Trade Ideas vs TC2000: Real-Time Discovery and Holly, or Chart-First Scanning

Trade Ideas vs TC2000, side by side

Every TC2000 detail below comes from tc2000.com, checked in October 2026. Trade Ideas details come from our own pricing page and product pages.

Real-time U.S. stock data in TC2000 comes from Nasdaq Basic, per its pricing page, with a consolidated tape available as a $14.99/mo add-on.

Chart-first scanning vs event-first discovery

TC2000 starts with a picture. Its home page calls the condition wizard "the heart and soul of TC2000": you pick an indicator, the wizard walks you through a condition, and EasyScan tests your list against it. You can write formulas too, and "flex" conditions that unfold over time. The output is a list of stocks that currently match, which you then read chart by chart. For swing traders and anyone who plans the next day after the close, that is a calm, powerful way to work.

Trade Ideas starts with an event. The servers watch every U.S. stock as trades print, and when one does what your scan describes, such as a new high, a cross above VWAP or a burst of relative volume, it shows up in your Streaming Alerts window. You do not run the scan again. Next to it, a Top List updates every 15 seconds with a ranked lineup of every stock that meets your filters, so you see both what just happened and who qualifies.

That is the honest split. TC2000 answers "which stocks on my list match my condition?" Trade Ideas answers "what is happening in the whole market, right now, that fits my setup?" Both are useful questions. They are not the same question, and the second is the one that costs money when you answer it late.

In practice, many conditions a TC2000 user draws on a chart exist in Trade Ideas as alerts that fire across all stocks: a 15-minute 20/200 SMA cross up, a 15-minute MACD crossing below zero, a Fibonacci 38% sell signal, or an opening range breakout or breakdown at 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes such as the 60-minute breakout. Altogether our help pages describe 310 alerts and 249 filters. Any alert can be combined with any filters, each with a minimum and maximum, and 191 alerts carry their own setting, such as the pattern grade on candle alerts. One alert and three filters allow 788,058,440 pairings, which is why we call the combinations effectively unlimited.

Who TC2000 is better for

• Chart-centered traders. TC2000 has been building charting software for more than two decades. Drawing tools, multi-monitor layouts, sector drill-downs and fundamentals on the chart are all there.
• Swing traders and end-of-day planners. If you build a watchlist in the evening and trade it over days or weeks, a condition scan on a list is all you need, and Basic at $24.99/mo covers it.
• Options traders who chart. Options charting with streaming bid and ask, intrinsic and time value plots, and shaded profit and loss zones are real strengths.
• Mac users. TC2000 runs on Mac and web. TI Pro runs on Windows. On a Mac, the browser-based Trade Ideas web Dashboard needs no install and covers stock details and news, TreeMaps, Races, Top Lists, Market Pulse and charting with Picture in Picture; Streaming Alerts and Holly need TI Pro.
• Budget-first buyers. Even Premium+ at $99.99/mo is below TI Standard's monthly price.

What Trade Ideas adds that TC2000 doesn't list

Holly, the Trade Ideas AI

Holly runs OddsMaker-style testing behind the scenes every night and only sends signals for strategies that pass. You see each signal as it fires on the Channel Bar, practice it in simulated trading, or send the order to your broker. Holly is on TI Premium.

OddsMaker: see how a setup has done before you use it

TC2000's history columns let you look back at what a scan or sort showed. OddsMaker goes a step further. Pick a Streaming Alert or a set of Top List filters. Choose your entry time and exit: a stop, a target, a timed hold or a time of day. Next, OddsMaker plays back actual past events for all stocks. You get the trades, the win rate and the profit factor, so you know whether the idea held up before you put money on it.

Past results, including backtests, don't guarantee future results.

Money Machine and custom scripting

Money Machine trades off your own Top Lists and Streaming Alerts, gives each stock a stop and target sized to its volatility, and follows your rules on retrying or reversing. If you like TC2000's Personal Criteria Formulas, the Formula Editor is the Trade Ideas equivalent: script a custom filter from existing data fields, then test it in OddsMaker.

Unusual options activity next to the stock scan

Filters such as Options Volume Today (%) let you add "trading far more option contracts than usual" to any stock scan.

What "real time" means on each

On TC2000, Basic gives you real-time streaming watchlists and charts, but scanning and sorting in real time is a Premium feature, and filters that keep themselves up to date are on Premium+. Its streaming scans run on TC2000's servers, five at a time by default. On Trade Ideas, the alert engine and Top Lists run on our servers for every subscriber, on live market data, so a stock reaches you while the setup is happening rather than on the next refresh.

If your trading is built on end-of-day data and weekly charts, that sentence describes you, and TC2000 Basic may be all you need.

A use-both workflow many traders settle on

• After the close, in TC2000: chart the day, draw your levels and build conditions for the swing names you are watching.
• Before the open, in Trade Ideas: load a Top List for gaps, premarket volume and float, and check which setups OddsMaker says have held up lately.
• During the session, in Trade Ideas: let Streaming Alerts and Holly surface new names, and use External Linking in TI Pro to send each symbol you click to your charting window.
• Execution: trade wherever you already do, or route orders from TI Pro to a connected broker. See the brokers page.

What each costs

TC2000's annual billing brings the effective monthly rate to $20.82, $41.65 and $83.32. Add-ons include real-time options ($9.99/mo), real-time U.S. indexes ($9.99/mo) and a consolidated tape ($14.99/mo). Holly, OddsMaker and Auto Trading need TI Premium. Below that, TI Standard already has real-time Streaming Alerts, Top Lists, paper trading, in-app trading and the Holly AI Assistant.

TC2000's plans run lower. The higher Trade Ideas price funds an in-house database, more than two decades in the making, under Streaming Alerts able to fire on any trade, Top Lists on a 15-second cycle and 310 alerts you can pair with any of 249 filters.

Which one fits you

Pick TC2000 if your edge lives on the chart, you plan trades after the close, and price matters most. Pick Trade Ideas if you need the market to tell you when a setup happens, want to test a setup in OddsMaker before trading it, and want Holly's signals alongside your own scans.Holly AI Signals and OddsMaker are on TI Premium, and each signal carries an entry, a stop and a target. Your own scans can come from the AI Assistant, from a no-code menu of 310 alerts and 249 filters, or from a custom filter you write in the Formula Editor and test in OddsMaker. Plenty of traders keep both. New to trading? Trade Ideas gives you the premium experience without a setup step. Ready-made Channel Bar channels and the AI Assistant in every TI Pro plan, plus the free Trading Room, are there from your first session. See Trade Ideas for beginners. Comparing other scanners too? See the best stock scanners for day trading or the full list of Trade Ideas alternatives.For the order these pieces run in, from incoming data to optimization to Holly'.

How we checked

• From TC2000 itself. Plan prices and the five-streaming-scan footnote come from the TC2000 pricing page and home page.
• Footnotes count. Where TC2000 qualifies a feature in small print, we carried that qualifier over.

Prices checked Oct 2026. Sources: tc2000.com/pricing; tc2000.com. Trade Ideas: trade-ideas.com/pricing.

Trade Ideas plans on our pricing page: TI Standard, $127 a month or $1,068 a year with annual billing (roughly $89 a month); TI Premium, $254 a month or $2,136 a year (roughly $178 a month), which is the plan with Holly AI Signals, OddsMaker backtesting and Auto Trading. Check both sites for current prices before you decide.

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