Best Charting Apps [Free + Paid Software: 2024]

Best Charting Software and Apps—Top Picks

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Best Charting Software at a Glance

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The best stock charting app for you isn’t necessarily the perfect app for someone else. Your best choice is likely one of the following:

• Best for drawing on stock charts (+ best free stock charting software): TradingView
• Best for placing trades with hot keys in charts: InteractiveBrokers
• Best for futures trading charts and free paper trading for beginners: NinjaTrader
• Best stock charting app you can install on desktop: TC2000
• Best for automating technical analysis: TrendSpider
• Best for technical indicators: MetaStock
• Best for advanced traders: Trade Ideas
• Best for technical analysis: FinViz

Let’s look deeper into the top picks and the details of each.

Best Stock Charting Apps and Software

1. Best for Drawing on Charts: TradingView

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• Available: Sign up here

TradingView is one of a handful of valuable charting platforms for technical analysis-driven stock traders on this list. Users can view stock charts, select specific indicators (RSI, Moving Averages, Bollinger Bands, etc.), add trend lines, chat with one another and do it all on repeat.

They have a robust web-based charting system with stock price data (real-time data), historical charts (1D, 5D, 1M, 3M, 6M, YTD, yearly price charts, 5Y and All-Time), strike prices, streaming charts and more. The result? Hopefully, delivering you Alpha.

TradingView works well for traders looking to gain an edge on the markets, whether the stock market, forex markets, crypto, futures or more.

TradingView is in the business of delivering competition-crushing charting and trading tools, strategies and insights for you to trade with confidence. They have some of the best stock charts and technical analysis tools. TradingView utilizes 50+ real-time data feeds, historical data, pre-built popular indicators, smart drawing tools, figure charts and valuation analysis.

You can use the platform to conduct customized technical analysis with metrics like volume indicators, MACD, backtesting, etc. Pairing this service with an InteractiveBrokers or TradeStation account may capture alpha through TradingView’s stock charts.

 

2. Best for Placing Trades With Hot Keys In Charts: Interactive Brokers

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• Available: Sign up here

Interactive Brokers, founded in 1978, is one of the largest U.S. electronic trading platforms, offering traders access to stocks, bonds, funds, options, cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange, and more.

IB’s Trader Workstation (TWS) is Interactive Brokers’ flagship desktop program—a trading platform with roots back to 1995. But since then, the company has launched a number of other access points for brokerage accounts.

But Workstation remains the workhorse. The platform supports investments across 150 global markets, and offers a wide variety of features, including real-time monitoring, risk management tools, paper trading—all packaged under a heavily customizable layout.

While TWS users can still select the original view, they can build their own bespoke view through Mosaic. Functions such as stock monitoring, order entry, charts, and more appear as “tiles,” sized and arranged however you want them, and you can save custom layouts designed for one or more monitors.

The platform’s charting features offer an extensive list of customizations, including for charts, layouts, and buttons. As a result, every trader can build their charting and workstation setup to reflect their exact specifications, providing ample power and flexibility to your trading. One thing to note about this however, is that the incredible customization potential can be overwhelming and thus present a steep learning curve to master. Therefore, it’s probably best to find the basic configuration you need (you can save your layout, saving a considerable amount of time and stress rebuilding the same layout from scratch each session) to accomplish your goals.

In addition to charting, Trader Workstation also lets investors:

• Create example watchlists
• Use preset scans or build your own
• Create real-time trading alerts using price, time, margin, and volume
• Access more than 100 order types and algorithms to execute better trades
• Read breaking news from Reuters, Dow Jones, and other financial news outlets
• Access research from Morningstar, Zacks, and other firms

IBKR Pro, the premium IBKR product, is meant for advanced investors and active traders. While it does charge commissions on even U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs, it provides better execution for trades via its IB SmartRouting, which seeks out the best available prices for stocks and options across exchanges and dark pools—possibly resulting in lower spreads that offset the commissions you pay. It also offers better margin rates than Lite (one of the company’s commission-free products), though both platforms’ rates are among the best on offer.

Pro also offers some features not available on IBKR Lite, including higher interest paid on idle cash balances, lower interest charged on margin loans, backtesting, and access to IBKR APIs, which allow you to build your own custom trading applications and even develop commercial trading software—features often used by hedge funds, Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), and proprietary trading firms.

We should note that IBKR’s rating does get dinged (by both us and app-store users) for its sometimes buggy mobile-app experience. But the desktop app is a mainstay among advanced and professional traders.

You can visit Interactive Brokers to sign up or learn more.

 

3. Best for Futures Trading Charts and Free Paper Trading for Beginners: NinjaTrader

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• Available: Sign up here

NinjaTrader is one of the oldest and best known trading platforms on the market. 

Specializing in technical analysis tools, real-time analysis, and a clean, fully customizable charting experience, NinjaTrader allows you to employ a fully automated trading strategy through its own brokerage service for futures, options on futures, and forex trading. And while that might seem like a limited set of assets (especially for being mentioned as a trading app and platform), NinjaTrader’s other core strengths are its ability to integrate with other brokers like IBKR, Schwab (TDAmeritrade), and others for an add-on fee and its NinjaTrader Ecosystem.

This community of vendors and plugins enrich the NinjaTrader experience through offering education-rich content for free and, among other things, allows you to attach NinjaTrader to several supporting brokerages to give traders access to other markets, including options on futures, contracts-for-differences (CFDs), and equities.

NinjaTrader’s platform offers advanced charting with more than 100 technical indicators, advanced order types, automated trading, order flow analysis, streaming historical market replay, the SuperDOM (depth of market) tool, and more. The NinjaTrader desktop app is the most customizable of the platform’s versions, offering access to “thousands of trading apps and add-ons,” you can still enjoy most of NinjaTrader’s functions via its web and mobile apps.

Unfamiliar with futures trading? Anyone with an account can use NinjaTrader’s free futures trading simulator, which includes a backtesting engine that lets you use historical market data to simulate automated trading strategies and see how they would have performed. 

You can download and use NinjaTrader’s platform for free, but you can reduce your commissions by subscribing to a monthly or lifetime account. Additional data does carry additional costs, however. For instance, for CME Level I top of book data (CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX), it’s $12 per month and Level II costs $41 per month for non-professional users. Professional users pay $135 per month per exchange. ICE Market data also costs $140 per month per exchange for all users.

NinjaTrader’s robust community and suite of tools have established it as a leading charting software—be it for stocks, futures, forex, or other assets. The burgeoning educational guides, video library and free ongoing webinars provide ample access to the understanding traders need to hone their craft. Plus, the platform offers an easy (and free) way to learn what the platform can offer through its SIM trading environment. Consider signing up for a NinjaTrader account and taking the service for a test-drive.

 

4. Best Stock Charting App You Can Install on Desktop: Worden TC2000

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• Available: Sign up here

Worden’s TC2000 is an easy to install investment research and analysis software which allows you to build watch lists, follow stock news, receive stock alerts, conduct stock scans, and sort and make personal notes on stock opportunities.

The heart and soul of TC2000 is the service’s Condition Wizard. The tool allows you to build for any condition you might think of on any indicator step-by-step. The investment software provides over 70 technical indicators with ten drawing tools.

While this doesn’t require formula writing, you can develop your own and watch “flex” conditions unfold over time.

The service also has an EasyScan service, allowing you to scan millions of data points for your conditions on the fly.

 

5. Best for Automating Technical Analysis: TrendSpider

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Traders of all experience levels looking to trade more efficiently
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

TrendSpider offers a comprehensive platform for traders to create, backtest, and refine trading strategies, scan and analyze the market, and time trades with precision. With its advanced tools and features, TrendSpider is designed to make trading more efficient for both novice and experienced traders.

One of TrendSpider’s top features is Smart Charts—a charting system that helps automate many of the most time-consuming aspects of technical analysis. For instance, Smart Charts can conduct full TA for any stock, ETF, or other security in less than a minute. The system also comes with more than 700 watch lists to help you seek out trading opportunities. And you can even create your own green-red Smart Checklists, which allow you to plainly see if a potential trade covers all, most, some, or none of the conditions you need to pull the trigger.

Among the platform’s other powerful tools:

• Raindrop Charts^®, which provide a new way to visualize market data, focusing on trading volume at each price level
• Alternative data offerings including information on options flow, analyst actions, market breadth, insider trades, and more
• Data Flow, which enables real-time tracking of market data for all symbols, including analyst estimates, earnings, news, and unusual options flow
• Strategy Tester, which allows users to quickly develop and test trading strategies without any coding required; users can configure entry and exit rules and explore the performance of their strategies directly on the price chart
• Backtesting capabilities for technical, non-technical, and event-based strategies; once a winning strategy is identified, users can deploy it as a trading bot with just one click
• A stock scanner that allows you to instantly test any strategy on any market and search for ideal trading opportunities. Users can mix and match conditions and timeframes, allowing them to express any view in a single scan. The platform also provides a range of pre-made scans to help users get started.

TrendSpider’s mobile app ensures traders are always connected to their charts and scanners, while the Chrome extension allows users to access real-time charts while browsing the web. The platform also offers extensive educational resources through TrendSpider University and detailed documentation for its features.

The platform also supports integration with external systems using webhooks, enabling traders to build custom alerts and bots that interact with social media channels, private chat servers, email, or order routers connected to brokerage accounts. TrendSpider’s SignalStack service can turn any signal or alert on TrendSpider into a live order in a trader’s account.

Learn more about the platform’s capabilities or sign up for TrendSpider today.

 

6. Best for Technical Indicators: MetaStock

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• Available: Sign up here

MetaStock is a longtime player in the technical analysis tools industry. Several versions of the software are available, depending on your trading needs. MetaStock offers options for day, swing, and EOD traders to trade stocks, options, commodities, futures, and more.

For frequent traders, MetaStock R/T uses real-time data so you can make informed decisions about what to buy and sell and when to make the most money possible. You also can customize solutions to fit your trading style and build and backtest trading strategies.

For traders who prefer to do their analysis after the markets close, there’s MetaStock D/C, which comes with a one-time price of $499. However, both products offer free trials, so you can test them before committing to a subscription or fee.

The software comes with over 150 indicators and interpretations that help you understand how to trade based on each indicator. Advanced users also can write their customized indicators. Plus, along with the ability to backtest trading strategies, you can also use the software to make predictions about future trading.

One drawback to MetaStock is that the software is currently only compatible with the Windows operating system.

 

7. Best for Advanced Traders: Trade Ideas

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• Available: Sign up here

Trade Ideas employs an artificial intelligence-powered assistant named Holly. This AI becomes your virtual research analyst who never sleeps and instead sifts through technicals, fundamentals, social media, earnings, and more to pick stocks as real-time trade recommendations.

Holly stays busy, too. She runs more than 1 million simulated trades each night and morning before the markets open with more than 60 proprietary algorithms to find you the highest-probability, most risk-appropriate opportunities to invest in stocks.

This stock scanning and analysis tool doesn’t stop there, though. You can also build your own scanners and screeners with over 500 data points and indicators to choose from. You can backtest your trading strategies, and also forward-test them in the real-time trade simulator. This allows you to learn, test, and optimize, without risking your own money.

The powerful service allows you to access real-time streaming trading ideas on simultaneous charts to learn how to trade into risk-reward balanced trades. In other words: You can invest and learn at the same time.

Where Trade Ideas excels

Where Trade Ideas excels is not only giving you the data and ideas you haven’t seen elsewhere, but also how to manage your money. The AI-powered smart risk levels on every chart are suitable for both long-term investors and active traders.

As the stock market evolves, TI’s software adjusts levels and the trading plan to match. The best part? You can learn how to do all of this without risking your principal through a real-time simulated trading environment.

After you’ve grown comfortable with the service and trading, you can choose to go live with the trade ideas and start investing real money by connecting directly through a brokerage like Interactive Brokers or E*Trade. (The full list of available brokers you can use through the service is available on Trade Ideas’ site.)

I’m a newsletter and alert aficionado, so I should point out a couple of Trade Ideas products. For one, it has a standalone alert service in the form of a weekly Swing Picks newsletter. This gives you five new trade ideas in your inbox from the company’s model portfolio every Monday. Trade Ideas’ Standard and Premium subscriptions include these stock picks. Trade Ideas also has a free Trade of the Week newsletter highlighting one stock pick TI has identified for members.

How does Trade Ideas find stock picks?

Trade Ideas finds its Strength Alerts by focusing on a unique approach that emphasizes relative strength. They start by identifying the most effective indicators and chart setups, based on their top-performing algorithms. They proceed by applying statistical analysis to assign weighted values to each indicator and chart setup, allowing for a quantitative evaluation of their significance. Advanced server technology allows TI to evaluate every stock in the market using these weights and then sort them based on which achieved the highest score. Their team of experts curates these findings to ensure subscribers receive only the most promising trade recommendations.

While Trade Ideas offers exceptional value, it’s important to note that there’s a considerable investment required. Note that you must sign up for Premium to receive full access to the Holly experience. However, you can enjoy a big discount by using the code mentioned below.

Consider starting your Trade Ideas subscription with no contract involved. Cancel anytime.

 

8. Best for Easy-to-Use Technical Analysis: FinViz

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• Available: Sign up here

Finviz is a stock analysis software that provides a free version and one with paid premium features.

With the stock analysis tool’s premium features, you can join thousands of traders who make more informed decisions. These features include access to real-time data and quotes, advanced visualizations, trend lines, backtesting, and much more.

Finviz has an intuitive interface that makes it easy to find what you’re looking for in seconds. For premium users of the FinViz*Elite service, the platform also includes a variety of charting and tools possibilities, such as:

• intraday charts and overlays so you can perform deep technical analysis on stocks like never before
• stock indicators
• drawing tools
• fullscreen layouts
• performance comparison charts
• correlations
• technical studies backtesting

It also includes access to pre-market and after-market data in all stock features. Further, you can use the service’s enhanced Stock Screener to filter stocks, export the data, create advanced charts, customize the filters, and have a statistics view.

Consider signing up and starting a subscription. If you’re not satisfied, you can request a full refund within the first 30-days of subscribing. Also, by becoming a FinViz*Elite member, you can remove all ads from your platform.

 

Best Stock Charting Apps

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A stock charting app allows you to learn about technical analysis (TA) through employing various indicators and tools while performing screening, backtesting and forecasting for stocks.

While there are free stock charting apps, which we’ll cover below, usually the best options involve spending a bit of money.

Some of them even function as useful:

• stock trading apps and platforms
• stock news apps
• investment research websites and
• stock analysis apps and software.

The features of stock charting apps vary, so it’s important to choose one that has the tools, technical indicators and charting features you need.

Related Questions on Stock Charting Tools

What is a Stock Chart?

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Stock charts are an integral tool for technical analysis and trading. Charts provide a visual representation of the price action of stocks by plotting historical price data, which allows for easier identification of price patterns and trends.

Through technical analysis of stock charts, traders can help identify a stock’s trajectory and make informed trades.

What are Stock Chart Indicators?

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Stock chart indicators are mathematical calculations plotted as lines on a price chart.

These indicators help traders identify trends within the market that will help inform their trading decisions.

Popular Stock Chart Technical Indicators

Moving Averages

Moving averages are average calculations done on different subsets of the complete data set. Moving averages help mitigate the impact of short-term fluctuations in stock prices so traders can better identify the trend of a stock or support and resistance levels.

Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD)

Moving average convergence divergence is one of the most popular technical indicators and can be used as a trend or momentum indicator. Essentially, MACD calculates the difference between the 26-day and 12-day exponential moving averages.

On the chart, MACD appears as two lines that oscillate without boundaries, and the crossover of the lines gives trading signals. The MACD is considered bullish when crossing above zero and bearish when crossing below zero.

Relative Strength Index (RSI)

The relative strength index is a momentum indicator that measures the magnitude of a price change. This measurement helps evaluate whether the price change reflected oversold or overbought conditions. RSI is shown as an oscillator with a reading from 0 to 100.

Values of 70 or above indicate overbought conditions, and 30 or below indicate oversold conditions.

Bollinger Bands

Bollinger bands display the upper and lower ranges of stock prices. They are envelopes plotted one standard deviation above and below the moving average of the price and help determine whether prices are high or low.

You can use these technical indicators to understand how a stock might trade going forward by comparing the stock price to performance on a relative basis. Using the pair of bands isn’t meant to serve as the only tool used. In fact, the pair of bands are used to confirm signals (buy signals, sell signals) given by other advanced and basic indicators.

Trading Volume

Trading volume is the number of shares traded during a specific period used by traders to confirm a particular security trend.

Candlestick Charts

Candlestick charts are used to describe price movements. They are similar to box and whisker plots in that four data points for the day are represented. The open and close prices are the candle body, while the lowest and highest prices are represented by the “wicks” that extend from either side of the body. A candlestick chart provides information about trading patterns over short periods.