cTrader will tell you when price touches a number. It will not tell you when RSI drops under 30 on a closed H1 bar, when a trendline breaks, or when a level is retested. If that is the alert you actually want, you have been quietly told to write a cBot. You do not need to.
What cTrader's built-in alert actually does
cTrader's price alert is simple on purpose: pick a symbol, choose bid or ask, choose "higher or equal" or "lower or equal", enter a price. When it is met you get a pop-up, a sound or an email. That covers "tell me when gold reaches 2,400" and not much beyond it.
What it does not do:
- No indicator conditions. There is no "RSI(14) below 30" or "price closes above the 200 EMA". Anything indicator-based means writing your own indicator or cBot.
- No sloped lines. The alert watches a fixed number. A trendline is a price that changes every bar, so a flat alert drifts out of date within hours.
- No bar-close logic. It fires on the touch, wick included, so a spike that is taken back before the candle closes still counts.
- No combining. "Price crosses the level and it is the London session and the spread is sane" is three alerts you have to correlate by eye.
- Few places to land. Pop-ups and email are fine at a desk. They are poor when you are away from the screen.
Your real options
| Route | What you get | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Built-in price alert | Free, one price, pop-up or email | Everything in the list above |
| Write a cBot or custom indicator | Anything you can code in C# | You must write, compile, test and maintain it, and keep a cTrader instance running for it |
| Bridge from TradingView webhooks | TradingView's indicator alerts, then relayed to cTrader through its Open API | Two systems, a per-alert fee on TradingView's side, and every failure mode of a webhook hop |
| A hosted rule engine on the Open API | Indicator, trendline and level conditions evaluated for you, no code | A subscription, and trusting a third party with a broker authorisation |
A cBot is the right answer when you are building a bespoke strategy. It is a heavy answer to "ping me when RSI is oversold at the close", because the work is in the maintenance rather than the first version.
How a hosted rule reaches cTrader
cTrader exposes an Open API that third-party applications use with your permission. You authorise a specific trading account once, on cTrader's own consent page, and the application receives tokens for that account — not your cTrader ID password. chartTrigger connects this way, which has a practical consequence: there is no terminal to host and no VPS involved. Authorise the account and it is connected within seconds.
Once connected, a cTrader account is treated like any other account in chartTrigger. The rules, the indicators, the trigger logic and the alert destinations are the same ones used for MetaTrader 5, so nothing you learn is platform-specific.
Setting up an indicator alert, start to finish
- Authorise the account. Choose cTrader when adding a connection and approve access on cTrader's page. Revoke it there at any time.
- Build the rule. Pick a template, draw a level on the chart, or describe it in plain English to the AI copilot and read what it writes back. A typical alert-only rule: price crosses below the lower Bollinger Band (20, 2) and RSI(14) is under 35.
- Set the mode to alert-only. No order is ever sent to your broker. The rule watches, notifies and records.
- Choose confirm on close if you want closed bars only, so a wick through the band cannot fire it. Why that setting matters.
- Pick where it lands. Telegram, email, SMS, Discord, Slack or a webhook of your own — with the chart snapshot attached on channels that carry images.
- Test it on history. The Proving Ground replays the rule over past bars so you can see how often it would have fired and which condition blocked it when it did not.
Trendline alerts on cTrader
A trendline break is the case the built-in alert cannot do at all, because the level moves. In chartTrigger the drawing is the rule: draw the line, and the rule reads the price of that line at the bar it is judging. Drag the line and the rule moves with it. The detail that makes a break worth acting on — a real crossing, a tolerance band, a bar close — is covered in the trendline break guide; it applies identically on cTrader.
What to check before you trust any hosted alert
- Scope of the authorisation. Know which account you have granted and how to revoke it.
- Where the price comes from. The alert should use the same feed as the account it is attached to, not a different source that disagrees by a few pips.
- What happens when it goes quiet. You want a record of why a rule did not fire, not silence. The Bench shows each condition's live state and how far price still has to travel.
- Whether it can place orders you did not ask for. An alert-only rule must be alert-only in the engine, not merely by convention.
Common questions
Does cTrader have indicator-based alerts?
Not natively. The built-in alert watches a single bid or ask price. Alerts on RSI, moving averages, Bollinger Bands or trendlines need a custom indicator or cBot, or an external service that evaluates the condition for you.
Do I need a cBot to get a cTrader alert on Telegram?
No. A hosted rule engine connected through the cTrader Open API can evaluate the condition and send the alert to Telegram, email or a webhook, with no cBot and no code.
Is my cTrader password shared when I connect?
The Open API uses an authorisation you grant on cTrader's own consent page for a specific trading account. The application receives tokens for that account rather than your cTrader ID password, and you can revoke access from cTrader.
Can an alert-only rule place trades?
No. In alert-only mode the rule watches, notifies and records, and no order is sent to the broker.
Connect a cTrader account and set one alert
Authorise once, no terminal and no VPS. Start with an alert-only rule and read the record before you let anything trade.
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Risk note. This article is educational material about how chartTrigger works. It is not investment advice, not a recommendation to trade any instrument, and nothing here forecasts results. Trading leveraged products carries a high risk of loss. Any historical simulation referred to is exactly that — a run over past bars under stated spread and slippage assumptions, not an indication of future performance.