Free Historical Data
The free historical data service enables traders to download bar data composed from Dukascopy tick data. The service provides for up to 200,000 bars of data for Forex, Commodities, Cryptocurrencies, and Indices.
Works with
MetaTrader 4
MetaTrader 5
Forex Strategy Builder Professional
Expert Advisor Studio
Microsoft Excel
High quality historical data. Free forever.
The free historical data service allows any trader to achieve a high-quality reliable back-test in MetaTrader with bar data! It was originally designed for Forex Strategy Builder Professional and Expert Advisor Studio however over time it has been expanded to incorporate with more tools like Microsoft Excel and and even direct to MetaTrader format!
Why do you need accurate historical data?
When it comes to creating profitable strategies there are many steps that need to be performed correctly. As a trader you need to back-test your strategy, and even more importantly, you need to perform forward-testing to confirm your strategy works in real life conditions.
But not all back-tests are created equal. For a high quality back-test you need a long data series and it needs to be without gaps. Another often overlooked consideration is that the timezone of your back-test matches your brokers timezone!
Many traders use the data that can be downloaded from within the MetaTrader platform itself. However, this data is usually not the best quality, or often there is only a small amount of data! With more data (and higher quality data!) the more robust your strategies will be because they are exposed to more market conditions! Pairing the free historical data service with strategy generation software like Forex Strategy Builder Professional and Expert Advisor Studio is a great combination.
If you want to give yourself the best chance of creating profitable trading strategies in the live environment you require high quality data!
How does the free historical data service work?
Don’t worry, all the hard work is done for you! We go through a painstaking process of collecting raw tick data from Dukascopy and then convert it into binary bar data. The data is then turned into the bar data for all time-frames and then split into 200,000 bars! We believe 200,000 bars is more than enough data to create profitable trading strategies.
When you use the free historical data service it loads data that is pre-compiled and changes the timezone for your automatically based on your settings.
New data is added daily so you always have the latest!
High quality data
To achieve the high quality data we assemble raw tick data from Dukascopy which is compiled into bar data! Minimal missing bars and minimum gaps guaranteed!
Multiple formats
The free historical data service can export to MetaTrader, Forex Strategy Builder Pro, Expert Advisor Studio and Microsoft Excel formats! It is easy to view the data and reformat if needed!
Fast data download
Download the data is lighting fast! We use pre-compiled data up to 200,000 bars that are ready to be exported immediately into difference formats.
What markets are available?
Forex
- AUDCAD – Australian Dollar / Canadian Dollar – New
- AUDCHF – Australian Dollar / Swiss Frank – New
- AUDJPY – Australian Dollar / Japanese Yen
- AUDNZD – Australian Dollar / New Zealand Dollar
- AUDUSD – Australian Dollar / US Dollar
- CADJPY – Canadian Dollar / Japanese Yen – New
- CHFJPY – Swiss Franc / Japanese Yen – New
- EURAUD – Euro / Australian Dollar – New
- EURCAD – Euro / Canadian Dollar – New
- EURCHF – Euro / Swiss Franc
- EURGBP – Euro / British Pound
- EURJPY – Euro / Japanese Yen
- EURUSD – Euro / US Dollar
- GBPAUD – British Pound / Australian Dollar – New
- GBPJPY – British Pound / Japanese Yen
- GBPUSD – British Pound / US Dollar
- NZDUSD – New Zealand Dollar / US Dollar
- USDCAD – US Dollar / Canadian Dollar
- USDCHF – US Dollar / Swiss Franc
- USDJPY – US Dollar / Japanese Yen
Commodities
- BRENT.CMD – Brent Crude Oil (USD) – New
- XAGUSD – Silver (USD)
- XAUUSD – Gold (USD)
Cryptocurrencies
- BTCUSD – Bitcoin / US Dollar
- ETHUSD – Ethereum / US Dollar
Indices
- DEU.IDX/EUR – DAX 30
- GBR.IDX/GBP – FTSE 100 (London) – New
- USA30.IDX/USD – Dow Jones 30
- USA500.IDX/USD – S&P 500 – New
How do I use the free historical data service?
The free historical data service is designed to be simple and easy to use!
- Select the Symbol you want to download historical data for.
- Select the Format you wish to download depending on the application.
- Click the Load data button.
That’s it!
A download link will appear for each time-frame. Some browsers may show a notification asking you if you would like to download multiple files. Please click “Allow”.
If you want to change some advanced settings you can do so on the Settings tab. One important setting you should change is the Timezone so that it matches your brokers time zone. By default the data comes in (GMT) Coordinated Universal Time!
How do I import the data into MetaTrader?
You can follow the steps below to import .csv format data into MetaTrader:
- Load the necessary data in MetaTrader (.csv) format and download all the files. Let’s use GBPUSD for our example. We recommend downloading the full 200,000 bars for convenience.
- Open your MetaTrader platform and go to Tools > History Center or press F2.
- Navigate to the symbol you want to import data for in the “Symbols” list. In our example this will be GBPUSD.
- Double click on the period (M1, M5 etc.) to load the data for that period. For our example we will use H1, but you have to complete this for all time frames one by one.
- Then, click the Import button that opens to a new window.
- Click the Browse button to select the correct file that you downloaded from previously, GBPUSD_H1.csv in this example. MetaTrader will display a preview of the data for you if everything went well!
- Click Ok.
- Repeat the previous steps for each of the other periods that you want to import data for: M1, M5, M15, H4 and D1.
How do I import the data into Expert Advisor Studio?
This requires two tasks. We must import the data files into Expert Advisor studio, and then we have to customize the symbols settings.
Importing the data files into Expert Advisor Studio:
- Load the necessary data in the Expert Advisor Studio (.json) format and download all the files.
- Open Expert Advisor Studio and navigate to the Data > Data Import page.
- You can now select the previously downloaded files and drag / drop them over the “Drop files here…‘ zone or click the Upload button. Expert Advisor Studio will import the files and upload them to your account if you are logged in! You’ll then be able to use them at a later time.
- You can now visit the Editor and load the new symbol.
Don’t forget to edit the symbols settings in the Tools > Symbol Settings menu! This is required because the data comes with generic settings for swap, commission, spread etc.
- Open the Tools -> Symbol Settings page.
- If you used the default server name when you downloaded the data it will be under the Premium Data server.
- Click on the symbol you would like to edit.
- Change the Settings source to “Custom symbol settings” to enable customizing the settings. The values below will turn from grey to white.
- Edit the values so that they match your trading account!
How do I import the data into Forex Strategy Builder Professional?
We must create a new Data Source, add the necessary Symbols, and finally download the data files.
You’ll first have to create a new Data Source in Forex Strategy Builder Professional.
- Navigate to the Control Panel -> Data Source page.
- In the section “Add Data source”, add the new name Premium Data.
- Click on the “Add Data Source” button. It will create the new settings including a new data folder in the location C:\Program Files\Forex Strategy Builder Pro\User Files\Data\Premium Data.
The second step is to edit the symbol settings. This is required because the data comes with generic settings for swap, commission, spread etc.
- Navigate to the Control Panel > Symbol page.
- Change the “Active data source” to the Premium Data server.
- Select the symbol you would like to edit.
- Edit the values so that they match your trading account!
- Repeat for all symbols you would like to add.
Finally, you need to download and copy the data files:
- Load the necessary data in Forex Strategy Builder (.csv) format.
- Copy and paste the downloaded data files in the new Data Source directory that you created previously. Now the new data will be available in the Editor.
How do I import the data into Microsoft Excel?
Downloading and importing the .csv (Comma Separated Values) files for Microsoft Excel is super simple!
- Download the data files in Excel (.csv) format.
- Open a new Spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel.
- Click on the Data tab in the navigation menu.
- You can import data from Get External Data > From Text.
- Browse to where you downloaded the data files and click on the file to be imported.
- After you select a file, the “Text Import Wizard” appears.
- Click on “Next”, “Next”, and “Finish”.
- Click “Ok” to import the data.
Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool and it makes for an easy way to review and format data files. With this data you can rearrange it to your preference or format it to suit your requirements!
