| Dimension | Aurafy | TradeZella |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Futures + prop-firm traders | Multi-asset (stocks/options/futures/crypto) |
| Pricing (monthly) | $49 (or $19 founder, first 50 only) | ~$49 |
| Pricing (annual) | $490 | ~$499 |
| Free trial | "Trial that never expires" — 1 account, 3 playbooks, 30-day window, no card | Paid trial / paid plans |
| Native screen recording | Yes (Aurafy Recorder) | No |
| Trade replay (tick chart of completed trade) | Bar-replay backtester (coming soon) | Yes (mature feature) |
| Prop-firm rule tracking (trailing DD, consistency) | Built-in for Topstep, Apex 4.0, MFFU | Generic journaling — you track rules yourself |
| Broker imports | Tradovate, NinjaTrader, Sierra Chart, Rithmic | ~40+ brokers across asset classes |
| Playbook / strategy tagging | Yes | Yes (more mature) |
| Analytics depth | Strong for futures-specific metrics (ticks, R-multiple, prop rule headroom) | Broader (drawdown curves, MFE/MAE, calendar heatmap, etc.) |
| Mobile | Web (responsive) | Web + mobile app |
| Track record | Newer (2025–2026) | Established (2020s) |
Both are around $49/month at list — close enough that price alone isn't a decider. The real differences:
If you also stack screen recording, the math gets more interesting. A common "DIY journal stack" — TradeZella $49 + Loom $15 + FX Replay $39 — runs ~$103/mo. Aurafy Pro is one tool covering journal + screen recording + replay (bar-replay coming) at $49 (or $19 founder).
This is the one place the two products live in different categories.
Why this matters: most eval failures and blown funded accounts are behavioral — oversizing on a setup that violates your playbook, revenge-clicking after a stop-out, freezing through news. A chart replay can't show those. A screen recording can. We wrote a full comparison of the two approaches in Trade Replay vs Screen Recording — read that if you want the long version.
If you mostly want chart-review of closed trades, TradeZella's replay is genuinely good and more mature than our bar-replay (which isn't shipped yet).
TradeZella is a generic journal — it's excellent at performance analytics, but it doesn't know what "Apex 4.0 intraday trailing drawdown" is. You log the trades; you do the math.
Aurafy was built for prop-firm traders specifically. It tracks:
You can replicate all of this in TradeZella manually with custom fields + a spreadsheet — but if you're a Topstep / Apex / MFFU trader, the prop-firm focus is what Aurafy is for. If you're not at a prop firm, this difference is irrelevant to you.
You can also use Aurafy's free prop-firm calculators standalone (no login): the trailing-drawdown calculator and consistency calculator work with any journal.
This is where TradeZella is straightforwardly ahead — and the right answer if you trade more than one asset class.
This is a hard line: if your day includes anything other than futures, Aurafy is the wrong product and TradeZella is the right one. We are honest about this.
TradeZella has had four-plus years to build out its analytics surface. Expect a deeper bench of charts and aggregate views — calendar heatmap, drawdown curves, MFE/MAE distributions, time-of-day breakdowns, tag-by-tag performance.
Aurafy's analytics are deliberately built around futures and prop-firm reality:
If you want breadth of metrics, TradeZella. If you want a narrow but extremely accurate read on whether your futures trading is rule-compliant and improving, Aurafy.
You trade SPX 0DTE options in the morning, MNQ scalps in the afternoon, and hold an SOL position in your IBKR account.
Pick TradeZella. Aurafy won't import your options trades or your crypto. You'd be running two journals, which defeats the point. TradeZella consolidates the whole day in one place.
You're working an Apex 4.0 100K eval. You scalp ES and NQ off the open, do five to fifteen trades a day, and you're trying to figure out why you keep stopping out at 80% of target.
Pick Aurafy. The screen recording will surface what trade replay can't — that you're sizing up after losses, or trading the second hour after a tight stop-out (revenge-trade pattern). And Aurafy's trail tracker will tell you exactly how much intraday drawdown headroom you have during the session, not after.
At list price, basically the same (~$49/mo). The big delta is the $19/mo founder plan (first 50 customers, locked for life) and the fact that Aurafy bundles screen recording — so you don't also need a Loom subscription.
Not directly today. If you import your broker history (Tradovate / NinjaTrader / Sierra / Rithmic) into Aurafy, you'll get the same trades — just rebuilt from source. Notes and tags don't carry over from TradeZella.
Not as of June 2026. They have trade replay (chart playback of a closed trade), which is a different thing. If screen recording is important to you, you'd pair TradeZella with Loom or OBS.
Aurafy — it tracks the trailing drawdown, daily loss limit, and consistency rule for each firm natively. TradeZella works fine as a generic journal but you'd be doing the prop-firm math yourself.
TradeZella. Aurafy doesn't import equities or options today. Honest answer.
They solve different problems. Trade replay shows you what the chart did. Screen recording shows you what you did — every click, news pop, freeze, oversizing impulse. Most eval failures are behavioral, so we built screen recording first.
No — TradeZella has years of head start on analytics breadth and broker coverage. Aurafy is newer, more focused, and faster to ship features in our niche. If you need a battle-tested all-rounder, TradeZella is the safer bet.
If you're still cross-shopping journals, the two posts below cover the other two competitors most futures traders weigh against Aurafy. If you've already picked the tool and now need to pick a firm, the head-term hub + the Apex-vs-Topstep head-to-head are the next reads.
30-day window, 1 account, 3 playbooks. No card. If you've been blowing evals and can't pinpoint why, the screen recordings are usually where the answer hides.
Start free at aurafy.devOr grab a $19/mo founder seat (first 50, locked for life) at the same link.