Connect your broker

Ordertune connects to Interactive Brokers through the Ordertune Bridge — a small program that runs on your own machine, next to Trader Workstation. This is the only supported path. There is nothing to choose and nothing to compare.

What the Bridge is

A small program that sits on the machine where Trader Workstation runs — one file on Windows, a folder on Linux. It does three things:

1. It asks Ordertune whether you have released any orders: every five seconds during US market hours, every 60 seconds outside them.
2. It passes those orders to Trader Workstation over a local connection.
3. It reports back what happened — filled, rejected, cancelled — so your dashboard matches your account.

That is the whole job. The Bridge is open source under the MIT licence, and every release is built by a public workflow from a tagged commit, so you can read both the code and the build.

What the Bridge does not do

This matters more than the feature list, because it is what most people actually want to know.

• Nothing reaches your broker on its own. An order is sent only after you release it yourself in Order Management. Ordertune does not trade for you, and it cannot.
• Ordertune never sees your IBKR credentials. Your broker password stays with you; Ordertune never stores it. There is no API key to request from Interactive Brokers and nothing to paste into Ordertune. You are switching on IBKR's own local interface, which accepts connections only from the machine it runs on.
• The Bridge does not run in our data centre. It runs on your machine, holds your token, and talks to your Trader Workstation. If your machine is off, nothing is sent.

Before you start

Your machine

Step 2 of the setup. Already have a machine that stays on? Skip to Prepare TWS.

Why it has to stay on

Trader Workstation and the Bridge have to run whenever the market is open. Interactive Brokers restarts Trader Workstation once a day and asks for a full login once a week; Prepare TWS sets up the daily restart. A laptop that sleeps misses both, and with them your orders.

The easiest machine that stays on is a virtual private server (VPS): a computer in a data centre that you rent by the month and reach over remote desktop. It is yours alone, and Ordertune has no access to it.

Minimum requirements

Trader Workstation needs a lot of memory, so these are minimums: more is always better. A Linux machine saves you the Windows licence; it does not save you memory.

Which system

The Bridge runs on Windows and on Linux. On Linux it matters whether the machine has a desktop, so there are three choices rather than two. Everything from here on is written for all of them, and every page carries a switch where they differ:

Pick one once. The choice follows you across every page.

In doubt between the two Linux entries? If you can see a desktop on that machine, even over remote desktop, take Linux desktop. It is the shorter path and it works the same way Windows does.

Setting up a Windows VPS

Create the server with Windows Server 2022 or newer, and note its IP address and the administrator password. Connect with Remote Desktop (on a Mac: Microsoft's Windows App) and run Windows Update once.

Setting up a Linux VPS with a desktop

For the Linux desktop choice, with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS or newer, or Debian 12 or newer. A fresh VPS usually has no desktop. Connect by SSH with the address and password from your provider:

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

Debian only: if the server answers sudo: command not found, run this first:

apt install -y sudo

Then install a desktop and remote desktop:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y xfce4 xfce4-goodies xrdp
sudo adduser xrdp ssl-cert
sudo systemctl enable --now xrdp

And create your own user. Trader Workstation and the Bridge both run as this user:

sudo adduser trader
sudo usermod -aG sudo trader
echo xfce4-session | sudo -u trader tee /home/trader/.xsession

trader is your Linux username. You can choose any name; then replace trader in all three lines, including the path /home/trader.

Connect with Remote Desktop (on a Mac: the Windows App) to the server's IP and log in as your new user. When you leave, close the window. Do not log out.

Firewall and remote desktop login

If your provider has a firewall, add a rule for Remote Desktop: TCP port 3389, open to any source. You will connect from home, from the office and on the road, so limiting it to one address would lock you out sooner or later.

That makes your password the lock. Give your user a long password and use it nowhere else.

The steps from here

One happens in Trader Workstation, one on Ordertune, and the middle one goes back and forth: you start the Bridge on your machine and type the code it shows into Ordertune. The whole setup takes about an hour, and most of it you do once.

Do them in order. Preparing Trader Workstation is the step people skip, and it is the one that causes the failures that look like something else — a connection timeout, a heartbeat that runs while every order fails, an order that hangs on a dialog nobody can see.

When something does not work

• Troubleshooting — sorted by what you see, not by what causes it.
• Updating the Bridge — what to do when a newer version is available.