Stock charts are the cornerstone of technical analysis, and if you are a trader, you need access to a stock chart app so that you can access the real-time market data you need to make savvy trading decisions.
Free stock charts offer basic, common indicators and are best for beginners, while paid options come with advanced tools that help experienced traders carry out in-depth analyses and have an edge on the market.
In this post, I delve into free stock charting tools and paid options so that you can choose the ones that fit your investment needs and experience.
4 Best Free Stock Charting Software
Most stock charting software offer a mix of free and paid plans so that you can upgrade as your trading experience levels up.
Below is a rundown of the best free stock chart websites, some of which offer affordable paid plans.
Methodology
In our research for the best free and paid stock charts, we selected stock charting software based on their ease of use, pricing, real-time charts/quotes, technical analysis tools/indicators, broker integration, portfolio management, and interactive chart support, among other factors.
TradingView
TradingView is the most advanced stock charting software that offers free stock charts online.
It is packed with powerful market analysis tools and reliably connected to 50+ real-time data feeds to allow you analyze stocks, crypto, indices, Forex, futures, and bond markets.
TradingView Top features
- 100+ pre-built indicators and 100,000 community-build indicators
- 50+ smart drawing tools
- Candlestick pattern recognition
- 12 customizable chart types
- Market screeners for stocks, crypto, and forex
- Economic and Earnings calendars
- Stocks and crypto heatmaps
- Partners with 130+ stock exchanges and 40+ crypto exchanges
- Trade directly from the charts
- Multiple timeframes, from one minute to one month
- Paper trading to test your trading strategies.
- Pine Script to code your own indicators and strategies.
- Cloud-based alerts for every device with 12 alert conditions.
- Top news, including market snaps, news flow, educational ideas, and more.
The basic plan is free, but if you want to skip annoying ads and unlock advanced features, you can upgrade to any of the paid plans, all of which come with a 30-day free trial.
- Pro: $10.50/mo
- Pro+: $17.95/mo
- Premium: $30/mo
Yahoo Finance
Yahoo Finance is one of the best free stock charts websites reputed for its wide financial news coverage and is great for beginners.
Yahoo stock charts enable you to analyze stocks, ETFs, futures, indices, cryptocurrencies, mutual funds, options, bonds, and Forex.
Yahoo Finance Top Features
- Interactive charting with more than 100 technical indicators
- Drawing tools for trendlines, quadrant lines, linear regression, Fibonacci, and more
- Enhanced charting with auto pattern recognition
- Multiple timeframes from 1 day to 5 years of historical data.
- Watchlists to create an unlimited list of assets to follow
- Research reports from Morningstar & Argus
- Real-time quotes and charts through the BATS system
- Basic screening tools for all markets
- Partners with mainstream US brokers to allow you to trade from the charts
- Wide coverage of financial news
The basic Yahoo stock charts are free to use but come with ads. If you want to unlock more features and enjoy an ad-free experience, you could upgrade to Yahoo Finance Plus, which offers two plans.
All plans are billed annually and come with a 14-day free trial.
- Lite:$20.83/month
- Essential: $29.16/month
CNN Money
CNN Money is great for beginners or hand-off investors looking to access basic stock charts online.
It offers basic indicators with no drawing tools. So if you’re just getting started and want to get a quick overview of the market from static, non-interactive charts, CNN money will work for you.
You get up-to-date market data and the latest news coverage on stocks, crypto, currencies, and commodities.
CNN Money Top Features
- Historical data from 1 day to 5 years.
- 4 chart types, including mountain, candlestick, OHLC, and line
- Several indicators, including momentum, volume, and trend indicators.
- Ability to plot earnings (EPS indicator) on the chart
- A summary of the company profile, financials, shareholders, forecasts, and more
Its downside is that it only offers one sub-window, no drawing tools, and the page refreshes every time you click to plot new indicators.
Its static, non-interactive charts are also a turnoff to active day traders.
Stock Rover
Stock Rover offers the best stock charting tools that enable buy-and-hold investors to research stocks and implement investment strategies for growth, dividend, and value investing portfolios.
Investors can use its powerful free stock charts to research and analyze stocks, ETFs, bonds, and commodities.
Stock Rover Top Features.
- 10 years of historical financial performance data
- 350 fundamental performance metrics
- Research reports for comprehensive market research
- Broker integration so that you can link your brokerage account to view performance metrics and automatic portfolio updates
- Powerful charting with technical and fundamental metrics
- Portfolio management and analysis
- Portfolio brokerage integration for automated syncing
- Pre-built and custom screeners to find and rank stocks
- In-depth market and individual stocks news
- Comprehensive earnings calendar
- Daily analyst ratings with analyst rankings
- A dashboard with detailed portfolio performance information
The basic free plans cover over 8,500 stocks, 4000 ETFs, and 40,000 mutual funds. If you want to access more market securities and unlock advanced features like unlimited stock ratings, fair value & margin of safety scoring, and analyst rating scoring, you’ll be better off with a paid plan.
StockRover pricing plans include:
- Essentials: $7.99/month
- Premium: $17.99/month
- Premium Plus: $27.99/month
Its downside is that Research Reports cost an additional $99.99 per year or $49.99/per year when bundled with any yearly or two-year plan.
4 Best Paid Stock Charts
If you’re a seasoned trader looking to carry out complex, in-depth technical analysis, you may have to opt for paid stock charts.
In addition to the above free stock charts websites that offer paid plans, below is a rundown of 4 best-paid stock charts, some of which offer basic free plans.
StockCharts
StockCharts is among the top trusted stock charting software that offers advanced, interactive stock charts with indicators to enable you to analyze stocks, options, and ETFs.
It stands out with its partnership with Tradier Brokerage to allow users access to commission-free trading of equities and options from within the StocksCharts Advanced Charting Platform (ACP).
StockCharts Top Features
- High-quality, visually impressive charts
- 12 chart types and about 66 indicators
- Advanced scanning tools to discover assets that fit your criteria
- Award-winning charting and annotation tools to pinpoint the best entry
- Custom technical alerts to help you time your exits
- ChartLists to monitor your position and track your portfolio
- Commission-free equities and options via Tradier Brokerage
- Market commentary from industry experts
The downside of StockCharts is that you can only analyze a limited number of market securities, and it doesn’t support cryptocurrencies. Its free version is also very limited.
Thus, the platform will work well for you if you are willing to pay. To that end, StockCharts offers 3 plans, all of which come with a 1-month free trial.
- Basic: $14.95/month
- Extra: $24.95/month
- Pro: $39.95
Finviz
Financial Visualization is one of the best-paid stock charting software for advanced day traders.
It enables you to analyze futures, crypto, forex, and stocks. It also features an S&P 500 index heatmap that groups stocks by industries and sectors to enable you to make sound-stock-picking decisions.
Its stock screener allows you to screen assets using a variety of fundamental, technical, and descriptive metrics.
Finviz Top Features
- Stock screener
- Backtests
- Real-time quotes and news
With Finviz free stock charts, you can’t select or input your values, and you are limited to using drop-down menus with pre-specified ranges. They also contain ads, and data is delayed for 3-5 minutes.
So if you want to enjoy a streamlined charting experience, you may want to sign up for Finviz Elite service, which gives access to real-time quotes, backtesting, premarket data, advanced screener & charts, and correlations at $24.96/month.
TC2000
TC2000 offers free stock charts online and enables traders to screen, sort, and analyze stock and options.
The TC2000 stock charting software is free to download and is available for Windows, Mac, mobile, and web platforms.
TC2000 Top Features
- Free stock charts with 140+ indicators
- 7 chart types and 25+ drawing tools
- Sortable watchlists to organize and consolidate your assets.
- Dynamic Charting and Options Chains
- Unlimited paper trading for free practice
- Intraday Charts, from a minute to 1 year per bar
- Integrated portfolio management
- Condition wizard to build a condition for any indicators
- EasyScan stock & option screener to test millions of data points for your conditions
- Options Charting using historical and streaming bid/ask data.
- Built-in options strategies.
The downside of TC2000 is that it only supports stocks & options, and if you want to unlock more powerful features, you may have to upgrade to its premium services, including:
- Silver: $8.32/mo
- Gold: $24.99/mo
- Platinum: $74.98/mo
MetaStock
MetaStock is a top stock charting software offering advanced tools and technical indicators. It is great for all types of traders, including day, swing, and EOD traders.
Traders can use the platform to scan and analyze stocks, options, futures, forex, and more.
MetaStock Top Features
- Over 150 indicators that come with interpretations
- Allows advanced traders to write and backtest your customized indicators and strategies.
- MetaStock RealTime (R/T) for real-time trading using intraday data.
- MetaStock Daily Charts (D/C) for traders who prefer to carry out post-market analysis
- XENITH real-time market data and news
MetaStock D/C has a one-time fee of $499, while MetaStock R/T goes for $1395 with a MetaStock Software subscription of $100/month or $1080/yr.
There are also several other subscriptions like Refinitiv DataLink, XENITH & XENITH Add-Ons, and others that can significantly increase your costs.
Both MetaStock D/C and R/T offer free trials so that you can test their features before subscribing.
The major downside of MetaStock is that their charting software is only compatible with windows, and you’ll have to pay a premium to access and use their platform.
What is a Stock Chart?
A stock chart is a graphical representation of a financial asset’s price action over a period of time.
They form the basis of technical analysis and help traders determine how the price of market securities changes over time so that they can determine the best entry and exit points.
How do Stock Charts Work?
A stock chart works pretty simply. It plots the stock price vertically on the y-axis and the time over which that price traded along the x-axis to form a trend.
It also shows additional information like trading volume, company name and ticker, current buy/sell data, and more.
It also shows the open, high, low, and close (OHLC) price of an asset within a specific time frame with vertical bars to show how volatile the price was during that period.
How to Choose a Stock Charting Tool
There are several factors you should consider when choosing stock charting software, including:
- Easy-to-use interface
- Different chart types and chart layouts
- Support for technical indicators, trendlines, shapes, drawing tools, and a library of symbols.
- Paper trading for free practice and backtesting
- Mobile applications options to stay connected with the markets on the go
- Pricing: Free plans work well for beginners. Paid charts are great for experienced traders looking for advanced features.
FAQ
What is the best free stock chart app?
TradingView is the best free stock chart app that offers comprehensive technical analysis tools for the free plan. Others include Yahoo Finance, CNN Money, and Stock Rover.
What is the best paid stock charting software?
StockCharts, Finviz, and TC200 are some of the best paid stock charting software that also offer basic free plans with limited features.
Is TradingView free?
Yes, TradingView stock charts are free for the basic plan. It also offers paid stock charts via its Pro and Premium plans to experienced traders who want to go ad-free and unlock more features.
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