---
title: Best timeframe for crypto? 1-hour vs 4-hour vs daily data
url: https://comparand.xyz/blog/timeframe-1h-vs-4h-vs-daily-chart
description: On Binance Bitcoin the typical candle ranged 0.64% on 1-hour, 1.35% on 4-hour and 3.74% on daily charts. Wicks, green share and noise compared.
updated: '2026-10-21'
category: Patterns
---

# Best timeframe for crypto? 1-hour vs 4-hour vs daily data

On Binance Bitcoin the typical candle ranged 0.64% on 1-hour, 1.35% on 4-hour and 3.74% on daily charts. Wicks, green share and noise compared.

On Binance Bitcoin, the typical candle ran from low to high by 0.64% on the 1-hour chart, 1.35% on the 4-hour chart and 3.74% on the daily chart. So a 4-hour candle covers four times the time of a 1-hour candle but is only about twice as tall. Almost everything else barely changed with chart size: about 59% to 60% of each candle's range was wick, and about 51% of candles were green. These are past measurements from September 2019 to October 2026, not a forecast, and they point to no best timeframe.

## What does each chart size show?

A **bar** records the open, high, low and close price over a set time, and a chart draws it as a **candle**. A 1-hour candle covers one hour, and a daily candle one day.

A candle has two parts. The **body** is the distance between the open and the close. The **wicks** are the thin lines above and below the body, up to the high and down to the low. The **range** is the whole height, from the lowest price to the highest.

We report the **median**, the middle result when you sort all candles from smallest to largest. New to candles? See [how to read a candlestick chart](https://comparand.xyz/blog/how-to-read-candlestick-chart).

## How much bigger are 4-hour and daily candles?

Much bigger, but not in step with the time they cover. A 4-hour candle is only about twice as tall as a 1-hour candle. A daily candle holds 24 times as much time, yet it is only about six times as tall.

Here is the full picture for Binance BTCUSDT, the Bitcoin perp (a futures contract that never expires), from September 8, 2019 to October 19, 2026.

| Binance BTCUSDT | 1-hour (62,357 candles) | 4-hour (15,589) | Daily (2,599) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Median body, as % of the open | 0.23% | 0.47% | 1.37% |
| Median range, low to high | 0.64% | 1.35% | 3.74% |
| Share of the range that is wick | 59.09% | 60.33% | 59.67% |
| Candles with wicks longer than the body | 61.82% | 63.19% | 61.75% |
| Green candles | 50.61% | 51.09% | 50.60% |

*Diagram: Draw one typical Binance BTCUSDT candle at each size, 1-hour, 4-hour and daily, scaled by median range (0.64%, 1.35%, 3.74%), with the body and wicks shaded.*
## Are wicks just noise?

The wicks did not shrink as the chart got longer. The wick share stayed near 60% at every size, and in six out of ten candles the two wicks together were taller than the body. Across all 12 markets we measured, wick share sat between 55.26% and 60.80%. A daily chart is not cleaner. It has about the same mix of body and wick, only bigger.

## Does one candle tell you the next one's color?

Almost never. We measured **autocorrelation**, a number from −1 to 1 that shows how much one bar's move lines up with the next one. Zero means no link. For Binance BTCUSDT it was −0.02 on 1-hour candles, −0.02 on 4-hour candles and −0.07 on daily candles.

Negative means a move was followed, very slightly, by a move the other way. Across all 36 market and timeframe pairs, the values ran from −0.14 (TRXUSDT daily) to 0.05. All tiny.

We also used a **variance ratio**. It compares the spread of 4-hour and 24-hour moves with what you would expect if every hour were an unrelated coin flip. Above 1 means moves tended to keep going; below 1 means they gave a little back. For Binance BTCUSDT it was 0.96 at four hours and 0.97 at 24 hours. All 12 markets were below 1 at four hours, and 11 of 12 at 24 hours (DOGEUSDT was 1.11). Differences of a few hundredths are within the noise of this method.

## Do big moves come in groups?

Yes. This is the one link that showed up in every market and timeframe. We measured the same autocorrelation on the size of moves, ignoring direction. For Binance BTCUSDT it was 0.30 on 1-hour candles, 0.23 on 4-hour candles and 0.17 on daily candles. Across all 36 market and timeframe pairs it ran from 0.17 to 0.41.

In plain words, a big move tended to be followed by another big move, whichever way price went. For more on this, see [volatility clustering in crypto](https://comparand.xyz/blog/volatility-clustering-crypto).

We checked it another way on daily candles. A day was "top 10%" when its move, ignoring direction, beat 90% of the previous 365 days. On Binance BTCUSDT, 202 days qualified, and the next day was also top 10% in 32 of them, or 15.84%. Across all eligible days the share was 9.05%. The 202 days cluster inside a few violent stretches, so the real sample is smaller than it looks. And this says nothing about direction. For the same idea across the clock, see [which hours move crypto the most](https://comparand.xyz/blog/most-volatile-hours-crypto-utc).

## Does the answer change from year to year?

Yes. Candle size also moved a lot from year to year. This is the median range of Binance BTCUSDT candles by calendar year (2026 runs through October 19).

| Year | 1-hour | 4-hour | Daily |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2021 | 1.08% | 2.26% | 5.86% |
| 2022 | 0.73% | 1.57% | 4.06% |
| 2023 | 0.45% | 0.99% | 2.87% |
| 2024 | 0.62% | 1.34% | 3.72% |
| 2025 | 0.50% | 1.03% | 2.98% |
| 2026 | 0.49% | 1.07% | 2.92% |

So "typical" depends on the years you ask about.

## Do other coins look the same?

Yes, with bigger numbers for wilder coins. Median range by timeframe:

| Market | 1-hour | 4-hour | Daily | Green candles, daily |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Binance BTCUSDT | 0.64% | 1.35% | 3.74% | 50.60% |
| Binance ETHUSDT | 0.87% | 1.86% | 4.95% | 51.65% |
| Binance DOGEUSDT | 1.09% | 2.29% | 6.07% | 48.58% |
| Binance TRXUSDT | 0.59% | 1.25% | 3.38% | 53.68% |
| Coinbase BTC-USD | 0.62% | 1.35% | 3.80% | 52.36% |

Coinbase BTC-USD is spot Bitcoin priced in US dollars. We never mix the two venues. In all 36 market and timeframe pairs, the share of green candles stayed between 48.58% and 53.68%.

## What does this data not show?

It does not show which timeframe makes money: we tested no trading rule. It does not show direction either. A candle's size says nothing about which way the next one goes.

It covers ten Binance perps and two Coinbase spot markets, not every coin or exchange. We did not measure 5-minute or 15-minute candles.

## How we measured this

We used Binance perpetual futures for ten big coins and Coinbase spot for BTC-USD and ETH-USD, through October 19, 2026. We took 1-hour and daily bars as given and built 4-hour bars from four complete hourly bars on the UTC grid; a missing hour removes the whole 4-hour bar. Daily candles close at UTC midnight (see [when the daily candle closes](https://comparand.xyz/blog/what-time-does-crypto-daily-candle-close)).

Body and range are a percent of the open. Wick share is the part of the range that is not body; zero-range bars were skipped. The variance ratio uses overlapping windows, so its error is wider than the bar count suggests. The "top 10%" check needed 365 earlier days, so each market's first year is left out. Nothing here is a trading rule, so there is no fee column.

## Try this in Comparand

Ask your connected AI agent: "Get completed 1-hour, 4-hour and daily bars for Binance BTCUSDT over my chosen dates. Show the median candle range for each size."

- **venue_bars** returns completed open, high, low and close bars for one symbol at 1m, 5m, 15m, 1h, 4h or 1d. It is free on every key.
- Your agent works out the medians. The tool does not return a timeframe report.

Then ask: "Find the 10 closest past charts to Bitcoin's last 48 bars on Binance, once on the 4-hour timeframe and once on the daily timeframe."

- **shape_analogs** takes a timeframe of 5m, 15m, 1h (the default), 4h or 1d. It compares the chart only with the same coin's own past on the same exchange and timeframe.
- Each match comes back with its own path and its forward move 12, 24 and 48 bars out for a 48-bar window, in basis points (one hundredth of one percent). On a daily chart that is 12, 24 and 48 days, so the same 48 bars cover very different time. See [how many candles to use](https://comparand.xyz/blog/chart-window-length-matters).
- It returns no average and no hit rate. Each search costs $0.01 from your credits.

For Binance, 1-hour, 4-hour and daily data run from September 2019; 15-minute data starts in October 2024 and 5-minute data in January 2026. You can [try 3 coins free](https://comparand.xyz/try), check [pricing](https://comparand.xyz/pricing), or read the [tool docs](https://comparand.xyz/docs).

## The short version

- On Binance BTCUSDT the median candle range was 0.64% (1-hour), 1.35% (4-hour) and 3.74% (daily).
- Candles grew more slowly than their time: 4 times the time gave about twice the height.
- Wick share (59% to 60%) and green share (about 51%) hardly changed with chart size.
- Direction links were tiny at every size, but big moves did tend to follow big moves.
- Candle size also changed a lot by year (the 2021 daily candle was about double the 2023 one), and no timeframe came out as best.

## Questions people ask

**What is the best timeframe for crypto trading?**

Our data gives no best timeframe. On Binance Bitcoin the typical candle was 0.64% tall on the 1-hour chart, 1.35% on the 4-hour chart and 3.74% on the daily chart, but wick share, green share and direction links looked almost the same at all three. The timeframe changes how big each candle is, not whether the chart behaves like a coin flip from bar to bar.

**Do longer timeframes have less noise?**

Not by the measures we used. About 59% to 60% of a typical Bitcoin candle's range was wick on the 1-hour, 4-hour and daily charts alike, and wicks were longer than the body in 62% to 63% of candles. Longer candles are bigger, but they are not cleaner.

**Are daily crypto candles more often green than hourly ones?**

Not in a way that matters. On Binance BTCUSDT, 50.61% of 1-hour candles, 51.09% of 4-hour candles and 50.60% of daily candles closed above their open. That is close to half at every size.

**Is a 4-hour candle just four 1-hour candles?**

Yes, in our test. We built each 4-hour bar from four completed hourly bars on the UTC grid starting at 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00 and 20:00. Where an hourly bar was missing, that 4-hour bar was dropped.

**Do big crypto days come in groups?**

Often, yes. On Binance BTCUSDT, 15.84% of days that followed a top-10% day were also top-10% days, against 9.05% across all eligible days. That is 32 of 202 cases, and many come from a few crash periods, so treat it as a small sample.