Best Stock Market Simulator Apps (2024 Comparison)

A good stock trading simulator allows you to dip your toes in investing & trading without risking a penny. Unlike regular paper trading accounts, stock market simulator apps are fun to use and can offer many additional benefits like valuable educational content, competition with other traders, and a more user-friendly experience.

Since 2015, we have tested over 150 trading simulator apps and games to help you choose the best one according to your skills and investing goals. We are constantly updating this list of apps with the latest contenders so you can be sure to get up-to-date information.

Top 11 Stock Market Simulator Games in 2024

1. Three Investeers – iOS | Android
2. Investopedia Simulator – Web
3. Best Brokers Simulator – iOS | Android
4. Invstr – iOS | Android
5. Thinkorswim by TD Ameritrade – Web
6. Line Century Simulator – iOS
7. Stock Trainer – Android
8. HowTheMarketWorks – Web
9. Ninja Trader – Web
10. TradeStation – Web version
11. Invest Stock Market Simulator – iOS

What is the best stock market simulator?

The comparison is based on 10 key factors: trading functionality, stock research, real-time price delays, risk management, asset choice, educational value, contest & fun, indicators, portfolio management, and simulator's price.

The best stock market simulator according to the 10-factor analysis is Three Investeers Stock Market Game. It doesn't have the best stock research tools, but its live chart, interactive trading school and addictive leaderboard contests make its user experience stand out from the others.

The Investopedia simulator is the most famous of its genre. However, their simulator platform is quite old and has not been updated for many years. As a result, despite the decent features, the whole user experience feels outdated.

The Best Brokers Simulator is also a solid time-proven app, and it shares similar pros and cons with the Investopedia simulator.

Trading Simulator Functionality

Do you know what's at the heart of every investment and trading platform?

It's the charting engine and the trading screen.

If you're looking for the most intuitive and entertaining experience, Three Investeers might be the best one. Their charting tool is by far better for analyzing the intraday market movements thanks to the candlestick charts and live prices.

For example, with the Investopedia and Best Brokers simulators, you have to go back and forth to open a new asset chart, but with Three Investeers, your favorite assets are easily available in the scrollable header bar, which is similar to Instagram's stories header.

However, if you're not so much into day trading but more interested in long-term investing, then you might consider testing out the Investopedia or Best Brokers apps, as their charts also support monthly and yearly timeframes.

Best Stock Screener Tools

If you're considering buying shares in a company, you need to analyze its financial data like price-earnings ratio, sales growth, profit margin, etc.

None of these trading simulators have proper stock screener functionality built in.

Investopedia and Best Brokers apps have some basic fundamental data for stocks, but even they are barely scratching the surface of what's needed for proper analysis.

Three Investeers simulator does not have any fundamental data about the stocks. It has a Top Gainers and Top Losers filter, which is handy for finding day trading profit opportunities, but not for value investing.

So unless you have a subscription to the Bloomberg Terminal (which costs $2,000/mo), it's much more convenient to do the analysis in a dedicated stock screener and the trading (or simulated trading) in a trading app.

One of the best free stock screeners is Finviz, where you can filter stocks with the most potential.

Bottom line: For serious analysis, you need specialized stock screeners.

Trade Status and Immersiveness

It's good to see where exactly you have entered a trade on the chart and how it progresses.

Not seeing your trades on the chart is like flying a plane in the clouds without radar – it's mundane and dangerous.

Even for longer-term trading, you want to know if you are going with or against the market trend.

The Three Investeers paper trading game is one of the rare simulators that allows you to see your trades on a snappy interactive chart. You can see exactly where you entered and analyze the price action to see if there are any chart patterns around your trade or not.

With the two other simulators, you can only see your trades as lines of text in a static table.

Which app is best for live trading?

To practice live trading, you need a trading simulator with real time prices.

The best trading app for live trading and day trading is the Three Investeers simulator as their prices are updated up to multiple times per second.

Other simulators, in comparison, feel as if they're off-line – the prices don't move, and the charts look frozen.

If you're more interested in practicing long-term investing, you can get by with a simulator that is updated just once every 15 minutes. However, having real-time prices is always better.

For example, seeing how Tesla stock or Oil reacts in real time to an announcement from Elon Musk will give you a better feel for how the market works. Even more important is to see how prices react in real time to the central banks' announcements.

24/7 Trading Availability

If your trading simulator offers only stocks, you will have a short daily window to practice trading.

You'll come home from work, open your simulator and stumble on a message like this: "Market is closed. It opens in 8 hours and 17 minutes"

If you want to trade all day long without being bound to the short stock market hours, the best option is the Three Investeers app. It has the widest selection of different assets that allow you to trade day and night, even during the weekends.

Best App for Learning to Trade

A trading simulator alone is not enough to learn investing or trading. A simulator can be useful to see how to place orders and how the basics of the market and risk management work. But there's much more to learn if you want to be successful.

Add the fact that trading with fake money can create a false illusion of your skills, and you quickly understand that you need heaps of additional education on top of being good with a simulator.

Educational Features Comparison

• Three Investeers: The best educational value with interactive trading school, illustrated lessons from basics to advanced strategies, and short quizzes. PRO plan required for full access.
• Investopedia: Good quality articles but requires switching between app and website. High-quality content but fragmented experience.
• Best Brokers: Limited educational content with just 4 basic videos.

Portfolio Management Features

To learn what's working and make necessary adjustments to your strategy, you need to have a good portfolio overview. A good portfolio screen will allow you to see all your stats at a glance and show you how you are doing currently and over different time horizons – today, this month, year to date, and all time.

All of the top 3 simulators have most of the necessary info available. The Three Investeers app unfortunately doesn't allow you to switch time frames of your portfolio. The other two allow this, but they lack the live updating.

As a result, on their apps, you'll get your performance history updated only once every other minute or after the market closure, which is quite weak.

Gamification and Fun Factor

A regular paper trading account will not keep you up at night. It will also not make you hyped and anxious in the morning before the markets open.

Why? Because classical paper trading platforms don't have any interactivity. You trade fake money and compete against yourself. It quickly becomes boring.

On the other hand, trading simulator games have built-in gamification elements to boost users' motivation and make the learning process more enjoyable.

All of the TOP3 simulators have a leaderboard, but the Three Investeers have the most interesting and active one. They have weekly leaderboards with a count-down timer where the users are judged by their weekly performance. As a result, even the newest members can get to the first spots, as it's not possible for the old users to occupy the top places simply due to their accumulated game money.

From time to time, the Three Investeers also award real money prizes for the three best weekly traders.

Technical Analysis Tools

If you're serious about learning to trade, you must master technical analysis and at least a few of the most popular technical indicators.

Technical analysis is not a magic wand that will make you rich, but it helps to find trades with an increased probability of success. Also, it's crucial for risk management.

The only one of these apps that offers a decent set of technical analysis tools is the Three Investeers simulator. In addition to the basic line chart, they also have candlestick charts which are the bread and butter of technical analysis. As to the indicators they have moving averages, MACD, Relative Strength Index, Bollinger bands, and 60+ other indicators. Unfortunately, they don't yet have the Volume indicator and Fibonacci, which are very popular among traders.

Risk Management Features

If there is a holy grail in trading, it's risk management. It might sound strange, but traders with effective risk management strategies can still make money even if they lose more trades than they win.

"The key to superperformance is losing the least amount when you're wrong" - Mark Minervini

As a trader, you'll inevitably have many losing positions. But if you prepare for losses – and stick to your risk management plan – they shouldn't restrict your long-term success.

The Three Investeers app lets you set stop loss and target profit orders for every trade you open. That allows you to avoid unnecessary losses and learn the fundaments of risk management (especially if you couple the practice with the Risk Management chapter from their trading school).

Free Trading Practice Options

Three Investeers Trading Simulator, Investopedia Simulator, and Best Brokers Simulator all allow you to practice trading for free.

If you want extra game money, full access to school or to remove the ads, you can buy the optional upgrade packages.

Unfortunately, the Investopedia simulator is filled with ads, and there is no way to turn them off, as they don't offer a pro version.

Conclusion

It's easy to get confused with the wide choice of simulators.

As we can conclude from this comparison, the Investopedia Simulator is the most popular one not because it's the best one but rather because they have the top positions in Google thanks to the high domain rating of their primary website.

Three Investeers simulator has raised the bar for trading simulators, and the older leaders have a lot of work to catch up.

Three Investeers is clearly the best stock market simulator app in the market right now.