Why Does Rithmic Keep Disconnecting? Every Error, Decoded

The first suspect when Rithmic keeps disconnecting is a session conflict (the same Rithmic login open in a second app, PC, VPS or copier): Rithmic closes the older session, and ATAS documents the symptom as a drop 20 to 40 seconds after connecting. No public dataset gives the share of each cause, so the exact error text and the timing of the drop are what tell the causes apart.

Why does my Rithmic connection keep disconnecting?

Your connection drops at one of five layers, and each leaves its own message and timing. Rithmic (the order-routing and market-data network behind many futures prop firm logins, covered in what Rithmic is and who uses it) sits between your platform and CME.

Picture the stack from the bottom. CME is the base, closed 49 hours each weekend and 60 minutes each weekday evening. Above it sit Rithmic and your firm (the one-session default, firm-side disconnects, maintenance), then the system and gateway you picked, then your ISP and router, where "Connection timeout." starts, and on top your PC and platform, home of "Bad Input", plug-in errors and the Sierra Chart symbol loop.

PickMyTrade (August 2026) publishes a split of causes from its own support tickets, roughly a third data agreements or new-account activation, but shares no dataset, so treat it as one vendor's impression.

What does each Rithmic error message mean?

Each message names a layer. "No handle", "Logged in from elsewhere" and "Disconnect enforced by broker or 2nd login to the same account" are session messages; "Login Failed", "bad input" and "not authorized" are credential or entitlement messages; "Connection timeout." and "Heartbeat has been quiet" point at the network. The table maps each exact text to its layer, test and fix.

Compiled by Phoenix Technologies from the ATAS help center (October 2026), Quantower's Rithmic issues page, NinjaTrader community posts (2025) and the Optimus Futures community (2020); message text verbatim, typo included. Eight of the ten messages have nothing to do with your internet line.

The tree below starts at the exact message; each branch ends in one confirming test.

The session message is not proof that you logged in twice. In a September 2020 NinjaTrader log posted to the Optimus Futures community, "Disconnect enforced by broker or 2nd login to the same account" arrived 1.058 seconds after an order was accepted (21:16:25:982 to 21:16:27:040), and the trader reported that the firm confirmed the disconnect came from its side.

Why does Rithmic disconnect every 20 to 40 seconds?

Drops that repeat 20 to 40 seconds after each connect mean two clients are taking turns on one login. ATAS states the rule: "The same Rithmic login is used in another program or on another computer, and Rithmic closes the older session."

When both clients auto-reconnect, the rule becomes a loop. Picture platform A connecting at 09:30:00 and a forgotten VPS, B, connecting on the same login at 09:31:10, which closes A. With a 30-second auto-reconnect (illustrative: the midpoint of the ATAS range, since no platform publishes its Rithmic retry interval), A returns at 09:31:40 and closes B, B returns at 09:32:10 and closes A, and the swap repeats at 09:32:40 and 09:33:10.

At a 30-second cycle that is 3,600 / 30 = 120 drops an hour across the two clients, 90 at 40 seconds and 180 at 20 seconds. Your line is fine the whole time, so rebooting the router does nothing; closing B ends it. The loop is our model: ATAS documents the symptom and the older-session rule, not the cycle itself.

Sierra Chart has its own loop. Its Rithmic documentation traces endless reconnects with history re-downloading to non-standard symbols (Rithmic expects [futures symbol].[exchange]) and says "Sierra Chart version 2783 and higher has changes in which non-Rithmic symbols are not sent to Rithmic, thereby resolving this issue." The same page, last modified December 2025, offers no technical support for Rithmic data, lists "frequent disconnections from server" among "ongoing issues with Rithmic market data" and says Sierra Chart users must use its own Denali Exchange Data Feed for the most reliable experience; a February 2025 support reply said version 2727 and higher no longer support it.

How many sessions can one Rithmic login have?

One, by default. An Optimus Futures moderator wrote in November 2021 that "all Rithmic accounts by default are limited to 1 connection at a time without the use of the R Trader Pro plugin." Firms can raise that number, though most do not publish theirs.

Edge Clear sets the counting rule: "A concurrent login is the number of direct connections for market data and trading on your Rithmic ID." Apps sharing R|Trader Pro through plug-in mode on one PC count as one market-data session. NinjaTrader adds its own limit of one Rithmic connection at a time (see running two Rithmic firms in NinjaTrader).

The table counts six setups against the default of 1 and against 3, the count at which, per Edge Clear, CME has required since May 1, 2020 that a trader be reported as a professional market data subscriber (costs in market data fees on a funded account).

Computed by Phoenix Technologies; method: one session per direct connection (Edge Clear, 2020), apps sharing the plug-in on one PC counted as one market-data session, compared with the default of 1 (Optimus Futures, 2021); setups illustrative, and a firm may allow more. Only the plug-in row runs two apps without losing a session, and every row with a second machine loses one.

Sierra Chart has no plug-in row: a Rithmic support reply that a trader posted to the Sierra Chart support board in July 2020 said "Sierra Charts has chosen to not support the R|Trader Pro Plugin," so treat every Sierra Chart connection as direct.

The common advice that plug-in mode fixes "No handle" is only partly true. Quantower notes that "When using a direct connection (without RTrader Plugin), you cannot use the same login on multiple platforms at once," and the plug-in lifts that only for apps on the Windows PC running R|Trader Pro.

A server-based copier on your login is a session too. Thor runs 24/7 on cloud servers, so opening the same Rithmic credentials on your desktop can close one of the two, which looks like "the copier stopped". Other causes are in our diagnostic for a copier that stops.

When is Rithmic down for weekend maintenance?

From around the Friday CME close until shortly before the Sunday open, and possibly 25 minutes each weekday evening, but Rithmic's own schedule could not be loaded and second-hand versions disagree by up to 5.5 hours on when Sunday access returns. Elite Trader Funding's help center, as of November 2026, says: "Rithmic servers shut down every weekend as part of their scheduled maintenance window. This is not an outage."

The table sets each published window against the CME weekly close in Central time (US daylight saving time ended on November 1, 2026).

Computed by Phoenix Technologies: hours between the stated endpoints in Central time; "Friday night" taken as the 16:00 CT CME close. PickMyTrade (August 2026) gives the window as exactly Friday 4:00 pm to Sunday 4:00 pm CST, yet one firm's two pages differ by 30 minutes and QuantVPS ends it 5 hours earlier.

So a refused login before 16:30 CT on Sunday, or at the same minutes each weekday evening, is the clock. Elite Trader Funding adds: "If you cannot connect on a weekday during market hours, that would indicate an actual connectivity issue." Holidays follow the CME trading calendar.

Is Rithmic down, or is it your connection?

Compare across firms and machines. Affordable Indicators (August 2026) puts it as "If every firm fails at once, it is upstream." If one firm fails while others hold, the cause is that firm or that login; if everything on your machine fails, it is your connection.

Rithmic-side failures do happen, so PickMyTrade's unsourced claim that "Rithmic connection errors almost never mean Rithmic itself is down", and that most traders go years without one, is too strong. In a February 5, 2025 thread on the Sierra Chart support board, a trader reported Rithmic connections to prop firm accounts stopping at 23:45 CDT; Sierra Chart Engineering replied "We have contacted Rithmic about this connectivity issue," and users reported a Frankfurt gateway as a temporary fix. Rithmic publishes no status page or uptime statistics that we could find.

For the ticket, Affordable Indicators says to "gather two details before you open a ticket: the exact time of the drop and the exact wording of any error." A log time only helps if your clock is right (see clock drift in trading logs), and a quiet heartbeat can leave the connection looking up while quotes have stopped (see spotting a stale data feed).

Which Rithmic system and gateway should you choose?

Use the system your firm's login email names and the gateway nearest you. A wrong system gives a refused login rather than a slow one, and a gateway is a route, not a speed setting.

ATAS describes the format: "Each item in the Server list has two parts: the Rithmic system and the gateway, for example 'LucidTrading. Chicago Area'." Systems include Rithmic Paper Trading (the demo and paper system, which OneUp Trader uses for its accounts), firm-named systems, and Rithmic 01 or another broker system from your email; NinjaTrader's prop firm guide says these settings "are typically provided by your firm".

Distance sets a floor that no bandwidth can lower. Picture four bars on one baseline, the fibre round trip to the CME Aurora data centre: 0.5 ms from downtown Chicago, 11.9 ms from New York, 64.0 ms from London and 70.1 ms from Frankfurt (computed by Phoenix Technologies: great-circle distance, light in fibre at 200 km per ms; real routes are longer).

No public data says where each Rithmic gateway sits, so the nearest one is a sensible default and another is a diagnostic test, as the February 2025 Frankfurt workaround showed. The same logic settles the myth that faster internet stops disconnects: more Mbps fixes no session, credential or maintenance cause (see why latency matters more than Mbps). A VPS shortens the path, but QuantVPS notes it "cannot fix credential, session or permission problems, which only your broker or prop firm can change," and on your login it is one more session (our VPS setup guide).

What happens to your strategy when Rithmic disconnects?

Your platform loses sight of orders and positions until it reconnects, and in NinjaTrader an automated strategy can stop and stay stopped. ATAS warns on a quiet heartbeat: "Rithmic reports possible connection problems. Order or position updates may be delayed."

NinjaTrader acts once a disconnect outlasts DisconnectDelaySeconds, 10 seconds by default. With StopStrategy, the NinjaTrader help guide says the strategy stops and "No action will be taken when a connection is reestablished." In the 30-second loop above, each outage is three times that default, so a strategy set to StopStrategy stops at the first kick and stays stopped (the default setting is Recalculate). After any drop, confirm orders and positions in R|Trader Pro or with your firm before trading again.

How do you stop Rithmic disconnecting?

Work down the layers in order, cheapest test first, and stop at the first step that changes the symptom.

1. Copy the message and the time. Exact wording, exact clock time, platform name.
2. Check the clock. On a weekend, before 16:30 CT on Sunday, or at the same minutes each weekday evening, wait and retry.
3. Count sessions on the login. Close R|Trader Pro, other platforms, second PCs, VPSs and any copier on the same credentials, then connect one app.
4. Check system, gateway and credentials. Match them to your firm's email; Elite Trader Funding and OneUp Trader both advise pasting credentials rather than typing.
5. Fix plug-in mode. R|Trader Pro must run on the same Windows PC, logged in with Allow Plugins.
6. Isolate. Try another firm's login and another gateway.
7. Test the network. For "Connection timeout." check firewall, antivirus and VPN.
8. Send the ticket. Give your firm the time and message from step 1.

The decision rule: if drops repeat 20 to 40 seconds after each connect, close sessions, not routers. If one login fails while another firm's holds, it is that firm's ticket. If you need one login on two machines at once and plug-in mode cannot reach the second, ask the firm for a higher session count or compare Rithmic and Tradovate connections; a copier does not cure a session conflict, because on a default login it is one more session to count.

Go deeper

• Multiple Rithmic Connections in NinjaTrader: Two Limits, Four Fixes
• Trade Copier Not Copying? A Diagnostic for Every Symptom
• What Internet Speed Do You Need for Day Trading? Latency, Not Mbps
• Do You Have to Pay for Market Data on a Funded Account?

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. ATAS (2026), Connecting to Rithmic
2. Quantower (2026), Rithmic issues
3. Sierra Chart (2025), Rithmic Trading Platform Service
4. NinjaTrader (2026), ConnectionLossHandling
5. NinjaTrader (2026), How to Connect NinjaTrader to Your Prop Firm
6. Edge Clear (2020), Rithmic CME Market Data Subscription Fees
7. Elite Trader Funding (2026), Rithmic not available during weekends
8. Sierra Chart Support Board (2025), Rithmic connections stopped working 23:45 CDT
9. Sierra Chart Support Board (2020), SierraChart no longer supports Rithmic's conurrent sessions
10. Optimus Futures Trading Community (2021), Simultaneous login with Rithmic paper trading account