Quantower vs ATAS

The free tier depends on how you opened your exchange account

Both products are order-flow desktops built for CME traders, and both treat crypto as the market they can afford to give away: real-time crypto data costs nothing on either, where real-time futures data costs money on both. Each attaches a condition to that free crypto tier, and the condition is about your exchange account, not about you. Neither card states it in full.

Quantower's free version, on its own, is not an order-flow tool. One connection, two indicators per chart, no footprint chart, no volume profile, no VWAP. The exception is a block on its connections page headed "ALL PAID FEATURES for FREE with these connections", listing Binance, Binance Futures and Bybit. The block carries no conditions, and the Quantower card reads it that way. The help centre does carry them, as read on 8 October 2026: the Binance offer comes from Binance's broker programme, the account must have been created on or after 1 February 2021, and it must not be "connected with any referral previously". An older account, or one opened through anyone's referral link, means opening a fresh Binance account to qualify. You confirm it worked in the Account Info panel, where "Full license" should read Enabled after you log in with keys in Trading mode. For Bybit, both the connections page and the Bybit help article send you through Quantower's own referral code, and neither says in words whether an account opened without it qualifies.

ATAS Start is an order-flow tool on any of its exchanges. Footprint and cluster charts, the Smart DOM, and live order entry on a real crypto account, limited to one active connection, two instruments and three indicators per chart. The condition sits one row above the order-management row in the pricing table: "Ability to connect referral crypto-accounts" is a dash on Start and ticked from Plus up, and the tooltip defines it as accounts "registered on crypto exchanges through third-party referral links". The table does not define "third-party", and a search of the ATAS help centre for "referral" returned nothing on 8 October 2026. The ATAS card does not mention the row.

Put the two conditions side by side and the free tier sorts by the history of your exchange account rather than by the product:

• A Binance account opened since February 2021 with no referral is free on both, and Quantower gives you more: its whole paid feature set against ATAS's three indicators and two instruments.
• An account opened through somebody's referral link is free for order flow on neither. The cheapest footprint is ATAS Plus at €24.95 a month; on Quantower it is the Crypto package at $40.
• An account with no referral on any other exchange ATAS carries is free on ATAS and not on Quantower.

What a second exchange costs

Once the free tier is behind you, the two vendors meter different things. Quantower's Crypto package meters the asset class: unlimited simultaneous connections, provided every one of them is a crypto exchange. ATAS meters the number of connections: one on Start and on Plus, three on Pro, unlimited on Ultra.

So the cheapest way to have two exchanges on screen is $40 a month at Quantower and €69.95 at ATAS. On annual terms it is $336 a year against €479.40, figures read on both vendors' pages on 8 October 2026; the ATAS month-to-month prices are the card's, verified on 19 September 2026, because ATAS draws its 1-month slide in the browser and the page as served carries no figure to re-read. ATAS's page opens on the annual tab, so the first figure you see there is the yearly rate divided by twelve; Quantower's opens on one month.

What each one leaves out at that price is not symmetrical either. ATAS Pro adds the chart types Plus lacks — Volume, Delta, Tick, seconds — and twenty instruments. Quantower's Crypto package leaves out three things an order-flow trader is likely to want: DOM Surface, the order-book heatmap, at $30 a month on top; Power Trades at $25; and the TPO chart at $20. ATAS ticks its heatmap, still marked beta, on every tier including Start. A crypto trader who wants a book heatmap and several exchanges is at $70 a month on Quantower, which is the All-in-One price, or €69.95 on ATAS Pro — nearly the same number in two currencies, buying a finished heatmap on one and a beta on the other.

Neither upper tier is a crypto purchase. Quantower's Multi-asset package is the same feature set without the crypto restriction, and ATAS Ultra is sold on an MBO bundle that works only through Rithmic, a futures gateway.

The venue lists overlap on five names

Data and execution are the same list on both: every crypto connector shows the market without keys and trades it with them. The lists themselves differ.

Both trade Binance, Bybit, OKX and Bitfinex. Kraken is on both, but on ATAS only in the ATAS X build; Classic ATAS lists BitMEX in its place, which stopped trading on 23 September 2026, and Quantower's connections page still showed BitMEX as released on 8 October. Only ATAS carries Bitget, WhiteBit and Phemex. Only Quantower carries Deribit, KuCoin, Crypto.com, WOO X, HTX, HitBTC, CoinMetro, RabbitX and Binance.us. If your exchange is on one list and not the other, the rest of this page does not apply.

On Binance itself, the two behave differently. ATAS's Binance article says hedging mode is not available, so the account has to run in one-way mode, and that OCO orders are emulated on your computer, so a disconnect can leave one leg resting after the other fills. Quantower's Binance Futures article documents both one-position and multiple-position modes and places stop-loss and take-profit on an open position server-side, at the exchange. Its own local stop and target emulation is a paid feature that is not in the free version.

The machine and the trial

Quantower is Windows only: one build, Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. ATAS ships Classic ATAS for Windows and ATAS X, in beta, for Windows and macOS, on every plan including Start. The vendor says moving Classic's panels into X will take time, and X is also the only ATAS build with Kraken.

Quantower's 7-day trial starts when you register an account and confirm the email; ATAS's 14-day trial of a paid plan, once per user, wants a card. Quantower refunds a first order within 10 days and never a lifetime licence; ATAS refunds within 14 days of a first payment.

Which one, and when

Take ATAS while you trade on one exchange, your account there was not opened through someone else's referral link, and three indicators on a footprint are enough. Start is the whole chart with live order entry for nothing. Take it as well, at any price, if you are on a Mac or your exchange is Bitget, WhiteBit or Phemex.

Take Quantower the moment you want a second exchange on screen. The Crypto package does at $40 a month what ATAS charges €69.95 for, and does it for any number of exchanges rather than three. Take it first, and for nothing, if you trade on Binance and your account there was opened after 1 February 2021 with no referral — or you are willing to open one that was. Take it too if you hedge on Binance Futures, or your venue is Deribit, KuCoin or WOO X.

If your account came through a referral link and you stay on one exchange, the choice is ATAS Plus at €24.95 against Quantower Crypto at $40, and ATAS is the cheaper footprint until the day you add a second venue.