Buyer's guide
Free copiers exist. Here is where the cost reappears.
There are genuinely free trade copiers, and for a single pair of accounts some of them are fine. The question worth asking is not whether a tool costs money — it is where the cost shows up instead, because in this category it usually does.
The four places free gets paid for
Not accusations — these are the ordinary economics of the category, and knowing them tells you which free tool is actually free for your situation.
- A machine that has to stay on
- Most free copiers are desktop software. That means a computer awake and connected during every session you trade, which for anyone trading overnight means renting a VPS. A $10–30 monthly server is the commonest hidden cost, and it is a real one.
- Your time when it breaks
- A local process that stops does not announce itself. You find out from a position you did not expect, or from one you expected and do not have. The cost is not the outage, it is that you have to check.
- Account limits
- Free tiers commonly cap at one leader and one follower. That is genuinely enough for some people. It stops being enough the moment you buy a second funded account, which is exactly when copying starts to matter.
- Commission rebates
- Some free tools are funded by routing you to a particular broker for a share of your commission. It can still be a fair deal — but it means the price is in your fills rather than on the invoice, where it is much harder to compare.
When free is genuinely the right answer
Two accounts, one platform, and you are at the desk during the hours you trade — a free desktop copier will do that job and there is no reason to pay for it.
The calculation changes when any of those stop being true. Three or more accounts, or accounts on different platforms, or a strategy that fires while you are asleep, and the free option starts requiring a server, a monitoring habit, or both.
Worth being honest about which situation you are in rather than which you plan to be in. Paying for infrastructure you do not yet need is its own mistake.
What is free here, and what is not
Being straight about it, since this page ranks for the word.
Quanify is not a free trade copier. There is no permanently free copying tier, and pricing has not been announced yet.
What is free is everything you need to decide whether it works for you. You can connect a simulated or evaluation account and run the entire product against it — the same connection, the same multipliers, the same behaviour — and nothing about the configuration changes when you later point it at a funded account. The built-in paper accounts fill from your strategy's own signals with commission and slippage you set per side, and they are incapable of reaching a live broker by construction rather than by a setting.
So are the calculators on this site, which are client-side and require no account at all.
How to evaluate any copier without paying
This works on a free tool or a trial, and it settles the question faster than a feature table.
- 01Point it at simulated accounts and run it through real sessions rather than a few manual test trades. Behaviour across a week is the thing you are buying.
- 02Place an order large enough to fill in pieces. Confirm every follower is correct at each step, not just at the end. This is the check most tools fail and none advertise.
- 03Mute one account and confirm the rest carry on, and that the muted one is still configured when you re-enable it.
- 04Stop the copier while holding a position. Anything that closes a position you did not close is a disqualifier, and you want to learn that on sim.
- 05Close your laptop. If the copier stops, you are buying a server as well — factor it in and compare the real totals.
The cost that actually matters
Neither the subscription nor the VPS. It is being wrong-sized on an account you could not afford to be wrong-sized on.
A copier that sends the same order to every account is free until the day a trade that was routine on your funded account breaches a 50K evaluation. That evaluation fee is not recoverable, and on most free tiers per-account sizing is precisely the feature that is missing.
Which is the honest argument for paying for anything in this category: not features, but whether the tool prevents the error that costs more than every subscription in the comparison combined. Work out what that error costs you before comparing prices — the position size calculator will tell you what the right size on each account actually is.
Common questions
Is there a free trade copier for futures?
Yes, several — mostly desktop applications with a free tier limited to one leader and one follower. For two accounts on one platform while you are at the desk, that is often genuinely enough.
Is Quanify free?
No. There is no permanently free copying tier and pricing has not been announced yet. You can run the whole product against a simulated or evaluation account at no cost first, and the calculators on this site are free and need no account.
What is the catch with free trade copiers?
Usually one of four: the software runs on your machine so you need it awake (often a VPS), the free tier caps at one follower, you carry the monitoring burden yourself, or the tool is funded by commission rebates so the cost is in your fills.
Do I need a VPS for a free trade copier?
If it is desktop software and you trade outside the hours you are at your desk, yes. That is typically $10–30 a month, which is the number to include when comparing a free tool against a hosted one.
When should I pay for a trade copier?
When you have more than two accounts, when they are different sizes, or when trades fire while you are away. The argument for paying is not features — it is whether the tool prevents being wrong-sized on an account you could not afford to be wrong-sized on.
Can I test a paid copier without paying?
Point it at simulated or evaluation accounts and run it through real sessions. Nothing about the configuration changes when you later point it at a funded account, so what you test is what you get.
More on copy trading
Start on a simulated account.
Connect a sim or evaluation account and run the whole product against it before you point anything at live money. Nothing about the setup changes when you do.