STP stands for Straight Through Processing. The broker takes your order and hands it straight to its own pool of liquidity providers without taking the other side itself. It earns its keep by adding a small markup to the spreads it receives from those providers. You see one combined number on the platform, slightly wider than raw, and there is no separate commission line.
In spirit, STP and ECN solve the same problem: keep the broker from being your counterparty, so individual fills are not weighed against you by design. The differences are mostly mechanical. STP brokers usually aggregate fewer providers than ECN venues. The markup-based pricing means costs are bundled into the spreadSpreadThe gap between the bid and ask price of an instrument, paid implicitly on every entry.Click the word to learn more rather than itemized. ExecutionExecutionHow the broker turns an order into a real fill: speed, routing, and the price you actually get.Click the word to learn more depth in violent conditions can be a touch thinner.
For most algorithmic strategies, STP and ECN both work cleanly. The choice ends up depending on commission structure, instrument coverage, and the specific quirks of how each broker handles edge cases. There is no universal winner.
Javlot tells you exactly which model the partner broker for a given strategy is running on. The information sits on the strategy page, not buried in a manual. If the model changes, the page reflects it.