While there are dozens of charting platforms available, TradingView and StockCharts stand out for combining a huge breadth of features with user-friendly design. With both platforms, you get access to fully customizable technical charts, stock screeners, and more.
So, which charting software is right for you? In this guide, we’ll compare TradingView vs. StockCharts to help you decide.
About TradingView and StockCharts
TradingView was established in 2011 as a platform to bring terminal-style trading tools onto the cloud. The company built an advanced charting software, which it now licenses to dozens of brokerage firms. In addition, TradingView has more than 30 million monthly users on its own site.
StockCharts is a much older platform, founded in 1999 by a former Microsoft developer who worked on the earliest versions of Windows. At the time, StockCharts was one of the first advanced tools available to retail traders for online stock analysis. Despite its head start, StockCharts has been far surpassed by TradingView in terms of its user base – StockCharts sees around 2 million users each month.
TradingView vs. StockCharts: Charting Features
TradingView and StockCharts are designed first and foremost for charting, and they each do an excellent job of helping traders analyze price data. Both platforms come pre-loaded with hundreds of technical indicators, annotation and drawing tools, and multi-panel layouts. So, we’ll focus mainly on the features that set these two charting platforms apart.
TradingView has several important features that you won’t find in StockCharts. First, you can view price data in 1-, 5-, 15-, or 30-second intervals. With StockCharts, the shortest timeframe for price data is 1 minute. In addition, TradingView offers bar replay, so you can easily rewind a chart to see how a technical pattern played out.
More important, TradingView offers a code editor that you can use to create your own custom technical indicators. While the indicators in StockCharts are highly customizable, there’s no way to create an indicator that doesn’t already exist in the software. TradingView also lets you import indicators that other users have created, which makes the software much more flexible for trying out new strategies.
Where StockCharts excels is in the range of its charts and how flexible they are. You can view not only common chart styles like candlestick and Heikin-Ashi, but also Elder Impulse System bars, point and figure charts, and comparative performance charts for up to 12 symbols. There are also RRG charts to visualize momentum and relative strength across multiple stocks and seasonality charts that explore how price trends change throughout the year. While not all of these chart styles are as useful for intraday trading as 1-second charts might be, they can be very useful for revealing patterns that candlestick charts miss.
TradingView vs. StockCharts: Stock Screener
Both TradingView and StockCharts also offer comprehensive stock screening tools. You’ll have access to all the same technical indicators for screening as you do for charting, including any custom indicators you’ve created in TradingView. Both scanners are very easy to use, although TradingView’s user-interface is decidedly more modern.
One major advantage that the StockCharts screener has is that you can open a code editor to modify your scan and create complex logical statements. While TradingView has a code editor for creating indicators, the software doesn’t let you directly edit the code for a stock scan.
What TradingView offers, though, is scan results that update in real time. TradingView results can update automatically every 10 seconds, which is helpful for day trading in rapidly changing market conditions. StockCharts requires you to manually re-run your scan to update the results.
TradingView vs. StockCharts: Trade Ideas
TradingView and StockCharts each allow you to interact with other traders on the platform, although TradingView has a distinct advantage because of the size of its community.
On TradingView, you’ll find dozens of community-contributed indicators, trade ideas, and discussions submitted every day. In fact, the platform has ‘Editor’s Choice’ categories to help you find the best ideas out of the community.
On StockCharts, whole weeks can go by without a post in the community boards. However, users are able to share lists of charts and trade ideas just like in TradingView.
TradingView vs. StockCharts: Trading
Another important difference between TradingView and StockCharts is in how they enable trading. TradingView integrates with brokerage accounts at Tradovate, AMP Globa, OANDA, Forex.com, and Gemini, while StockCharts only integrates with Tradier. Notably, TradingView has limited support for options trading, while StockCharts offers integrated options trading with Tradier.
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TradingView vs. StockCharts: Pricing Options
TradingView is somewhat pricier than StockCharts, especially as you move up in the two platforms’ pricing ladders. Basic paid tiers at both services start at $14.95 per month. At TradingView, that includes five indicators per chart and two charts per window. At StockCharts, you get 20 indicators per chart and no limit on the number of charts you can have per window. However, you can only run 1 custom screen per month.
TradingView’s Pro+ tier costs $29.95 per month and the Premium tier costs $59.95 per month. These increase the number of indicators and charts you can view at once, as well as enable indicators on indicators.
At StockCharts, the Extra tier costs $24.95 per month and the Pro tier costs $39.95 per month. The Extra tier unlocks technical screens and price alerts, while the Pro tier offers price data going back to 1900 and more custom layouts.
TradingView vs. StockCharts: Which Platform is Better?
For the majority of traders, we think TradingView is the better platform. TradingView and StockCharts both do an excellent job with any basic to intermediate charting tasks and both platforms are very user-friendly. However, TradingView offers key features like 1-second chart intervals and a script editor for building custom technical indicators. The size of the TradingView community is also a plus since you have access to more ideas and more user-generated indicators to add to your charts.
That said, there are some cases when StockCharts is the better option. If you want historical data from before 1980, for example, you’ll need to use StockCharts. The platform’s unusual chart styles can also be useful for long-term investors looking to develop outside the box trade ideas.
Alternatives to TradingView and StockCharts
While TradingView and StockCharts are both strong platforms, they can be expensive. If you’re on a tight budget, it’s worth considering Thinkorswim. This charting platform offers many of the same charting tools as TradingView, including 1-second price intervals and a built-in code editor. However, it’s completely free with a TD Ameritrade brokerage account.
The major downside to Thinkorswim is that it has a much steeper learning curve than either TradingView or StockCharts. If you want to hit the ground running as quickly as possible, this free alternative could be more trouble than it’s worth.
Conclusion
TradingView and StockCharts are two of the premier charting and analysis platforms available to traders today. While there’s a lot to like about both platforms, we think TradingView is the better choice for most traders.
Still looking to learn a bit more before making your final decision? If so, check out our complete review of TradingView here and our complete review of StockCharts here. Now get charting!
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