# What to use instead of BigCharts

BigCharts redirected to MarketWatch from 21 August 2025. What now covers its quick charts, favourite charts, industry pages and closing price on a date.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/alternatives/bigcharts*

## The subject

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Product | BigCharts |
| Status | retired |
| Stopped serving | 2025-08-21 |
| Website | https://bigcharts.marketwatch.com |
| Category | Stock Charting Platforms & Screeners |

MarketWatch's free charting site, with quick and interactive charts, saved favourite charts, industry and market pages, and a lookup of a stock's exact closing price on a past date.

## Replacements

*Ordered by how much of the original’s job each one covers, closest first. Paid placement does not affect this order.*

1. [StockCharts](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stockcharts.md) — The closest in shape, technical charts on a web page with a free level, and ChartLists that keep saved charts in an account from 19.95 dollars a month.
2. [TradingView](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tradingview.md) — For the everyday interactive chart, where a free Basic account gives one chart per tab, two indicators, one saved layout and a 30-symbol watchlist.
3. [Stock Analysis](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stockanalysis.md) — For the closing price on a date, a daily table of open, high, low, close and volume, free without an account for the last five years.
4. [Finviz Elite](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/finviz-elite.md) — For the industry pages the free Finviz site ranks US sectors and industries by performance from a week to a year, without a login.
5. [Stooq](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stooq.md) — For a close older than five years, a symbol's whole daily history as a CSV, Apple's from 1984, free for personal use and downloaded by hand.

## The product

BigCharts was MarketWatch's free charting site, a chart of a US stock on screen without signing up
for anything. Its about page, captured by
the Internet Archive on 3 August 2025, described interactive charts, quotes, industry analysis,
intraday stock screeners and market commentary, and called the whole thing "a free service
supported entirely by our site sponsors". The footer named FactSet as the source of both its
intraday and end-of-day data, with real-time last-sale prices for US stocks reported through
Nasdaq only and other intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes.

Four things kept people coming back, and the site's own pages describe each of them. Its features
page, still online in a February 2025 capture, is old text (it lists screen sizes of 640x480 and
1024x768), so read it as what BigCharts was built to do rather than a 2025 spec sheet.

- **Quick and interactive charts.** A quick chart was a symbol and a click. The interactive one
  took up to ten comparison symbols on one chart, moving averages, 25 indicator studies and up to
  three lower indicator panes, in seven chart styles.
- **Historical Quotes.** The page itself, captured on 29 March 2025, still said what it did: "This
  Historical Quotes tool allows you to look up a security's exact closing price." Type a symbol and
  a date and it returned the split-adjusted close with the open, high, low and volume, the split
  adjustment factor, and a two-month chart marking the day, back to January 1985.
- **My Favorite Charts.** Up to twenty saved charts, each remembering its symbol, time frame,
  comparisons, indicators and style. The help pages' Favorite Charts FAQ, captured in February
  2025, explains that the list lived in a browser cookie, and that people who cleared their
  cookies lost it.
- **Industry and market pages.** The ten best and worst industries over a chosen period, tiled
  thumbnail charts of every stock in an industry, and market diaries of advancing and declining
  issues and new highs and lows.

**What happened.** By 25 July 2025 every page carried a banner, absent from a capture on 23 July:
"To our valued customers: As of August 21, 2025, BigCharts.com will redirect to MarketWatch.com,
where you still have access to the best charts, market data, and continued support. Thank you for
being a part of our community." It gave no reason. The Internet Archive recorded the home page
still answering early on 21 August 2025, and by 24 August it returned a permanent redirect to
MarketWatch's home page. On 27 October 2026 the old addresses all land on www.marketwatch.com, but not all of
them on a page: Historical Quotes redirects to a market-data page, or with a symbol in the address
to that symbol's download-data page; the industry section to an industries page; the favourites
view and edit pages to a watchlist page. The quick-chart and interactive-chart addresses, which are
what most bookmarks hold, and the favourites list page are passed through unchanged to the same
path on MarketWatch, where nothing is served.

## What to use instead

Nothing in this catalogue replaces BigCharts as a whole, and nothing is free in the same
no-strings way. Split it into the jobs it did. Prices and limits below were read on the vendors'
own pages on 27 October 2026 unless a date says otherwise.

**A chart, now.** [StockCharts](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stockcharts) is the nearest relative: a technical-analysis
website since 1999, with a free level of three indicators on a 900-pixel chart and nothing saved.
Its PerfCharts compare up to 12 symbols on one chart, by its own help pages, against BigCharts' ten.
[TradingView](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tradingview) is the more modern chart. Its free Basic plan, which needs a
sign-up but no card, allows one chart per tab, two indicators per chart, fewer than BigCharts gave
away, three price alerts and 5,000 bars of history.

**The favourites list.** This is the job that now costs money. StockCharts' ChartLists are folders
of saved charts, and they need a membership: Basic, at 19.95 dollars a month, holds one list of up
to 1,000 charts, and Extra, at 29.95, holds 250 lists. TradingView Basic saves one chart layout and
a watchlist of up to 30 symbols, which is a list of tickers rather than a list of charts with their
settings.

**The closing price on a date.** [Stock Analysis](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stockanalysis) prints a daily table of
open, high, low, close, adjusted close and volume for each stock, without an account. The free
ranges run to five years; ten years and full history are locked to Pro, at 79 dollars a year.
There is no date box, so you pick a range and page back to the day. For anything older,
[Stooq](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stooq) publishes each symbol's daily history as a CSV, Apple's from September 1984,
free for personal use only. Its pages sit behind a bot check, and the card's check of 4 October
2026, which found browser downloads working, is the latest this page can stand behind: the site
returned nothing readable to a scripted request on 27 October. For a whole market's closes on one
date rather than one stock's, see [end-of-day prices in bulk](https://stockmarketstack.com/how-to/download-eod-prices-in-bulk).

**Industry and market pages.** The free Finviz site, covered on the
[Finviz Elite](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/finviz-elite) card, has a group screener that ranks sectors, industries,
countries and size bands by performance over a week, a month, a quarter, half a year, a year or the
year to date, served without a login, plus a market map. Quotes on the free site are delayed one
minute. It covers US listings only, and the rest of the [charting platforms and
screeners](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/charting-screeners) category has the paid alternatives.

MarketWatch itself is where the redirect sends you, and it has charts and quote pages of its own.
It has no card in this catalogue, and it refused a scripted request on 27 October 2026, so this page
does not describe what it offers.

## What you give up

**No account, ever.** BigCharts asked for nothing, not even an email address, and remembered your
settings in a cookie. Stock Analysis, the Finviz group pages and StockCharts' free charts still ask
for nothing, but anything you want kept now needs a login at TradingView or a paid membership at
StockCharts.

**One box for a past close.** BigCharts took a symbol and a date and answered in one step, with the
split factor printed beside the price, back to 1985. Stock Analysis answers inside five years by
paging through a table; Stooq answers further back, but as a file you download and search yourself.
Neither prints the split factor next to the close, so that is now a separate lookup.

**Twenty saved charts for nothing.** A favourites list that kept each chart's indicators,
comparisons and style cost nothing on BigCharts. The nearest equivalent, a StockCharts ChartList,
starts at 19.95 dollars a month, and the free alternative is TradingView's single saved layout.

## Migration notes

**The favourites list is not coming back, but your bookmarks remember it.** The list was a cookie
on BigCharts' own address, and the watchlist page that address now redirects to does not read it.
What survives is any chart you bookmarked: BigCharts kept a chart's settings in its address, with
`symb=` for the symbol and further parameters for the comparison index, moving averages and style.
The links now end on a MarketWatch address that serves nothing, but the symbols in them are still
readable, which is enough to rebuild a list.

**A close you copied from BigCharts was split-adjusted.** It was adjusted for every split up to the
day you looked it up, so it will not match the price on a trade confirmation from before a split,
and it will not match a table today if the stock has split since. Stock Analysis prints a close and
an adjusted close side by side; Stooq does not document how it adjusts, so check one known split
before trusting a series. [Split and dividend history as data](https://stockmarketstack.com/how-to/get-split-and-dividend-history-as-data)
covers where to get the factors.

**The numbers come from someone else now.** BigCharts' prices were FactSet's. Each replacement
licenses its own, so a close can differ from a figure you noted years ago for reasons that have
nothing to do with the stock. When two sources disagree, the listing exchange's official close is
the figure to settle on.

## FAQ

### When exactly did BigCharts shut down?

A banner on the site said that as of 21 August 2025 BigCharts.com would redirect to MarketWatch.com. Internet Archive captures show the banner first between 23 and 25 July 2025, the home page still answering early on 21 August, and a permanent redirect to MarketWatch's home page by 24 August 2025.

### Why did BigCharts close?

The banner gives no reason. It says only that MarketWatch.com is where users would still have charts, market data and support, and thanks them for being part of the community. We found nothing else from MarketWatch on the decision, so this page does not guess.

### Where can I look up a stock's closing price on a past date for free now?

For a date in the last five years, Stock Analysis shows a daily table of open, high, low, close and volume without an account, read on 27 October 2026. For older dates, Stooq publishes a symbol's full daily history as a CSV for personal use. The old BigCharts historical-quote address now redirects to a MarketWatch page instead.

### Can I get my BigCharts favourite charts back?

No. BigCharts kept the list in a cookie in your browser rather than in an account, by its own help pages, and the addresses that showed and edited it now either redirect to a MarketWatch watchlist page that does not read that cookie or land on a MarketWatch address that serves nothing, checked on 27 October 2026. A bookmarked BigCharts chart address still carries the symbol and settings in the link, which is the one record most people have.