At a glance
The short version
The fastest way to get good at reading price is practice — thousands of hours — without risking money on each one. The catch is that thousands of hours is a real number, and replay is how you compress it — the arithmetic of how much you can actually get through in an evening is worth doing before you start. Candle-by-candle replay gives you exactly that: step through real market history one bar at a time and trade it like it's happening live.
What candle-by-candle replay is
Instead of staring at a finished chart where every move is already obvious, replay drops you into the past with the right edge of the chart hidden. You step forward one candle at a time and only ever see what you'd have seen live. When your setup forms, you mark your entry, stop and target in the moment — then step forward and watch it play out.
You may know the idea as bar replay — it's the same thing, and it's the feature most traders first meet inside a charting platform. If you're here because intraday replay sits behind a plan tier where you currently are, the TradingView Bar Replay alternative comparison lays out what each tier gives you and where CRTLAB differs.
Why it beats scrolling a chart
This is the single biggest thing that separates a real backtest from a fantasy one: hindsight bias. Scroll a static chart and you can quietly use information you'd never have had in real time — you "knew" it was going to bounce, so of course the entry looks perfect. That quietly turns a 45% strategy into a 90% illusion.
Bar-by-bar replay makes cheating impossible. You commit before you see the next candle, exactly like live trading — so the win rate and average R you walk away with are real. It's also faster than a demo account: you compress months of setups into an afternoon instead of waiting for them in real time.
How replay works in CRTLAB
Pick one of 38 markets — indices, forex, metals, crypto or US stocks — drop into real historical price, and step or fast-play through it. Mark your trades as they set up, and CRTLAB logs each one and scores your win rate, average R and profit factor automatically. No downloads, no spreadsheets, no MetaTrader.
All 38 markets and the full history are there from the first chart. The only thing you can exhaust is candles: one per bar you step, 10,000 of them free sample first, or unlimited at $14.99 a month. Scrolling back, redrawing, changing timeframe and journalling are not metered — only moving the replay forward is.
Frequently asked questions
What is bar replay?
Bar replay (or candle-by-candle replay) steps through historical price one candle at a time with the future hidden, so you can practise and backtest setups exactly as they would have unfolded live — without hindsight.
Is candle-by-candle replay free?
CRTLAB is free to try. You get any of the 38 markets, bar by bar, on the full history, with every tool the product has, for your first 10,000 candles of replay — roughly two hours of stepping through a chart, no card needed. After the sample, unlimited replay is $14.99 a month, cancel any time. The counter only moves when the chart does — you are charged for replay, not for sitting and looking at it.
How is replay different from a demo account?
A demo account trades in real time, so you wait for setups. Replay compresses history — you can run hundreds of setups in an afternoon and build the pattern recognition far faster, all on real past data.