Stocks & investing
Best Stock Market Simulators (2026): 10 Compared
Ten stock market simulators compared on starting money, live or delayed prices, lessons, feedback, broker tickets and class tools, with the best fit for each.
Trading Game vs TradingView Paper Trading: which fits you
TradingView has the best chart and a broker's ticket. Trading Game tested that chart on beginners and built a simpler one with a coach around it. Which you need depends on whether you have a plan yet.
In this article
TradingView fits someone who already trades: the whole market, 400+ indicators, a broker-like ticket, The Leap.
The short answer
TradingView has the best chart in the business and a paper-trading ticket that behaves like a broker's. If you already know what you are looking for on a chart, use it; nothing on a phone comes close, and you will probably end up there anyway.
If you do not yet know what you are looking for, start in Trading Game. We tested TradingView's charts on beginners and decided not to use them, on purpose. They built a simpler chart with a short list of indicators, each one taught in the app's own lessons, and put a coach, two daily analyst setups and a live simulator around it. That is a different product with a different job: to teach you to trade, and to let you find out whether you can, before any real money is involved.
The honest order is Trading Game first, TradingView when you have a method of your own to test. Start the other way round and it is easy to spend the first month adding indicators and the second wondering why that did not help.
What the first hour looks like
TradingView. You open a chart and the chart is magnificent. Then you look for the simulator. It is behind the Trade button, in a panel that lists real brokers, with at the top labelled "Brokerage simulator by TradingView". You set a balance, optional commission and leverage, and you have a full ticket: market, limit, stop, bracket exits, even futures expiry. There is no good-till-cancelled order, and a help article exists to explain why. On the free plan you get one chart per tab and two indicators, with ads. Crypto, forex and Cboe US stock prices are live; most other exchanges are delayed unless you buy a data add-on on a paid plan. Nothing tells you what to do with any of it. That is not a flaw; TradingView assumes you came with a plan.
Trading Game. You pick a balance from $500 to $10,000 (or $200) and you start on a chapter, not a chart. A short illustrated lesson, a chart question, then a practice trade on a live price with the stop and target already on the ticket. The chart has five drawing tools and a short indicator list. Under Daily Insights, two analyst setups a day are drawn and explained; Copy to Chart drops one onto your own chart. Tap the robot icon and Chart Intelligence reads the chart with you. Close the trade and the coach tells you how you did.
Why Trading Game built its own chart
This is the part of the comparison I most wanted to write, because it is our own story. We had the chance to license TradingView's charting library for the simulator. There were two versions, a simple one we liked and an advanced one with a very long indicator list. We tested it with beginners. The verdict was that it was too much: thousands of indicators with similar names and overlapping jobs, and even the advanced traders they watched were confused and used perhaps a tenth of it.
So the chart is short on purpose. Volume and Volume Profile, RSI, VWAP, Bollinger Bands, SuperTrend, four moving averages, plus an auto-MA that shows which average has worked best on that timeframe. Every one of them has an Academy lesson, and Chart Intelligence links the pattern it finds to the lesson that explains it. Our view: if you need more than this list, you should be trading real money by now. A 400-indicator chart is for backtesting and for professionals, and both should first find out whether they can handle real stress.
The chart talks back. Chart Intelligence reads the open chart the way a day trader, swing trader or investor would, draws the levels, gives a buy, sell or wait, says how sure it is, and explains in a fixed order: what I see, what you should do, what to watch, why. Draw your own lines first and it checks them. It is in beta and its help page says it can be wrong. TradingView's AI Copilot is a paid add-on for chart tasks; it is not reading your chart and marking your homework.
Two setups a day, written for you. TradingView has community ideas by the thousand, published by anyone at any level. Trading Game's analysts publish one setup at the European open and one at the US open, levels drawn, reasoning spelled out for a first-timer. The analyst's whole day goes into those two, and users vote on which markets get covered. Copy to Chart puts the drawing on your own chart in a tap; two copies free, unlimited in Pro.
Someone reviews the trade. When you close a position, AI Analyse is one tap away. Max, the coach, reads the trade back to you and names the leak: hesitation, an early exit, a revenge trade. The process behind it was refined over years of watching beginners. A weekly message allowance is free; Pro gets the full conversation.
Ten timeframes and a market clock. 15 seconds to a month, so you can find out whether you are a scalper or a position trader before you have paid to find out. The market-hours screen lists each market's open and close in your local time and flags the busy hours.
And the game. Ten-minute Trading Battles against a friend, the AI or a stranger, with a sabotage move for friends. A weekly leaderboard. Pattern Hunter, a daily pattern test with a timer and no hints. A Quick Reads book summary each month at no charge, drawn with about 28 illustrations a chapter by my count. The Academy is 150-plus lessons in sixteen chapters with a free 28-day plan.
Not in Trading Game: limit orders, options, futures, custom indicators, a web version (listed as coming soon), or a real broker on the other side of the Trade button. It is the classroom. TradingView is the trading floor you graduate to.
Where TradingView is the better choice
You have a method to test. Limit and , commission and leverage settings, extended hours, futures expiry, Replay mode on historical data. If you can write your rules down, TradingView lets you rehearse them properly.
You want to build or study indicators. Four hundred built in, a hundred thousand community scripts, and Pine Script to write your own. Trading Game has no equivalent and does not want one.
You want one workspace for life. The chart follows you from desktop to phone, the paper account becomes a real broker connection, and the whole market is on it. Most traders end up here. The only question is when.
You want a prize. The Leap is a free paper-trading tournament with cash and subscription prizes; one recent edition had over 100,000 entrants.
Two cautions from TradingView's own pages. Free-plan US stock prices are live from Cboe, not from NASDAQ or NYSE; primary feeds are $3 a month each on a paid plan. And there is no good-till-cancelled order, so an order cannot sit for a week.
Round by round
Eleven things you meet in the first week, and which fits each better. No totals; find the row that is about you.
| What you need | Trading Game | TradingView Paper Trading | Better fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting money | $500 to $10,000 on the first screen, and a $200 option | No stated default; $100,000 by convention and in The Leap; reset to any figure | Either. TradingView lets you type any balance. Trading Game puts a small one on the first screen. Type the sum you would really risk. |
| Prices on the free plan | Live on everything | Crypto and forex live; US stocks live from Cboe; NASDAQ, NYSE and most other exchanges delayed 10 to 20 minutes without a paid add-on | Either. For crypto, forex and US stocks both are live for free. For a London or Tokyo stock, Trading Game is live and TradingView is not, unless you pay. |
| Markets | 220+ assets across stocks, indices, forex, commodities, crypto | Far broader; the 1.36 million figure is chart coverage, not a count of paper-tradable symbols | TradingView Paper Trading. No contest. TradingView has nearly everything with a ticker. |
| Charts and tools | Five drawing tools; volume, Volume Profile, RSI, VWAP, Bollinger, SuperTrend, four MAs; 10 timeframes | 400+ built-in indicators, 100,000+ community scripts, 110+ drawing tools; two indicators per chart on the free plan | TradingView Paper Trading. TradingView's chart is the best there is. Whether a beginner should start on it is the question this page is about. |
| Learning what to do | 150+ lessons in order, a free 28-day plan, Pattern Trainer, book summaries | No course; a help centre, Pine Script docs and community ideas | Trading Game. TradingView explains its tools. Trading Game explains trading, in order, and tells you what to do on day three. |
| Someone shows you a trade | Two analyst setups a day, drawn on the chart, explained for beginners; Copy to Chart puts them on yours | Community ideas: thousands of them, by anyone, at any level | Trading Game. TradingView's ideas are a crowd. Trading Game's are two a day, written for you, and copyable in a tap. |
| Feedback on a trade | AI reads the chart before, the coach reviews the trade after | None built in; AI Copilot is a paid add-on for chart tasks, not a coach | Trading Game. TradingView records the trade. Trading Game tells you why it lost. |
| The order ticket | Preset size, leverage 1x to 50x, stop and target; no limit orders | Market, limit, stop, up to four take-profit and stop pairs, commission and leverage settings, futures expiry, extended hours; Replay mode on historical data; no good-till-cancelled | TradingView Paper Trading. TradingView's ticket is a broker's ticket. If you have a method to rehearse, rehearse it there. |
| Phone | Built for the phone first | Web, desktop and phone; the phone app is one view of a larger workspace | Either. Both paper trade on a phone. Trading Game only lives there; TradingView visits. |
| Price | Free with ads; Pro $19.99 a month or $54 a year on the current offer | Free with ads, one chart per tab and two indicators; paid plans from $12.95 a month billed yearly, plus data add-ons | Either. Both are free to start and both sell you something. TradingView sells screen space and data; Trading Game sells the coach and the deep courses. |
| Playing against people | 10-minute 1v1 battles, weekly leaderboard, daily Pattern Hunter | The Leap: free paper-trading tournaments with cash and subscription prizes; 103,158 entrants in one recent edition | TradingView Paper Trading. If a prize moves you, The Leap pays cash. Trading Game's battles pay in a leaderboard place and a friend's annoyance. |
The facts, side by side
TradingView cells come from its help centre, pricing page and competition rules, read on 23 October 2026. Trading Game is ours, so its cells come from the app itself, its Pro page and its help centre, and the story about testing TradingView's charts is our own.
| Trading Game | TradingView Paper Trading | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting money | You choose: $500 to $10,000 on the site; $200 is offered as well (default $10,000). Reset in Settings to start over | No official default stated for regular accounts; The Leap competition accounts are preset to 100,000 virtual USD; community guides say regular accounts also start at $100,000 and can be reset to a chosen balance via the gear icon |
| What it costs | Free with ads. Pro $19.99 billed monthly, or $89 a year shown at $54 on the current offer: full AI coach, advanced courses, the full book library, unlimited Copy to Chart, no ads | Paper Trading free on the Basic plan ($0). Paid plans billed yearly: Essential $12.95, Plus $29.95, Premium $59.95, Ultimate $199.95 per month; no paper-trading feature is gated by plan |
| Sign-up | Download and start; a free account saves progress | Free TradingView account; paper trading starts from the Trade button in Supercharts |
| Where it runs | iPhone and iPad (iOS 15+), Android. Web version listed as coming soon | Web, desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux), iOS 16+, Android 8+; mobile paper trading confirmed by TradingView-hosted guides |
| What you can trade | 220+ assets: stocks from NYSE, LSE, NSE and Tokyo, 15 ETFs, indices, commodities, forex pairs and crypto | Almost every asset class on TradingView: stocks, ETFs, forex, crypto, futures (with expiry simulation), indices, bonds; 1,357,880 instruments listed in data coverage; some symbols are non-tradable |
| Price data | Real time; prices update several times a second | Free plan: US stocks real-time from Cboe (not the NASDAQ/NYSE primary feeds); crypto and forex feeds real-time; other stock and futures exchanges delayed 10-20 min. Paid real-time add-ons are for exchanges such as NASDAQ ($3/mo), NYSE ($3/mo), the US bundle ($9.95/mo) and CME, and need a paid plan |
| Order types | Market entry with preset trade sizes and leverage from 1x to 50x; take profit and stop loss set on the ticket | Market, limit, stop; up to 4 take-profit/stop-loss pairs; DOM and chart trading; extended-hours fills for limit orders; no GTC; trailing stop and OCO not mentioned |
| Simulated fees | None; buy and sell prices differ like real markets | Off by default; configurable fixed or percentage, per-contract for futures; leverage configurable (futures default 20:1); changing leverage requires an account reset |
| Lessons | 150+ illustrated Academy lessons with quizzes in a 16-chapter path (fundamental courses free, advanced in Pro); a 28-day plan; Pattern Trainer and a timed daily pattern game; Quick Reads book summaries (one free a month) | No built-in curriculum: Help Center, Pine Script docs, community Ideas with an Education filter, 'Masterclass' ideas |
| AI and feedback | Chart Intelligence reads the open chart, draws the levels, gives a buy, sell or wait scenario with a confidence level and checks your own drawings (beta; its help page says it can be wrong). Max, the AI coach, reviews a closed trade and answers questions (limited free, full in Pro). Daily analyst setups at the EU and US open; Copy to Chart puts them on your chart (2 free, unlimited in Pro) | AI Copilot: paid monthly add-on on every paid plan, web and desktop only, not on free plan; helps with drawings, indicators, alerts, Pine Script. No AI coach tied to paper trading |
| Charts | Candlestick and line charts, 5 drawing tools, indicators including volume, RSI, Bollinger Bands, VWAP, SuperTrend, Volume Profile and four moving averages, 10 timeframes from 15 seconds to 1 month | 400+ built-in indicators, 100,000+ community indicators, 110+ drawing tools; Basic plan: 2 indicators per chart, 1 chart per tab; Essential 5, Plus 10, Premium 25, Ultimate 50 indicators per chart |
| Games and contests | 10-minute 1v1 Trading Battles against a friend, the AI or anyone; weekly, battles and friends leaderboards (no prizes); daily timed pattern game | The Leap: recurring free paper-trading competitions, $100,000 virtual USD competition account; prizes such as $8,300 cash (Phillip Nova, Oct 2026) or plan subscriptions; Sept 2026 futures edition had 103,158 participants; must trade on 3+ days |
| Who can use it | Worldwide; the site says 100+ countries, including the US, Canada, UK and Australia. App Store age rating 4+ | Paper trading available globally; The Leap needs 18+ and excludes sanctioned countries |
| Languages | Six in the app (the App Store listing shows English) | Many localised versions on subdomains, switchable in the user menu; commonly cited as about 20 |
| Trading hours | Follows each market; forex generally 24/5 and crypto 24/7; a market-hours screen shows what is open in your time zone | Follows each exchange session; crypto 24/7; extended hours for stocks via 'Fill order outside RTH'; futures settle at expiry |
| Starting over | Pick a new balance when you start over (statistics and history are deleted) | Reset account (deletes history, orders, positions) and multiple sub-accounts with different currency, leverage and commission; paper history importable into Portfolios since May 2026 |
Try it yourself
Workspace or classroom?
Sort each goal to the tool that fits it better, by the facts above.
Trading Game for lessons, feedback and free live prices. TradingView for charts, order realism and tournaments.
What would you expect?
What this shows: TradingView is the better workspace. Trading Game is the better classroom. Most beginners need the classroom first.
TradingView gives you the whole market and every tool, and assumes you have a plan. Trading Game gives you a short chart with each indicator taught, analyst setups to copy and a coach after the trade. Pick by whether you have a plan yet.
Who should pick which
Pick TradingView if you already trade, you have rules to test, you want to write indicators, or you need a London stock on a five-second chart and are willing to pay for the feed.
Pick Trading Game if you are new, you learn on a phone, you want the indicators explained before you use them, and you want a worked example each morning and a verdict each evening.
Do them in that order. Learn in Trading Game until you can explain why you took a trade without looking at the coach's review. Then open TradingView, set the same $500, and rehearse your own rules with the full ticket. If you find yourself adding a fourth indicator, you went too early.
Questions beginners ask
Is TradingView paper trading free?
Yes. TradingView says Paper Trading is available to all users, including the free Basic plan. What costs money is around it: ad removal, more indicators per chart, and real-time data from primary exchanges, which needs a paid plan plus a data add-on.
Is TradingView free-plan data real time?
Partly. Crypto and forex are real time, and US stocks are real time from the Cboe exchange. NASDAQ and NYSE primary feeds and most other stock and futures exchanges are delayed, typically 10 to 20 minutes, unless you buy a data add-on on a paid plan.
Can I paper trade on the TradingView phone app?
Yes. TradingView's own tutorials show paper trading on mobile. TradingView also runs on web and desktop; the phone app is one version of that workspace. Trading Game is designed for the phone first.
What is The Leap?
TradingView's recurring free paper-trading competition. Each edition gives a separate $100,000 virtual account with fixed rules and awards cash or subscriptions. One September 2026 edition had 103,158 participants.
Keep learning
Stocks & investing
Trading Game vs Investopedia Simulator: which fits you
Investopedia stock simulator explained: $100,000 virtual cash, 20-minute delayed quotes, $19.95 pretend commission, class games, and a live-price alternative.