# Market Mechanics

The Grid is a real-time spot market for AI inference. This section explains how the market actually works: how the central limit order book matches buyers and sellers, how prices form from competing bids and asks, how Scheduled Sweeps move purchased Units into consumption, and why this design produces better pricing and stronger capacity signals than fixed-price inference APIs.<br>

* [**Central Limit Order Book and Scheduled Sweeps**](https://thegrid.ai/docs/introduction/market-mechanics/central-limit-order-book-clob-and-scheduled-sweeps) – Explains how The Grid’s single central limit order book continuously matches bids and asks for each Instrument, and how periodic Scheduled Sweeps move Units into Consumption to tightly couple real-time trading with short-term delivery.
* [**Order Types**](https://thegrid.ai/docs/introduction/market-mechanics/order-types) - Describes available limit and market orders and how they behave when interacting with the book.&#x20;
* [**Lifecycle of a Unit**](https://thegrid.ai/docs/introduction/market-mechanics/lifecycle-of-a-unit) - Traces a Unit from issuance through trading, sweeping into Consumption, usage, and eventual expiry.&#x20;
* [**Design Advantages**](https://thegrid.ai/docs/introduction/market-mechanics/design-advantages) - Explains why we chose this particular market design, and compares its advantages to the status quo of how AI inference is consumed.


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