- Open the simulator and pick WTI from the instrument list - or Brent, natural gas, gold, copper and the rest of the 105.
- Choose a start date and timeframe. The chart hides everything after it, so you read the same bars a trader had at the time rather than a chart you already know the answer to.
- Replay bar by bar and place trades with the mouse. Drag the stop and target on the chart and the lot size follows from your risk percent.
- Read the report. Win rate, expectancy, profit factor, Sharpe and drawdown across the session, saved to your trading journal so the sample accumulates.
Crude oil · WTI
Backtest crude oil free, in your browser.
Replay WTI crude bar by bar from 2018 to this week, place trades with the mouse, and get win rate, expectancy, profit factor and drawdown at the end of the session. No download, no futures account, no card - oil is unlocked on the free plan along with all 105 instruments, Brent and natural gas included.
The data
Nine years of WTI, through the 2020 crash.
Tick-derived OHLC bars from the same archive our published research is computed on. Lower timeframes cover shorter windows because the underlying data is far denser - the table is exactly what you can replay today.
| Timeframe | History starts | Roughly | Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| D1 / W1 / MN | January 2018 | 9 years, 2,000+ bars | Free |
| H4 | January 2018 | 9 years, 14,000+ bars | Free |
| H1 | January 2018 | 9 years, 51,000+ bars | Free |
| M30 | September 2024 | 2 years, 24,000+ bars | Free |
| M15 | September 2024 | 2 years, 48,000+ bars | Free |
| M5 | April 2025 | 18 months, 100,000+ bars | Free |
| M1 | June 2026 | 4 months, 100,000+ bars | Free |
Coverage as of October 2026 and growing nightly. WTI's 30- and 15-minute history is shorter than on most markets; for multi-year intraday tests, use H1.
Measured
Wednesday at 15:00 UTC is oil's inventory hour.
Median WTI hourly range in cents, by weekday, for the four hours around the US open, January 2021 to September 2026.
| Day | 13:00 UTC | 14:00 UTC | 15:00 UTC | 16:00 UTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 74.0¢ | 76.0¢ | 67.0¢ | 55.0¢ |
| Tuesday | 76.6¢ | 81.0¢ | 71.9¢ | 55.5¢ |
| Wednesday | 72.9¢ | 80.5¢ | 78.6¢ | 63.5¢ |
| Thursday | 74.0¢ | 76.0¢ | 73.0¢ | 64.0¢ |
| Friday | 75.0¢ | 77.0¢ | 69.0¢ | 57.5¢ |
33,908 WTI hourly bars, 2021-01-03 to 2026-09-25, FxBacktest archive; each cell is a median over 292 to 299 hours. UTC throughout.
Every Wednesday the US Energy Information Administration publishes its weekly petroleum inventory report at 10:30 New York time - 14:30 UTC in summer and 15:30 UTC in winter. That is visible in the data. In the 15:00 UTC hour, Wednesday is the widest day of the week at 78.6¢, against 67 to 73¢ on the other days. Oddly the 14:00 hour shows no Wednesday premium, so the effect sits in the bar that holds the release in winter and its first hour of digestion in summer. An oil strategy whose stops sit inside the typical hour gets swept more often on Wednesday afternoons - test with and without those hours, or turn on the news filter.
The bigger effect is the regime. The median WTI day covered 144¢ in 2019 and 372.4¢ so far in 2026, and the 21 April 2020 bar - the day after front-month WTI settled below zero - ranged 75.6% from high to low. Size oil stops from the current range, and keep April 2020 out of any average unless that is what you are testing.
When WTI crude oil movesmedian hourly range by 3-hour block, UTC, 2021-2026
33,908 WTI crude oil hourly bars, 2021-01-03 to 2026-09-25, FxBacktest archive. Each block is the average of its three hourly medians. Values are in cents per barrel. The 12:00-18:00 blocks hold the US open, the inventory report and the settlement window.
Before you test
Three things that break a forex strategy on oil.
Each links to a longer read.
Original research
News moves markets, measured
How much do scheduled releases widen the range, and for how long? Our release study measures it - the inventory hour behaves the same way.
Read the study GuideTest with and without news
Run the same rules twice, once skipping the release hours. If the edge only lives in the news hours, you need to know before you trade it.
Read the guide GuideEnough trades per regime
Split the sample by year before you trust the total. Each regime needs enough trades on its own to mean something, or the headline win rate is mostly one good year.
Read the guideHow it works
Four steps, about a minute.
More markets with their own page: Nasdaq · Dow 30 · EUR/USD · Bitcoin · Silver · GBP/USD · USD/JPY · S&P 500 · Ethereum · DAX 40 · GBP/JPY · AUD/USD. All 105 are on the backtest hub.
Questions
Crude oil backtesting FAQ
Is crude oil backtesting really free here?
Yes. WTI, Brent, natural gas and all 105 instruments are unlocked on the free plan, with every timeframe, full trade execution and the session report. Nothing to download, no card. Paid plans add more saved sessions, more simultaneous indicators and deeper analytics - not the oil chart or its history.
How much crude oil history can I replay?
Daily, 4-hour and hourly WTI bars from January 2018. 30-minute and 15-minute data start in September 2024, 5-minute in April 2025 and 1-minute in June 2026.
When is crude oil most volatile?
Between 13:00 and 16:00 UTC, around the US open, and above all in the Wednesday hour that holds the weekly EIA inventory report (14:30 or 15:30 UTC depending on daylight saving).
Can I backtest Brent too?
Yes. Brent, WTI and natural gas are all on the free plan with the same replay engine and report, alongside metals, softs, indices and forex - all listed on the backtest hub.
Risk disclaimerTrading foreign exchange, CFDs, cryptocurrencies and other leveraged products carries a high level of risk and is not suitable for every investor - losses can exceed your deposits. Everything on this page is educational content, not financial advice. Backtest and simulator results are hypothetical: they do not represent live trading and past performance does not guarantee future results.