Sierra Chart

What it is

Sierra Chart is a Windows desktop application for charting, order flow and order entry, bought mainly by futures traders who want a fast DOM and tick-precise data rather than a polished web product. The interface is dense and dated; it will also render a year of ticks without complaint. The distinguishing work is order flow: TPO profiles, Numbers Bars, a historical market depth graph and, on the top package, market-by-order.

Pricing

Five packages, $26 to $56 a month, and the split that catches people is Base versus Integrated. Package 3 ($26) and Package 5 ($36) run on Sierra Chart's own included data — its historical, forex/CFD, crypto and delayed feeds — and connect to no external broker or data service, nor to Denali. Trading through Interactive Brokers, CQG or Rithmic, or subscribing to Sierra Chart's own real-time Denali feed, requires Package 10 ($36), 11 ($46) or 12 ($56).

Twelve months up front takes 35% off — Package 3 becomes $202.80 a year — and six months take 25%, three months 15%.

Exchange data is a second bill. Non-professional rates with a funded account run from $2 a month for CME top-of-book through $13.50 for CME with depth to $40.50 for the full CME Group with depth, or $6 for the full CME Group without it; EUREX EOBI is $25, CFE $10 top-of-book and $12 with depth, NASDAQ TotalView $17, the US consolidated tape $10 and the CBOE indexes $6. Professional or unfunded rates jump to $145 per CME Group exchange, $130 for EUREX and $90 for TotalView. The 21-day trial is a demo rather than an evaluation — a fixed symbol list, 10 days of intraday history, and no connection to an external Data or Trading service.

Data & coverage

Denali covers CME, CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX, EUREX and CFE futures, US equities via the consolidated tape and NASDAQ TotalView, CME futures options and CBOE indexes. Sierra Chart supplies its own forex/CFD and crypto data, and a delayed feed comes with every package. Anything else arrives through an external data service — so, an Integrated package.

Integrations

External data and order routing is a list, not an API: Interactive Brokers, CQG, Rithmic, LMAX, DTN IQFeed and Global Data Feeds India, plus Sierra Chart's own Teton order routing to the CME Group through supported brokers and clearing firms. Custom studies and automated systems are written in C++ against ACSIL and compiled into a DLL; a built-in spreadsheet study covers formula-level work without a compiler. Sierra Chart also implements DTC, its own published and uncopyrighted trading protocol, and can act as a DTC server so external programs place orders through it. Market data is the exception: the DTC server rejects real-time and historical requests for CME Group, EUREX, NASDAQ, CBOE and UTP/CTA US equities data, and serves any data at all only to the local machine. Scanning is condition-based across a watchlist — a technical scanner, not a fundamentals screener.

Limitations

• Windows only. Wine works on Linux and macOS, and Sierra Chart explicitly declines to support it.
• No fundamentals, no fundamental screener, no news window — a price and order-flow tool, not a research platform.
• Back tests run one chart at a time, bar-based (fast, imprecise) or replay (precise, slow). There is no portfolio-level test.
• Automation means C++: no Python binding, no visual strategy builder.
• The cheapest package cannot place a live trade anywhere.
• Not every external service carries every market: Sierra Chart has no data connectivity with CQG for the CME Group or EUREX, so a CQG trader pays Denali or goes without.

Alternatives

NinjaTrader and MotiveWave cover similar order-flow ground with friendlier interfaces and higher prices; TradingView is the opposite trade, browser-based and far easier but much weaker at DOM execution. The rest of the field is in charting platforms and screeners.