A trading quote is stale when its feed has stopped delivering current updates, but a price that has not moved is not enough to prove that. Check the instrument, its session, any displayed update time and the connection state before treating the screen as live.
This is a diagnostic checklist, not a universal quote-age rule. Brokers expose different fields, and an external chart cannot tell you what your own order-routing feed will accept.
Start with the instrument and its session
Confirm the exact symbol, contract and venue first. Two screens that look like “gold” or “the index” may refer to different instruments, sessions or price sources. Compare like with like before calling a difference stale.
Then check whether that instrument is meant to be trading now. A quote that sits unchanged while its market is closed is not evidence of a broken feed. Nor does a changing chart prove that the bid and ask you would act on are current.
Find the update time and feed state
If the platform exposes a per-quote timestamp, read it alongside the bid and ask rather than relying only on the last-traded price. For example, tastytrade's API response documents an updated-at field alongside bid, ask, last and session fields. Its documentation describes REST quotes as one-off snapshots and recommends its streaming feed for live updates, noting that polling can leave stale data. Those are details of tastytrade's API, not a specification for cTrader or another broker. See tastytrade's market-data documentation.
A live connection indicator and a fresh instrument quote are separate checks. Kite Connect's WebSocket documentation says it sends a heartbeat every couple of seconds when no data is being streamed over an open connection. That heartbeat keeps the connection alive; it does not certify that a specific instrument has just updated. See Kite Connect's WebSocket documentation.
If your platform does not show quote timestamps or per-symbol update status, do not invent a maximum safe age. Use the broker's documented feed-status information or ask support how the displayed fields are updated. A quiet price by itself cannot settle the question.
Use a second screen as a check, not an oracle
A second source can reveal a mismatch, but only compare the same contract, venue, session and quote field. A last trade on one screen is not directly comparable to another screen's bid. A different feed can help locate the problem; it cannot prove which value your broker will execute against.
If the feeds disagree and you cannot explain why, pause the decision and record what each screen showed. Do not respond to uncertainty by resending an order or changing its price until you have reconciled the instrument and account state. The cTrader order-rejection checklist covers that separate after-the-response problem; the symbol preflight checklist covers contract settings.
A short pre-order record
For a manual review or a cBot log, preserve the symbol or contract, venue if shown, bid and ask, last price if relevant, displayed timestamp, session status, connection/feed indicator and your local time zone. Note whether the platform marks data as delayed. These fields make a later comparison reproducible; they do not turn a screenshot into proof of execution quality.
A hypothetical example: your chart's last price has not changed, but the session is open. The platform shows no quote timestamp. A separate feed is moving. That is a discrepancy worth checking, not enough evidence to declare which feed is wrong. Verify the platform's own status or stop treating the displayed quote as confirmed current.
realbacktesting is a trading-software studio for cTrader. Its proof and testing notes show the value of making a trading claim reproducible rather than trusting a display at face value.
Frequently asked
Is an unchanged price automatically stale?
No. The market may be quiet or closed. Check the instrument's session and the platform's per-quote update information before drawing that conclusion.
Does a live connection light prove the quote is current?
Not necessarily. A connection heartbeat can show that a stream remains open without proving that a particular instrument has sent a fresh quote.
Should I use another broker's quote as the true price?
Use it to identify a difference, not to assume how your own broker will handle an order. First match the contract, venue, session and quote field, then check your own platform's feed status.