As a swing trader I don't need realtime. I use the charting program for scanning for set-ups on a daily chart. The program allows me to automatically scan for set-ups, populates watchlists and sends an email with results at the end of the trading day. For the amount I use it a buck a day seems reasonable. I haven't looked at other programs as I'm very comfortable with this one, having used it for decades.
No contest. Tradingview is free and miles ahead of everybody imo. Brokers are starting to use it over their proprietary platforms for a reason.
As I mentioned a few times already elsewhere, TV is great when it comes to charts but otherwise useless for trade executions. You can't automate anything. Everything is more or less done manually. Click "buy" or "sell" on the chart, then manually add 2 stops for OTO. In this day and age of AI, that's just crap.
Thought we were talking charts... I use ibkr who have now integrated tradingview charts so there's your execution. Pretty sure they have a pretty extensive automated trading features...
I don't recall. It was my first real time software. There was nothing wrong with it so likely data cost or availablity of something elsewhere that I thought I'd like better. Software and data packages change sometimes. I quit Meta Stock after years of using it... after having paid ~$1,600 for the software... primarily because Reuters bought Equis (MS original maker) and elimated data sources except Reuter's own (Esignal data at that time was ~$150/mo)... Reuters data was $540/mo, so I looked elsewhere.
I don't have any experience with IBD I tried one time but IBD's display wouldn't run on my secondary monitor(s). As far as charting goes... I'm KISS on that too, so any charting software that displays and handles charts the way you like plus has the tools you like to use would be OK. I was sent a sample of Trading View charts... would be OK if you like them and their service is apparently a little cheaper than Stockcharts.
Hence why I left MC years ago. But at the same time, MC does allow you to automate bracket orders among many others. TV, on the other hand, is simply an abomination. I mean, just how hard is it to program these bracket orders ahead of time? Why force me to manually place separate orders for stop and target with every damn trade?