Active investors must act in the moment or risk their portfolios. They don’t have time to do in-depth research and mess around with charts; they need everything in one place with a stock charting app.
No two investors will have the same needs, risk tolerances, or goals, but hundreds of stock charting apps have different features to help you create your strategies.
Even if you have years of experience investing, knowing where to get the most up-to-date information in real-time to execute your trades is important.
Best Stock Charting Apps
I’ve narrowed down the top 11 stock charting apps and noted their best features. Because choosing a stock charting app is a personal decision, compare the features and see which app suits your investment style the most.
- Tradestation
- Webull
- Seeking Alpha
- Trade Ideas
- TradingView
- MooMoo
- StockCharts
- Yahoo! Finance
- MetaStock
- FinViz
- Worden TC2000
1. TradeStation: Best for Drawing on Stock Analysis Charts
TradeStation is more than a stock trading platform. However, I’ll focus there first so you can see the benefits of using TradeStation for your trades, especially if you’re a day trader or trade frequently.
Not only can investors make trades on TradeStation, but they can also access robust educational opportunities meant for advanced investors. The educational options include advanced charting features for experienced investors.
Investors who use TradeStation pay no commissions on stock and ETF trades and can also trade options and futures for a low fee.
Now for the charting features.
TradeStation Analytics is free for all TradeStation investors and includes the option to research and track stocks, ETFs, crypto, and futures. TradeStation helps investors find the most important data and perform technical analyses that provide unique trading opportunities for advanced investors.
Investors have access to more than 180 technical indicators and can utilize features including:
- Trading data in real-time
- Data to help you know when to buy or sell assets
- Assistance with options trading
- Create custom indicators
- Backtesting
- Custom scanners
Investors have easy access to support to get answers to questions quickly via phone, email, or live chat, and their features and support tools all help investors learn to improve their trading skills.
Investors who don’t want to use TradeStation for trading can subscribe to TradeStation Analytics separately for $99 per month.
2. Webull: Best for Mobile Devices
Webull, like most stock trading apps, offers commission-free trades. It focuses on technical analysis and fundamental indicators for advanced investors and day traders.
While it offers complex charting and trading options, it’s a good platform for beginners and experienced investors.
Webull is available on desktop and mobile, making it easy to make trades on the go. It works on all mobile devices too.
Investors can trade:
- Stocks
- Bonds
- Cryptocurrency
- Options
To use their charting capabilities, you must subscribe to NASDAQ TotalView 2 Advance. The charting app costs $1.99 a month and offers information about a stock’s demand, its current bid and ask prices and predictions for how the stock might shift based on the market’s performance.
The mobile app can also access breaking news and provide personalized charting. You can also save the charts for future use. The charting capabilities are profound, allowing you to customize the information you receive to make technical and fundamental decisions.
3. Seeking Alpha: Best for Market Data
Seeking Alpha is a stock charting app for advanced investors. It offers extensive research opportunities and stock picks to help investors create the portfolio that best suits them.
Seeking Alpha offers three tiers, including a free option, but the features are limited. For example, everyone can receive real-time news updates, Wall Street ratings, stock prices, and charts. Free members also get limited access to user content and articles written by expert investors to provide more insight into the market and its performance.
Among its notable features, Seeking Alpha offers charting and portfolio tracking features that members can fully customize.
Along with charting, Seeking Alpha offers earnings call reports, access to company financial statements, and earnings and dividends forecasts.
Subscribe to one of the paid Seeking Alpha plans, and you’ll have access to over 16,000 contributors providing their analyses, which are vetted by the Seeking Alpha staff before publishing. The free plan also includes access to stock prices and charts.
Free members only get access to a small fraction of the published articles, but paid members get access to thousands of articles and advanced charting and analytical tools.
Seeking Alpha has two paid plans: Premium ($189/year + 7 day free trial) and Pro ($2,400/year).
- Premium: Premium members get everything free members get, plus unlimited access to all professional analyses plus author ratings. This helps investors put the advice or opinions they’re reading into perspective. It also provides access to stock quant ratings and stock dividend grades.
- Pro: Seeking Alpha Pro includes everything from the premium plan, more in-depth content and newsletters, an idea screener, a top ideas newsletter, and a VIP service.
In short, Seeking Alpha provides all the information DIY investors need to make informed decisions while saving time. Everything is in one place, so you can quickly access the information you need to make fast trading decisions.
4. Trade Ideas: Best for Advanced Trading
Trade Ideas is an advanced stock screener that helps advanced investors find more trading opportunities and assess risk quickly.
Rather than reading charts yourself, Trade Ideas offers an AI assistant that analyzes all technical, fundamental, breaking news, and earnings data to provide you with stock recommendations.
Trade Ideas offers opportunities for beginner and advanced investors. However, if you’re just starting your journey as a DIY investor, you’ll find plenty of educational opportunities, as well as simulated trading, that allows you to try trades in real-time with paper money.
All subscriptions also include access to the Trading Room Community, where you can converse with thousands of other investors, trade ideas, and learn from one another.
Advanced investors enjoy the backtesting capabilities, of Oddsmaker, to help them understand the risk of certain investments and the ability to create custom formulas. The sky’s the limit with the capabilities to help you make trading decisions.
Traders who want the best of all worlds can combine trading ideas from community members in real time with technical analysis and stock charts for more balanced trade ideas.
One thing I love about Trade Ideas is its stock charting app for beginning and advanced investors. So whether you have a buy-and-hold strategy or are a day trader, there are features for everyone.
Trade Ideas combines the best of both worlds – education for beginning and advanced investors and real-time trades when you’re ready.
Plus, if you have an ETRADE account, you can automate your trades through Trade Ideas, executing what you learn in real time.
The robust features Trade Ideas offers come at a price:
Standard $84/month
- Live trading room
- Simulated trades
- Trading ideas in real-time
- Chart-based AI assistant
- Price alerts
Premium $167/month
Includes everything above plus:
- Rael-time entry and exit signals
- AI virtual assistant research and ideas
- AI virtual trading assistant
- Backtesting
- Risk assessment
5. TradingView: Best for Free Tools and Trading Charts
If you prefer technical analysis, TradingView offers the most robust charting opportunities on the internet, many for free.
The charting capabilities on TradingView are fully customizable, and investors can interact with one another to get more ideas. For example, investors can add trend lines, choose preferred indicators, and view current and historical stock charts.
The TradingView charting system is one of the most robust available today, providing real-time data, streaming charts, and other refined data that investors request.
Thirty million investors use TradingView today using their curated watchlists, breaking news, and community trends to give investors other angles to consider.
Investors can get as technical as they want with their charting needs, including backtesting, volume indicators, drawing tools, and valuation analyses to make real-time decisions.
TradingView has tiers for every investor. You can try the basic charting options everyone can access, or you can upgrade to get the following benefits:
Pro ($14.95/month)
- Up to 5 indicators per chart
- No ads
- Several watchlists
- Dual charts on one screen
- Indicators for volume
- 20 server-side reports
Pro+ ($29.95/month)
Includes everything above plus:
- Up to 10 indicators per chart
- Four charts on one screen
- 100 server-side alerts
- Custom charting
- Chart exporting
- Up to 10 saved charts
Premium ($59.95/month)
Includes everything above plus:
- Up to 25 indicators per chart
- Eight charts on one screen
- 400 server-side alerts
- Unlimited saved charts
- More data on charts
6. Moomoo: Best for Desktop and Mobile Charting Tools
Moomoo is a stock trading and charting app for beginners or advanced investors. Investors pay zero commissions, and there are no account minimums or hidden fees.
Moomoo simplifies stock research opportunities with its AI tools that provide real-time alerts, including research and tracking tools.
In addition to the robust charting opportunities, investors have access to plenty of educational tools, including courses and access to the thousands of investors that use Moomoo. In addition, investors can trade ideas and learn from one another in real-time.
Moomoo’s stock screener has over 100 indicators available on thousands of stocks. Plus, investors with a Moomoo brokerage account get free access to Level 2 market data, including up to 60 levels of the bid/ask prices, to help investors understand a stock’s performance in real-time.
Moomoo’s charting tools have 63 technical indicators and 38 drawing tools to cater to beginning and advanced investors. It also provides AI support alerts so investors can react to real-time market changes.
If this sounds like too much, they offer a paper trading account so you can play with your new strategies risk-free. You’ll receive $1 million in virtual money for stocks and options and $10 million for futures to help you try your strategies.
All these features are free when you open and fund a Moomoo brokerage account and trade for $0 commissions.
7. StockCharts: Best for Customized Charts
StockCharts is a robust stock charting app that provides enhanced technical analysis to help you understand the market, create a portfolio and try new investing opportunities.
StockCharts has been around for decades and has helped thousands of investors create customized charts that are more advanced than any competitors; plus, members can save their charts for future use.
Members can run custom scans and set alerts for their unique technical analyses to make real-time trading decisions. StockCharts also offers daily professional commentary from industry leaders, so investors can get more investing ideas or charts to create.
StockCharts charting capabilities are completely customizable and interactive, with hundreds of ways to play with the indicators, overlays, and chart layouts making it easy for investors to see the desired information the way they prefer.
The best part is StockCharts is available on desktop, and mobile devices, so you can access your charting from anywhere.
StockCharts helps investors of all types create the portfolio that suits their needs by offering:
- Advanced scanning tools
- Advanced charting tools
- Portfolio tracking
- Technical alerts for exit strategies
Investors who sign up for a brokerage account with Tradier Brokerage through StockCharts also receive free equity and options trading through the StockCharts charting platform.
StockCharts offers three pricing tiers for investors of all levels, including the following:
Basic ($14.95/month)
- 25 technical indicators and overlays per chart
- Intraday charting
- Multiple layouts
- Historical data for decades
- One chart list
- One custom scan
- Two price alerts
- One advanced technical alert
- Six price datasets per chart
Extra ($24.95/month)
Includes everything above plus:
- 250 chart lists
- 200 custom scans
- 200 price alerts
- 100 advanced technical alerts
Pro ($39.95/month)
- 500 chart lists
- 500 custom scans
- 500 price alerts
- 250 advanced technical alerts
- Ten price datasets per chart
8. Yahoo! Finance
Yahoo! Finance is a free charting app that doesn’t have premium options. It’s been around for decades and provides access to the most breaking financial news. In addition, users can set watchlists, link their brokerage account for tracking, and create/save custom screeners.
9. MetaStock: Best for Technical Indicators
MetaStock has been providing stock charting for over 30 years for DIY traders. Their focus is on active traders who use technical analysis.
The charting capabilities offered include backtesting, scanning, and customized stock analyses. Their charting works well for day traders, End of Day Traders, and swing traders.
Along with robust charting, you’ll receive:
- Real-time market data that pushes out all breaking news and other stories relevant to your investments
- Daily market data feed for real-time market data
- Customizable analysis tools
- 150+ indicators
- Ability to create customized indicators
- Backtesting
MetaStock offers many packages for the beginner through experienced investors ranging from $27.95 per month to $165 per month.
10. FinViz: Best for Ease of Use Technical Analysis
The FinViz stock screener offers multiple options for beginning and advanced investors. Of course, the Elite version provides many more features for advanced investors, including the following:
- Access to real-time data
- Trend lines
- Backtesting for 24 years
- Pre-market and aftermarket data
- Advanced charts
- Correlation testing
- Custom screening filters
- Real-time notifications
Plus, Elite members have an ad-free experience.
11. Worden TC2000: Best for Desktop Installation
Worden TC2000 is a robust charting platform for advanced investors. It’s been around for the last 20 years and has grown with the market and technology.
Worden TC2000 offers extensive backtesting, pre-market news, color bars, and scan plots, among other features.
Some of the top features of Worden TC2000 include:
- Dream It, Test It, Apply It: Investors can dream up the craziest scenarios and test them on the Worden platform. You can build conditions for any scenario and don’t need formula writing experience.
- Stock and option screener: Tests thousands of data points in seconds
- Multiple exit strategies: You can execute multiple exit strategies at one time
- Customizable charting: All charting features are 100% interactive
- Trading simulator: Try all your trades in real-time for free
- Real-time alerts: Set your customized alerts and rest assured you’ll be in the know at all times
- Prebuilt options strategies: Get access to multileg orders without the headaches
Worden TC2000 costs $8.32 to $74.98 per month, depending on your desired services and plan. Beginning investors can start with the basic plan and just get charting capabilities.
But as you gain experience, you may want to consider upgrading to get more features such as stock scans, chart drawing, 100s of alerts, backtesting, and market timing indicators.
What Are Stock Charting Apps?
Stock charting apps provide access to many tools to choose the right stocks, including stock charts. In addition, investors can use technical analysis to forecast, backtest, and monitor a stock’s performance.
Each stock charting app provides different features and, of course, has different pricing. In addition, there are apps for beginners that grow with investors as they try new strategies and those focused strictly on experienced investors.
What Is a Stock Chart?
Stock charts display a stock’s performance over a specific period. Investors can play with the charts, looking at daily data or data over a few days, months, or years. In addition, stock charts help investors learn about a stock’s recent changes and the company’s valuation.
Reading Stock Charts
Stock charts may feel overwhelming at first, but once you understand the basic elements, they are easier to read.
While each stock chart is different, most include the following information:
- Opening, high, and low prices: The price the stock opened, its highest, and lowest prices for the day
- Market capitalization: The value of all stocks owned by the company’s shareholders
- Price/Earnings ratio: A comparison of the share price to the earnings per share
- Yearly high and low: The highest and lowest company stock price for the year
- Dividend yield: How much of the share price the company pays in dividends
Desired Qualities of a Stock Charting App
All stock charting apps are different but should include some basic features to give you the most out of the app.
- Trend lines: All stock charts have a blue trend line. It will have ups and downs, but it gives you information about when the stock price changed drastically so you can research the events from that time and get more information.
- Lines of support and resistance: Your stock charting app should offer lines of support and resistance. A support line is a line the stock isn’t expected to drop below, and resistance is the line it’s not expected to surpass based on past performance. Lines of support and resistance are subjective and shouldn’t be the only information you use, but they can play a role in your decisions.
- Dividends and stock splits: Stock charts should include information about if and when a company paid dividends and if/when the stocks split. You can use this information along with the trendline to forecast a company’s performance. If the stock split, they issued more stock, but compare that to the trendline to see how the company performed.
- Historic trading volumes: Trading volume is another factor in trading decisions. Large and fast trading volume shifts can cause rapid stock price shifts and vice versa. To get more detailed information, compare the trading volume changes with other information, such as stock price changes, trend lines, and stock splits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Stock charting apps can mean the difference between executing a trade on time and missing out on the next big deal.
How do stock chart indicators work?
Stock chart indicators alert investors in real time when there’s something that will affect their portfolio. Most charting apps let investors set custom alerts so that they get the information they need and don’t have to worry about missing an important investment opportunity.
What are some well-known stock technical indicators?
The most common stock technical indicators include on-balance volume, relative strength index, and average directional index.
Which stock trading charts are useful?
There are many helpful stock trading charts. But, of course, what’s useful for you depends on your strategies, knowledge, and budget. If you’re looking for free stock trading charts, Yahoo Finance and FinViz are good options, but the premium charting apps offer much more.
What are RSI charts?
RSI charts look at a stock’s price momentum, predicting how fast it will change based on the current demand.
Which Stock Charting Apps are Best for You?
Investors have a large number of stock charting apps to consider. Before subscribing, decide how much you’ll use the app and how frequently you want information pushed to you. If you’re just starting, a free stock charting app may be a good option while you get your feet wet. But if you’re an advanced investor, the sky’s the limit with these apps’ capabilities.
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