LESSON 1 / 5 · 6 MIN
What TradingView is (and what plan you need)
Decide whether the free plan is enough for you before spending a dollar.
TradingView is three products stacked on top of each other: a charting engine, a database of market and macro data, and a social network of scripts. Most people only use the first one. The whole point of this course is to get you to the second and third, because that is where the edge lives.
The free plan, with real numbers
| Limit | Basic (free) | Does it hurt? |
|---|---|---|
| Indicators per chart | 2 | Yes — this is the real limit |
| Charts per tab | 1 | Yes, for the macro layouts in module 8 |
| Active price alerts | 3 | Tolerable if you rotate them |
| Historical bars | 5,000 | On monthly charts that is 400 years — irrelevant |
| Ads | Yes | Annoying, not blocking |
Key idea
The limit that actually decides it is 2 indicators per chart. Everything else you can work around. If your plan is to look at one asset with a moving average and one oscillator, free is enough forever.
Tip
Trick that buys you room: one well-built script can draw six things at once and still counts as one indicator. That is exactly what the @55 library in module 8 does — the inflation panel plots seven series and eats a single slot.
Paid tiers (Essential, Plus, Premium, Ultimate) mostly buy you more indicators, more charts per layout, more alerts and second-based intervals. Prices and limits change — check the pricing page before deciding, not a blog post.
Common mistake
Do not pay on day one. The most common mistake is buying Premium to fit eight indicators on screen, when eight indicators on screen is itself the problem. Module 4 covers why.
Check yourself
You want to watch inflation, employment and the yield curve on one free chart. What do you do?