Two TikToks with 150k views took a $60/month "TradingView one-click MT5" extension from 92 users to 486

ViewLink is a hosted service by two brothers from South Africa. Draw entry, stop and take-profit on a TradingView chart, click once, and the trade fills on MT5 with size calculated from your risk. The Chrome extension is only a 94KB client; the money comes from the $60/month subscription. The features aren't new: at least four similar extensions came earlier, and the established PineConnector charges the same. What's worth watching is the pitch. The same feature was explained in first-person screen recordings, and two videos brought in most of its users.

"Bye-bye MT5 manual trading"

In 2026 September 13, the TikTok account @viewlink.dev posted a 1 min 30 sec video captioned: "Bye-bye MT5 manual trading! I drag the entry and stop on TradingView, the R:R updates live, and it lands right where I want it. No lot-size math, no jumping to MT5." The screen is split: on the left, TradingView, drag the price and click; on the right, the fill appears on MT5 immediately. By 6 Nov it had 160k views, 5,800 likes and 590 shares.

Four days later, plugin users went from 92 to 204 (extops.dev user curve). The second post, Sep 25: "Free TradingView plan. Still fires to MT5." 148K plays, 648 shares; over the next ten days, users went from 252 to 386.

The most-liked comments weren't praise but doubt: "broker and TradingView prices are different" (31 likes), "I only enter on MT5, TradingView quotes lag" (32 likes), "pineconnecter does the same." But the same thread also had "we've been waiting for this" and "this is what I actually want", and a string of people asking: is there a trial, does it work on mobile, do prop firms allow it, how do I install it.

What it is

Setup has three steps: attach its Pine Script indicator on TradingView, which calculates entry, stop, take-profit and order type; the Chrome extension reads those values from TradingView's Data Window; click Execute and the order goes through its server to MT5, where you install the EA it provides on MT5. The store listing says: "No automation. No signal generation. You decide every trade." It doesn't make decisions for you; it just removes platform switching and manual lot sizing.

The reason it exists is simple: TradingView can't trade directly on MT4/MT5 accounts (TradingView's official support page: you can log in, you can't place orders). The daily routine of a lot of retail forex traders is reading charts on TradingView, placing orders on MT5, and doing lot-size math in between.

Revenue comes from outside the extension. The site viewlink.dev has one plan, Starter, at $60/month for one MT5 account, including a managed MT5 VPS so users don't run their own server. There's a 7-day free trial, and the page shows "73 free trial spots left", a number that hasn't moved much in days. A second income stream is introducing-broker commissions from ATFX, $4–12 per lot, limited to South African residents.

Behind it are brothers Kevin and Theo Maja, who call themselves traders in the videos. Their LinkedIn company page was created 2026 years ago and has 10 followers. In early November they had a booth at FMAS, a financial markets show in Cape Town.

Where users come from

User curve from extops.dev and the Chrome store, 11-06.

Almost entirely TikTok. The account has 2,816 followers and 185 posts (11-06). In September, 26 videos got about 326k views in total, 300k of it from those two; other months totaled ten to forty thousand views a month. Rough view-to-install conversion is about 0.08%, and of the 300 new users since September, about 250 came from those two videos (estimate). The same material also went to YouTube Shorts, Instagram and LinkedIn, with little effect. User numbers didn't move after the trade show. There's no discussion on X, Reddit or Product Hunt and no press coverage. Judging by the quality of the questions in the comments, it looks like organic traffic, though whether paid promotion was used can't be confirmed.

What's worth copying is the pivot in pitch. Up to 3 April, its videos talked about "alerts trigger, auto-open, you do nothing", head-to-head with PineConnector, at ten to twenty thousand views a month. From August it switched to "you decide, one click fills at the right size", adding "works on the free TradingView plan". That line targets the biggest barrier among competitors: alert forwarding needs webhooks, and webhooks need a paid TradingView plan. Both hits came after the pivot. The video formula is also fixed: first-person screen recording, split-screen comparison, specific instrument and lot size ("USDCAD 14.45 lots"), and exaggerated reaction shots.

Who it's competing with

Chrome store and extops.dev, 11-06; PineConnector pricing page.

There's also a detour: many brokers already connect to TradingView directly, or link an MT5 account to cTrader and then to TradingView. Commenters said outright: "I'm surprised that you people are just finding this out", "Bro discovered something was there for ages". Another wrote: "TradingView > Data window > connector > MT5 execution > order filled. I can create this in 1 day". That is in fact its structure.

So its only differences are two: a hosted VPS (most similar extensions make users run MT5 themselves), and the positioning of "one-click manual, works on the free plan". Neither of these is a real moat.

Where the money comes from, and how much

Unknown. Paid users and revenue aren't public, and from 486 installs there's no way to tell how many are on trial versus paying. What is clear is that the price is seen as high: "60$ a month 🤔", "60 usd is too high", "15-25$ is a fair price". Assuming 486 installs and a few dozen paying customers, it's a small business of a few thousand dollars a month (inference). Its upside is the high unit price: users of this kind of bridge already pay, PineConnector anchors the price at $59, and broker commissions add a second income stream.

The risks sit here too. It works by reading the Data Window on the TradingView page, so if TradingView redesigns or blocks that, it has to adapt. Prop firm rules differ on whether this order method is allowed, and forex commissions are themselves a compliance-sensitive business.

If it were you

B: worth trying, the opportunity is there, but the feature has no moat; what you can take is the playbook. A bridge of "chart on platform A, order on platform B" has real willingness to pay, and pricing can match $59; ViewLink shows that first-person short videos saying "no lot-size math" and "the free plan works too" can pull in users. But four or five similar extensions already exist, and the established leader offers more at the same price; ViewLink's own 185 videos only reached 486 users.

Who it suits: developers who trade themselves and can film screen recordings on TikTok every day; people with a network or audience in a non-English trading community (Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Arabic, Nigerian, etc.); small teams able to reliably run MT5 EAs and hosted VPSs.

Who it doesn't suit: people who want to win on features (commenters already say it can be written in a day); people unwilling to touch forex, prop firm rules and commission compliance; people who won't appear on camera to make content.

How to do it: don't make another English ViewLink. Pick an audience that neither ViewLink nor BridgeX is serving, and build a local-language version: the same "draw the order on the chart → one click fills at the right risk → hosted VPS", priced at the $15–30/month range commenters mention. Fill in what it does poorly: multi-account (PineConnector offers 3), mobile (repeatedly requested in comments), prop firm rule warnings (daily loss limit, per-trade risk), plus MT4 and cTrader. If broker commissions can be offered compliantly where you are, use them as second revenue.

How to acquire users: copy its video formula, in the target language: first-person screen recording, split-screen comparison, state the instrument and lot size, open with "you can run MT5 from the free TradingView plan". Post daily to build volume until a hit lands; two hits out of 185 videos is enough. Also publish a free public indicator with the same name on TradingView so people searching inside TradingView find you. The people in the comments asking "how do I install" and "is there a trial" are the ones you should answer directly under your videos.

When to move: the sooner the better; ideally get an account running in one language market before Q1 of 2027. Since late October, new similar extensions have been listed almost every week, and they all still have 0 users. Once a couple of them learn the short-video playbook, search placement and the comment sections will be taken.

Signs you've misread it: ① ViewLink is still hovering around 500 installs with 1 reviews three months on, meaning trial users aren't sticking and demand at this price is smaller than the videos suggest; ② TradingView opens direct MT5 trading, or blocks extensions that read the Data Window, and the whole category disappears; ③ you post daily in the local language for a month and no single video passes ten thousand views, meaning this audience isn't on TikTok and you need a different channel.

Data and sources

• Chrome Web Store page chromewebstore.google.com/detail/nhkdbffhhilennnjjegonjppkbbgeagj (11-06 read, version 0.3.3,11-04 updated, 2026-06-02 listed).
• User curve: extops.dev single page (11-06); competitor user counts from Chrome Web Store and extops.dev, 11-06.
• Pricing and rebates: viewlink.dev (11-06); PineConnector pricing page; TradingView support page "MT4/MT5 accounts can log in but cannot trade."
• TikTok @viewlink.dev profile, videos and comments (11-06); two hit videos posted on 2026-09-13 and 2026-09-25, play counts as seen 11-06.
• LinkedIn company page viewlink-official; public "ViewLink" indicator on TradingView (author The_Alchemist_7, whether it's the official account unverified).
• X search for "viewlink" over the last 90 days: 0 posts.