Tradovate pricing: the plan is an arithmetic problem, and the commissions are NinjaTrader's to the cent
Three plans, one platform. The break-even sits at 330 contract sides a month on standard futures and 1,980 on nano. The published schedule is identical to NinjaTrader's, which changes what the choice between them is actually about.
Tradovate sells one platform on three plans. The plans do not differ in features; the NinjaTrader desktop, web and mobile apps come with all of them. They differ in what you pay per contract and what you pay per month, which makes choosing between them a calculation rather than a preference.
Here are the published numbers, re-read on 28 August 2026 and unchanged since 13 August.
| Plan | Micros | Standard | Nano & Event | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0.39 | $1.29 | $0.20 | none |
| Monthly | $0.29 | $0.99 | $0.15 | $99 per month |
| Lifetime | $0.09 | $0.59 | $0.05 | $1,499 once, or 4 × $499 |
All figures are commission per side. Exchange, clearing and NFA fees sit on top of every plan and are not Tradovate’s to set.
The schedule is NinjaTrader’s, to the cent
Put this table beside NinjaTrader’s and every number matches: the same $0.39, $0.29 and $0.09 on micros, the same $1.29, $0.99 and $0.59 on standard contracts, the same $99 a month and the same $1,499 lifetime licence.
That is not a coincidence worth speculating about, and Tradovate’s own page names the relationship anyway by bundling the NinjaTrader apps into every plan. What matters is the consequence: anyone comparing these two on price is comparing nothing. The commission question is settled identically at both, and the choice comes down to platform, execution and support, none of which appear on a pricing page and none of which we have tested.
It also means the arithmetic below transfers. Work out your break-even once and it holds at either firm.
There is a practical corollary for anyone already trading at one of them. Switching to the other saves nothing per contract at any volume, on any contract type, on any plan. Whatever the reason to move might be, it is not the commission, and a lifetime licence bought at one of them is not a reason to stay at that one either until you have checked whether it carries across, which is a question for their support rather than for a pricing page.
Where each plan stops being the cheapest
The monthly plan saves $0.30 per side on standard contracts against the free plan. To cover $99 you need 330 sides a month, which is 165 round turns, or roughly eight round turns a day on a twenty-day trading month.
The saving shrinks as the contract does, and the required volume grows with it:
| Contract | Saving per side | Sides to cover $99 | Round turns a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $0.30 | 330 | ≈ 8 |
| Micros | $0.10 | 990 | ≈ 25 |
| Nano & Event | $0.05 | 1,980 | ≈ 50 |
Most people trading micros do not do 25 round turns a day, and almost nobody does fifty. For them the free plan is the cheaper one, and the paid plan is a subscription to a saving they never collect. The smaller the contract you trade, the less the paid plan is for you, which is the reverse of how cheap contracts are usually marketed.
The lifetime plan is a bet on duration, not volume
At $1,499, the lifetime plan saves $0.70 per side on standard contracts against the free plan, covering itself at 2,141 sides. Measured against the monthly plan instead, it looks very different: at 330 sides a month you save $132 in commission and stop paying $99, so $231 a month, and the licence repays in six and a half months.
That is the fastest payback on any lifetime licence we have priced. Quantower’s takes 2.87 years against its annual rate and ATAS takes 3.3 to 4.2 years. The difference is structural: those two sell a subscription you stop paying, while this one also cuts a per-trade cost that scales with how much you trade.
The number that decides it is still duration. The plan is worth it if you are trading futures in two years and dead money if you stop in four months, and how long people last in this market is a real question rather than a rhetorical one. The figures we could find are in prop firm pass rates.
The four-instalment option at $499 does not change the arithmetic, only the cash flow.
The day trading margins are calibrated to ten points
The pricing page publishes a full intraday margin ladder, and it repays reading closely:
| Contract | Day trading margin |
|---|---|
| Nano | $10 |
| Smalls | $25 |
| Micro | $50 |
| Standard futures | $500 |
These are broker-set intraday margins, far below the exchange’s overnight requirement, and they are what lets a small account hold a futures position at all.
Now convert two of them into market movement. A Micro E-mini S&P contract is $5 per index point, so a $50 margin is ten index points. A standard E-mini is $50 per point, so a $500 margin is also ten index points. The ladder is not scaled to contract size; it is scaled so that every rung covers the same distance of market.
That is worth knowing because it tells you what the margin is not. It is not a measure of risk, and it is not a stop. It is roughly ten points of room before the position is no longer covered, on a contract where ten points is an ordinary morning. A lower margin does not reduce tick value; it only reduces how much of a move you can survive.
What is not in the plan price
Exchange, clearing and NFA fees. Tradovate states these apply on every plan. They are set by the exchanges and the regulator rather than the broker, and they attach per contract. For anyone comparing brokers these are the same everywhere and are not a differentiator; for anyone budgeting, they are a line item that does not appear in the table above.
Market data. The page offers top-of-book data with an approved and funded account, which is level one. Depth of market is a separate exchange subscription at every venue, and professional classification multiplies it. We set out the same point for Sierra Chart, where the platform fee turned out to be the smaller half of the monthly total.
The two-minute exercise before you subscribe
Count your round turns in a typical month and double them to get sides.
Multiply by the per-side difference between the plans you are choosing between: $0.30 on standard, $0.10 on micros, $0.05 on nano.
If the answer is below $99, the free plan is your plan, and no feature list changes that, because the feature lists are identical.
If you are well above it and expect to be trading in two years, price the lifetime licence against the monthly plan rather than against the free one. That is the comparison that makes it repay in months instead of years.
What we checked, and what we didn’t
Every commission and margin figure comes from Tradovate’s published pricing page, read on 28 August 2026 and compared against our reading of 13 August, with no change. The break-even volumes, the payback periods and the ten-point conversion are our arithmetic on those figures and on CME’s published contract specifications.
We have not opened a Tradovate account, traded through it, or verified fills, platform uptime or support, so nothing here compares this firm to NinjaTrader on anything except price, where they are identical.
Sources
- Tradovate: pricing and plans
- CME Group: Micro E-mini S&P 500 contract specifications
- Sierra Chart: service packages and pricing