CRTLAB is a bar-by-bar market replay for traders who test by hand. You pick a market and a date, the chart rewinds to it, and you step forward one candle at a time with the right-hand side of the screen genuinely hidden. You place the entry, the stop and the target as you go, and the journal keeps the record. No card, no download, and no part of the tool is held back for a paid plan.
It exists because the usual answer — code your rules, run an equity curve — only works if your edge is a set of rules. Most discretionary traders' edge is not. It lives in how they read structure, and the only way to test that is to sit in front of the chart with the future covered up and do it a few hundred times.
What you get without paying
All 38 markets — the forex majors, the index futures, gold, silver, oil, seven crypto pairs and 17 US stocks and ETFs — on every timeframe from one minute to one month, across the full history we hold on each. Every drawing tool, every indicator, every ICT overlay, the performance report and prop firm mode come with it. There is no reduced version of the product: the chart a paying customer opens is the chart you open.
What is metered is candles stepped. You get 2,000 of them free, which is somewhere around two hours of real replay, and the counter ticks down only while you are actually advancing a chart — reading, drawing, scrolling and journalling cost nothing.
You re-up your candles instead of renting the software
Replay tools rent you access by the month, so a fortnight of hard work and five quiet weeks cost the same. CRTLAB charges for candles instead. Step through 2,000 free; when they run out, re-up for $5 and carry on from exactly where you stopped. Balances never expire, so nothing is wasted in the months you do not backtest.
That is the whole price list: $5 for 5,000 candles, $10 for 12,000, or $19.99paid once, which removes the meter permanently and includes the ICT course and the CRT × Mitigation strategy. Nothing on that list renews, nothing on it expires, and the months you do not backtest cost nothing at all.
Why replay beats waiting for the market
A setup that appears twice a week takes most of a year to produce a sample worth trusting. In replay it takes an evening. That compression is the entire argument: not that screen time stops mattering, but that you can stop paying for it in calendar months and in the money you lose finding out that a setup you liked does not survive fifty attempts.
It is also the only honest way to find out how you behave. An equity curve cannot tell you that you move your stop when a candle goes against you. Replay can, because you are the one moving it.
Open a chart on the thing you came here for
Every link below opens a live chart that is already what it says — the market loaded, the timeframe set, the overlay switched on — in a single click, with no account. That is the same session a paying customer uses, on the same history, with the same tools. The only thing you spend is candles.
Common questions
Is CRTLAB actually free?
Yes, and without a card or an account. Every one of the 38 markets is open, on the full history, with every timeframe, every drawing tool, every indicator and prop firm mode. Nothing is reserved for a paid plan. What is metered is candles: you step 2,000 of them for nothing, which is roughly two hours of replay, and after that you decide whether to top up.
Is there a subscription?
No. Replay tools rent you access by the month, so a fortnight of hard work and five quiet weeks cost the same. CRTLAB charges for candles instead. Step through 2,000 free; when they run out, re-up for $5 and carry on from exactly where you stopped. Balances never expire, so nothing is wasted in the months you do not backtest. If you would rather never think about the meter again, $19.99 paid once removes it permanently and includes the ICT course and the CRT × Mitigation strategy — that is a single payment with no renewal and nothing to cancel.
What happens when I run out of candles?
The chart stops advancing and everything else stays exactly as you left it — your session, your drawings, your journal. You re-up for $5 and carry on from the same candle. There is no reset, no expiry date on a balance, and no separate "pro" version of the product waiting behind it.
How is this different from paper trading?
Paper trading runs at the speed of the market, so a year of practice takes a year. Replay runs at the speed of your mouse. You can put a hundred trades through a setup in an evening instead of waiting a hundred sessions for them to appear — and you can do it on 2018 as easily as on this morning.
Can I test a strategy I did not code?
That is the point. This is manual, discretionary backtesting: you read the chart, you place the entry, stop and target yourself, and the journal records what happened. If your edge lives in how you read structure rather than in a set of rules a machine could follow, an automated backtester cannot test it and this can.
What markets can I practise on?
All 38 of them, from the first click: the forex majors, the index futures (NAS100, US30, SP500, GER40), gold, silver and WTI crude, seven crypto pairs, and 17 US stocks and ETFs including NVDA, TSLA, AAPL and QQQ. Same replay engine, same history depth, no list of pairs you have to pay to reach.
Do I need to download anything?
No. It runs in the browser. There is a desktop build if you prefer a dedicated window, but it is the same product and nothing needs installing to start.