Automated futures trading that runs on your machine, inside your limits
Build a strategy from indicators, ICT price-structure plays, a stat-arb pairs engine, or a TradingView webhook, or arm Intelligence Mode to weigh the strategies you enabled into one decision on every bar, within the rules and risk caps you set. Backtest it with a PASS / FAIL verdict against the evaluation rules you configure, then run it on a paper account from a desktop engine on your own hardware, and connect a live Tradovate account when you are ready to trade it for real.
Illustration only. A sample interface with made-up figures, not real account data and not a representation of any result. Nothing here is a performance record. See our Risk Disclosure.
New to trading?
Never traded before? Here's the 2-minute version.
No experience needed to look around. Here's what TradeByBar actually does, in plain English. Hover any underlined word for a definition.
What you're actually trading
You build rules that buy and sell futures, which are contracts that track things like the S&P 500 (ES) or Nasdaq (NQ). Beginners usually start with the tiny micro versions, where each trade risks far less.
You start with fake money
Every account begins as paper trading: real, live prices but pretend money, so you can test a strategy with no real money at stake. Real brokers come later, only when you choose, and live trading carries real risk of loss.
What a "prop firm" is
A prop firm funds you with its money if you pass a rules-based evaluation. We backtest your idea and tell you PASS or FAIL against those rules before you pay for one.
You don't need the jargon
Ready-made strategies are labeled Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced, and every confusing term has a one-line explanation a hover away. Start simple and grow into the rest.
Free to explore: no card, no broker, no risk.
About TradeByBar
You build the strategy. Your machine runs it.
TradeByBar is a software vendor, not a trading advisor. You define your own strategies and decide what risk to take. The backtester checks them against historical data, then a desktop engine you install runs them on a paper account so you can see how an idea behaves before any money is on the line. When you are ready, connect your own Tradovate account and take it live.
Your strategies run on your own computer, not on a shared server of ours. Your strategy logic and your order decisions happen on hardware you control, and you decide when it is running: strategies trade while the desktop app is open, and stop opening new positions when it is closed. Copy trading is the one exception you can opt into: it mirrors fills between your own accounts, and you can have us run it so it keeps working while your computer is off. Your dashboard, history, and alerts stay online either way. Because the engine is what enforces your exits, flatten your positions before you shut down rather than leaving them to a resting order.
Copy-trading works only between brokerage accounts you yourself own. We do not solicit or accept credentials intended to let us trade on someone else's behalf. This is our product policy, not legal or tax advice about your own registration or prop-firm obligations.
- Paper trading and live Tradovate execution
- The engine runs locally, on hardware you control, paired to your account with a 6-character code
- Risk gate on every order: contract caps, loss limits, trading sessions
- Trailing-drawdown protection with a configurable freeze threshold
- On live accounts, the stop and target for a filled entry rest at your broker and keep working even if the app closes
- Closing the app stops the engine placing new orders. Flatten first: a resting stop and target are cancelled against each other by the engine, not by your broker
- Research validation built to reduce the odds you are fooled by chance: walk-forward folds, deflated Sharpe, sealed hold-out (historical only, no live guarantee)
- Nothing trades until you arm it yourself, paper first
- AES-256-GCM encrypted broker credentials at rest; the desktop app holds no encryption key and runs on a revocable device token
- Pause-all switch, kill switches, and one-click flatten, all executed by your engine while it is running
Features
Everything you need to test an idea automatically.
Indicator, price-structure, and statistical-arbitrage strategies, TradingView webhooks, copy-trading, an adaptive Intelligence Mode with a live decision feed, shareable setups, and account-level guardrails (contract caps, loss limits, trading sessions), backtested and paper-traded before they ever touch real money.
Your engine, your machine
The trading engine ships as a desktop app you install and pair to your account with a 6-character code. It runs on your own hardware, so your strategies are evaluated and your orders are placed from a process you control rather than a shared cloud tenant, and you decide when it is running. Pairing hands the app a revocable device token, so no passwords or broker secrets are ever typed into it. Strategies read bars and open new positions only while the app is running. On a live broker account, the stop and target for a filled entry are placed as real orders at your broker, so they keep working even if the app closes. Everything the engine computes pauses with it: breakeven moves, trailing stops, time stops, session auto-flatten, and the one-click flatten button. Copy trading is the one part you can opt into having us run instead, so it keeps mirroring your own accounts while the app is closed. Plan for one thing before you shut down: the stop and target are cancelled against each other by the engine, not by your broker, so if one of them fills while the app is closed, the other keeps resting and can open a fresh position on its own. Flatten first, or leave the app running. Manage or revoke paired machines anytime.
Strategy & condition builder
Start from a preset, from beginner classics (EMA Cross, RSI Mean Reversion, MACD Signal Cross, Bollinger Bounce) to advanced ICT price-structure plays (break-of-structure, liquidity sweeps, fair-value gaps), or build your own entry/exit rules from EMA, SMA, RSI, MACD, Bollinger, ATR, and structure events. Keep it all organized in color-tagged groups, and share any setup with a link. Shared setups import disabled, so nothing trades until its new owner arms it.
Intelligence Mode
An ensemble brain you configure that weighs every strategy you enable, plus live reads of trend, momentum, volatility, and order flow, into one probabilistic decision on every bar. It weighs each voice by how well it has done lately in conditions like these, sizes by its own conviction, and stands aside when the evidence is split or thin. It can skip or shrink entries around high-impact news, can manage exits you turn on (breakeven, ATR trail, time stop), and journals every decision with the full breakdown of what each voice contributed, streamed to your dashboard live as it thinks.
One-click research runs
The research engine sweeps thousands of candidate strategies and is built to distrust luck: walk-forward tests across sequential folds, a deflated Sharpe that penalizes every extra trial, and a sealed hold-out checked exactly once. Survivors arrive disabled; you arm them yourself, paper first.
Pairs & statistical arbitrage
Trade the spread between correlated futures (NQ/ES and their micros), dollar-neutral or ratio-based, with rolling z-score entries and exits. A full stat-arb engine, not just single-symbol signals.
Backtest with a prop-firm verdict
Every backtest reports PASSED / FAILED against the daily-loss, trailing-drawdown, and profit-target rules you enter for your evaluation. A PASSED result reflects the historical backtest only and does not guarantee your evaluation will pass; firm rules change, so verify against your contract.
Webhook ingestion
Turn alerts into orders through a per-strategy webhook endpoint, gated by the same risk rules as everything else. Each endpoint carries its own secret, and every request is signed with a fresh timestamp so a captured alert cannot be replayed. TradingView alerts cannot add that timestamp themselves, so a raw TradingView alert needs a small relay in front of it. The in-app setup guide walks through it with a code example, and the same endpoint accepts alerts from your own code directly.
Paper trading
Run any strategy on a paper account before risking a cent. Sessions, risk caps, and the order path are the same code that runs a live account, so the mechanics you learn carry over. Paper prices come from your connected broker's market data when you have a data-entitled account attached, and from a free delayed feed otherwise, so treat paper fills as indicative rather than tick-accurate. When you're ready, connect a live Tradovate account and trade it for real.
Copy across your own accounts
Mirror trades from one account to another with size multipliers, reverse mode, and per-link risk limits. Scoped to your own books only.
Charts, P&L & economic calendar
Backtest and equity charts, a daily P&L calendar with per-trade win rate, live positions and fills, and a high-impact economic calendar, all in one dashboard.
Discord alerts & commands
Trade-opened / closed DMs, a daily P&L summary, and /stats, /pnl, /positions slash commands. Each trader picks which alerts they want.
Guardrails & trading sessions
Per-account contract ceilings, daily-loss caps, and a trailing drawdown with a freeze threshold. Restrict trading to the hours you choose, auto-flatten anything still open when the session ends, and pause everything trading into a group of accounts in one click.
Diagnostics & one-click demo
A "why isn't my strategy trading?" checklist pinpoints the exact blocker: engine, assignment, market data, or an expired contract (with a one-click roll). The dashboard also flags a dead broker session or an out-of-date engine the moment it happens, with a one-click fix. New here? One click seeds a complete working demo to study.
Pricing
Simple plans. Every paid tier starts with a free trial.
Start on the free Starter plan, upgrade when you're ready. Save 20% with annual billing.
Starter
Free, always
- Backtester with prop-firm verdict
- Paper trading
- 1 saved strategy
- Community support
Pro
billed monthly
- Everything in Starter
- Unlimited strategies
- All indicator presets + the pairs / stat-arb engine
- TradingView webhooks
- Copy-trading across your accounts
- Risk guardrails: contract caps, loss limits, trading sessions
- Charts, P&L & economic calendar
- Discord alerts & slash commands
- Up to 3 connected accounts
- Live broker execution
Elite
billed monthly
- Everything in Pro
- Unlimited connected accounts
- Unlimited copy links
- Priority support
Intelligence
billed monthly
The most hands-off tier. You select and arm the strategies that survived your research checks; the engine then weighs them into one decision on every bar and applies the exits and risk caps you configure, automatically.
Start free trialIncludes a 3-day free trial. Cancel anytime before it ends and you won't be charged.
- Everything in Elite
- Intelligence Mode: an ensemble brain that weighs every strategy you enable, plus live trend, momentum, volatility, and order-flow reads, into one probabilistic decision on every bar
- News-aware entries plus managed exits: breakeven moves, ATR trailing, and time stops
- One-click research runs: walk-forward tests with a multiple-testing penalty and a sealed hold-out surface candidate rule sets that survive the checks for you to review and arm yourself
- AI strategy copilot: describe an idea in plain English, get a draft rule set to backtest
- A decision journal that explains every entry, exit, and news skip, with the breakdown of how each strategy and market read voted
- Every order still passes your risk caps; you arm everything yourself, paper first
- Intelligence Mode does not predict prices or guarantee profits. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss. See our Risk Disclosure.
Pro and Elite include a 7-day free trial; Intelligence includes a 3-day free trial. Cancel anytime during the trial and you won't be charged. Already have an account? Log in to subscribe.
Paid plans are billed in advance through Stripe and automatically renew each billing period at the then-current price until you cancel. You authorize these recurring charges when you subscribe. You can cancel anytime from the billing portal; cancellation stops future renewals and takes effect at the end of the current period. See our Terms for refund details.
Blog
Notes from the engine.
Build logs, market structure write-ups, and the occasional rant about prop-firm rules.
Ready to put your strategy to the test?
Sign up free, build and backtest an idea, then paper-trade it from the desktop engine on your own machine. Connect your live broker whenever you are ready.