MotiveWave

What it is

A Java desktop platform for Windows, macOS and Linux, with a companion mobile app priced separately in the app stores. It connects to your own broker or data service and charts whatever that connection carries; it ships no market data at all.

What people buy it for is Elliott Wave, and it is the only platform here that treats wave counting as a feature rather than a drawing tool: manual components, Auto Analyze over a look-back window, a dynamic study that re-labels itself as bars arrive, and a scanner for Wave 2, 3, 4, 5 and Wave E. The rest is conventional and competent — 280 studies (290-plus with the order flow pack), footprint and depth tools, Java strategies with genetic optimisation and walk-forward testing.

Pricing

Six editions, and the fork in the ladder matters more than any single price. EW Lite is Standard plus the wave tools. PRO costs more and has no wave tools at all — it buys order flow, strategies, backtesting and the scanners. The branches meet only in Ultimate, so the real price for a wave trader who also wants to backtest is $2,295, not $1,395.

A purchased licence is not a lifetime of updates. It carries one year; after that your version keeps running, and another year costs $55 (Standard) to $295 (Ultimate).

Data & coverage

Instruments, depth, history and latency all belong to whatever you connect: 30-plus brokers and feeds, from Interactive Brokers and Schwab to Rithmic, CQG, IQFeed and Indian exchange data. Below PRO a workspace holds one connection, so pairing a futures broker with an equity feed needs a multiple-connection edition. Import takes CSV, ASCII and MetaStock; export is CSV.

Integrations

The extension point is the Java SDK, present even in the free Community edition. No REST API, no Python binding, no webhook; alerts fire to a popup, a sound and an email from the running app.

Limitations

• One running instance per licence — install anywhere, run on one machine at a time.
• The scanner is a batch job: pick instruments, press Start, watch a progress bar. Nothing in the manual describes it re-running itself, so treat it as a screener, not the real-time scanner the marketing page advertises.
• The vendor's own pages disagree on what EW Lite gives up. The pricing page calls its wave tools "basic"; the manual documents Auto Analyze and the Auto Elliott Wave study under "Elliott Wave Lite / Ultimate", and names only the scanner as Ultimate-only. Trial it before paying the Ultimate difference.
• The option chain is order entry — 13 spread structures and position P/L — not analysis. No Greeks, implied volatility or payoff modelling is documented. The news panel likewise shows only what your connection supplies, which for most futures gateways is nothing.

Alternatives

NinjaTrader and Sierra Chart cover the same futures execution and order-flow ground with their own one-off licences and far larger communities, but neither counts waves. If Elliott Wave is not why you are shopping, this is an expensive way to buy charts.

The rest of the charting platforms and screeners.