Installing AmiBroker: Versions and Editions

AmiBroker’s download page offers more than one installer, the shop offers two editions, and the differences between them are documented in exactly one place and repeated nowhere usefully. This lesson tells you which file to take, what the trial actually is, what the two editions actually differ on, and which of the thirty-seven parts of this course need something you may not have.

The honest headline first: almost all of this course runs on the free trial, or on the cheaper edition, with free end-of-day data. The parts that do not are the real-time parts, and every one of those carries an alternative route. Nobody needs to buy anything to finish the course. But you should know where the boundary is before you walk into it, rather than three months from now in the middle of a lesson.

Two release channels, one program

AmiBroker maintains two publicly available builds at any time, and they are not the same version.

The licensed release is 7.00.1 — build 7.00.1.7001, dated 22 December 2025. You get it from the Members’ Area after buying a licence. This is what this course is validated against.

The public trial is 6.93 — build 6.93.0.6930, dated 17 August 2024. It is a free download with no signup, offered as separate 32-bit and 64-bit installers of roughly 10 MB each. The download page describes it as a universal installer for both the Professional and the Standard editions, and it includes AmiQuote and the AFL Code Wizard, so those do not need separate downloads.

The trial is therefore one full release behind, and that gap matters in specific, nameable ways.

!Important

Features introduced in AmiBroker 7.00 are not in the 6.93 trial. The ones a reader of this course might reach for are the AI-driven AFL Code Assistant in the Formula Editor, colour-coded symbol tagging, the integrated software updater in the Help menu, SetOpacity for alpha-blended plots, AddSummaryRows working in every analysis mode rather than explorations only, and SetOption("MaxEntryRank", N) in the backtester. None of them is load-bearing for the course, and every lesson that mentions one says which version it needs.

Two smaller consequences of the split are worth knowing now. First, a purchased licence key does not upgrade the demo build in place — after buying, you install the full licensed version from the Members’ Area. Second, the AmiBroker website’s HTML function reference visibly lags the 7.00 release: several features announced in the release notes have no page in the online reference at all. For anything specific to 7.00, the help file bundled with your installation is the authority, not the website.

What the trial is, and what it is not

AmiBroker is trialware. The documented terms are short: you may evaluate the software free for up to 30 days, and to use it beyond that you buy a licence. Registering unlocks “all features of the program”, and the guide names two things specifically — database saving and the removal of the nag requesters — along with 24 months of free upgrades, Members’ Area access and 24 months of e-mail support.

Those two named items are the only trial limitations the official documentation states. Everything else people say about the trial is inference.

∴Research note

Three things about the trial are not documented anywhere official, and this course will not assert them: which edition the trial behaves as, whether trial feature gating differs from a licensed Standard edition, and whether AmiBroker itself imposes any symbol or bar cap during the trial. If you need to know, test it on your own machine and trust what you observe over what a forum post claims.

One limit that is documented and is frequently misattributed: AmiQuote, the downloader bundled with the installer, is a separately licensed $99 add-on. Its trial version carries a 10-symbol limit on all data sources, and an unregistered AmiQuote downloads Yahoo “fundamental extra” data for only the first 20 tickers in a list. That cap belongs to AmiQuote, not to AmiBroker. Hitting it and concluding that AmiBroker cannot handle more than ten symbols is a common and expensive misreading.

Standard versus Professional

AmiBroker ships in two editions. There is exactly one official feature-by-feature comparison, and this is what it says.

Capability	Standard	Professional
End-of-day charting, backtesting, scanning	Yes	Yes
1-, 5-, 15-minute and hourly intraday	Yes	Yes
Custom minute bars	Yes	Yes
Tick charts, backtests and scans	No	Yes
1-, 5- and 15-second bars	No	Yes
Streaming Real-Time Quote window	10 symbols	Unlimited
Time and Sales window	1 symbol	Unlimited
GetRTData() / GetRTDataForeign()	No	Yes
Wait for backfill in the Analysis window	No	Yes
Automatically updating real-time charts	Yes	Yes
MAE/MFE distribution charts in portfolio backtest reports	No	Yes
Analysis-window threads	Up to 2	Up to 32
Bitness	32-bit only	64-bit and 32-bit

Tick support is further restricted by data source: the edition page footnotes it as available only through eSignal real-time, Interactive Brokers, or a DDE feed. The thread count also depends on how many logical processors you have and how many symbols are under test — 32 is a ceiling, not a promise.

That table is the complete list. Nine capabilities. Everything else in AmiBroker — portfolio backtesting, optimization, walk-forward, Monte Carlo, the batch processor, the visual debugger, matrices, low-level graphics, the on-chart GUI functions — is in both editions. Out of the several hundred functions in the online AFL reference, exactly two carry an edition restriction, and both are on the table above.

✕Common mistake

The trap in the edition list is GetRTData(). In the Standard edition it does not raise an error and it does not warn you. It silently returns Null for every field, so a formula that depends on it appears to run correctly and simply produces nothing. If a real-time formula from a forum or a book gives you empty output on Standard, this is the first thing to check.

Where the official pages disagree, and what this course does about it

There is a genuine inconsistency in AmiBroker’s own documentation about real-time data and editions, and you should know about it because it changes what you can trust.

The data-vendor directory page heads its real-time table “REAL-TIME DATA (Professional Edition only)”. The edition-comparison page, by contrast, gives the Standard edition automatically updating real-time charts, a ten-symbol streaming quote window, one Time and Sales window, and answers “no” to “requires a real-time data subscription”. The shop page describes Standard as “End-of-day and Real time. Intraday starting from 1-minute interval.” A plug-in tutorial elsewhere in the guide says of one real-time source that it “can operate on the standard edition, but AmiBroker RT is recommended”.

Three official pages give Standard real-time capability; one section heading suggests otherwise. The vendor-directory page is also explicitly dated March 2023 and warns that its contents may not be current.

✱AmiBroker Professional required

How this course handles it. Every lesson that assumes a live streaming feed is badged as needing Professional, because the User’s Guide’s real-time data chapter says so and because the capabilities such a lesson exercises — tick and second intervals, GetRTData(), more than ten streaming symbols, wait-for-backfill — are individually documented as Professional-only. Every one of those lessons also carries a Level A path: the same learning with end-of-day data, historical intraday data or Bar Replay.

The narrower statement, every clause of which is separately sourced from the edition page, is this: both editions can connect to a real-time data source; Standard is restricted to intervals of one minute and above, ten streaming symbols, one Time and Sales window, no GetRTData(), and no wait-for-backfill.

32-bit or 64-bit

If you buy Standard, this decision is made for you: Standard is 32-bit only. Professional ships both.

The compatibility chart publishes the addressable memory each build gets:

Build and host	Addressable memory
32-bit AmiBroker on 32-bit Windows	2 GB, or 3 GB with the /3G boot switch
32-bit AmiBroker on 64-bit Windows	4 GB
64-bit AmiBroker on 64-bit Windows	1000 GB

Three practical points follow, and two of them surprise people.

Plug-ins are DLLs, and Windows will not mix bitness. A 32-bit AmiBroker cannot load a 64-bit plug-in and vice versa. Because most third-party data plug-ins ship 32-bit only, the 32-bit build has the widest data-source support. Two vendor links — TC2000/TCNet and FastTrack — are 32-bit only for good, because the vendors publish no 64-bit API. If a plug-in you dropped into the Plugins folder does not appear in the data-source list, bitness mismatch is the documented first suspect.

The keys are different, and the wrong one fails silently. Activation uses ABReg.exe for the 32-bit build and ABReg64.exe for the 64-bit build. Applying the wrong one produces no error message at all — the program simply stays unregistered. The 64-bit key is issued only to Professional registrants.

64-bit is less numerically precise, not more. The x64 compilers dropped the 80-bit x87 floating-point unit in favour of 64-bit SSE2, so the 32-bit build computes intermediate results at 80-bit internal accuracy while the 64-bit build tops out at 64. Choose 64-bit for capacity, not for accuracy, and expect tiny differences between builds on the same data. Everything else is portable: formulas, project files, databases, layouts and watch lists are binary-compatible between builds.

✦Tip

AmiBroker’s own download page gives the simplest rule: if you are unsure, use 32-bit. It runs on both 32- and 64-bit Windows, and it has the widest plug-in support. Both builds may be installed side by side in separate folders. Help -> About states plainly which one you are running.

System requirements

The guide’s supported-operating-system list is Windows 7 SP1 (with Internet Explorer 11) through Windows 11, in both 32- and 64-bit editions. Older Windows versions are not supported; only very old 5.x AmiBroker releases ran on Vista and XP. Windows 7 further requires TLS 1.2 enabled and update KB3004394 installed, which matters because AmiQuote’s downloads are all over HTTPS.

Hardware is undemanding. The published minimum is a 450 MHz Pentium with 1 GB of RAM and 20 MB of disk. The recommended configuration is a multi-core CPU at 1 GHz or better with 4 GB of RAM or more. Take the recommendation seriously if you plan to work with intraday databases; Part 4 of this part explains why memory is the binding constraint there.

✕Common mistake

The marketing pages and the User’s Guide disagree about supported Windows versions — the product page still lists Vista and XP under minimum requirements, while the guide and the compatibility chart both say they are not supported. When two official AmiBroker pages disagree, the User’s Guide wins. That rule is worth adopting generally.

What this costs, stated plainly

Prices are in US dollars, from the shop, which is stated to be the only authorised AmiBroker shop worldwide.

• Standard Edition, new single-user licence: $299
• Professional Edition, new single-user licence: $379
• Ultimate Pack Pro: $499 — Professional plus AmiQuote plus the AFL Code Wizard
• AmiQuote alone: $99. AFL Code Wizard + AI Assistant alone: $99
• Upgrades, once the free period ends: Standard $159, Professional $189

Licences are perpetual and personal. One licence may be used on several machines that you own. Each includes 24 months of free upgrades, support and maintenance; after that, further upgrades are half price. Delivery is a key file by e-mail. There are no refunds on digital downloads, which is precisely why the 30-day trial exists — use it.

⚠Warning

Two add-ons are separately licensed and easy to confuse with the program itself. AmiQuote is the downloader this course uses in the next lesson but one; it is bundled with the trial installer and with Ultimate Pack Pro, but a plain AmiBroker licence does not cover it. The AI AFL Code Assistant in AmiBroker 7.00 is gated by the AFL Code Wizard licence, not by the AmiBroker edition — without that key it is limited to five responses per run, whether you own Standard or Professional.

Which parts of this course need what

Deciding what to install

1. 1Free 30-day trial, 32-bit, end-of-day dataParts 1-16 and 27-36 in full. Start here — this is the default route.
2. 2A licence, still end-of-dayAdds database saving and removes the requesters. Standard is enough.
3. 3Standard plus an intraday feedAdds Parts 19-26 at one-minute grain and above.
4. 4Professional plus a real-time feedAdds tick and second intervals, GetRTData, unlimited streaming symbols, wait-for-backfill, MAE/MFE charts, 32 analysis threads.

Each step adds capability. No step is required to finish the course.

Concretely, by part:

• Parts 1–16 and 27–36 — no edition requirement, no data subscription. End-of-day data from a free source is enough for every lesson, lab and project.
• Parts 17–26, the real-time block — written against a live feed and badged Professional, with a Level A path in every lesson using end-of-day data, historical intraday data or Bar Replay.
• Part 29, understanding backtest results — the MAE/MFE distribution charts in the portfolio backtest report are Professional-only. The lesson explains what they show and how to reason about excursion without them.
• Parts 12 and 31, scanning and optimization — both run on Standard. They run faster on Professional, because Standard caps an Analysis window at 2 threads and Professional at 32. That is a difference in how long you wait, not in what you can do.

?Reality check

It is often said that you need the Professional edition to do serious work in AmiBroker. Held up against the documentation, that claim does not survive: the Professional-only list is nine items long, and seven of the nine concern real-time streaming data specifically. If you are building and testing end-of-day systems — which is what most of this course is — the two editions do the same work, and Professional does it with more threads. Buy the edition that matches the data you actually intend to use.

What changed in your understanding

You now know that AmiBroker has two live versions rather than one, that the free trial is a release behind and what that costs you, and that the trial’s only documented restrictions are database saving and the nag requesters. You know the complete, nine-item list of what Professional adds, and that everything else is in both editions. You know that the bitness decision is really about plug-in compatibility and memory rather than about speed, and that 64-bit is marginally less precise. And you know where AmiBroker’s own pages contradict each other about real-time and editions, and which page this course trusts when they do.

The next page turns all of that into an installation you have actually verified.

Check your understanding

Question 1. You are running the Standard edition and your formula calls GetRTData("Bid"). What happens?

• AmiBroker refuses to save the formula
• The Formula Editor reports a syntax error
• It runs and silently returns Null for every field
• It falls back to the last bar’s Close

Show the answer and why

Answer: It runs and silently returns Null for every field

GetRTData is one of only two edition-restricted functions in the whole AFL reference. In Standard it does not error — it returns Null for every field, so the formula appears to work and produces nothing. Silent failure is far harder to diagnose than a loud one, which is why it is worth memorising.

Question 2. Which of these are documented as requiring the Professional edition? Select all that apply.

• Five-second bars
• Portfolio backtesting
• More than 10 symbols in the streaming Real-Time Quote window
• The visual AFL debugger
• MAE/MFE distribution charts in the portfolio backtest report

Show the answer and why

Answer: Five-second bars, More than 10 symbols in the streaming Real-Time Quote window, MAE/MFE distribution charts in the portfolio backtest report

The Professional-only list is closed and short. Second and tick intervals, the streaming quote window beyond ten symbols, and the MAE/MFE charts are on it. Portfolio backtesting and the debugger are not edition-gated anywhere in the official documentation — do not assume a feature is Professional-only just because it feels advanced.

Question 3. You install the 64-bit build and apply the activation key with ABReg.exe. What do you see?

• A clear error saying the key is for the wrong build
• Nothing — the program simply stays unregistered
• AmiBroker converts the key automatically
• The 32-bit build launches instead

Show the answer and why

Answer: Nothing — the program simply stays unregistered

The two builds use separate registration executables, ABReg.exe and ABReg64.exe, and applying the wrong one produces no message at all. If a licence "did not take", checking which registration tool you ran is the first move.

Question 4. True or false: the 30-day trial is documented to behave as the Standard edition.

• True
• False

Show the answer and why

Answer: False

False, and the distinction matters. The installer is documented only as universal for both editions. Which edition the trial behaves as is not stated anywhere official, so the course does not assert it. When documentation is silent, "not documented" is the correct answer rather than a plausible guess.

Check my answersClear