Last updated: 6 July 2026
Subscription & billing
1. Can I cancel my subscription at any time?
Yes. You can cancel whenever you want from your billing settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — you keep access to your paid features until then. We don't lock you into long contracts.
2. What happens to my data if I cancel?
Your account and everything in it (strategies, portfolios, backtest history) remain available until the end of the paid period. After that, if you don't renew, your account moves to the free tier and access to paid features and datasets is limited accordingly. You can export or delete your data at any time.
3. Do you offer refunds?
Fees already paid are generally non-refundable, except where required by consumer law. Because you can cancel before each renewal and downgrade freely, you're never charged for a period you didn't intend to use.
4. Is there a free plan?
Yes. The Free plan lets you try SkewLab with no credit card: US equities and ETFs, a limited number of backtests per month, and the core wizard. It's meant to let you build and run a real backtest before deciding whether to upgrade.
5. What's the difference between the plans?
Free covers US equities/ETFs with monthly limits. Basic removes the monthly backtest limit and adds crypto. Pro unlocks all asset classes (including European equities, futures, bonds, FX, indices), AI suggestions, robustness and Monte Carlo analysis, stress tests, and forward paper testing. Institutional adds multi-user, white-label reports, custom datasets and dedicated support. The pricing page has the full comparison.
6. Can I change plans later?
Yes, you can upgrade or downgrade at any time. Upgrades take effect immediately; downgrades take effect at the end of the current billing period.
7. How is billing handled?
Payments are processed securely by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. You can pay monthly or annually — the annual plan gives you two months free.
8. Do prices include VAT?
Prices shown include applicable VAT unless stated otherwise at checkout. If you're a business, you can enter your VAT number on the invoice.
Data & coverage
9. Where does your market data come from?
We license data from established providers. US equities, ETFs, futures, FX, crypto and indices come from an intraday data vendor with 15–20 years of history; European equities come from EODHD and, for Borsa Italiana, Marketstack.
10. Is your data survivorship-bias-free?
It depends on the market. Our US equity dataset includes delisted companies, so it's survivorship-bias-free. European equity coverage currently includes only currently listed instruments, so it is subject to survivorship bias — which tends to overstate historical returns. Each dataset's coverage is indicated in the app so you always know what you're testing on.
11. How far back does the data go?
US daily and intraday data span roughly two decades. European daily data goes back to 2000. European intraday (1-hour and 5-minute) data starts from October 2020, which is the depth available from the vendor.
12. Which timeframes can I backtest on?
Daily, and intraday down to 1-minute on many US instruments. For European equities you can backtest on daily, 1-hour and 5-minute bars (intraday from October 2020). Available timeframes are shown per instrument.
13. Why are some European stocks only available daily?
Milan (Borsa Italiana) and Lisbon instruments don't have usable intraday data from our provider, so they're offered on a daily basis only. This is a limitation of the data source, not of the platform.
14. Are dividends included in the data?
Depending on the dataset, price series are either price-return (dividends excluded) or total-return (dividends reinvested). The app indicates which applies. For European daily data both split-only and total-return variants exist; European intraday is split-adjusted.
15. What are time, dollar and volume bars?
Beyond standard time-based bars, SkewLab supports dollar bars and volume bars — sampling methods from quantitative research (López de Prado) that build bars based on traded value or volume rather than fixed time intervals. They can produce more statistically stable series for certain strategies.
Using the platform
16. Do I need to know how to code?
No. You build strategies through an intuitive wizard — you choose indicators, entry and exit rules, and parameters visually, with no programming required. The same applies to portfolios.
17. Which technical indicators are available?
25 indicators across four families: momentum (RSI, MACD, Stochastic, ROC, CCI, Williams %R), trend (SMA, EMA, WMA, ADX, Aroon, Parabolic SAR, SuperTrend), volatility (ATR, Bollinger Bands, Keltner, Donchian, Z-Score, Hurst) and volume (OBV, VWAP, MFI, CMF, Accumulation/Distribution, Force Index).
18. What's the difference between a strategy and a portfolio?
A strategy is a set of rules applied to instruments — entries, exits, indicators — that you backtest to see how it would have performed. A portfolio is a collection of assets with an allocation and rebalancing logic, tested for long-term behaviour. Strategies live in the Trader module, portfolios in the Investor module; both are available from the same login.
19. What analyses can I run on my results?
For strategies: temporal robustness, Monte Carlo on trades, alpha/beta versus a benchmark, and result export. For portfolios: historical stress tests, forward Monte Carlo, benchmark comparison and an institutional PDF report.
20. What is a stress test?
A stress test replays your portfolio through specific historical crisis windows (dot-com crash, 2008, European debt crisis, Covid crash) to show how it would have behaved. Where an instrument lacks data for a window, an asset-class benchmark is substituted as a proxy, and this is flagged in the report.
21. What does the Monte Carlo simulation do?
It resamples historical returns many times to produce a distribution of possible outcomes, helping you see the range of results your strategy or portfolio might experience rather than a single historical path.
22. Can I export my results?
Yes. Strategy results can be exported (e.g. trade lists as CSV). Portfolios can generate a multi-page institutional PDF report. PDF reports are available for portfolios only.
23. In which languages is SkewLab available?
The platform, guides and legal pages are available in English, Italian, French, German and Spanish. You can switch language at any time from the selector, and the interface detects your browser language on first visit.
Nature of the service
24. Is SkewLab investment advice?
No. SkewLab is an analytical software tool. Nothing it produces — backtests, metrics, simulations, reports or AI suggestions — is investment advice or a recommendation. We are not authorised or regulated as a financial adviser. Always consult a qualified, authorised adviser before investing. See our Risk Disclaimer.
25. Do the AI suggestions tell me what to invest in?
No. The AI features generate generic analytical observations about the parameters and results of your own strategies and portfolios. They are not personalised advice and must be verified independently.
26. Can past backtest performance predict future results?
No. Backtest results are hypothetical and computed with hindsight. Past performance — real or simulated — is not indicative of future results. Real trading involves execution, liquidity and emotional factors that a backtest cannot fully capture.
27. Can I use SkewLab results to make real investment decisions?
You can use them as one input among many, but any decision is entirely your own responsibility and at your own risk. SkewLab is a research and analysis tool, not a trading service.
Account & privacy
28. How do you protect my personal data?
We process personal data under the UK GDPR and GDPR, using encryption in transit and access controls. We don't sell your data. See our Privacy Policy for details on what we collect, why, and your rights.
29. Can I delete my account and data?
Yes. You can delete your account at any time from settings; your data is removed from active systems and from backups within 30 days. You can also request data access or erasure by contacting us.
30. How do I get support?
Use the contact form in the Help section or on the public site — we reply by email. For questions about an Institutional plan, select the Institutional topic on the contact form and we'll get back to you.
This FAQ is for general information and does not form part of a contract. Where it touches on legal or risk matters, our Terms of Service and Risk Disclaimer prevail.