Forex Tester is the veteran of this category, and the comparison starts with the thing most vendor pages bury: you buy it once and own it. As of July 2026 the online version sells Starter for €119 and Pro for €209 as lifetime licences (regular prices €169 and €299), all future updates included. Over any horizon longer than about six months, that is simply cheaper than renting Secuora at $29/month — and no amount of feature copy changes that arithmetic.
Secuora is a subscription web app that comes at backtesting from a different angle: the replay is one part of a loop that also contains a journal for your live trades, an AI backtester that compiles plain-English rules, and a quant terminal. Forex Tester replays the market better and cheaper over time; Secuora surrounds the replay with the rest of the review process. Here is the honest breakdown.
Secuora vs Forex Tester at a glance
| Feature | Secuora | Forex Tester |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Subscription — Pro $29/mo, or $23/mo billed yearly | One-time lifetime licence — future updates included |
| Price | $29/mo ($276/yr billed yearly) | Online: Starter €119, Pro €209 lifetime (July 2026 sale; regular €169 / €299). Desktop sold separately |
| Cost after 2 years | ≈ $552 billed yearly | €209 once — and €0 every year after |
| Free to try | 3-day free trial of the full product (card required), plus a no-signup live demo | Free demo, no credit card; 30-day money-back guarantee |
| Install | None — browser, any OS | Online version in browser; desktop version is a Windows install |
| Data granularity | 1-minute candles plus a derived 30-second view | Tick-level data, up to 23 years of history (Starter) |
| Symbols | Crypto, forex, stocks, indices, futures, metals | 80 symbols (Starter); 283 symbols incl. expanded crypto and futures (Pro) |
| Prop-firm practice | Challenge simulator — targets, daily loss and max drawdown on historical data | Prop firm challenge training (Pro tier) |
| Live-trade journal | Yes — emotions, rules, confluences, screenshots, P&L calendar for your real trades | Trading history import + analytics (Pro tier); built around the simulator, not a live journal |
| Strategy automation | AI backtester — plain-English strategy compiled to ~27 deterministic primitives, no coding | Custom indicators and trading robots (Pro tier) — coding required |
| Edge / overfitting checks | Edge detector — probabilistic + deflated Sharpe, Monte Carlo p-value, minimum track record length, concentration and tail checks, penalised by how many variations you searched | Blind testing mode (Pro) guards against hindsight bias; no statistical overfitting tests advertised |
| Broker auto-import | ✗ | ✗ |
| Daily market data | Quant terminal — live prices, funding, positioning, news flow (Pro) | ✗ |
| Community | Community leaderboard | ✗ |
| Mobile | Responsive web app (no native app) | Desktop-first; no native mobile app |
Forex Tester facts verified against forextester.com, July 17, 2026, during an advertised July sale — the €119/€209 prices are promotional and the regular prices are €169/€299. Desktop licence pricing is quoted separately by the vendor and independent reviews place it around $149–$349. Prices in EUR as the vendor lists them.
Where Forex Tester is genuinely stronger
The price, over time. This is not close, and it deserves the first word. A €209 lifetime Pro licence costs less than nine months of Secuora Pro, and then it costs nothing for the rest of your life. If backtesting is all you want, and you plan to keep doing it for years, Forex Tester is the rational purchase and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.
Data depth. Tick-level data with up to 23 years of history is meaningfully deeper than Secuora’s 1-minute candles and 30-second derived view. If you are testing scalping strategies where the path inside a one-minute candle decides whether your stop was hit before your target, tick data is not a luxury — it is the difference between a valid test and a fictional one. Secuora cannot answer that question at its current granularity, and any Secuora backtest of a sub-minute strategy should be read with that caveat.
Prop-firm challenge training ships on Forex Tester Pro too, so our challenge simulator is not the unique feature it is against most rivals here. Their Pro tier also includes an Exit Optimizer, blind testing mode, and custom robots for people who can code.
Where Secuora is stronger
It is a loop, not a simulator. Forex Tester is excellent at replaying the market; it is not where you journal Tuesday’s live loss with a screenshot and an honest note about why you moved your stop. Secuora runs the whole review cycle in one place: replay trades log themselves with session stats, live trades get journaled with emotions, rules and confluences, and the analytics read across both. Forex Tester Pro can import trading history, but the product is organised around the sim.
No install, no Windows. Secuora runs in a browser on any machine — Mac, Linux, a locked-down work laptop, a Chromebook. Forex Tester’s desktop product is a Windows install, and while the online version removed that barrier, the ecosystem is still desktop-first.
Strategy testing without code. Forex Tester’s automation path runs through custom indicators and robots — real power, but you need to program them. Secuora’s AI backtester takes a strategy in plain English ("long when price sweeps the prior day low then forms a 5-minute FVG"), compiles it to roughly 27 deterministic primitives, and runs it on a deterministic engine. The AI writes the rules, never the numbers.
The daily surface. Secuora’s quant terminal (live prices, funding, positioning, sentiment and tagged news flow) and the community leaderboard have no Forex Tester equivalent — it is a training tool you open to practise, not a tool you open every morning.
A note on what backtesting actually buys you
Whichever you pick, keep expectations calibrated. Secuora’s published research at /strategy ran 40-plus popular recipes — ICT silver bullet, FVG entries, opening-range and session breakouts, EMA crosses, RSI mean reversion — on a year of BTC and ETH data through the same engine that powers the in-app AI backtester. After modest commissions, every single one finished underwater, several down more than 90%, mostly bled out by trading costs on high-frequency rules.
That is not an argument against backtesting. It is the argument for it: the cheapest place to find out a strategy does not work is a simulator, not a funded account. Both of these products are worth their price if they stop you deploying one bad idea.
Choose Secuora if you…
- want the journal, the backtester and the analytics to be one product
- work on a Mac, Linux or a machine you cannot install software on
- want to test strategies in plain English instead of coding robots
- journal live trades as well as simulated ones
- prefer a small monthly bill and a 3-day trial to a lifetime purchase decision
Choose Forex Tester if you…
- want to pay once and own your backtester forever — it is cheaper than us after ~6 months
- test scalping strategies that need genuine tick-level data
- need 20+ years of history for long-horizon testing
- can code your own indicators and robots and want to backtest them
- want a dedicated training simulator and already journal elsewhere
Frequently asked questions
Is Secuora a good Forex Tester alternative?
It depends what you are replacing. If you want a browser-based replay plus a live-trade journal, an AI backtester and analytics in one subscription, yes. If you want a pure backtesting simulator with tick data and no recurring bill, Forex Tester is the better tool — it is bought once (€119–€209 lifetime as of July 2026), and Secuora has neither tick data nor a lifetime option.
Which is cheaper, Secuora or Forex Tester?
Forex Tester, over any meaningful horizon. Its online licences are one-time purchases — €119 Starter and €209 Pro during the July 2026 sale (regular €169/€299), updates included. Secuora Pro is $29/month, or $23/month billed yearly ($276/year). Forex Tester Pro costs less than nine months of Secuora and then nothing forever. Secuora is cheaper only in month one, where a 3-day free trial and a no-signup demo cost you nothing at all.
Does Forex Tester have a trading journal?
Not in the sense Secuora does. Forex Tester Pro imports trading history and produces analytics on it, but the product is built around the simulator. Secuora journals live trades directly — emotions, rules broken, confluences, screenshots and a P&L calendar — and logs every replay trade automatically, so simulated and real trades sit in the same analytics.
Is Forex Tester only for forex?
No, despite the name. As of July 2026 the online Starter tier covers 80 symbols across forex, stocks, indices, ETFs and commodities, and Pro expands that to 283 symbols including broader crypto and futures. Secuora replays crypto, forex, stocks, indices, futures and metals in its single Pro tier.
Does Secuora have tick data like Forex Tester?
No, and this is our honest gap. Secuora replays 1-minute candles with a derived 30-second view; Forex Tester offers tick-level data with up to 23 years of history. For strategies where intra-candle path matters — tight scalps where you need to know whether the stop or the target was hit first — Forex Tester will give you a more faithful test.
Do both simulate prop-firm challenges?
Yes, which makes this one of the few rivals where our challenge simulator is not a differentiator. Forex Tester includes prop firm challenge training on its Pro tier; Secuora’s challenge mode simulates account size, profit target, daily loss limit and max drawdown inside the replay. The difference is what surrounds it: Secuora then journals the attempt alongside your live trading.