Galactic Trader, Solar Fire, and Optuma: Alternatives Compared

Traders who take astronomical cycle analysis seriously quickly run into a short list of commercial tools. Galactic Trader, Solar Fire Gold, and Optuma are the three most commonly recommended. Each comes with significant trade-offs. This is an honest assessment of what each does well and where it falls short.

Galactic Trader

Galactic Trader (developed by Magi Society and others over the years, now available from several vendors) is the most specialised tool in this space. It was built specifically for combining planetary data with price charts.

What it does well: The integration of planetary positions directly onto price charts is genuinely useful. You can overlay the Bradley siderograph, planetary ingresses, eclipse dates, and heliocentric positions alongside OHLCV price data in a single view. The correlation functions, which test whether specific planetary events precede price moves by a specified lag, are well-implemented.

The gaps: Galactic Trader is not a full charting platform. Technical analysis tools (moving averages, oscillators, pattern recognition) are limited. Data connectivity has historically been a problem, getting current price feeds into the platform reliably requires workarounds. The software is Windows-only and the UI reflects its origins in the 1990s.

Price: Licences range from USD 500-2,000 depending on the version. No free tier.

Solar Fire Gold

Solar Fire is primarily an astrological calculation program, not a trading tool. It's used by astrologers for natal chart calculation, transit analysis, and astronomical event lists. Traders use it for the planetary data capabilities rather than the price charting.

What it does well: The Bradley siderograph calculation in Solar Fire is accurate and well-documented. The planetary aspect search, "find all dates when Jupiter and Saturn are within 2° of conjunction", is fast and flexible. The ephemeris coverage is comprehensive (Swiss Ephemeris based).

The gaps: There's no price data integration. You get planetary dates and charts; you have to manually align them with price charts in a separate program. This two-platform workflow is cumbersome. Solar Fire is not designed for quantitative backtesting, it's a calculation and visualisation tool for astrologers who happen to want the astronomical data.

Price: Around AUD 400-600. Windows-based, though it runs acceptably under Wine on macOS/Linux.

Optuma

Optuma is a professional charting platform used by institutional technical analysts. It has a planetary module that adds astronomical events to price charts. Gann tools, Square of Nine, fan lines, angles, are well-implemented and there's an active user community around the Gann functionality.

What it does well: Optuma is a proper charting and analysis platform. The data connectivity is robust. The Gann tools are the best-implemented of any platform in this comparison. The scripting language (Optuma's own MatScript) allows custom indicators and backtesting. The Bradley siderograph is available as a standard indicator.

The gaps: Planetary analysis depth is shallower than Galactic Trader. The scripting language has a learning curve and some planetary calculation functions are limited compared to what you can do with raw ephemeris access in Python. Pricing is subscription-based and at the expensive end.

Price: AUD 100-200/month or AUD 1,000+ annually depending on the plan. 30-day trial available.

The open-source alternative

The gap in the commercial market is a tool that combines: - Full planetary ephemeris access with proper coordinate systems - Rigorous statistical cycle testing (Bartels, FFT spectral analysis) - Price data integration - Backtesting capabilities - Python-accessible for custom analysis

Crohamhurst.app is being built to fill that gap. It's not a commercial competitor to Optuma's charting capabilities, but for the specific workflow of planetary cycle analysis and significance testing, it does things the commercial tools don't.

Specific capabilities: - Swiss Ephemeris integration for planetary positions - Bradley siderograph calculation and visualisation - Gann Square of Nine price and time targets - Bartels cycle significance testing on uploaded time series - Bring your own data, upload CSV and apply all analysis tools to your data

Honest assessment

For a serious trader who needs professional charting alongside astronomical analysis: Optuma is the best single-platform solution, despite the price.

For someone primarily focused on astronomical data and already using a separate charting platform: Solar Fire Gold plus your existing charts is a workable two-platform setup.

For research and custom quantitative analysis: Python with Swiss Ephemeris and Crohamhurst.app for the cycle analysis components is more flexible than any commercial option.

Galactic Trader has the most direct integration but the oldest technology stack. It remains useful for the specific visual workflow of overlaying planetary events on price charts, but it hasn't kept pace with modern data connectivity expectations.

None of these tools is the complete answer to astronomical cycle trading. All of them require the analyst to supply the judgement that the software can't: which cycles are real, which configurations are significant, how to manage risk when the cycle analysis is wrong.

Related: Bradley Siderograph Complete Guide | Gann Square of Nine 2026 Guide | Computing Planetary Aspects: Ephemeris and Precision