NinjaTrader vs Sierra Chart vs MultiCharts: commission, rent, licence

Three ways to pay for one job

The reader here trades futures from a Windows desktop and has narrowed the choice to these three. All three chart, trade from the chart and a DOM, backtest and automate. None has a native Mac client. The decision is made by four things the cards do not say side by side: who you pay and in what unit, which broker you are tied to, which language your strategies end up in, and how much order flow each one shows you for the money.

The units do not match, and every number below has to be read with that in mind. NinjaTrader's prices include the broker: the platform is free, and what changes between its plans is the commission per contract. Sierra Chart and MultiCharts price software only. Their figures leave out your broker's commission, which neither card can state because neither vendor is a broker.

What the bill is paid in

NinjaTrader earns on the brokerage. The Free plan costs nothing and charges $0.39 per side on a Micro contract and $1.29 on a standard one. The $99-a-month plan cuts that to $0.29 and $0.99, and the $1,499 lifetime licence to $0.09 and $0.59. On every plan each fill also owes a $0.19 clearing fee plus exchange and NFA fees. A Free-plan account that logs in but places no live trade in 30 days is charged $35. All of that applies only to accounts NinjaTrader clears itself. Any other broker or data feed needs the Multi-Broker add-on at $99 a month.

Sierra Chart is rent. Five packages run from $26 to $56 a month. Twelve months paid up front take 35% off, six months 25% and three months 15%. The split that matters is Base against Integrated. Packages 3 and 5 cannot connect to any outside broker or data service, or to Sierra Chart's own Denali feed. A live trade anywhere needs Package 10 ($36), 11 ($46) or 12 ($56).

MultiCharts is a licence. Standard costs $99 a month, $79 a month billed annually, or $1,499 once. Advanced costs $149, $119 or $1,999 on the same terms. The lifetime licence includes all future upgrades, with no maintenance fee published. It covers one edition on one computer at a time, and no order is refundable. Market data is never included. You connect a feed, or add the vendor's own package at $49 a month, $19 on an annual plan.

A year, added up

NinjaTrader at its own brokerage. Per Micro round turn, the commission is $0.78 on Free, $0.58 on Monthly and $0.18 on Lifetime. The Free plan therefore costs more than Lifetime in the first year once you pass about 2,500 Micro round turns. On standard contracts the gap is $1.40 a round turn, so the crossing comes at about 1,070. On these figures the $99 Monthly plan is never the cheapest of the three over a full first year, on either contract size. Below the crossing Free costs less, above it Lifetime does. What Monthly buys is not paying $1,499 at once.

NinjaTrader through another broker. The add-on alone is $1,188 a year, on top of that broker's commissions. The card does not say that a lifetime licence removes it.

Sierra Chart. Package 11 costs $552 for twelve months paid monthly, or $358.80 paid up front. Package 12, which adds market-by-order, costs $672 or $436.80, and Package 10 $432 or $280.80. Exchange data and the broker's commission are separate. A second year costs the same again.

MultiCharts. Standard costs $948 billed annually, $1,188 month to month, or $1,499 once. Advanced costs $1,428, $1,788 or $1,999. Add a feed: the vendor's own package is $228 a year on an annual plan or $588 month to month, and the card does not say whether exchange fees are inside it. Lifetime beats annual billing at about nineteen months on Standard and seventeen on Advanced.

Exchange data is the line that recurs on all three, and the two cards that price it bundle CME differently. Compare the bundles that match. For a non-professional on the full CME Group, top-of-book is $12 a month on NinjaTrader against $6 on Sierra Chart. Full depth is $48 against $40.50, which is $576 against $486 over a year. A professional pays $156 per exchange on NinjaTrader and $145 per CME Group exchange on Sierra Chart.

The conditions differ as well. NinjaTrader withholds real-time data until a live account holds any balance above $0. Sierra Chart charges the $145 professional rate to anyone without a funded futures account at a supported trading service, and it must see that account at least once a month. The guide to real-time data fees explains why a professional pays several times more for the same feed.

Brokers, feeds, and which one you are tied to

NinjaTrader ties you to its own brokerage unless you pay to leave. The house account covers CME, CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX, ICE US, MGE, Eurex, Bitnomial and Coinbase Derivatives futures. Behind the add-on it connects to Interactive Brokers, CQG, FOREX.com / City Index and FXCM, and to data from IQFeed, Kinetick, eSignal, Global Datafeeds and others. Stocks and forex exist only through that route.

Sierra Chart ties you to nothing but a package tier. Its own Denali feed covers CME, CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX, EUREX and CFE futures, US equities and CME futures options. Outside connections run to Interactive Brokers, CQG, Rithmic, LMAX, DTN IQFeed and Global Data Feeds India, and its own Teton routing reaches the CME Group through supported brokers. There is one trap. Sierra Chart has no data connection to CQG for CME or EUREX, so a CQG trader pays for Denali or goes without data.

MultiCharts requires you to bring both feed and broker. Most brokers connect through the Rithmic, CQG or Trading Technologies gateways. Interactive Brokers, TradeStation and Saxo Bank connect natively, and the large crypto exchanges directly. Symbol mapping lets you chart from one source and trade through another. QuoteManager keeps every tick on your own disk. A broker or feed nobody has written a plugin for needs the Data or Order API, which is sold separately at no published price.

Interactive Brokers, CQG and IQFeed appear on all three lists. On NinjaTrader, using any of them means paying the $99 add-on.

Scripts, and what moves with you

NinjaScript is a C# dialect compiled inside NinjaTrader. Its Strategy Builder generates the same code for people who do not write C#. The Strategy Analyzer runs optimisation, walk-forward, Monte Carlo and multi-instrument basket tests. Sierra Chart takes C++ against its own ACSIL interface, compiled to a DLL, plus a spreadsheet study for formula-level work. It has no visual builder and no Python. Its backtests run one chart at a time, with no portfolio-level test. MultiCharts compiles PowerLanguage, an EasyLanguage dialect, to C++. Its .NET edition takes C# and VB.NET instead, and you choose the edition at purchase; switching later costs $200 each time. Portfolio Trader and walk-forward are Advanced-only, and Python is a beta for the .NET edition.

Porting is where the choice locks in. The only route any of the three cards documents is EasyLanguage into MultiCharts, which is the reason most of its users arrive. Nothing documented leaves NinjaScript or ACSIL. Sharing C# with MultiCharts .NET gives NinjaTrader a language in common, not a described import. Whichever platform you write your strategies on is the one a later move has to rewrite them from.

Order flow and the DOM

This is where NinjaTrader and Sierra Chart are both built to compete, and MultiCharts is not. NinjaTrader has the SuperDOM and Order Flow+, with volumetric bars, delta and volume profile, plus Market Replay and the Pulse indicator. Order Flow+, Market Replay and Pulse stay locked until a live account is funded. The static SuperDOM adds $0.10 per contract for its Trading Technologies licence.

Sierra Chart's order-flow work is TPO profiles, Numbers Bars and a historical market-depth graph, with market-by-order on Package 12. The cheap connected package is the trap here. Package 10 reaches your broker but lacks those studies, so order flow on a live connection starts at Package 11, $46 a month.

MultiCharts Standard includes chart trading and a DOM. Its only order-flow item on the card is a volume-profile drawing tool, and that is on Advanced. The MultiCharts card records no footprint or delta charts at all.

Windows, and only Windows

All three are Windows desktop software, and the cards differ only in the fallback. NinjaTrader is a .NET Framework 4.8 application. Its web and mobile clients chart and trade, but NinjaScript strategies will not run there. Sierra Chart publishes x64 and 64-bit ARM Windows builds, the latter for Apple M-series machines. It documents Wine on Linux and macOS and declines to support it. MultiCharts needs .NET Framework 4.8, and its vendor points Mac users to Parallels or VMware. On a Mac, a running strategy on any of the three means a Windows machine or a virtual one.

What these figures rest on

The three cards were verified within a day of each other. MultiCharts was checked entirely on 13 September 2026. NinjaTrader and Sierra Chart had their pricing checked on 14 September and the rest on the 13th, and Sierra Chart's exchange-fee figures are dated 13 September. That makes them about four weeks old today. They are close enough in date to compare, but not to quote as current without opening the vendors' pages. The Sierra Chart and MultiCharts totals above are this page's arithmetic on the cards' list prices and discounts. They are not figures either vendor publishes.

The recommendation

NinjaTrader if NinjaTrader's own brokerage will clear your futures. The platform costs nothing there, and Order Flow+ unlocks with any funded balance. Stay on Free until your existing volume passes about 2,500 Micro round turns a year, or about 1,070 standard ones. Above that, Lifetime costs less in the first year. Over a full year, Monthly is not the cheapest plan at any volume.

Sierra Chart the moment your broker is anyone else and order flow and the DOM are the job. Package 11 prepaid costs less for a year than four months of NinjaTrader's add-on, and its full CME depth is cheaper too. The conditions are C++ for anything automated, backtests one chart at a time, and a funded futures account if you want the non-professional data rate.

MultiCharts if your strategies are already in EasyLanguage, or you need Portfolio Trader and a broker on its list such as TradeStation, Saxo or a Trading Technologies gateway. Buy it once only if you expect to stay past nineteen months. Budget the feed as a separate line from the first day.

The rest of the category is on the trading platforms page.