Tiger.com Windows vs Quantower vs ATAS: three free footprints, three referral rules

Three free tiers, each paid for by somebody else

All three are Windows order-flow desktops: footprint, DOM, order entry from the chart, over your own exchange keys. All three give crypto away. Quantower vs ATAS sets those two against each other, and this page does not repeat it. What it adds is the third desktop, whose free tier works on a different arrangement and changes the answer at the point where the other two start charging.

Tiger.com Windows says where its free licence comes from. The help centre's page on using the Crypto licence with Binance says that by trading in the terminal you support it, "as Binance will return a portion of the commission to Tiger.com in the form of brokerage fees from your trading commissions". The free tool is paid from your trading fees, which is the arrangement in who pays for your free trading bot. Quantower's free paid-feature offer runs through Binance's broker programme. ATAS gives its Start plan away and earns from futures traders who need a paid plan for real-time CME data.

All three attach a condition to your exchange account. The three conditions differ.

The referral condition, three ways

What each one gives you depends on how your Binance account was opened.

• No referral on the account. All three are free. Tiger trades Binance spot and futures on the Crypto licence. Quantower unlocks every paid feature if the account was also opened on or after 1 February 2021. ATAS Start is the footprint with live orders on one connection.
• Opened through somebody else's referral link. Tiger's prices page says "only Spot" on Binance under the free licence. Its licence FAQ is blunter and says you "will not be able to trade in Binance" with a referral account. ATAS Start excludes referred accounts, so the cheapest route there is Plus at €24.95 a month. Quantower's offer requires no referral, so its footprint is the $40 Crypto package. For Binance futures on a referred account, ATAS Plus is the cheapest of the three, and Tiger's own way round it is the Full licence at $79 or a KYC broker account.
• Not on Binance at all. Tiger's pages attach the referral rule to Binance and state none for its other exchanges. ATAS's applies to any crypto account opened through a third-party link. Quantower's free offer covers Binance and Bybit only, so on any other venue its free version has no footprint.

Tiger's pages do not agree on the non-referral case either. The Binance connection guide says that to use the terminal for free you log in "with your Tiger.com Broker account credentials", which is a KYC broker account. The licence pages do not say so. Read the connection guide before assuming the plain-registration route works for Binance.

A second exchange: free, $40 or €69.95

This is where the third desktop changes the answer. The other two meter connections:

• ATAS allows one active connection on Start and Plus, three on Pro at €69.95 a month, and unlimited on Ultra.
• Quantower allows one connection on the free version. The $40-a-month Crypto package allows unlimited simultaneous crypto connections.
• Tiger.com Windows prints no cap at all. The licence FAQ, read on 24 October 2026, calls the Crypto licence "a free and unlimited license for cryptocurrency trading only", in a list beside a 14-day trial, so "unlimited" may mean no time limit rather than no cap. The prices page's comparison table has rows for crypto exchanges, live trading, demo trading and Binance referrals. It has none for connections, instruments or indicators.

So for two or three exchanges on one Windows screen, the price is nothing on Tiger, $40 a month on Quantower and €69.95 on ATAS. An unstated limit is not a stated absence of one, and Tiger's own pages disagree about how many exchanges the free licence covers. The prices page says "seven" and names five, while the connection list has fourteen that trade. Connect your second exchange before relying on the arithmetic.

The order-book heatmap follows the same pattern. Tiger documents a Heatmap chart indicator in its help centre, read on 24 October, with no licence condition stated. ATAS ticks its heatmap, still in beta, on every tier. On Quantower the DOM Surface heatmap is $30 a month on top of the Crypto package.

What the free one does not do

Tiger's free licence is generous on screens and thin on everything around them.

• No strategy automation. Quantower's C# Algo API and Strategy Runner are free on every tier, and ATAS's C# API runs automation algorithms from Start. Tiger's C# interface writes indicators and chart objects. Its "Tiger API" is a local socket that lets a screener open a symbol in a linked window, and it reads no data out and places no orders.
• Replay costs extra. Tiger's History Player is $25 a month beside the Crypto licence, or included in Full at $79. ATAS has Market Replay from Plus at €24.95. Quantower's Crypto package includes Market Replay, restricted to crypto instruments.
• The trial is not a crypto trial. Tiger's 14-day Full trial has "no crypto exchange connections". The Crypto licence is the one to install, from day one.
• A heavy Windows install. Tiger recommends 16 GB of RAM and 80 GB of disk. None of the three runs natively on a Mac except ATAS X, in beta. The Tiger.com macOS app is a separate product.

The venue lists

Each desktop reaches venues the other two do not:

• Only Tiger: Hyperliquid, AsterDEX and Lighter on the decentralised side, plus Gate.io, MEXC, BingX and Backpack.
• Only Quantower: Deribit, Crypto.com, WOO X, HTX, HitBTC, CoinMetro, RabbitX, Delta Exchange and Binance.us. Tiger's prices page names Deribit, but its help centre has no Deribit connection guide.
• Only ATAS: WhiteBit and Phemex.

Binance, Bybit, OKX, Bitfinex and Kraken are on all three. On ATAS, Kraken is in the ATAS X build only. KuCoin is on Tiger and Quantower, and Bitget on Tiger and ATAS.

Hyperliquid on Tiger needs a decision about keys. The setup guide's main route has you type the wallet's seed phrase into the terminal, which controls everything on that wallet. The alternative is a Hyperliquid API wallet key with a signed builder fee approval of up to 0.02% per order. The second route costs money on every order and keeps the recovery phrase out of a desktop app.

Which one, and when

Take Tiger.com Windows if you trade by hand on Windows and want two or more exchanges on one screen without a licence fee. Take it too if your venue is Hyperliquid, Gate.io, MEXC, BingX or Backpack. It is the only one of the three whose free tier states no limit on connections. On Binance, use an account opened without a referral and read the connection guide's broker-login line first. On Hyperliquid, connect with an API wallet rather than the seed phrase.

Take ATAS if you are on a Mac, or trade WhiteBit or Phemex. Take it also if your Binance account came through a referral link and you want futures cheaply: Plus at €24.95 is the lowest price of the three for that.

Take Quantower the moment a rule has to run without you. Its C# Strategy Runner is free on every tier, and on Tiger nothing runs it. Take it too if you trade Deribit, Crypto.com or WOO X. At that point the $40 Crypto package is what a second exchange costs, and the comparison with ATAS is the one in Quantower vs ATAS.