Forex Tester has been the best manual backtesting software solution for a long time. I started using it around 2008.
I’ve kept my eyes out for alternatives, but nothing came close.
Then NakedMarkets was launched in 2022, and I instantly knew that it was a competitor. But how good is it, and more importantly, is it better than Forex Tester?
Both software programs help you speed up the manual backtesting process and make it easy to test almost any trading strategy in stocks, Forex, futures, cryptocurrencies, and more.
After spending several months backtesting with NakedMarkets, I’m finally ready to give you a complete comparison of the two.
I’ll show you which ONE is better and why.
Ease of Use
Is the software designed in a way that makes it intuitive and so I don’t have to learn new syntax or processes?
Both software are patterned after MetaTrader, so I would say that they are very similar when it comes to ease of use.
There are a couple of small differences however.
In version 5 of Forex Tester, they decided to move to a “ribbon” type menu at the top of the screen. If you’ve used Microsoft Office, you know what I mean.
This is what the menu looks like.
I’m not a fan of this.
It makes the menu bar bigger, and since each button is bigger, I have to flip through more menus to get to the functions I want to use.
In addition, the menus in Forex Tester 5 could be more useful. For example, the right-click menu on the charts don’t have any options for trading.
Since there are already trading options on the primary ribbon toolbar, some might think that additional options on the right-click menu are redundant.
I disagree.
I feel that there should be some trading options on the right-click menu and the options for volume, grid, etc. should go on the Chart Settings menu.
On the other hand, the NakedMarkets menus are very well thought out and streamlined.
The buttons are small, so they don’t take up a lot of space, and there are only the buttons that I use most often.
Creating a minimalist menu is actually more difficult than you may think. It’s much easier to stuff it full of functions and let the users sort it out.
The right-click menu is much more practical than the one in Forex Tester.
What I like about this menu is that there are actual buy and sell order options.
There are many other ways that NakedMarkets is easier to use than Forex Tester 5…too many to go into here.
But there is one more function that makes NakedMarkets better than Forex Tester in this category.
This is the Rules Manager function in NakedMarkets. It’s actually brilliant, I would have never thought of this.
It allows you to build pieces of your trading strategy so you can automate them and speed up the backtesting process. More on this feature later in this article.
NakedMarkets also recently launched a TradingView-like interface for their charts. I don’t use it, but some traders love it.
It’s just a personal preference. I’m happy that there is an option though.
TradingView has a great interface. Too bad it’s not good for backtesting.
So even though Forex Tester 5 is easy to use, I have to give it a slightly lower score because of the ribbon menu and because the Rules in NakedMarkets really speed up the backtesting process.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 4
- NakedMarkets: 5
Total Cost of Ownership
Cost of ownership may seem like a straight forward calculation, but it’s not.
Here’s why…
There are 3 parts to backtesting software ownership:
- Initial cost
- Historical data updates
- Additional feature add-ons
Everyone understands the initial cost.
This is the amount that you pay to unlock the full version of the software.
As this is being written, the regular price for Forex Tester is $299. However, they have a lot of sales and you can get it for $149.
On the other hand, NakedMarkets costs $269 up front, but you can get a $20 discount here, for a total of $249.
Before you jump on Forex Tester though, you also have to take into account the data plan and add-ons.
The Forex Tester data plan costs $49.99 per month to get the latest updated data.
Now you could use the free plan, but there is a very limited amount of data available. So if you want to do any serious backtesting, you’ll have to get the paid plan.
One thing you can do is order one month, download the data, then cancel your subscription. Then wait a few months, subscribe again for a month, then cancel.
Obviously, this solution is not ideal because you won’t have the most updated data available. But it might be enough if you only backtest higher timeframes trading strategies.
The best solution is to purchase Forex Tester’s lifetime data package so you never have to pay for data again. This package currently costs $539, on sale.
With NakedMarkets, you get updated historical data at no additional cost. So you only pay $249 (with the discount coupon), with no additional costs.
So when you compare apples to apples, you save $290 by purchasing NakedMarkets.
Remember, pricing can change, so be sure to double check the prices before buying.
Both are reasonably priced, but you do save a decent amount of money with NakedMarkets, so I’m giving NakedMarkets a slightly higher score.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 4
- NakedMarkets: 5
Speeds up Backtesting
The next thing that I wanted to find out is how much each of the software packages can speed up the overall backtesting process.
Speed is relative. So what’s the slowest method of manual backtesting?
Well, that would be manual backtesting with MetaTrader (and a spreadsheet), or using a notebook to do “paper trading.”
Both of these methods are very slow.
So one of the biggest benefits of using Forex Tester or NakedMarkets is that they speed up the process considerably.
But which one makes the process faster?
When it comes to basic backtesting, both software solutions are about the same.
However, when you start using the NakedMarkets Rule Manager, that’s when you really start cooking with gas.
Rules in NakedMarkets allow you to automatically identify trade setups, entries and exits. It can also enter and exit trades and use set your risk management.
You can learn more about Rules in this video.
So while Forex Tester 5 is a solid solution, NakedMarkets provides another “gear” with their Rule Manager, which allows you to backtest much faster.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 3
- NakedMarkets: 5
Data (Cost, Quality and Availability)
Up to date date is very important for backtesting because you want to see if your strategy is still working in current market conditions.
The biggest difference between the two products is that updated data in NakedMarkets is included, while you have to pay extra for it in Forex Tester.
Otherwise, the data solutions are very similar.
In both cases, there could be more data available and some markets have spotty data. That probably isn’t the fault of the software companies, it’s most likely a function of the data feeds they are using.
But overall, both products provide solid data feeds.
I’m giving NakedMarkets a slightly higher score because the data is included with the purchase of the software.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 3
- NakedMarkets: 4
Overall Stability
Let’s face it, backtesting software is complex.
When I first started using Forex Tester around 2008, the program crashed often and it was buggy. Activating my license was a clunky process and I had to contact support if I wanted to change computers.
But that’s how almost all software is at the beginning, and at the end of the day, it worked well enough to get in a solid backtest and develop trading strategies.
Over the years, it has evolved into a very stable product and now I hardly have any issues with it.
NakedMarkets launched in 2022 and the benefit of the software was obvious, after using it for a week. But since it’s complex and very new, there are still a few bugs that they have to work out.
However, NakedMarkets has been really good at fixing bugs as they are reported. They also do frequent updates and are constantly improving the software.
Although NakedMarkets is improving quickly, I have to give Forex Tester a big edge on stability at this time.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester 5: 5
- NakedMarkets: 3
Reporting
This is where there is a HUGE difference between the two products.
Huge is an understatement…they aren’t even in the same galaxy.
The whole point of backtesting is to get stats on your trading strategy, so you know what to expect when you start trading it live.
Therefore, analytics are extremely important.
I’ve told Forex Tester in the past that they really need better reporting.
But unfortunately, they still have the same trading report that they’ve had since version 2.
As you can see, this report only shows balance, equity, margin and drawdown. There isn’t a lot of data on this chart, but just look at the legend to see what the report is showing.
…and that’s it!
Serious.
To get a more detailed report, I always had to export the data to Excel and spend a lot of time “massaging” it to get the stats that I wanted.
Enter NakedMarkets…
Now that’s more like it!
I get way more valuable information out of NakedMarkets.
…and that’s just one tab on the report.
The other tabs are:
- Overall stats
- Symbols analysis
- Timing analysis
- Risk analysis
- Trades list
- Monte Carlo
To see a more detailed analysis of the reporting feature, read this article.
An added benefit is that you can also import reports from Forex Tester, Oanda and MetaTrader into NakedMarkets, and get detailed analytics, without going through the headache of exporting to Excel.
It’s a night and day different between the two software packages.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 1
- NakedMarkets: 5
Automation
Next, I’ll cover the amount of automation in each program.
Automation can dramatically speed up the backtesting process and any worthwhile software should have some sort of automation option.
Forex Tester 5 does allow you to backtest MetaTrader EAs, but that’s all of the automation they have available.
Realistically, you can backtest MetaTrader EAs in MetaTrader, without paying additional money for Forex Tester. So that function in Forex Tester is useless.
To be fair, Forex Tester does have their own proprietary “AI” function that supposedly optimizes your EA settings automatically. I haven’t tried it and that could be useful. The downside is that it costs extra.
But again, you could simply setup a similar test in MetaTrader and it will run through all of the settings iterations that you give it. So again, including this in Forex Tester is not very helpful.
As I mentioned in previous sections, NakedMarkets has come up with an ingenious way to automate parts of the backtesting process.
On top of that, if all parts of your trading strategy can be automated, you can do a fully automated backtest.
But wait, it gets even better…
You can also backtest your fully automated trading strategy on multiple markets and multiple timeframes at the same time, with the Fast Backtest function in NakedMarkets.
So I think the winner here is obvious. NakedMarkets stands head and shoulders above Forex Tester 5 in the automation department.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 1
- NakedMarkets: 5
Add Custom Indicators
I’m not a huge fan of custom indicators, but you might be.
So I’m going to go over how easy it is to import or create custom indicators for each of the software solutions.
Forex Tester 5 has an import function that will allow you to import MetaTrader indicators, if you have the source code. I’ve tried this function and it only works about half the time.
Therefore, you might be able to get your custom indicator into Forex Tester, but you cannot add all custom indicators.
Now what about creating indicators from scratch?
I’ve tried to code my own indicators for Forex Tester in the past, but it’s actually really difficult. Mostly because they don’t have any documentation on it.
In order to get custom indicators, I had to hire a programmer who could do it. Luckily, I got a good programmer, but he was hard to find.
See the indicators he created here.
On the other hand, NakedMarkets doesn’t have an import feature in the software, but they are working on it.
In the meantime, you can actually ask them to do the conversion and they will help you as best they can.
They also have documentation on how to code your own custom indicators. There aren’t many tutorials there yet, but all of their default indicators are open source, so you can see how they are coded and customize them to fit your needs.
C# and Visual Basic are used for coding NakedMarkets custom indicators, which is great because these programming languages are easy to learn. You can download a free software development package online (there are several options) and start coding in these languages.
If you don’t want to code it yourself, you can easily find a programmer to do it for you because these are common programming languages.
So overall, I have to give NakedMarkets the edge here. Once they get their import feature online, their score will probably increase to a 5.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 3
- NakedMarkets: 4
Build Custom EAs
This is a big one for many traders. Their dream is to build an automated trading robot, or Expert Advisor (EA), so they can make money while they sleep.
So how easily do these solutions help you to do that?
Let’s start with Forex Tester 5. They have created an external website that helps you build EAs with a no-coding, and a drag and drop interface.
Once you’ve built a EA on the website, you can export it to MT4, MT5, or Forex Tester formats.
Sounds good in theory.
The reality is that you can’t build a usable EA on their website. The interface is too rudimentary and it’s hard to build even the simplest trading system.
On top of that, you have to pay money to use their website.
It’s a pretty big fail.
NakedMarkets, on the other hand, has the functionality to build an automated trading strategy built in to their software.
Use the Rule Manager and you can build partially automated or fully automated strategies. The Rule Manager is also a no-code solution, so you don’t need advanced programming skills.
No external websites or additional fees necessary.
The only downside to NakedMarkets is that you cannot export the strategy to MetaTrader format. But they are working on that and will hopefully have a solution soon.
On the upside however, once you’ve created an automated strategy in NakedMarkets, it’s easy to hire a programmer to convert it into a MetaTrader EA.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 1
- NakedMarkets: 4
Support
Support is very important, especially with complex backtesting software.
There are basically 2 types of support:
- Day-to-day support: How quickly do they answer emails and are they helpful?
- Long-term software support: Do they listen to feedback and improve the software with each new version?
I’ve found that both companies do a great job with day-to-day support.
No complaints there.
However, NakedMarkets has a huge edge when it comes to long-term product support.
There are some features that I’ve been wanting to see in Forex Tester (like professional-level reporting) for a long time.
But they haven’t really upgraded the product since version 2. It’s still basically the same program. It’s more stable and has a few more bells and whistles, but it’s still very basic.
On the other hand, NakedMarkets has been fantastic about fixing bugs and adding requested features.
I leave a post on their forum and they usually get back to me within a few days, with a solution.
They are very good about adding suggested upgrades to the software and fixing bugs quickly.
The most recent addition they have made is the implementation of a TradingView-like interface. So now traders can choose between a MetaTrader-like experience or TradingView controls.
They have also added a few features for me, which I greatly appreciate.
So in terms of overall support, NakedMarkets is much better.
Here are the scores for this category:
- Forex Tester: 3
- NakedMarkets: 5
Review Video
Watch the complete video review below.
I show you some of the differences in action and why I gave the scores I did.
Final Score
Now let’s add up all of the scores and find out which software package is the winner…
As you’ve probably already guessed, NakedMarkets comes out way ahead of Forex Tester by a margin of 17 points.
- Forex Tester 5: 28 points
- NakedMarkets: 45 points
Forex Tester had the first mover advantage, but they have rested on their laurels and are now going to have to play catch up to NakedMarkets.
Like I mentioned before, Forex Tester hasn’t really changed much since version 2, it just became more stable.
Many of the upgrades that they have added over the years have had questionable utility and I’ve always had the distinct impression that the product was being designed by programmers…not traders.
On the other hand, I personally know the creator of NakedMarkets and I know that he’s a legit trader too. That’s why he has added features to the software that are actually useful to traders.
There are many benefits to NakedMarkets, but what I like best is its ability to backtest fully manual, partially automated and fully automated trading strategies. It will only get better with time.
If you want to see a trading strategy that I developed with NakedMarkets, go here.
