> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.ziplime.limex.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What Ziplime Is Not For

> Honest boundaries: high-frequency trading and latency arbitrage

Ziplime is not built for **high-frequency trading (HFT)** or **latency arbitrage** — strategy classes where the outcome depends on fractions of a second.

## Why

The engine is built on Python, with select performance-critical components accelerated in Rust. That's fast enough for meaningful strategies on one-minute-and-above intervals, but it isn't built to compete on sub-second execution timing the way specialized HFT infrastructure is.

## Why this isn't a real drawback for most users

This is a positioning choice, not a gap to apologize for. High-frequency trading isn't accessible to retail users in the first place — it requires colocation, specialized hardware, and infrastructure investment that's economically out of reach outside large professional trading firms. Ziplime is built for the far larger set of strategies where the *idea* and the *math* matter more than microsecond execution: portfolio construction, momentum, mean reversion, pairs trading, and similar approaches on intraday-and-above timeframes.

If your use case genuinely requires minimal latency or direct exchange access, that's what products like [**Lime Direct**](https://lime.co/lime-direct-api-and-fix-protocol/) are for — see [How We're Different](/guide/product/how-we-are-different) for the comparison.