TradingView vs. TrendSpider – Which Charting Platform is Better?

TradingView vs. TrendSpider

Looking to take your trading to the next level through advanced technical analysis and screeners? Then it’s worth looking at popular tools like TradingView and TrendSpider. These two web-based platforms offer highly capable technical charts and a huge range of indicators.

TradingView enables you to share ideas with thousands of other traders and develop your own indicators using an easy-to-learn coding language. TrendSpider takes some of the work out of technical analysis by automating common studies like Fibonacci retracements and finding chart patterns for you.

So, how do these two technical analysis platforms stack up, and which is better for you? Let’s compare the two to find out.

About TradingView and TrendSpider

TradingView launched in 2011. Thanks in large part to the fact that many of the platform’s tools and social network are available for free, it expanded quickly. The company now has more than 50 million active users and is the most-visited investing website online. In addition, TradingView’s charts and commentary are integrated into many major brokerage platforms.

TrendSpider is a newer and much smaller platform. It launched in 2018 and has only attracted around 4,000 users. However, the company has continued to release new features since its launch and has positioned itself as one of the most powerful and user-friendly automated charting platforms on the market.

TradingView vs. TrendSpider: Similarities

Although TradingView and TrendSpider take fundamentally different approaches to technical analysis, they have quite a lot in common.

Markets

Both TradingView and TrendSpider offer data and charts for a wide variety of markets. Both platforms cover US stocks (NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX exchanges, plus OTC markets), although only TradingView covers international exchanges. You can get delayed data for more than 50 exchanges across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa for free, or purchase real-time data for just a few dollars per exchange.

Both platforms also offer real-time data for forex, cryptocurrencies, US commodity futures, and major global indices. TradingView also covers the bond market, which TrendSpider does not.

Scanners

It’s hard to heap enough praise onto the scanners that both TradingView and TrendSpider have created. They are two of the best options available for scanning any of the markets these platforms cover. Both scanners are highly visual and enable you to mix and match technical indicators (that is, apply indicators on indicators). So, you don’t need to deal with coding to create a complex scan.

Notably, TradingView’s screener provides significantly more parameters for screening stocks based on fundamental financial data. TrendSpider’s scanner gives you the option to scan across multiple timeframes at once as well as to run multiple different scans simultaneously.

Alerts

Each of these platforms offers excellent alert capabilities, and the alerts are virtually as flexible as the screeners. You can create fully custom alert parameters using multiple indicators. Importantly, TrendSpider’s alerts can be based on chart patterns and algorithmically determined support/resistance lines thanks to the software’s automation features. That offers more flexibility compared to TradingView, although whether this is better ultimately depends on your trading strategy.

Technical Charts

Charts are at the heart of both TradingView and TrendSpider, and both platforms offer highly advanced and intuitive charts. The charting software is very different once you get into TrendSpider’s automation features, but on the face, they offer many of the same drawing tools, interval customization options, and chart styles.

TrendSpider includes so-called “raindrop charts,” which are relatively unique. This chart style constructs bars using a high, low, right VWAP, and left VWAP to highlight trading volume and does not use open and close prices. TradingView users have developed an open-source script to create similar raindrop charts in that platform, which highlights the potential of TradingView’s social network.

Backtesting

Both TradingView and TrendSpider include a module for backtesting custom trading strategies. That’s enormously important considering that both of these platforms are designed to help you create your own sets of indicators and alerts. TradingView offers up to 15 years of historical data, while TrendSpider comes with 20 years of historical data.

Trading Bots

Both TradingView and TrendSpider support automated trading using bots. In TradingView, you can create a bot using the script editor, which sends buy and sell instructions to your broker or crypto exchange. There are many free and paid bots available for TradingView – another benefit of the platform’s social network and massive user base.

In TrendSpider, you can create bots using any of the platform’s indicators or automated technical analyses. The process is nearly the same as for creating alerts. You can integrate with any platform that supports webhooks, so it’s possible to send orders to virtually any brokerage.

TradingView vs. TrendSpider: Differences

The shared features in TradingView and TrendSpider are excellent, but the two platforms put them to work in very different ways. 

Trading Community

TradingView is ultimately a community of traders, and this is one of the platform’s great strengths. The platform bears some resemblance to Twitter in that any member can post trading ideas, annotated charts, or new indicators to the whole community.

The social side of the platform is very active, with a steady stream of new ideas every trading day. Helpfully, posts are categorized by whether they are ideas or indicators and are organized according to the relevant market or indicator category. So, you can easily search for posts that are relevant to your trading style rather than simply be inundated with other traders’ posts.

TrendSpider doesn’t offer any similar social networking features. 

Custom Technical Indicators

Another strength of TradingView is in its breadth of indicators. The software ships with hundreds of premade technical studies, and you can find thousands more by searching through indicator posts from other traders.

TradingView uses Pine script, a fairly intuitive coding language, to enable traders to build their own studies from scratch or to create more complex trading signals. Any premade or user-generated indicator on TradingView can be opened in the Pine script editor and fully customized.

If you have an idea for a new indicator, it’s worth searching for it on TradingView before you create it from scratch. There’s a good chance someone has made something similar, and you can modify the indicator’s Pine script to better suit your trading strategy.

TrendSpider has hundreds of technical studies, including many of the same ones that are native to TradingView. Most of the parameters for these indicators can be modified, and you can create trading signals that combine multiple studies. However, you won’t get access to the underlying code in TrendSpider to get into deeper customization.

Automated Technical Analysis

Where TrendSpider excels is in its chart-based automation features. This platform doesn’t just allow you to draw on charts – it will draw on them for you. You can, for example, have TrendSpider automatically suggest Fibonacci retracements on a chart using an AI-powered algorithm. Or the software can use AI to identify potential areas of support and resistance on a chart. TrendSpider can even identify candlestick patterns. 

Having this automated analysis is nice for annotating a single chart, but it’s potential really shows when you start building screeners and alerts. You can screen for stocks with a specific candlestick pattern, for example, or have an alert trigger when a stock breaks above its next resistance line (you can also set a volume threshold or another indicator for this alert). This opens up ways to identify trading opportunities that simply aren’t possible with most other trading platforms.

Alternative Stock and Crypto Data

Another unique thing that TrendSpider offers is alternative data for stocks and crypto. The platform offers a financial news feed from Benzinga Pro, data about insider trading, analysis of social media sentiment on Reddit, an unusual options flow tracker, and more. Most of this data can be displayed as widgets alongside your charts and incorporated into scans and alerts.

With the exception of a news feed, none of this alternative data is available in TradingView.

TradingView vs. TrendSpider: Pricing Options

On the whole, TradingView is somewhat cheaper than TrendSpider. However, TradingView’s plans are highly complex, as they alter everything from how many indicators you can access to how many charts you can have on a single screen. We won’t dive into all of the details here, so make sure to review the plan options carefully.

TradingView offers a free option that’s surprisingly robust. You can access most community posts and the scanner, but you do lose out on advanced indicator customization. You’ll find that your options for overlaying indicators on charts are somewhat limited.

Paid plans start at $155.40 per year and range up to $599.40 per year. They vary in how many indicators you can overlay on a chart, how many alerts you can set up, whether you can use indicators on indicators, and more. Also, note that international exchange data costs extra (prices vary widely).

TrendSpider starts at $384 per year, although this plan limits you to daily candles for scanning, doesn’t let you set up multi-indicator alerts, and doesn’t include trading bots. An Elite subscription costs $780 per year and gives you second-interval scanning, complex alerts, bots, and access to alternative stock and crypto data. A Master subscription, for $1,620 per year, extends the lifespan of your alerts and gives you more results per scan and more trading bots.

Which Service Is Better?

TradingView and TrendSpider are both extremely powerful trading platforms with a huge range of features to offer. At the end of the day, it’s hard to go wrong with either of these software options. 

Ultimately, which is better for you comes down to how you approach trading. If you rely primarily on technical studies and want the option to create your own highly complex indicators, then TradingView is the better option. TradingView is also the better option if you want to trade international stocks or bonds, since TrendSpider doesn’t offer data for these assets.

If you rely on chart patterns and visual analyses like Fibonacci retracements, then TrendSpider is the better service. While TrendSpider is pricier, we think the added cost is reasonable given that it’s one of the only platforms that offers reliable AI-based chart annotation.

TradingView And TrendSpider Alternatives

TradingView and TrendSpider are at the top of the market when it comes to technical analysis software. However, if you’re looking for a cheaper alternative, it may be worth considering Thinkorswim. This comprehensive trading platform is free with a TD Ameritrade brokerage account and includes real-time data for US stocks, bonds, futures, forex, and commodities. (Charles Schwab, which purchased TD Ameritrade, plans to integrate Thinkorswim for its existing customers later this year.)

Thinkorswim easily matches most of TradingView’s charting and backtesting capabilities, and like TradingView, it gives users access to a code editor for creating custom technical studies. Thinkorswim doesn’t have a baked-in community, but there is a strong online community of users who frequently post code for new indicators. The downside is that Thinkorswim isn’t nearly as visually appealing, and the platform has a steeper learning curve to access the same features. Notably, Thinkorswim doesn’t replicate TrendSpider’s automated chart annotation features, which remain relatively unique.

So, Thinkorswim could be a low-cost alternative for TradingView, but not for TrendSpider.

Conclusions For TradingView vs. TrendSpider

TradingView and TrendSpider are two of the top platforms for advanced technical analysis. TradingView offers a social network and virtually unlimited customization of indicators. TrendSpider integrates automated chart annotation with screeners and alerts to give traders more flexibility in spotting opportunities. Both platforms cover a wide range of markets and come with critical features like backtesting, so either can benefit experienced traders.