Free NQ futures backtester
Paste a Pine v6 strategy written for NQ or MNQ. With a free account it runs on CME's 1-minute NQ bars, with every trade on the chart and $2.50 a contract plus a tick of slippage charged. Free and unlimited with an account, no card.
Paste your script
Pine v6, as TradingView has it.
What it runs on
CME's 1-minute E-mini Nasdaq-100 bars, two years deep, every minute of the futures day from the 18:00 New York open, joined into one continuous series the way NQ1! is: the next quarterly contract takes over three trading days before expiry. Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 trades at the same prices, so MNQ runs on the same bars at its own dollars a point.
Your Pine script runs as written, on our own Pine runtime: a rule that fires on a close fills at the next bar's open, and stops and limits fill at the prices the runtime reports inside the bar. The data is eight hours behind real time, so the page is for testing a strategy, not for trading it live. Futures open with a free account.
Contracts, costs and history
| CONTRACT | A POINT | A TICK (0.25) | DEFAULT COMMISSION |
|---|---|---|---|
| NQ · E-mini Nasdaq-100 | $20 | $5 | $2.50 a contract each side |
| MNQ · Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 | $2 | $0.50 | $2.50 a contract each side |
The commission your script declares per contract replaces the default, and market and stop orders pay one tick of slippage unless the script sets its own. The account starts at the script's initial_capital, or $100,000 when it names none. 1-minute and other odd-minute runs use the latest 120 sessions, about six months; 5-minute and longer use 600 sessions, about two years.
What a run shows
Net result after costs, Sharpe, profit factor, win rate, the worst drawdown and every trade on the chart with its entry, exit and result. The last third of the bars is kept apart and judged on its own, with its dates, so a strategy tuned on the first part is tested on bars it never saw. The rules, the data and its limits are written out in Data and methodology.
Trading a prop firm challenge? Write its rules into the script and test them here: backtest a prop firm challenge strategy. Trading the ES instead? The ES futures backtester runs the same way.
Questions
Is this NQ futures backtester free?
Yes. A free account backtests NQ or MNQ as often as you like, with no card: Run opens your script in the Alpha Charts terminal on the Free plan. The paid plans add the optimiser, the screener and more of the AI that writes and fixes scripts, each with 30 days money back.
Is it real NQ data or an ETF?
Real NQ: CME's 1-minute NQ bars, two years deep, joined into one continuous series the way NQ1! is, moving to the next quarterly contract three trading days before expiry. MNQ runs on the same prices at its own dollars a point. The data is eight hours behind, so it is for testing, not live trading.
NQ or MNQ: which does it run?
Whichever your script names: NQ at $20 a point and MNQ at $2 a point, both in 0.25-point ticks. A script that names either opens on it when you run it, and both are in the symbol menu.
How are commission and slippage charged?
$2.50 a contract on each side by default, or the commission your script declares per contract (commission_type = strategy.commission.cash_per_contract). Market and stop orders pay one tick of slippage unless the script sets its own.
How much history does a run use?
1-minute and the other odd-minute timeframes use the latest 120 sessions, about six months. 5, 15 and 30-minute and hourly timeframes use 600 sessions, about two years. Daily bars are built from the same data, on the futures day that opens at 18:00 New York time.
Can I test a prop firm challenge strategy?
Yes, with the challenge's rules written into the script: the account size, the contracts, the daily loss limit and the drawdown. The prop firm challenge page shows how, and the tester runs it on NQ or MNQ with per-contract costs.
Is a backtest here a prediction?
No. It is what the script's rules would have done on past CME data with costs charged. Live fills, news and your own execution differ, so read it as a test of the rules, not a forecast.
NQ, MNQ and the Nasdaq-100 futures are CME Group contracts; NQ1! is TradingView's name for the continuous contract. Alpha Charts is software for testing trading scripts, is not affiliated with CME Group or TradingView and gives no investment advice. A backtest shows what rules would have done on past data, not what they will do.