At a glance
The short version
Most "trading simulators" hand you a demo account and a live chart, which is just slow trading with fake money — you still wait days for a setup and you still can't measure anything. A replay simulator does the opposite: it puts real historical price in front of you one candle at a time, so a month of market conditions fits into an afternoon of practice.
Why a replay simulator beats a demo account
A demo account moves at real time. If your setup appears twice a week, you'll collect ten samples in a month — nowhere near enough to know whether your edge is real or you got lucky. A replay simulator compresses that: you step forward candle by candle and can put a hundred setups through your rules in a few sessions, which is where actual pattern recognition starts.
It's also honest in a way scrolling a chart never is. Because the next candle hasn't been drawn yet, you can't quietly reward yourself for a trade you'd never have taken live. That single constraint is the difference between practice and hindsight — the trap covered in the most common backtesting mistakes.
What makes a simulator actually useful
Three things. Real data, not synthetic or randomly generated candles — the whole point is to learn how your markets genuinely behave around sessions, sweeps and news-driven expansion. Bar-by-bar control, so you decide when the next candle prints. And a record of every decision, because a simulator you don't log is just a video game.
Sizing matters too. If your simulated trades don't reflect the risk you'd actually take, your results are fiction — work out the real number per trade with the position size calculator and check the payoff with the risk/reward calculator before you log the outcome.
How to practise in CRTLAB
Pick one of the 38 markets — indices, majors, metals, crypto or US stocks — drop into real history and step forward. When your setup forms, mark entry, stop and target by your rules, then log the result. After 50–100 trades you have a real win rate, an average R and a worst drawdown for that specific market, instead of a feeling. If you want a structured routine, how to backtest the CRT strategy walks the loop end to end.
Everything is open on the first chart: all 38 markets, the full archive on each, every tool. That is what lets you simulate trending years, ranges and crash weeks rather than practising on whatever the market happens to be doing this fortnight.
The simulator itself is not what you pay for. You spend candles as you advance them — 10,000 free sample first, or unlimited at $14.99 a month, cancel any time.
Frequently asked questions
Is the trading simulator free?
CRTLAB is free to try. You get every supported market on the full archive, 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. There is no demo version and no trial timer — the simulator a paying customer opens is the one you open.
What's the difference between a trading simulator and a backtester?
In practice they're the same tool used two ways. A simulator emphasises the feel of trading decisions in sequence; a backtester emphasises the numbers you get from doing that repeatedly. CRTLAB does both — you trade the replay and it records the stats.
Does the simulator use real market data?
Yes — real historical price, revealed one candle at a time, so you only ever see what you'd have seen live. No synthetic or randomly generated candles.
Can I practise day trading with it?
Yes. Step through intraday candles inside their higher-timeframe session context and take setups as they form. It's the fastest way to accumulate day-trading reps without waiting for real time to pass.