pyalgotrade VS backtesting.py

https://github.com/gbeced/pyalgotrade (event-driven)

pyalgotrade – PyAlgoTrade is an event driven algorithmic trading Python library. Although the initial focus was on backtesting, paper trading is now possible

We chose backtesting.py for a backtesting framework. There are several to choose from but that one seems like the most well-supported and actively worked on at the moment.

The process might vary a bit based on what you want to trade, but I've had some success with back-testing by using the IBKR API to download historical data for the stocks I want, then plugging in that data to some other back-testing framework, like https://kernc.github.io/backtesting.py/

https://kernc.github.io/backtesting.py/ offers nice way to zoom backtesting. It has some bugs, but good for visualization.

Are there any free trading platform options to import and backtest millisecond historical tick data? Do you use something like https://github.com/kernc/backtesting.py and then translate algorithms into mql4/5 or pinescript?

But even if you don't know that, you can Google the library to find its documentation and installation instructions - in this case, here where it does indeed tell you to run pip install backtesting.

Sure. My strategy is actually very simple using common indicators like MACD and RSI. Most of the code is actually based on https://github.com/kernc/backtesting.py and I use it to check whether I should buy or sell on a particular day. Hope this helps!

I'm leaning towards using the backtesting.py library, but from the example on their main page, it looks like you need to program your strategy using their library?