TradingView Heatmap: Stocks, Crypto, Forex (2026 Guide)

The TradingView heatmap turns a screen full of tickers into a single chart you can read in two seconds: green cells are gaining, red cells are losing, and the bigger the cell the bigger the company’s weight in its sector. TradingView ships three of them, one for stocks, one for crypto, and one for forex, and you can customize the size and color by metrics other than market cap once you know where the settings live. This guide walks through how to open each heatmap on desktop and mobile, what every cell is telling you, and how to use the view to spot sector rotation before it shows up in your normal scan.

Key Takeaways

• TradingView publishes three heatmaps (stocks, crypto, forex) and they each grade an asset by cell size (weight) and cell color (performance dynamics).
• The stock and crypto heatmaps customize cleanly: switch SIZE BY between market cap, volume, and other metrics, switch COLOR BY between change and performance windows, and toggle grouping by sector. The forex heatmap is fixed (no customization).
• Heatmaps are good for sector and risk overview, weak for entry timing. Treat them as the first scan of the morning, not as a signal source.

What the TradingView Heatmap Shows

The heatmap is a single-screen visualization of how a market is moving right now. Each cell is one asset (a stock, a coin, or a currency pair). The cell’s color shows performance, with deeper greens for stronger gains and deeper reds for stronger losses. The cell’s size shows weight, which by default means market cap on the stock and crypto views.

That combination matters more than either signal on its own. A small green cell is a small stock making a big move, easy to overlook on a normal watchlist. A large red cell is a heavyweight name dragging its sector down, which has implications for index trades and any positions correlated with that sector. Reading both signals together is what makes the heatmap fast.

The heatmap is a top-of-the-morning scan tool, not a signal generator. You use it to see where the day is leaning and which sectors are doing the work. You don’t use it to time entries; for that, switch to the stock screener or your normal chart workflow.

Stock, Crypto, and Forex Heatmaps Compared

TradingView ships three heatmap views. They look similar at a glance but the customization options diverge.

Heatmap	Default grouping	Default cell size	Customizable	Best use
Stock	Sector	Market cap	Yes (size, color, grouping)	Sector rotation, single-stock standouts
Crypto	None (flat)	Market cap	Yes (size, color)	Coin-level relative strength, alt rotation
ETF	Asset class	AUM	Yes (size, color)	Portfolio composition, factor rotation
Forex	Currency cross	Fixed	No	Pair strength versus the dollar

The stock and crypto views are the two you customize most often. The forex view is intentionally locked: TradingView pre-tunes it for currency-pair relative strength so you can read the dollar’s strength against everything else without setting it up. The ETF heatmap is a quieter version of the stock view that groups by asset class instead of sector and is useful for portfolio-level views.

If you trade primarily one asset class, the rest of this guide focuses on the customization model that applies to your view; if you trade multiple, the same SIZE BY / COLOR BY language carries between stock and crypto.

How to Access the TradingView Heatmap on Desktop

From the TradingView homepage, click Products in the top navigation and choose Heatmaps, then pick Stock, Crypto, ETF, or Forex. You can also reach all four directly:

• Stock heatmap: tradingview.com/heatmap/stock/
• Crypto heatmap: tradingview.com/heatmap/crypto/
• ETF heatmap: tradingview.com/heatmap/etf/
• Forex heatmap: tradingview.com/markets/currencies/cross-rates-overview-heat-map/

A free TradingView account is enough to open and use any heatmap. None of them are gated behind a paid plan, and the data updates in real time on the free tier.

How to Access the TradingView Heatmap on Mobile

Open the TradingView mobile app, tap More in the bottom right, and you’ll see Stock Heatmap and Crypto Coins Heatmap as separate menu items. Tapping either opens the same heatmap view as desktop, with the SIZE BY and COLOR BY controls at the top. Forex and ETF heatmaps are not in the app menu at the time of writing; if you need those, the mobile browser surfaces them at the URLs above. The full mobile workflow is covered in the TradingView mobile app guide.

Customizing Sectors, Size, and Color

The settings live across the top of the heatmap. The three controls that matter most:

• SIZE BY: changes what the cell area encodes. Defaults to market cap on the stock view. Switch to Volume to see which names are actually trading versus which are just large. Switch to Number of Employees, Dividend Yield, or any of the other metrics to slice the same universe a different way.
• COLOR BY: changes what the cell color encodes. Defaults to Change %, which is intraday performance. Switch to Performance (1 Week, 1 Month, etc.) to read trend instead of intraday. Switch to Volatility to spot risk concentration.
• Display mode: under the cogwheel icon. Toggle between Classic with grouping (sectors are visually separated), Classic without grouping, Mono size with grouping (every cell is the same size, useful for trend-only reads), and Mono size without grouping (a clean overview).

The grouping toggle is the one most people miss. Turning it off and switching to Mono size strips out the market-cap distortion and gives you a pure performance view, which is what you want when you’re scanning for movers across the board, not just within sectors.

For a deeper TradingView setup walkthrough, the best TradingView indicators post pairs well with the heatmap workflow.

How to Read the TradingView Heatmap

Read color first, then size. Color tells you the direction and intensity of the move; size tells you whether the move matters at the index or sector level. A bright green large cell is a heavyweight pulling its sector up. A bright red small cell is a small name selling off, possibly idiosyncratic.

Then read groupings. On the stock view with sector grouping on, scan whether one or two sectors are visibly greener than the rest. That’s sector rotation showing up in real time. Compare it to what the stock screener shows for the same sector to confirm whether the heatmap pattern is supported by volume and breadth.

Finally read the outliers. The cells that look out of place (a green cell in an otherwise red sector, or vice versa) are the ones worth opening a chart on. The heatmap doesn’t tell you why they’re moving, just that they are.

Use Cases: Sector Rotation and Risk Spotting

Three workflows the heatmap is genuinely good at:

1. Sector rotation scan. First thing in the morning, open the stock heatmap with sector grouping on and SIZE BY market cap. The sectors that are visibly greener than the rest are your potential leaders for the day. Cross-check with the index-level move (if SPY is flat and one sector is bright green, that’s rotation, not beta).
2. Risk concentration check. Switch SIZE BY to your portfolio weights (manually, by mentally overlaying your holdings on the cells). Bright red large cells in your concentration zones are the positions that hurt today.
3. Crypto alt rotation. On the crypto heatmap, watch for the pattern where Bitcoin’s cell is muted but mid-cap alts are bright green. That’s alt rotation, and it usually fades fast. The heatmap surfaces it earlier than a price-only watchlist will.

What the heatmap is bad at: timing entries, telling you why something is moving, and replacing a real watchlist. Treat it as input to your morning routine, not as the routine itself. If you want to track which heatmap-spotted setups you actually traded and how they did, the Financial Tech Wiz Trading Journal logs entries by symbol, side, and hold duration so you can see whether your heatmap reads turn into real edge.

Limitations and Workarounds

The heatmap looks complete but it leaves a few things out:

• No price level on the cell. You see direction and intensity, not the absolute price. For levels, click the cell to open a chart.
• No volume context unless you switch SIZE BY. By default the cells are sized by market cap, so a heavyweight that isn’t actually trading looks the same as one that is. Switching SIZE BY to Volume fixes this.
• Forex heatmap is locked. You can’t customize it. If you want a forex view that respects different volatility windows, you’ll need a separate scanner.
• No history. The heatmap is real-time only. If you want to see where things stood at the open, switch COLOR BY to a longer performance window (1 day, 1 week) but understand that’s still relative to the current snapshot, not a true historical playback.

If you trade off these limitations and want to log every heatmap-spotted setup so you can grade your own pattern recognition, a structured journal makes it visible. The free trading journal template is enough for a few weeks of testing; the paid Financial Tech Wiz Trading Journal gives you AI insights and equity-curve graphs once you have real volume.

Bottom Line

The TradingView heatmap is a free, fast, multi-asset scan that you can open in a browser tab or the mobile app. The stock and crypto views customize cleanly across SIZE BY and COLOR BY; the forex view is fixed and the ETF view is a quieter sector-grouped variant. The right way to use it is as a five-second morning scan for sector rotation and outlier moves, then as a launchpad into the chart or screener for the names that look interesting. It will not time your entries and it will not tell you why something is moving. Use it for the overview; use a journal to track whether your reads turn into real trades.

FAQ

Does TradingView have a heatmap?

Yes. TradingView publishes four heatmaps (stocks, crypto, ETFs, and forex) and all of them are accessible on the free plan. They update in real time and live under Products in the top navigation, or directly at tradingview.com/heatmap/stock/, /heatmap/crypto/, /heatmap/etf/, and /markets/currencies/cross-rates-overview-heat-map/.

How do I find the heatmap on TradingView?

On desktop, hover over Products in the top navigation and choose Heatmaps, then pick the asset class. On the mobile app, tap More in the bottom right, then Stock Heatmap or Crypto Coins Heatmap. The forex and ETF heatmaps are not in the mobile app menu; reach those through the mobile browser.

How do you read the TradingView stock heatmap?

Read color first, then size. Bright green cells are gaining, bright red cells are losing, and the bigger the cell the larger the company’s market cap (or whatever metric you set under SIZE BY). Then read sector groupings: a sector that’s visibly greener than the rest is showing rotation. Outliers (a green cell inside a red sector) are the names worth pulling up a chart on.

Is the TradingView heatmap free?

Yes. All four heatmaps are accessible without a paid plan. You don’t need a subscription, and the cells update in real time on the free tier the same way they do on paid plans.

Can I use the TradingView heatmap on mobile?

The stock and crypto heatmaps are in the TradingView mobile app under More. The forex and ETF heatmaps aren’t in the app menu; you can still open them in the mobile browser at the same URLs as desktop. The mobile views support the same SIZE BY and COLOR BY controls that desktop does.