Top Forex Testers and Their Working Methods

Testing is a mandatory stage of performance verification forex strategiesIt allows the trader to see mistakes, problem points, and save money during real trading. It allows to see mistakes, problem points and to save money during real trading. Special tester programs are used for testing, the reviews of which say that they give a useful experience before trading.

What is a tester?

One of the main problems for beginning traders is underestimating the need to test strategies. Not only new ones, but also classic ones, in order to understand how exactly they work. Or they simply do not know how and with what to test, and when they start trading on real trading accounts, the only thing they manage to do is to quickly lose the deposit. To experienced traders about the need to apply testers Forex strategies It is not necessary to remind, because before trading in the market they test everything first, although not necessarily by the program.

Top 3 best forex brokers: test their terminals

A Forex Strategy Tester is a program or advisor that simulates the operation of a strategy on a realistic forex broker’s price chart – allows you to open and close trades and evaluate the result. If you repeat the process many times, before trading in the market it is possible to see if the strategy is profitable and, if not, why not. Beginners sometimes conduct the test before trading in the market an insufficient number of times. To see all the bottlenecks of a new Forex strategies, tester according to the reviews should pass it hundreds of times. If the strategy is a classic, frequently used, but used for the first time, it should be passed before trading in the market until it is fully understood. Many specialized resources, for example, “Forex Academy, strategy testers regularly describe (The whole truth about forex).

Top Forex Testers

We have compiled our list of top forex advisors from which you can choose the best.

TSTester 2

TSTester – it’s a popular tester-advisorwhich is downloaded for installation on MT4 broker from a third-party source for free. Installed in the standard way – copy the EA files to the directory of the trading terminal in the appropriate folders, then unloaded to the chart through the function “Open data directory”. In order for this forex strategy tester online worked, also unload the quotes of the desired asset through the “Service”, select the tested timeframes and follow the command “Load”. After that TSTester 2 runs as a standard forex advisor. In order for it to work correctly, according to reviews it is necessary to enable visualization – just check the box next to the corresponding option. For those who are already familiar with the MT functionality, working in TSTester by the reviews will be easy (See the rating of forex brokers).

TSTester 2 powerful enough, allows you to thoroughly test before trading in the market hundreds of transactions during the trading day forex broker. During the test any standard forex indicators are available on the chart and oscillatorsThe advantage of the Expert Advisor is that it rewinds to almost any candlestick, time, lot (counted as a percentage of the deposit), order, and so on. The advantage of the Expert Advisor is that the chart is rewound to almost any value by candlestick and by time, limit orders stop-loss and take-profit can be placed directly on the forex broker’s chart. Loss and profit can be seen immediately above transaction fixation lines. There are many links on the Internet to resources that offer forex strategy tester free download. But before downloading, you need to carefully study the resource and reviews for the last year, so as not to download along with it or instead of it some malicious software.

FX Blue Trading Simulator

FX Blue – powerful a program for testing forex strategieswhich can be called a simulator for traders. It is a classical simulator of trade on the historical chart. But at the same time it is one of the most functional advisors, because it can simulate trading at the broker’s market on several timeframes at the same time, with any type of orders, with fixed and dynamic lot. The big advantage is that it is possible to exit the transactions by touching the trend lines, which saves a lot of time. If this tester is downloaded from a third-party source, you should make sure that the downloaded file is safe. This can be seen in the user reviews for 2021. In order to work it is necessary to register on the site FX Blue.

This advisor is characterized by the simplicity of installation on the MT4 chart. When you download the file to the trading terminal of the broker, you do not need to copy anything manually. There are two files in the downloaded folder – the boot file and the instruction. As in any other case, it is recommended to read the instruction. When you download the installer .exe you will need to choose a trading terminal, there are not only MT4. But the algorithm of unloading, in general, is the same. MT4 forex strategy tester is placed in the list. At startup FX Blue Trading Simulator (Fig. 1) you need to select the start and finish of the test, turn on the visualization. The first time you start the simulator before trading, it is activated through the login and password of the user account on the FX website. The control panel is placed in the upper left corner.

There are two main buttons – “Buy” and “Sell”, it is possible to set the lot, stop-loss, take-profit and trailing stop values. At the same time stop-loss and take-profit are moved on the chart. If you click on these values, simultaneously pressing Ctrl, you will see the values of the tested deposit. Parameters such as pause, scroll speed, – are selected at the bottom of the Expert Advisor. It is possible to close or open a deal by crossing the line, if you simultaneously press Alt. In the upper right corner of the simulator are available advanced settings, here selects the type of pending order, the type of fixed transaction volume, the level of stop loss and take profit. Saved templates are opened by clicking on the same settings icon with the Ctrl button. These are not all of the features that are available for FX Blue Trading Simulator AdvisorBut it gives you very few opportunities to test the most complex trades before trading. But it gives you little opportunity to check the most complex trades before trading on the market.

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When the test is complete, examine the report generated by the simulator, it is unloaded by clicking on the “Analyse” button. The report is not formal, but very capacious, with a huge number of parameters that will give a complete picture of the effectiveness of the strategy before trading in the market. This report is printed or saved in an Excel spreadsheet. By the way, there is a version of the simulator for MT5 in the network, it is loaded the same way, but its functionality is less than for MT4, but according to reviews for 2021, it is possible to use it as an advisor before trading in the market.

SimpleFXTester

Another popular simulator designed for MT4. It is downloaded from a third-party source, there are two folders 1 and 2 in the boot folder. The first one is moved to the root MT4 folder (not to the data directory). Files of the second folder are placed in MT4 as advisor – in the data directory indicator is placed in Indicators, and advisor – in the Expert folder. For this forex advisor to work, the visualization must be enabled. For accelerated testing in the window select the parameter “By open prices”. Open orders are presented by the section “Open”, pending “Pending”, closed – by the section “Closed”. The first tab contains information on open orders, the second tab contains information on pending orders, and the third tab contains information on closed orders. In the section “Place New Order” select the parameters of volume, Stop Loss and Take Profit, etc. After checking, the results are displayed in the form of a report – profitability and statistics, by which the conclusion about the effectiveness of the tested strategy is made.

Forex Tester

Forex Tester is a paid multifunctional simulator for testing the market before trading, it does not need to be unloaded on the trading terminal, because it has its own, which almost entirely simulates the classic, which allows you to test almost any forex strategy on the technical analysis of forex and train skills of fundamental analysis. Expert Advisor contains data on deals for 16 years and almost a thousand tools for imitation trading. It has no equal in power and variety of provided functions. All the functions are described on the developer’s website. To master it, it will take a lot of time, not less than mastering the real trading terminal.

How the advisor works

We will show you what the Expert Advisor is and how it functions by the example of the Forex Tester, which has demonstrated high efficiency of the test according to the feedback. In the fourth update it was further improved and several new functions were added. The test trading terminal for Forex has been significantly expanded. It supports flexible spread settings for currency pairs, it’s possible to check using trading history of 11 Forex brokers, keep the trading diary, comments in the trades journal, economic calendar for traders with news or fundamental strategies supporters. The license for this simulator is paid.

Now the developer offers Forex Tester 5, and it is possible to download a demo version from the main page of the site. According to reviews, this program itself is difficult for beginners, you can not test something in it at once. It is necessary to be trained with the help of the guide or at basic courses (Fig. 2), – the offer to do this will appear at the first start of the simulator. The test in the demo mode is carried out for one hour, then you must restart a new project.

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The training begins with the basics – it tells how the price changes in the real market, how to change the timeframes at the forex broker, how to choose them, and so on. It is not enough for a beginning trader. The long courses are a guide to Forex trading in general, not within the EA (Fig. 3).

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The interface of the demo version according to reviews in 2021 is very difficult for beginners, although it is a variant of the MT trading terminal (Fig. 4).

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In the upper left part of the trading terminal button “Start”, in the licensed version this button starts a new project or continues to test the already started. In the demo version, the data is not saved, as well as the history of transactions-tests, so it is only possible to start a new project, by the button “Start over” – and again to test on new data. In this case, you are prompted to enter the parameters of the strategy being tested (Fig. 5).

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The project must be given a name and assigned a folder where it will be loaded. Clicking “Next”, you must continue to enter the parameters – choose a currency pair or other asset, test period, the type of data used – in minutes or ticks, in the subsection “Advanced settings” – enter the refining parameters of ticks, the default is offered floating spread. The next section of the settings – the time parameters of the test, i.e. set the shift, denote close of business, specify the start time of the test, test mode. When you click on “Create” in the trading terminal the corresponding candlestick chart of the broker appears (Fig. 6).

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If you put the mouse cursor on the candlestick, the second upper window will contain information about it – date, year, time and so on. In the upper window on the left are placed data, for example, on the currency pair – symbols and prices Bid and Ask, a small tick chart, statistics of transactions at the forex broker. On the main page sets the speed of the check, select a timeframe or set your own. On the same main page of the interface, in the “Order” section set the parameters of market or pending order (Figure 7).

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In the market order parameters select a symbol (for example, the desired pair), lot, place stop-loss and take-profit, calculate the degree of risk, and leave your comment. It is also possible to place trailing stop parameters. And click “Buy” or “Sell” and leave a comment. In parameters of the market order you can set the forex broker pair, type, lot, risk level and trailing stop parameters. The order is changed by clicking on the specially designed for this purpose button, which has the same name. In the “Charts” section might be a new graph with the same parameters is loaded, it will be placed on top of the already tested one.

It is possible to change the candlestick chart to Renco bars by changing the bar size in pips. And it is possible to set the Renko chart. And separately the profit chart is offered (Fig. 8). In the “Data” section there are actual data on currency pairs of forex broker, including cross rates, by ticks and minutes, by different data streams. On the main page of this trading terminal section “Update history in the project” is available only for the licensed version. In the “Data” section the parameters for each of the forex broker’s pairs under test are changed by clicking on the “Change Settings” button. The data are imported and exported.

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The “News” subsection shows news statistics for each tool. In the subsection, which is called “Additional information about data service/upgrade” – to go to the external page historical data from the developer’s company. In the “Strategies” section there are a number of classic preset strategies – you only need to turn them on. There are three buttons for management – change properties. Optimize and delete. Before launching it is possible to change the parameters – change the timeframe, period and so on, each has its own set of possible changes. It is also possible to optimize it – if you click on this button, you will see the “Optimizer” (Fig. 9).

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In the optimizer you should choose an optimization algorithm from three possible ones, during which the simulator goes through all possible options on historical data. In the “Symbol and data” section of the optimizer you select the symbol of the trading instrument of the forex broker, minute or tick data. Next, the test parameters for each specific strategy are entered and the deposit parameters are specified in the “General Settings” section. If you click the “Start” button, the optimization will be completed and the optimization result will be shown. In the upper left corner there is an option “Reset” – in this case the previous optimization will be suspended. Also from this section you can change the strategy.

In the section “Strategies” there is also a list of “Recommendations”, which presents what is installed in the trading terminal. In addition, there is a function “Quick Test”, which, accordingly, allows you to quickly run the tested strategy. An interesting feature in – Easy Forex Builder – this section takes the user to an external page for creating an Expert Advisor by yourself without programming skills. It has a demo mode where it is possible to find out what exactly the developers of this service offer.

In the “Windows” section you can not only define the position of the main windows, but also place functional windows on the chart. Among them – a separate window for symbols, display the tick chart in a separate window, separately superimposed data window – the information in it appears when you move the mouse cursor on the chart. Also separately available for viewing are statistics of deals (pic. 9), view “Open Positions” (open deals), pending orders, account history (history of operations on the trader’s account), set the graphical trading panel.

The graphical panel contains technical analysis tools – various line variants, corrections, time zones and other Fibonacci elements, Andrews’ Pitchfork, wave patterns and others. Just like in the MT4 and MT5 trading terminal, the lower part of the test trading terminal has a transaction log and other functions. The graphical elements are also located directly on the main page of the terminal. And there – the list of classic Forex indicators. Among them is a large list of trendy ones, where there are trading indicators volume, a large selection of oscillators, a large selection of custom indicators, a list of recommended and you can load your own from an external source. The indicators are customizable (Fig. 10), according to the reviews they are fully functional for the test purposes and show good results.

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Since the functionality of this program, according to reviews for 2021, is very complex, training in it is not limited to a short course – there is a whole section “Training”, which presents materials for training at three levels of complexity. And there’s also a “Store” section, which sells a paid full-featured version, as well as deal copying services and visual strategy builders and indicators.

Usually testers advise novice Forex traders. But the Forex Tester shows that this is not exactly the right advice. Obviously, in order to test the simplest strategy, you need to have a fair amount of knowledge about trading, almost all of its aspects. If we’re talking about beginner traders, the functionality of the program is more suitable for learning practical Forex trading in general, even in the free demo version, according to reviews, it is already a good tutorial, in addition, there are training materials, – from the very basics to the analysis of complex transactions.

MT5 Expert Advisor Tester

MT5 makes it possible to check how effectively the strategy trading advisor or robot. You can access this service through the “View” section, the “Strategy Tester” subsection (Fig. 11) – you need to click it and it will load at the bottom of the trading terminal. To open it, you need to click the F1 key. It is also loaded in the “Algotrading” section, in the “Navigator” subsection. During testing, the service checks how the Expert Advisor has traded in the past – its profitability is used to assess whether it is suitable for work at present. Before testing, MT5 downloads the history of trades, – this parameter should be specified, because if you select a too long period, the data will be downloaded for too long. But if you select a short period, the results of the Expert Advisor may be very different from those obtained during real trading after the test.

The first tab of this tool is an overview of the test tools Forex trading advisors. The default “Single” tool contains settings for the midline. To the right of it is the test settings icon, if you click on it, you can, for example, run a single test. In the settings, select the “Forex” folder and the corresponding pair from the forex broker’s list. The time frame, interval is set (from the entire trading history to the period chosen by the trader). The option “Delays” on the right side contains an additional settings icon, “Trade settings”, where you can set your commissions, including import them, set the number of orders and set the margin.

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This subsection establishes trading without delays, i.e. practically ideal or with an arbitrary delay. It is believed that the arbitrary delay is closer to reality, so the test conditions with it will be more useful. However, in addition to the random delay, several other variants are offered to the trader’s choice. Then, the type of simulation, the size of the initial deposit and the amount of leverage of the forex broker, if necessary, are specified. In “Simulation” in the “All ticks” mode, the check will be carried out on a minute-by-minute basis. For strategies from a minute timeframe the results will be acceptable, for high-frequency ones it is unlikely.

In the “Every tick based on real ticks” mode, testing before trading is performed on real data, which is imported from the forex broker’s server. Also in the “Settings” tab it is possible to set optimization parameters at once. In the tab “Parameters” values of moving, risk indicators, etc. are set. In the starting tab “Overview” you can also select another indicator from the drop-down list. The next subsection here is “Indicator” (Fig. 12).

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In it, you select the indicator from the list of existing indicators on MT5, and set the parameters – symbol (pair), interval and type of simulation. To the left of the indicator name there are additional settings. The next “Overview” subsection is “Visualization”, which contains settings similar to those placed in the “Single” subsection. Also in the “Overview” tab are placed three optimization options to choose from, market scanner, math calculation and previous results.

Visualization allows you to clearly see how the strategy works. The results of the test are placed at the bottom, in the “Journal” tab. Testing in MT5 with visualization implies that the trader can already understand forex transactionsThe user knows exactly what and how he is invited to test, because in practice, he is invited to work on a regular trading platform forex broker, only in a simulated live. Without visualization, however, the test on MT5 is also available to a knowledgeable trader – visualization is needed if the trader is not enough data presented in the log.

If it is necessary to activate “Calculate Math”, in which there are only two parameters, then all other parameters that are not needed in this test will be hidden. This section is needed to configure the parameters of the forex advisor. When testing forex trading robots in MT5, before trading in the market, it is necessary to specify a deposit close to reality, and preferably exactly the one that the trader has at the forex broker. The size of the deposit affects the efficiency of testing. When you press the “Start” button MT5 starts testing, if the visualization mode is enabled, the service loads a test trading terminal with a chart. Any optimization should be disabled before launching the test.

The chart during testing can not be adjusted, but it is possible to save as a template to check again, if necessary before trading in the market – this function is placed in the “Charts” section, subsection “Templates” in the drop-down menu and is saved in the usual way in the correct folder. MT5 has the ability to test multi-currency forex strategies. A forex advisor from the Market is loaded into the trading terminal for testing. You can test the demo version of the Expert Advisor. When this advisor is downloaded, the “Test” button will be placed on its page. Allowable settings for testing are made in the “Parameters” section, but basically all the settings are already in the Expert Advisor. However, before testing, you need to select and include all of the necessary instruments in the market overview, open charts for each of the tested currencies, and set the time frame to one month. Everything else takes place according to the same algorithm as for non-currency EAs.

Strategy Tester features

According to reviews in 2021, testing with special programs helps to check the classic forex trading strategies before trading, if any changes are made to them – changing the currency pair or entirely the asset, timeframe and other parameters. This advisor also checks new, unproven tactics in different simulated conditions. With its help it is possible to master faster the work with new tools of the broker – indicators, oscillators, charts, work out graphic patterns, try multicurrency and multi-instrumental forex strategies.

With the help of Expert Advisors, tactics developed by the trader himself are tested and their effectiveness is achieved by testing different assets, instruments, timeframes of the broker. The effectiveness of trading is also tested before trading with advisors and robots. The simulator cannot teach a trader to trade with a broker. But it is good to use it as an additional method to teach new trading techniques before trading, especially for this purpose simulator trading terminals and Forex Tester, which are full-fledged simulation trading terminals are suitable.

Testing of trading tactics by testers by novice traders is impossible because it requires knowledge, without which it is impossible to set up a program, load a trading strategy into it, be able to interpret the results and make corrections. Beginner traders can use them only in training, running through them well-known tactics, selecting and substituting their own data. With all that, specialized programs are not very popular among professional traders, so there are few of them, although they are available for any software, browser, there is even forex strategy tester for android.

This is due to the fact that to test an experienced trader, in principle, the demo mode in the trading terminal is enough. In addition, to work with complex Expert Advisors you need additional training, and for many it does not seem a rational waste of time. Moreover, these programs are far from having disadvantages. Their main disadvantage is psychological. If a trader works out a trading strategy in a safe mode for a long time, it can cause stress in real trading that will bring all preparatory work to naught, along with the deposit.

Specific and also a psychological moment of testing the program – scrolling toolswhich removes the factor of waiting for the implementation of the strategy at the broker. On the one hand, it is good, because it allows you to see the result very quickly. It seems to be an advantage, but when it comes to real trading at the broker, the trader’s inability to wait can cost him dearly, literally. Also according to reviews this year many people note the conventionality of testing in the simulator – it is possible to run a trading strategy with a thousand different parameters, but as a result on the real account the situation at the broker will develop according to 1001st scenario. In this case nothing can replace the knowledge and experience of the trader.

Many traders note in their 2021 reviews that automatism and the speed of action cause some important totals to pass by, and then, in reality, this data has a significant impact on the totals in the account. Because of this, experienced traders prefer to literally handheld strategy advisor: they put all the necessary options on the chart and then compare it with the chart on which it is shown, but with all the established forex signals, breakdowns, rebounds, and so on – and put it on a new chart. And some traders, in order to get the result, work out the strategy literally by hand – draw charts with all the broker’s tools in Excel.