How to backtest on TradingView (free)

Yes. TradingView's Strategy Tester runs on the free plan. Any strategy on your chart, whether a built-in one, a community script or your own Pine Script, is replayed over the chart's history and summarised as net profit, profit factor, drawdown, win rate and a list of every trade.

What the paid plans add is reach, not the tester itself: more bars of intraday history, Deep Backtesting over longer periods, and Bar Replay on intraday timeframes for manual practice. For a first test of an NQ or ES idea on 1- to 5-minute bars, the free plan is enough. TradingView changes its plan limits from time to time, so check its plans page for the current ones.

On the free plan, CME futures quotes are delayed. That does not matter for a backtest, which only reads history.

1. Open the right chart. Search for NQ1! (E-mini Nasdaq-100) or ES1! (E-mini S&P 500), the continuous front-month contracts. MNQ1! and MES1! are the micros. Pick the timeframe your strategy trades.
2. Add a strategy. Open Indicators and look under Strategies, or open the Pine Editor, write or paste a strategy, and press Add to chart. A strategy (not an indicator) is what the tester can run.
3. Open the Strategy Tester. It is the panel under the chart. Its tabs summarise the run and list every trade.
4. Set realistic properties. In the strategy's settings, under Properties, set the initial capital, the order size in contracts, a commission per contract and one or two ticks of slippage. The defaults are zero cost, which flatters every futures strategy.
5. Read the results. Net profit and profit factor first, then the maximum drawdown, then the number of trades. Fewer than about 100 trades is too few to trust a profit factor.
6. Export the list of trades. Press the export (download) icon at the top right of the tester and choose List of trades. You get a CSV with an entry and an exit row per trade.

• Commission and slippage. A scalping strategy on NQ that nets two ticks a trade loses most of its edge to a few dollars of commission and one tick of slippage. Use our NQ and ES P&L calculator to see what a tick is worth per contract.
• Contract size. NQ is $20 a point, MNQ $2, ES $50, MES $5. A strategy sized for the micro reads ten times smaller on the mini.
• Session. Futures trade nearly around the clock. If your strategy only makes sense in the cash session (9:30 to 16:00 New York time), say so in the code or the results will mix in overnight trades.
• Back-adjusted charts. TradingView can back-adjust the continuous contract for rolls. Prices on an adjusted chart differ from the prices that traded at the time; keep that in mind when you compare with real fills.
• Bar magnifier and order fills. By default, the tester assumes how price moved inside each bar. Strategies with tight stops and targets on the same bar are the most affected. The Strategy Tester guide explains the fill options.

The Strategy Tester tells you how much a strategy made. It does not tell you when or why. A profit factor of 1.4 can be a strategy that wins steadily all day, or one that makes everything in the first hour and gives a third of it back after lunch.

QuantLogic Trade Analytics reads the exported list of trades (in any interface language) and places every trade on the 1-minute bars around it, with the session VWAP, gamma-exposure levels from SPX and NDX options, and the economic calendar. The findings rank the conditions where the strategy makes and loses money, and test alternative exits bar by bar with no look-ahead. Backtests stay in their own account, apart from your real trades.

It does not write Pine Script, place orders or tell you a strategy will hold live; nobody can tell that from the trades alone. It shows you the conditions behind the numbers, so your next version of the strategy is a decision, not a guess.