eSignal

What it is

eSignal is a Windows desktop charting platform on top of the ICE Consolidated Feed, the data network of its owner, Intercontinental Exchange. It is the older generation of retail charting: a symbol-limited client with pages, workspaces, quote boards, market depth and several hundred studies. It has its own scripting language, EFS (eSignal Formula Script), an extended JavaScript for custom studies and strategy testing. Its long-standing strength is breadth of data: the exchange list runs from NYSE and CME to Lima, Muscat and Ho Chi Minh City, which few retail-priced platforms match.

Three packages sit on the same client. Classic is a delayed-data charting product, Signature is the real-time product, and Elite adds Advanced GET, a proprietary set of Elliott-wave, Gann and Fibonacci studies. In September 2026 the homepage also advertised Polymarket prediction-market data as an add-on service.

Pricing

Month to month, Classic is $71, Signature $241 and Elite $493. Billed yearly, they are $60, $183.67 and $398.58 a month. Every package excludes exchange fees, add-on services and activation fees. You pick exchanges during signup, and the public site publishes no per-exchange price list, so the real monthly total appears only at checkout. Registration asks whether you are a professional or non-professional subscriber, and professional subscribers to direct-billed sources such as NYSE, OPRA and TSX also pay a $1 delivery fee per exchange per month.

Several features are priced separately. The Signature column marks ICE XL downloads, market depth, a year of intraday history, Market Profile and Volume Delta with "additional fees apply". The add-on price list shows Market Profile at $55/month, Volume Delta $50, Extended Intraday History $14 (12+ years of minute bars for North American equities and indices), FactSet fundamental data $8 and GovPX Treasury data $25.

Data & coverage

Equities, ETFs, indices, equity and futures options, futures, forex, a small crypto set, NYSE corporate bonds and GovPX Treasuries. eSignal counts 25 million instruments from 600+ sources. The exchange table covers North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific, each with its own delay rule for delayed data (10 minutes for CME, 15 for NYSE, 60 for Hang Seng indices).

Classic's delayed service is thinner than the price suggests. It has no delayed options data for stocks or indices, only futures. It carries no tick data, and several exchanges, Xetra among them, are excluded or sold separately. Its history is six months of minute bars, and daily data back to 1990 for most North American stocks.

Integrations

Order entry connects to Interactive Brokers, FXCM and Rithmic, and only for users in the USA and Canada. eSignal's real-time feed also works as a data source inside other software: Interactive Brokers' TWS can take it, and so can NinjaTrader and AmiBroker, whose cards list it among their feeds. Classic does not support third-party applications at all.

The Excel route is ICE XL: streaming, snapshot and historical data in a worksheet, Windows Excel only (not Click-to-Run Office 365 or Google Sheets), 250 symbols, and no concurrent use across PCs. Otherwise, data leaves as CSV through the Data Export tool on charts, watch lists and time and sales.

Limitations

• Windows only. eSignal states it is not compatible with Mac or Linux, and the only client it offers is a Windows download.
• No developer API for individuals. The Desktop API is discontinued. The KB article on ICE XL says Python integration is not available to eSignal users, and the Market Data API is for institutions only.
• The real price is not on the price page. Exchange fees are extra on every package and appear only during signup.
• Symbol limits. Everything open (charts, quote windows, alerts, option chains) counts against a concurrent symbol cap. Classic's is 500, and a few of those are used by built-in wildcard symbols.
• Back-testing is chart-bound. Bar Replay runs one symbol at a time, and the current site documents neither a portfolio-level test nor a way for an EFS script to place live orders.
• Expensive. Real-time starts at $241/month before exchange fees. TradingView's paid plans start at $12.95 and TC2000's real-time tier at $24.99.

Alternatives

TradingView for a cross-platform, browser-first platform at a fraction of the price. Sierra Chart for a Windows client with exchange fees published line by line. TC2000 if US and Canadian equities are all you trade. eSignal's argument against all three is its international exchange list on a single feed.