TradeLocker built its whole terminal around TradingView's charts. Most other trading platforms, MetaTrader 4 and 5, cTrader and eTrader among them, built their own charting engine instead and never connected to TradingView at all. Neither approach is wrong, but they trade off different things: a bigger indicator library and a familiar interface against a chart that talks directly to the same server that holds the account, the position and the order book.
We build eTrader, with native charts, so this is not a neutral question for us. What follows is drawn from what TradingView, MetaQuotes, Spotware and TradeLocker publish about their own charting, so a firm can weigh the trade-off itself.
What "TradingView charts" actually means
TradingView is a charting platform and trading community with its own scripting language, Pine Script. It is not, by its own description, a platform a firm runs its trading book on. Brokers connect to it two ways: a widget or full chart embedded on their own site or app, which TradingView calls its Charting Library and Trading Platform products, or a full swap of the terminal's charting engine for TradingView's, which is what TradeLocker did. In both cases the order is still placed and held by the broker's own trading server. TradingView's chart is a window onto the market, not the ledger.
A native chart, on MetaTrader, cTrader or eTrader, is built by the platform vendor and wired directly into the same server that holds positions, orders and account state. There is no handoff between a charting product and a trading product because they are the same product.
The short version
| TradingView | MetaTrader 5 (native) | cTrader (native) | eTrader (native) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built-in indicators | 400+, per TradingView's own features page | 38, per MetaTrader 5's own help pages | Grouped as trend, oscillator, volatility, volume and other; no published total count | Built-in set including RSI, MACD and Ichimoku, plus custom ones through eTrader Code |
| Chart types | 21, from candles to Renko, Kagi and point and figure | 3: bars, candlesticks, line | Standard candle, bar and line charts through the cTrader and cAlgo apps | Six: candles, Heikin-Ashi, bars, line, area and more |
| Custom scripting | Pine Script, TradingView's own language | MQL5 | C# through cTrader Algo | Tide, eTrader's own language, through eTrader Code |
| Where the order lives | With whichever broker or platform is connected; not TradingView itself | MetaTrader 5 | cTrader | eTrader |
What TradingView brings to a chart
TradingView's own features page lists more than 400 built-in indicators and strategies, over 100,000 public indicators published by its community, more than 110 drawing tools and 21 chart types running from ordinary candles to Renko, Kagi, point and figure and line break. Pine Script is the scripting language behind the custom ones, described by TradingView as having thousands of built-in functions for indicators and strategies. That scale is the real draw: a trader who already has a library of TradingView indicators, alerts and saved layouts keeps all of it on a platform that embeds TradingView's chart, which is exactly the case TradeLocker makes for its own terminal.
TradingView has also been adding features beyond charting itself. In 2026 it introduced an AI Chart Copilot in public beta, described on its own blog as an assistant that lives in the browser's side panel, reads the indicators already on the chart and can create or manage alerts on request. That is a TradingView feature, running on top of whatever chart is open, not something that changes what a broker's own execution platform does with an order.
What a native chart brings instead
MetaTrader 5's own documentation lists 38 built-in technical indicators, 44 analytical objects including Fibonacci and Gann tools, 21 timeframes and support for up to 100 open charts at once, all inside the same terminal that places the order. cTrader's help centre groups its built-in set into trend, oscillator, volatility, volume and other categories, with EMA, RSI, SMA, MACD and Bollinger Bands listed as the ones traders use most, and its cTrader Algo product lets traders write both custom indicators and cBots in C#. Neither platform states a total indicator count that beats TradingView's, and neither tries to. The pitch is different: a chart, an order ticket and an account balance updating from a single connection with no third-party service in the path.
eTrader's charts follow the same native model. Six chart types, seven timeframes plus tick charts, market depth from the firm's own liquidity provider, one to four charts per screen with a detachable window on Mac and the web, and built-in indicators including RSI, MACD and Ichimoku. A trader also drags stop-loss, take-profit and pending-order lines straight on the chart, and the same chart data backtests robots written in eTrader Code or feeds the news check and rule logic an AI Trader built in eTrader AI runs against.
The middle path: embedding TradingView inside a native platform
TradeLocker's own materials describe its terminal as built around TradingView's charts and a risk calculator that sizes a position from a set amount or percent of risk, a combination we compare more broadly in TradingView vs MetaTrader. It is a real hybrid: the order still goes through TradeLocker's own trading server, but the chart a trader looks at, draws on and sets alerts from is TradingView's. TradeLocker itself says its own algo tooling is newer and still growing next to MetaTrader and cTrader, so the appeal for a discretionary trader familiar with TradingView is mostly in the charting, not in automation.
Which one actually matters for a broker or prop firm
For a firm choosing a platform to license, the charting engine is rarely the deciding factor on its own. What it changes is onboarding: clients who already use TradingView for research recognise a TradeLocker chart on day one, while clients moving from MetaTrader or cTrader recognise those platforms' own layouts instead. What it does not change is where the account, the risk limits and the dealing desk live, and that is decided by the trading platform underneath the chart, not by the chart itself.
A firm building on eTrader gets one fewer moving part to test: the chart, the order ticket, the price feed and the account are one connection, with no separate charting vendor to keep in sync during an outage or a version update. We go into eTrader's own case against TradingView specifically in eTrader vs TradingView.
"TradingView's library is genuinely larger than ours. What we give a firm instead is a chart, an order and an account balance that never leave our own servers."
— The SGHK Team
Key Takeaways
- TradingView is a charting platform and community, not a place a firm runs its trading book, by its own description.
- TradingView's own features page lists 400+ built-in indicators and 21 chart types; MetaTrader 5's own help pages list 38 indicators and 3 chart types.
- TradeLocker embeds TradingView's charts directly in its own terminal, a hybrid between the two approaches.
- eTrader, MetaTrader and cTrader all use native charts wired directly into the same server that holds the account and the order.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does eTrader use TradingView charts?
No. eTrader's charts are native, built by SGHK and wired directly into the same eTrader Broker server that holds the account and the order. Traders get six chart types, seven timeframes plus tick charts, market depth and built-in indicators such as RSI, MACD and Ichimoku, with custom indicators written in eTrader Code.
Is TradingView a trading platform on its own?
No, by its own description. TradingView is a charting platform and trading community with Pine Script for indicators and strategies. Brokers integrate with it so clients can view or trade from TradingView charts, but the account and the order sit with whichever platform the broker actually runs.
Which platform has more built-in indicators, TradingView or MetaTrader?
TradingView's own features page states more than 400 built-in indicators and strategies plus over 100,000 published by its community. MetaTrader 5's own help documentation lists 38 built-in indicators. Both platforms also support custom indicators, in Pine Script and MQL5 respectively.
Does TradeLocker only work with TradingView charts?
TradeLocker's own materials describe its terminal as built around TradingView's charts and a built-in risk calculator, while the order itself is still placed and held on TradeLocker's own trading server. TradeLocker also states that its algorithmic trading tools are newer than MetaTrader's and cTrader's and are still growing.
Can our CRM support a platform with native charts and one that uses TradingView's?
Yes. SGHK's Broker CRM and Prop Firm CRM connect to eTrader, MetaTrader, cTrader, DXtrade, Match-Trader and TradeLocker, so a firm can run more than one charting approach under one CRM. Book a demo to see eTrader's native charts on a live feed.
About SGHK
SGHK is a FinTech company that designs and builds its own software for the trading industry: the eTrader trading platform, Launch your Broker and Launch your Prop Firm. Every product is written, hosted and supported in-house and licensed to trading firms, with the CRMs branded to them, all hosted by us in the cloud, managed by each firm and built to scale across clustered servers as our clients grow. Everything is encrypted, and each firm is the only one with access to its data and its clients' data.