NinjaTrader 8's Trade Performance tab is a stats panel — gross P&L, win rate, expectancy. It is not a journal. Here's how to import NT8 trades into a journal that shows you the chart context, the prop-firm rule headroom, and what you were actually doing on screen when you took the trade.
NinjaTrader 8 is one of the most powerful retail platforms — full chart engine, ATM strategies, SuperDOM, Market Replay, NinjaScript add-ons, native Rithmic / Continuum / CQG / NTB connections. It's the default execution platform for a large share of Apex 4.0 and MyFundedFutures funded traders, and runs almost every Topstep account that isn't on TopstepX. But the Trade Performance tab — the closest thing NT ships to a journal — is a stats panel, not a review tool:
Aurafy reads the standard NT8 Trade Performance CSV export — no NinjaScript install, no API integration, no connection credentials shared. Roughly two minutes:
Open Control Center → Account Performance → Trades (or Strategy Analyzer → Trades for backtested strategies). Right-click the grid → Export → CSV. Pick the date range. The export includes account, instrument, side, qty, entry/exit price, time, commission, and net P&L per round-turn.
Open app.aurafy.dev, go to Imports → NinjaTrader, drag the file. Aurafy auto-pairs the entry / exit fills into round-turn trades, applies the correct tick value per contract (ES, NQ, MES, MNQ, CL, MCL, GC, MGC, ZB, 6E, MBT — 30+ presets), and computes net P&L after commissions + exchange + clearing fees pulled directly from the export.
Every NT8 fill plots on the chart with entry / stop / exit arrows. R-multiples compute automatically from the stop you set. The first time you see a week of fills overlaid on the 5-minute, you'll see patterns the Trade Performance grid silently hid.
Most NT8 users run several account connections — Sim101, a live Apex eval, a funded Topstep, maybe an MFFU Rapid. Export the Trades grid filtered per account; Aurafy keeps them separate and applies the correct prop-firm preset per account.
The majority of active NT8 retail accounts in 2026 are prop-firm funded or eval accounts. NinjaTrader is the default platform for Apex 4.0 and MyFundedFutures, and remains the dominant execution platform for Topstep customers who haven't migrated to TopstepX. That's who this journal layer is built for. Aurafy tracks:
NinjaTrader is the execution platform. Aurafy is the journal that knows you're trading NT8 on Rithmic, on a $100K Apex 4.0 funded account, with a 30% consistency rule that decides your next payout. Free tier covers the last 30 days of trades — no card, no trial-with-charge. Pro is $49/mo, or $19/mo locked for life as one of the first 50 founders.
Try Aurafy free → See pricingNT8 has Market Replay — it downloads tick data and replays the market exactly as it printed, so you can "re-trade" a past session bar-for-bar. That's a great tool for chart-reading practice. It is not a session review for the trades you actually took.
Aurafy's screen recorder captures you — DOM, chart, news ticker, Discord, all of it — and attaches the recording to the trades that fired during the window. When you review the day you don't just see the fills; you see the news pop you ignored, the hesitation before entry, the moment you moved the stop. Market Replay and screen recording solve different problems: full breakdown here →
Every futures journal on the market — TradeZella, TraderSync, Tradervue, TradesViz, EdgeWonk — can show you the fills. None of them record the session. For prop-firm traders, where most blowups are behavioral (oversizing, revenge trades, freeze on news), that's the missing review layer.
These work with or without an Aurafy account — single-page, no login, mobile-friendly. Preloaded with the exact tick values for the contracts you actually trade on NT8 (ES, NQ, MES, MNQ, CL, MCL, GC, MGC, ZB, 6E, MBT, MET, and 18 more):
Topstep + Apex 4.0 + MFFU presets. Intraday + EOD trail modeled separately. See your exact floor and headroom.
Open →Drop in entry / exit / stop on any of 30+ futures contracts. Get ticks, points, gross + net P&L (after NT commissions), $ risk, R-multiple.
Open →Prop-firm-aware sizing — checks both your risk-per-trade and the trail-DD floor. Tells you how many losses in a row to blow the account.
Open →Topstep 50%, Apex 4.0 30%, MFFU 40%. Drop in your daily P&L list — get max-allowed-best-day and the extra profit needed to qualify for payout.
Open →No. Aurafy reads the standard NT8 Trade Performance CSV export. No NinjaScript add-on installed in your NT instance, no API connection, no Rithmic / NTB credentials shared. The CSV-only model is intentional — it's the lowest-risk import path and works identically across every NT8 connection type (NTB, Rithmic, Continuum, CQG, IQFeed, sim).
Yes — that's the primary use case. The majority of NT8 retail accounts in 2026 are prop-firm accounts running through Rithmic or NTB. Aurafy's prop-firm rule tracking (trail-DD, DLL, consistency) is preset for the major firms. Note: if you run the same Topstep account on both NinjaTrader and TopstepX, the DLL rule differs by platform — on NT8 the DLL is still enforced, on TopstepX it was removed Aug 2024. Aurafy applies the right rule per account preset.
Same export, different source. You can export backtested trades from Strategy Analyzer the same way (right-click → Export → CSV) and Aurafy will treat them as a separate "account" you can review independently from live fills. R-multiples and chart overlays work identically. The prop-firm rule layer only applies to accounts you tag as live prop-firm accounts.
Partially — the NT8 CSV export records the final entry / exit prices, not the intermediate ATM events (initial stop, stop moves, target hits). The screen recorder fills that gap: if you've got the session recorded, you can see exactly when the ATM fired and whether you manually moved the stop. NT8's own grid doesn't show this either, so the recording is the only honest source.
Same flow, different export. Aurafy imports CSVs from Tradovate (see Tradovate guide), Sierra Chart, and Rithmic R|Trader Pro statements. The rule tracking, chart overlay, and screen recording work identically — only the export button changes. Each platform's accounts stay separate in the journal.
Real free tier — last 30 days of trades, 1 account, 3 playbooks, no card. For a single Apex 4.0 evaluation or Topstep funded you're actively running, 30 days of history is enough to see whether rule tracking + chart overlay + screen recording is useful before you pay anything. No trial-with-charge — if you don't upgrade, nothing happens.
First 50 paying customers get $19/mo locked for life instead of $49/mo. After 50, the price goes to $49 for new signups, but existing $19 seats stay $19 forever. No upsell, no trial, no rate-rise clause. If you cancel and come back, the founder price is gone.
Screen recording is a Pro-tier feature. Free covers the journal, imports, and chart overlays but not the recorder. The next-closest stack (TradeZella + Loom or OBS) runs $49 + $15 = $64/mo and still doesn't link recordings to specific trades. The $19 founder seat is the cheapest path to the recording layer.