Last updated 6 August 2026
TradingView alert looks delayed or late
Most of the time this is not a delay at all. The time you see on your chart is the time the candle started, not the time your alert fired. A one-minute candle marked 09:30 covers everything from 09:30:00 to 09:30:59, and an alert set to "Once Per Bar" fires the moment your condition becomes true inside that candle — which can be any second in that minute. So a candle marked 09:30 can genuinely fire at 09:30:25. To see the real firing time, add a timenow field to your alert message. Once you have it, you can compare the firing time with the time we received the alert and see the true gap. A Speed line shown next to your alert also gives you the exact moment your alert reached us, and splits the time after that into what we did and what your broker took.
When this happens
- 1 The time on your chart is the candle start time. A candle labelled 09:30 on a one-minute chart runs until 09:30:59.
- 2 A "Once Per Bar" alert fires the moment your condition becomes true, at any second inside the candle — not at the start of it.
- 3 A thinly traded contract updates slowly. Your condition is only checked when the next trade prints, so the alert can fire well after the candle opened.
- 4 The alert was genuinely sent late. Alerts are sent on a best-effort basis and can queue when the market is busy.
First, check what the time on your chart means
The time shown against an alert on your chart is the start time of the candle, not the moment your alert fired.
On a one-minute chart, the candle marked 09:30 covers every second from 09:30:00 to 09:30:59. So an alert linked to that candle can fire at 09:30:00, at 09:30:25, or at 09:30:58 — all of them belong to the same 09:30 candle.
This is the single most common reason an alert looks 20 or 30 seconds late when nothing is actually slow.
Add timenow so you can see the real firing time
TradingView gives you a built-in value called {{timenow}}. It is the exact moment the alert fired. Add it to your alert message and you never have to guess again.
If you use Alert Automation (recommended): add one more line to your alert.
account=MY_ACCOUNT
symbol=NIFTY
exchange=NFO
producttype=INTRADAY
tradetype=BUY
lots=1
timenow={{timenow}}If you use the classic JSON setup: add one more property to the message.
"timenow": "{{timenow}}"Two things to know:
{{timenow}}is given in UTC. Indian time is 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead. So04:00:25in the alert means09:30:25India time.- A time that lands exactly on
:00seconds is almost always a candle time, not a firing time. A real firing time hardly ever falls exactly on a whole minute.
Where to see it
- Alert Automation — open the Alert Trail screen. Your alert is shown there with the message exactly as it arrived, so you can read the
timenowvalue and compare it with the time we received the alert. - Classic JSON setup — open Tools → Activity. The alert is recorded there with the message content and the time it reached us.
Most alerts reach AutoTrader Web within a second or two of firing. If your timenow value is close to the received time, nothing is being delayed — your alert simply fired later inside the candle than you expected.
How long we took — the Speed line
Next to your alert you will also see a Speed line. It tells you in plain numbers when your alert reached us, and how long we took to place your first order after that:
Speed: your alert reached us at 09:30:25.412 and your first order
was placed 96 ms later — less than a second (our work 1 ms, your
broker 95 ms). Time taken before the alert reached us is not
counted here.How to read it:
- the time at the start is the exact moment your alert reached us. Compare it with your
timenowvalue to see the true gap; - the next number is the total time, from your alert arriving to your first order being placed;
- our work is everything we did — reading the alert, checking it, working out the exact contract and size, and converting a market order to a limit order where that is needed;
- your broker is the time your broker itself took to accept the order and reply.
ms means milliseconds — one thousandth of a second. So 96 ms is less than a tenth of a second.
This split is the useful part. If your broker is the big number, the delay was at your broker’s end. If our work is the big number, send us the line and we will look into it.
If the order was stopped before it ever went out — for example a check on your account did not pass — the line says so instead of showing a broker time. That tells you straight away that your broker never saw the order.
The line is written once per alert, for the first order only, so an alert that places several orders or a full option structure still gives you one clear number. You will find it on the Alert Trail (Alert Automation) or under Tools → Activity (classic JSON setup), alongside the other steps for that alert.
Choose your trigger setting knowingly
Your alert’s trigger setting decides when inside the candle it fires. It is a trade-off, so pick the one you want:
| Setting | When it fires | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Once Per Bar | The moment your condition first becomes true inside the candle | Fastest, but the firing time varies within the candle |
| Once Per Bar Close | Only when the candle completes | Predictable timing, but you wait for the full candle |
If you want the order to go at a fixed point, use Once Per Bar Close — but remember that on a one-minute chart this can mean waiting up to a full minute after your condition became true.
If the gap is real
If timenow really is far behind the time we received the alert, then the alert was sent late before it ever reached us. Alerts are sent on a best-effort basis and can queue when the market is busy. There is nothing to change in your AutoTrader Web setup for this.
The Speed line tells you which side of the gap to look at. It starts with the exact moment your alert reached us, so you can compare that directly with your timenow value. If the total is small, your order went out quickly once the alert arrived, and any large gap you are seeing happened before that — either inside the candle, or on the way to us. If the total itself is large, the split shows whether the time went to your broker or to us; either way, please send us the line with the details below.
What to send us if you still think something is wrong
Please share all of the following, otherwise we cannot investigate:
- Your alert message, including the
timenowfield. - A screenshot of your alert settings, showing the trigger setting you chose.
- A screenshot of the Alert Trail entry, or of Tools → Activity, for that alert — please make sure the Speed line is visible in it.
