Paper Trading on Altrady
Altrady’s Paper Trading facility allows traders to practise trading, test and compare strategies, explore exchanges, run bots and place all types of orders on all of the spot exchanges Altrady supports.
Paper Trading is available from V4.0, which can be accessed here or download and install the latest version of the app under Settings>Check for Updates.
See also: Managing Multiple Accounts on the same exchange
A Paper Trading Account is associated with a specific exchange, in the same way as a Live Trading Account. You can create multiple paper trading accounts, for the same or different exchanges.
An Introduction to Altrady's Paper Trading
How to create a Paper Trading account
Initial Balances
Editing Balances
Selecting your Paper Account
The Trading Terminal
Portfolio
Bots
Important Differences between Paper Accounts and Live Accounts
Order fills
Limitations on Paper Trading Accounts
What to use a Paper Trading Account for?
What happens if I run out of funds on my paper trading account?
Select Exchange Accounts from the left side menu.
Enter your 5 word pass key and click Activate to gain access to your API keys.
At the top of the API keys page, click Add paper account.
Choose the exchange, and give the account a meaningful label (e.g. Paper Binance)
Optionally, Select a folder for grouping your keys (for example, you might like to group all of your paper accounts together)
Folders can be created on the Portfolio page.
Click Save to create your paper trading account.
Your new paper trading account will have an initial balance of 0.3 BTC (or XBT, depending on the exchange) and 10,000 USDT (or USD, depending on the exchange).
The balance of your Paper Trading Accounts is excluded from the total balance displayed at the top of each page in the App.
The balances and the coins held in a poaper account can be edited at any time.
Everywhere in Altrady where a trading account can be selected, your Paper Trading Account can also be selected.
The Trading Terminal, for placing regular order, smart orders, managing positions, viewing orders and everything else
My Positions
Trading Analytics
Signal Bot
Grid Bot
Portfolio
Paper balances are not included in the balance shown at the top
From the Markets widget, choose a market on the exchange where you have created your paper trading account.
Then select your paper trading account from the Trading Accounts list (image below)
You will see the available balances for your paper trading account at the top of the Trading Widget.
My Orders will display only the orders for the selected Trading Account.
Your paper trading account can also be selected in My Positions
As for regular accounts, paper accounts are shown on the Portfolio page. You can track how the balance changes, and view the balances for coins held for each Trading Account.
If you have created more than one paper account on the same exchange, you can also compare the progress of each here, and in the Trading Analytics.
You can select or deselect your paper accounts in the Trading account list on the left, to include or exclude them from your total balance on the Portfolio page.
In general, a paper account will perform in the same way as a Live Account. However, there are some differences to be aware of, that arise due to the fact that orders on a Paper Trading Account are not placed on the exchange.
When any order is placed on an exchange, the exchange will verify that you have an account, and that the order is allowable and correct. While Altrady has access to many of those rules (such as minimum order size), there are some restrictions that only an exchange can validate. For example:
Trading leveraged tokens, where exchange permission is required. Altrady won’t know if you have permission from the exchange or not, so this won’t be validated.
Distance of the order price from the current price. Some exchanges limit how far an order price can vary from the current price, and this can be different for different markets. Altrady doesn’t have this information for your paper trading account, so order prices are not restricted. The amount of a coin or token you hold. Some tokens or coins have upper limits on the amount allowed to be in a wallet, or in open orders.
Number of orders open, or entered in a short space of time. paper trading accounts are not affected by either of these real world limitations. So in general, there are some orders that can be placed on your paper trading account that would not work on a Live Account.
Trading in volatile periods. During volatile trading periods, some exchanges slow down in their handling of API requests. Since there is no interaction with an exchange a paper trading account won’t be affected by these slow-downs. Altrady functions as quickly as ever during these times and your paper trading account will too.
All fees on a paper trading account are in Quote Currency at the highest standard rate for the exchange. (some exchanges have higher taker fees, if so then that is the fee used on all paper trades)
Fee discounts are not accounted for, which can affect the estimated profit on a paper account.
This can also mean slight differences in values for base and quote currency within a position, when compared with a live account, since some exchanges will actually charge fees using either:
an external token, such as BNB or KCS
base currency for buy orders and quote currency for sell orders (around half of the exchanges charge fees in this way when an external token is not used).
Limit Orders
When a limit order is placed on the exchange, it will sit in the order book, in a queue or orders at the same price. When your order reaches the beginning of the queue and is matched with an opposite order, your order will be filled. Naturally, when your order is not placed on the exchange, Altrady cannot know how it would have taken to reach your order, that is, when an equivalent order placed on the exchange would have reached the beginning of the queue and been filled.
For paper trading account orders, the price must exceed your order price, for the order to be marked as filled.
Example Buy order: When a trade occurs at 0.898, your order at 0.899 will be marked as filled. If there was no trade on the exchange at 0.899, then your trade price (filled order price) will be 0.898, instead of 0.899. In thin Order Books, this difference can be much greater.
This is noticeable for a Grid Bot: one a live account, orders would generally be shown as filled at the limit price of the grid. On a paper account, the fill prices can vary from grid prices.
Example Sell order: When a trade occurs at 2.12, your order will be marked as filled.
In terms of limit order fills, paper accounts are more conservative than Live accounts, where your order might be in a long queue where more orders are continually being added. This applies in particular to low sat markets which are often slow-moving. A paper trading account order will not be placed in the queue. Instead the order is marked as filled only when a trade occurs above (for a sell order) or below (for a buy order) the order price.
Keep this in mind for grid bots especially, where a Live account on a slow market would see many more filled orders than a paper trading account on on the same market.
On the other hand, a paper trading order will be shown as filled as soon as the price exceeds the order price, regardless of whether there would have been enough liquidity in the order book for the order to fill. This applies to both limit and market orders. For market orders, there is little to no slippage on paper accounts, while slippage can be large for live accounts.
Note. For Live accounts: On some exchanges, a market order might not completely fill, as the exchange applies the market order as a limit order 10% from the current price. This means that the maximum slippage is 10% for the amount filled, but also that some coins might not be sold (or bought, for a short position). Those coins must then be sold manually, at the current price, resulting in higher or lower total losses.
More on Market orders, below.
Market orders
Unlike a Live market order, a market order for a paper account is not actually placed on the exchange or matched against the order book. A market order will immediately be shown as filled and the price for the fill will be the Last Price at the time the order was placed.
This can be more or less than the fill price would have been for an equivalent live order, depending on: the liquidity in the order book, the frequency of trades, and the volatility.
Signal Bot comparison: Order fills and entry expiry
Paper trading account: a position will expire if the price is never reached. This is unlikely as signals are generally triggered based on the price. Paper account positions do not require liquidity on the order book for the entry order to be filled.
Live account: requires liquidity on the order book (i.e. for trades to occur). If there is no liquidity during the expiry period, the order will not be filled and the position will expire.
Therefore, a CBS signal bot running on a paper account can see more positions entered than a live account with the same settings.
There is a limit of 30 API keys per account. Paper trading accounts count towards this limit since server space and processing is still required for them.
Note that inactive accounts also count towards the total limit of API keys, for the same reason.
If you use a paper trading account for a signal bot or grid bot, that bot will be included in the count of Signal and Grid Bots allowed for your account.
Trying out unfamiliar order types. If you’ve never used a Trailing Stop, OCO, Smart Order, Stop Market order, Entry Expiry or Auto-close, this is your chance to play with those orders and develop expertise.
Likewise if you’ve never tried trading using the Quick Scan or the Base Scanner, a paper trading account is a great way to practise, minus the risk.
Compare Signal Bot strategies, by running 2 bots side by side using separate paper trading accounts (so you can easily see the difference in the balances).
Try different numbers or sizes of DCAs, TPs, SL percentages or no SL.
Try different position sizes and number of simultaneous positions.
The same for Grid Bot strategies–compare the number of grids, price range, Trailing Up and Down (on or off), or different markets.
Try out a new exchange. With a paper trading account, you can test trading on an exchange where you don't have a Live account! You might find that a BTC signal bot on Kucoin does much better than the one you’ve been running on Binance.
There are three options:
You can reset the balances of your account. All trades, orders, and positions will be deleted and the balances reset to the original amounts.
This can be done on:
the Trading widget when your Paper Trading account is selected, see Editing Balances.
the Portfolio page, by clicking the 3 dot menu to the right of the account and selecting "Reset Balances"
Providing you haven’t reached your limit of 30 API keys, you can create a new paper account whenever you like. It will start with new balances, and no order or trade history.
If you choose to delete a Paper Trading Account, all associated orders, trades, positions and balances are also deleted.
Edit the balances in the account. See below.
(V4.2 and above)
Refer to the image below and follow these steps in order:
1 Navigate to the Trading Terminal
2 Open the Markets widget
3 Select the exchange for your paper account
4 Select any market from that exchange, to open it
5 Select the paper account from the list if accounts for this exchange. If the paper account isn’t visible, ensure that Paper or All is selected as the account type
6 Open the Trading widget
7 Click: Edit Balance
Click Edit balance
The currencies for the selected pair are shown at the top.
The current available balance is shown in the middle column and its value it shown in the right hand column
Enter the new balance in the middle column–this is the number of coins and can be any value >= 0.
Click "Show Other Assets"
To edit the balances of other coins, first find the coin to edit:
1 Enter a search term or
2 Scroll the widget.
3 Exclude or include coins that currently have zero balance.
4 Enter the new balance in the middle column–this is the number of coins and can be any value >= 0.
Sort by any column, ascending or descending (see second image below).
Select a market for the exchange, and open the trading widget.
Select the paper account from the Accounts list
Click "Reset Paper balance"
This will reset the paper account, and delete:
Positions
Trades
Orders
The coin balances will be reset to the initial values.
Paper Trading is available from V4.0, which can be accessed here or download and install the latest version of the app under Settings>Check for Updates.
See also: Managing Multiple Accounts on the same exchange
A Paper Trading Account is associated with a specific exchange, in the same way as a Live Trading Account. You can create multiple paper trading accounts, for the same or different exchanges.
Contents
An Introduction to Altrady's Paper Trading
How to create a Paper Trading account
Initial Balances
Editing Balances
Selecting your Paper Account
The Trading Terminal
Portfolio
Bots
Important Differences between Paper Accounts and Live Accounts
Order fills
Limitations on Paper Trading Accounts
What to use a Paper Trading Account for?
What happens if I run out of funds on my paper trading account?
An Introduction to Altrady's Paper Trading
How to create a Paper Trading account
Select Exchange Accounts from the left side menu.
Enter your 5 word pass key and click Activate to gain access to your API keys.
At the top of the API keys page, click Add paper account.
Choose the exchange, and give the account a meaningful label (e.g. Paper Binance)
Optionally, Select a folder for grouping your keys (for example, you might like to group all of your paper accounts together)
Folders can be created on the Portfolio page.
Click Save to create your paper trading account.
Initial Balances
Your new paper trading account will have an initial balance of 0.3 BTC (or XBT, depending on the exchange) and 10,000 USDT (or USD, depending on the exchange).
The balance of your Paper Trading Accounts is excluded from the total balance displayed at the top of each page in the App.
The balances and the coins held in a poaper account can be edited at any time.
Selecting your Paper Account
Everywhere in Altrady where a trading account can be selected, your Paper Trading Account can also be selected.
The Trading Terminal, for placing regular order, smart orders, managing positions, viewing orders and everything else
My Positions
Trading Analytics
Signal Bot
Grid Bot
Portfolio
The Trading Terminal
Paper balances are not included in the balance shown at the top
From the Markets widget, choose a market on the exchange where you have created your paper trading account.
Then select your paper trading account from the Trading Accounts list (image below)
You will see the available balances for your paper trading account at the top of the Trading Widget.
My Orders will display only the orders for the selected Trading Account.
Your paper trading account can also be selected in My Positions
Portfolio
As for regular accounts, paper accounts are shown on the Portfolio page. You can track how the balance changes, and view the balances for coins held for each Trading Account.
If you have created more than one paper account on the same exchange, you can also compare the progress of each here, and in the Trading Analytics.
You can select or deselect your paper accounts in the Trading account list on the left, to include or exclude them from your total balance on the Portfolio page.
Bots
Important Differences between Paper Accounts and Live Accounts
In general, a paper account will perform in the same way as a Live Account. However, there are some differences to be aware of, that arise due to the fact that orders on a Paper Trading Account are not placed on the exchange.
When any order is placed on an exchange, the exchange will verify that you have an account, and that the order is allowable and correct. While Altrady has access to many of those rules (such as minimum order size), there are some restrictions that only an exchange can validate. For example:
Trading leveraged tokens, where exchange permission is required. Altrady won’t know if you have permission from the exchange or not, so this won’t be validated.
Distance of the order price from the current price. Some exchanges limit how far an order price can vary from the current price, and this can be different for different markets. Altrady doesn’t have this information for your paper trading account, so order prices are not restricted. The amount of a coin or token you hold. Some tokens or coins have upper limits on the amount allowed to be in a wallet, or in open orders.
Number of orders open, or entered in a short space of time. paper trading accounts are not affected by either of these real world limitations. So in general, there are some orders that can be placed on your paper trading account that would not work on a Live Account.
Trading in volatile periods. During volatile trading periods, some exchanges slow down in their handling of API requests. Since there is no interaction with an exchange a paper trading account won’t be affected by these slow-downs. Altrady functions as quickly as ever during these times and your paper trading account will too.
Fees
All fees on a paper trading account are in Quote Currency at the highest standard rate for the exchange. (some exchanges have higher taker fees, if so then that is the fee used on all paper trades)
Fee discounts are not accounted for, which can affect the estimated profit on a paper account.
This can also mean slight differences in values for base and quote currency within a position, when compared with a live account, since some exchanges will actually charge fees using either:
an external token, such as BNB or KCS
base currency for buy orders and quote currency for sell orders (around half of the exchanges charge fees in this way when an external token is not used).
Order fills
Limit Orders
When a limit order is placed on the exchange, it will sit in the order book, in a queue or orders at the same price. When your order reaches the beginning of the queue and is matched with an opposite order, your order will be filled. Naturally, when your order is not placed on the exchange, Altrady cannot know how it would have taken to reach your order, that is, when an equivalent order placed on the exchange would have reached the beginning of the queue and been filled.
For paper trading account orders, the price must exceed your order price, for the order to be marked as filled.
Example Buy order: When a trade occurs at 0.898, your order at 0.899 will be marked as filled. If there was no trade on the exchange at 0.899, then your trade price (filled order price) will be 0.898, instead of 0.899. In thin Order Books, this difference can be much greater.
This is noticeable for a Grid Bot: one a live account, orders would generally be shown as filled at the limit price of the grid. On a paper account, the fill prices can vary from grid prices.
Example Sell order: When a trade occurs at 2.12, your order will be marked as filled.
In terms of limit order fills, paper accounts are more conservative than Live accounts, where your order might be in a long queue where more orders are continually being added. This applies in particular to low sat markets which are often slow-moving. A paper trading account order will not be placed in the queue. Instead the order is marked as filled only when a trade occurs above (for a sell order) or below (for a buy order) the order price.
Keep this in mind for grid bots especially, where a Live account on a slow market would see many more filled orders than a paper trading account on on the same market.
On the other hand, a paper trading order will be shown as filled as soon as the price exceeds the order price, regardless of whether there would have been enough liquidity in the order book for the order to fill. This applies to both limit and market orders. For market orders, there is little to no slippage on paper accounts, while slippage can be large for live accounts.
Note. For Live accounts: On some exchanges, a market order might not completely fill, as the exchange applies the market order as a limit order 10% from the current price. This means that the maximum slippage is 10% for the amount filled, but also that some coins might not be sold (or bought, for a short position). Those coins must then be sold manually, at the current price, resulting in higher or lower total losses.
More on Market orders, below.
Market orders
Unlike a Live market order, a market order for a paper account is not actually placed on the exchange or matched against the order book. A market order will immediately be shown as filled and the price for the fill will be the Last Price at the time the order was placed.
This can be more or less than the fill price would have been for an equivalent live order, depending on: the liquidity in the order book, the frequency of trades, and the volatility.
Signal Bot comparison: Order fills and entry expiry
Paper trading account: a position will expire if the price is never reached. This is unlikely as signals are generally triggered based on the price. Paper account positions do not require liquidity on the order book for the entry order to be filled.
Live account: requires liquidity on the order book (i.e. for trades to occur). If there is no liquidity during the expiry period, the order will not be filled and the position will expire.
Therefore, a CBS signal bot running on a paper account can see more positions entered than a live account with the same settings.
Limitations on Paper Trading Accounts
There is a limit of 30 API keys per account. Paper trading accounts count towards this limit since server space and processing is still required for them.
Note that inactive accounts also count towards the total limit of API keys, for the same reason.
If you use a paper trading account for a signal bot or grid bot, that bot will be included in the count of Signal and Grid Bots allowed for your account.
What to use a Paper Trading Account for?
Trying out unfamiliar order types. If you’ve never used a Trailing Stop, OCO, Smart Order, Stop Market order, Entry Expiry or Auto-close, this is your chance to play with those orders and develop expertise.
Likewise if you’ve never tried trading using the Quick Scan or the Base Scanner, a paper trading account is a great way to practise, minus the risk.
Compare Signal Bot strategies, by running 2 bots side by side using separate paper trading accounts (so you can easily see the difference in the balances).
Try different numbers or sizes of DCAs, TPs, SL percentages or no SL.
Try different position sizes and number of simultaneous positions.
The same for Grid Bot strategies–compare the number of grids, price range, Trailing Up and Down (on or off), or different markets.
Try out a new exchange. With a paper trading account, you can test trading on an exchange where you don't have a Live account! You might find that a BTC signal bot on Kucoin does much better than the one you’ve been running on Binance.
What happens if I run out of funds on my paper trading account?
There are three options:
You can reset the balances of your account. All trades, orders, and positions will be deleted and the balances reset to the original amounts.
This can be done on:
the Trading widget when your Paper Trading account is selected, see Editing Balances.
the Portfolio page, by clicking the 3 dot menu to the right of the account and selecting "Reset Balances"
Providing you haven’t reached your limit of 30 API keys, you can create a new paper account whenever you like. It will start with new balances, and no order or trade history.
If you choose to delete a Paper Trading Account, all associated orders, trades, positions and balances are also deleted.
Edit the balances in the account. See below.
Editing Balances
(V4.2 and above)
Refer to the image below and follow these steps in order:
1 Navigate to the Trading Terminal
2 Open the Markets widget
3 Select the exchange for your paper account
4 Select any market from that exchange, to open it
5 Select the paper account from the list if accounts for this exchange. If the paper account isn’t visible, ensure that Paper or All is selected as the account type
6 Open the Trading widget
7 Click: Edit Balance
Edit balances for the currently selected pair
Click Edit balance
The currencies for the selected pair are shown at the top.
The current available balance is shown in the middle column and its value it shown in the right hand column
Enter the new balance in the middle column–this is the number of coins and can be any value >= 0.
Edit balances for other coins
Click "Show Other Assets"
To edit the balances of other coins, first find the coin to edit:
1 Enter a search term or
2 Scroll the widget.
3 Exclude or include coins that currently have zero balance.
4 Enter the new balance in the middle column–this is the number of coins and can be any value >= 0.
Sort by any column, ascending or descending (see second image below).
Reset the Paper account including balances
Select a market for the exchange, and open the trading widget.
Select the paper account from the Accounts list
Click "Reset Paper balance"
This will reset the paper account, and delete:
Positions
Trades
Orders
The coin balances will be reset to the initial values.
Updated on: 29/12/2023
Thank you!