balance and OKX's by position value, at different percentages. Compare
each venue's series with its own history, not with the other's.

**Read an account ratio as a headcount.** A high account ratio says many small accounts are on one
side, and the arithmetic of equal totals says the other side is holding larger positions on
average. That is all it says.

**Start recording now if you need history.** If your work needs Binance's ratios beyond 30 days, or
OKX's beyond 1,440 rows, schedule the calls today; the venue will not give the past back later. The
mechanics of pulling the related derivatives series are in
[how to get funding rates and open interest](https://cryptomarkets.tools/how-to/get-funding-and-open-interest).

**Ask an aggregator which series it uses.** A vendor that combines venues should be able to name
the endpoints and the method. If it cannot, its figure is not comparable with anything, including
its own figure for another coin.

## Tools this bears on

- [Binance Market Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/binance-api.md) — One venue's own tape — prices, books, trades and funding, free and unkeyed.
- [OKX Market Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/okx-api.md) — Public v5 endpoints for spot, swaps, futures and options — open, and tightly licensed.
- [Bybit Market Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bybit-api.md) — Venue-direct spot, perps and options data with no key — if your IP is not in the US.
- [CoinGlass API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinglass.md) — Funding, open interest, liquidations and L2/L3 order books across thirty futures venues.
- [Coinalyze](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinalyze.md) — Free futures screener — open interest, funding, basis and liquidations in one table.
- [Hyblock Capital](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/hyblock-capital.md) — Order-book and liquidation metrics with screeners, rankmaps and a backtesting lab.

## FAQ

### If every long has a short, what does a long/short ratio of 2 mean?

On an account ratio, that twice as many counted accounts are net long as net short. It says nothing about size. Because long and short contracts on a venue are equal in total, more long accounts than short ones means the average short position among them is larger than the average long one.

### Who are the top traders in a top-trader long/short ratio?

Whoever the venue says. Binance's endpoint descriptions define them as the top 20 percent of users with the highest margin balance. OKX's documentation defines them as the top 5 percent of traders with the largest open position value. Those are different people chosen by different measures, so the two series are not the same quantity on two venues.

### How far back does long/short ratio history go?

Not far on Binance: all three USDⓈ-M ratio endpoints say only the latest 30 days are available. OKX's contract endpoints return the latest 1,440 entries. Bybit's account ratio documents its earliest query start time as 20 July 2020. Anything older on Binance has to come from somebody who recorded it.

### Is the long/short ratio on a charting site the same as the exchange's?

Only if the site says which endpoint it reads. An aggregated figure across venues is a combination of series that count different populations, so the site's method decides what it means. Ask which venue series it uses and how it combines them before comparing it with anything.

## Sources

1. [Commitments of Traders — Explanatory Notes, open interest](https://www.cftc.gov/MarketReports/CommitmentsofTraders/ExplanatoryNotes/index.htm) — U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, read 2026-10-23
2. [V5 API — Get Long Short Ratio (GET /v5/market/account-ratio)](https://bybit-exchange.github.io/docs/v5/market/long-short-ratio) — Bybit, read 2026-10-23
3. [API v5 documentation — Trading Statistics, long/short ratio endpoints](https://www.okx.com/docs-v5/en/) — OKX, read 2026-10-23
4. [USDⓈ-M Futures — Long/Short Ratio (GET /futures/data/globalLongShortAccountRatio)](https://developers.binance.com/docs/derivatives/usds-margined-futures/market-data/rest-api/Long-Short-Ratio) — Binance, read 2026-10-23
5. [Binance USDⓈ-M Futures SDK, market_data_api.py — endpoint descriptions for the top-trader account and position ratios](https://github.com/binance/binance-connector-python/blob/master/clients/derivatives_trading_usds_futures/src/binance_sdk_derivatives_trading_usds_futures/rest_api/api/market_data_api.py) — Binance, on GitHub, read 2026-10-23

*Last updated 2026-10-23. A reference page, corrected in place — not a dated post.*