Free alternatives to TradingView community competitions
TradingView lets paid subscribers create paper trading contests. If you want a demo trading competition without a subscription, here is how the options compare.
TradingView added community competitions to its platform: paper trading contests that a subscriber can create and share. It is a good feature from a very good company, and if you already pay for TradingView it is worth a look.
This post is for everyone else: people who want to run a demo trading competition for an office, a club or a community without taking out a subscription to do it. Here is an honest comparison.
What TradingView offers
Based on TradingView’s own announcement and help pages:
- Creating a contest requires a paid plan or a trial. Joining one is free for anyone with a TradingView account.
- Organisers choose the tradeable instruments, starting balance, leverage, duration from one hour to four weeks, and whether the contest is private or open.
- Each participant receives a dedicated contest account.
- The leaderboard ranks by realised profit.
- It is aimed at creators, educators and community leaders.
It sits inside one of the most capable charting platforms there is, which is its biggest strength. If your group are already TradingView users, that familiarity counts for a lot.
Where it is a poor fit
The subscription. Someone has to pay to create the contest, and trials end. For an office that runs one contest a year, that is friction exactly where the idea needs none.
Realised profit only. Ranking by realised profit means an open winning position counts for nothing until it is closed, and a pure profit ranking rewards the one-big-bet strategy. Most groups find that one player wins early and everyone else loses interest.
Limited social layer. The contest is a feature of a trading platform. There is no contest chat, no activity feed of lead changes and blow-ups, and no shareable standings card to drop in the group chat.
It is a trading platform. For a group of colleagues who have never traded, the full TradingView interface is a lot to land in.
Awarnda
Awarnda was built for the office tipping comp version of this idea.
- Free to create and free to play. Creating a contest with the standard settings costs nothing, and nobody ever pays to take part. Credits unlock optional extras such as branding.
- Four scoring methods, including risk-adjusted and most-consistent, designed to keep the whole group playing rather than crown an early gambler. Scoring counts open positions at their current value.
- Rules that enforce themselves: daily loss limits, leverage caps, market lists and trading windows, checked on every order.
- Built to be social: a live leaderboard, a contest feed, chat, shareable result cards, public profiles with a contest record, and following.
- A simplified trading screen for people who have never used one, rather than a professional terminal.
- Duration from an hour to three months.
What it is not: a charting platform. The chart is there and it is good, but if you want forty indicators and Pine Script, that is TradingView’s home ground.
Other routes
Broker demo accounts. Most brokers offer free demo accounts. Running a contest on them means everyone opens their own account, trusting that everyone set the same balance and leverage, and tallying results by hand in a spreadsheet. It works for a small honest group and falls apart beyond it.
Spreadsheet paper trading. Everyone writes down imaginary trades and someone marks them to market. Zero cost, zero enforcement, and someone spends their evenings doing the marking.
Stock market game sites. Several long-running sites offer simulated stock portfolios with leagues. They tend to be equities only, settle daily rather than live, and are aimed at classrooms.
Choosing
| You want | Pick |
|---|---|
| A contest inside the charting platform you already pay for | TradingView |
| A free contest for an office, club or group chat, with a social layer | Awarnda |
| A small honest group and no platform at all | Broker demo accounts |
| A classroom, equities only, daily settlement | A stock market game site |
If you are leaning toward the second, the how to run a demo trading competition guide covers the settings, and the contest builder takes about two minutes.
Facts about TradingView are taken from its public announcement and help pages at the time of writing and may change. Awarnda is not affiliated with TradingView.