TradingView.com Review: Read Before You Upgrade - Top Trade Reviews (2024)

Introduction

TradingView.com is a web-based charting package and trading social network. Founded by the creators of charting software MultiCharts, TradingView aims to offer all of the functionality of a premium desktop charting suite, with the speed and portability of a web-based platform. Additionally, the wide TradingView community makes it easy to share and find trading ideas, indicators, and automated trading strategies.

TradingView Pricing Options

TradingView has four unique account tiers:
● Free
● Pro
● Pro+
● Premium

Depending on one’s trading/investing style, a certain plan may be tailored to your needs. For example, the casual investor who buys and holds will be more than fine with the free tier, as TradingView offers vast functionality for free.

TradingView FREE

The differences between TradingView Free and the paid options are not as dramatic as one may think. At a glance, free members are offered the majority of TradingView’s functionality. Most swing traders and investors wouldn’t miss anything that the paid plans offer, while a hyperactive day trader may not be able to trade using their style without a paid plan. Things like limited charts per layout, limited indicators per chart, lack of extended trading hours data, slower data flow, and a slew of other handicapped features are what holds the free plan back.

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TradingView Paid Plans

The various paid tiers of TradingView are very similar in features, the benefits a user gets by moving up a tier is mostly enhanced core features. For example, moving from Pro+ to Premium moves you from four charts per layout, to eight, a possible 10 indicators per chart, to 25. However, some features are exclusive to certain plans, like server-side SMS alerts, which are exclusively available to Premium members.

I found that what drove me to upgrade was specific features and a general increase in the current features offered. I was sick of being limited to three indicators, deleting one every time I wanted a fourth indicator, I wanted to employ some volume profile strategies, strategies using Japanese momentum charts like Renko, and I wanted to check quotes on during extended hours without being forced to go to CNBC.com.

Overall, if TradingView is your main charting package, and you can spend anywhere from $100 to $500 per year to speed up your workflow, extend your functionality, keep you in the box (avoid going to different platforms for other information), and generally not be limited by any artificial means, than the paid plans are absolutely worth it.

However, if you’re a new trader with a small account, the decision is not as cut-and-dry. It really depends on the type of person that you are, and how much money you make from your main income. If you make pretty good money and shelling out a few hundred dollars isn’t a big deal to supplement a new hobby and investment opportunity, than go for it. You’ve probably splurged that much on dining out in the last month. Conversely, I find that most (keyword: most!) traders with small accounts tend not to be in the best of financial situations. Often times, the money used on a paid plan can be put to better use somewhere else, whether in your trading account, or to pay a bill. Remember that TradingView is not the only game in town, and that anyone in the US can make a free TD Ameritrade account with no deposit and get access to the advanced Thinkorswim platform for free.

Below is a table comparing the four TradingView account tiers.

Table pulled from tradingview.com/gopro

Features

Trading View Charts

TradingView’s simple, sleek, fast, web-based charts are definitely their strength. I have yet to see a charting package come close to the user experience I had when using TradingView charts. They are smooth when zooming in and out, as opposed to jerky like every other charting platform I’ve used. There is an indescribable comfort and satisfaction when using a TradingView chart compared with any other chart. You can tell the designers thought out each detail meticulously, like where each button will be, how the sidebar looks, everything down to the animation of populating a textbox looks engineered.

Additionally, it is one of very few charting packages that feels modern at all. Most charting packages feel like they were made in 2007, due to the clunkiness and dated look.

Technical Indicators

TradingView offers a wide library of technical indicators that is routinely being added to and updated. What I like best about TradingView’s indicators more has to do with the platform design itself. While most charting packages have a huge drop-down menu with arbitrary folders full of indicators, TradingView simply has an “indicators” button that brings up a pop-up dialog, allowing you to browse through TradingView’s library of indicators, as well as community produced indicators.

News

News and headlines is one area that TradingView could do better in, especially in curation. The News section is simply a list of headlines with a small preview.

Tools like Money.Net have unique features like sorting news based on popularity/clicks, as well as interesting news infographics. TradingView would be smart to take note of these features and implement similar features in their own style.

TradingView Scanner

TradingView’s screener is, in my opinion, a very middle-of-the-road scanner. It shines where TradingView shines, which is ease of use and a satisfying user interface, but it lacks in customization. There is a limited amount of screening options, and many indicators/fundamental pieces of data included in the TradingView infrastructure are not available for use in the screener. Additionally, the indicators that are included, cannot be manipulated. For example, if you have a strategy using the 90 period EMA and the 5 period Average Directional Index, you would not be able to scan for setups in TradingView, instead, you would have to use the closest options which are the 14 period ADX and 100 period EMA.

The screener lacks customization features offered by platforms like Thinkorswim and Portfolio123, and users of these platforms will be disappointed by its lack of flexibility.

Alerts

TradingView’s alerts are great, they do what they need to do and the Alerts system allows for a wide range of alert types. Alerts can be created for any indicator or drawing. One drawback is that only Premium members (highest paid tier) can get SMS alerts, but I’ve never been phased by it, any smartphone can treat emails in the same fashion as an SMS, with the same notification sound, so to me, it doesn’t change anything. Another great feature is the ability to control the frequency of an alarm going off, rather than going off once, you can set it to go off five times.

Watch Lists

Offering nothing proprietary or special, TradingView’s watch lists do what they need to do. They enjoy the same fortune that the other mediocre features do, which is being part of the TradingView UI. Adding a symbol is as simple as typing the symbol and hitting ‘Enter,’ as opposed to many other platforms, which require the extra step of the user populating the empty space with their mouse before typing the symbol. It seems mundane, but when entering a large list of symbols, small shortcuts like these add up, and this is the type of smooth UI design that makes me love TradingView.

Volume Profile

TradingView offers volume profile indicators to all paid members. The volume profile, while pretty basic in functionality, is smoothly part of the TradingView infastructure. Fans of market profile à la Jim Dalton will not pleased however, as only basic volume profile is presented, showing prices where the most volume is being exectued and a point of control line.

Japanese Momentum Charting

While offered by many other charting packages, it still is somewhat rare for all of them to be in one package. TradingView offers Renko, Kagi, Line Break, and Point & Figure charts. These charts ignore time and focus on other factors like amount of ATRs moved or similar measures. They are more apt to trend traders.

Pine Script

Pine Script is TradingView’s proprietary scripting language which is surprisingly easy to learn and apply quickly, even for non-coders. With it you can backtest strategies, and if your broker is available, trade them live. For example, you can tell Pine Script to buy everytime the 50 day SMA crosses above the 200 day SMA, and flatten your position when the inverse happens, with a rule against shorting, and see the results on any asset. Of course, much more complex strategies can be tested and coded.

TradingView Social Network

I haven’t touched on this too much because it goes against some of the most sacred trading philosophies. However, some view it as a very useful tool for confirmation and idea generation. The social networking aspect of TradingView, and trading in general is very controversial. One of the worst things for a trader’s psychology can be social media, especially the type of person that likes to try new things. When a trader see a guy trading a bunch of cryptocurrencies, an asset they themselves have never traded, making a ton of money, one can get FOMO and make some very poor decisions.

That being said, the functionality of the social networking is great. There is a feature to toggle other trader’s ideas/drawings on a specific asset, members can write blogs, share their drawn up their charts, etc. While all of this stuff is great, I don’t think it will ever be a selling feature for TradingView, nor do I think they should ever brand themselves as a “trading social network.” Traders, as a group, are probably more opposed to social media than almost any other.

Brokers Compatible With TradingView

One let-down of using TradingView is the lack of trading functionality. Only a very small amount of brokers offer in-the-box trading with TradingView. Those brokers are:

● FXCM (Forex)
● Oanda (Forex)
● Forex.com (Forex)
● Modalmais
● CQG (third party trading platform)

What Type of Trader is it Best For?

TradingView’s diverse offerings make it palatable to most types of traders but I think there is a bias among the members towards medium-short term trading. First off, the free account plan is perfect for most investors and longer term swing traders who don’t require more than three indicators on their charts. Besides them, I think the general demographic of TradingView is technical based swing and intraday swing traders. It’s unlikely too many scalpers or order flow based traders even bother to use TradingView. An order flow trader is unlikely to use any indicators, nor do they manipulate their charts much, so they are usually better off using the charts within their trading platform.

Pros & Cons

Pros

● Smoothest charting I’ve ever used
● Amazing free plan
● Library of community produced indicators
● Proprietary, easy to learn, scripting language (Pine Script)
● Great backtesting tool
● Huge amount of functionality in one charting package

Cons

● No level 2 data (DOM is available if you have a CQG account)
● Very limited broker support

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