Paper Trading
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 the spot and futures exchanges Altrady supports.
Contents
An Introduction to Altrady's Paper Trading
How to create a Paper Trading account
Important Differences between Paper Accounts and Live Accounts
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
Unlike some paper trading tools that use a single generic account, Altrady's paper trading accounts are each tied to a specific exchange. This means the markets, order types, position modes, leverage limits, and fee rates available on your paper account are the same as those on the real exchange — giving you a much more realistic trading experience, and making it straightforward to compare results between paper and live trading on the same exchange.
How to create a Paper Trading account
Select Settings>Exchange Account API keys from the left side menu.
Click + Paper Trading in the top right corner.
A dialog will appear showing all supported exchanges.
Adding a Paper trading account for one exchange
Select the exchange for your paper account.
On the next modal, give the account a meaningful label (e.g. Binance Paper, ByBit Futures Paper) and click Save.
Adding Spot and Futures paper accounts for the same exchange
Exchanges in the top category offer both Spot and Futures.
Spot is enabled by default.
Select whether you want Spot, Futures, or both by enabling one or both toggles.
Adding paper accounts for more than one exchange at the same time
Enable the option: Add multiple paper accounts
Then select each of the exchanges to add.
If any exchanges from the first category are selected, both Spot and Futures paper accounts will be added (paid plans only).
Balances
Your new spot paper trading account will have an initial balance of 0.1 BTC and 10,000 USDT (or USD, EUR, or another quote currency depending on the exchange).
Your new futures paper trading account will start with 10,000 USDx, in the currency relevant to that exchange (USDT or USDC 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, and from the total on the Portfolio page. Only live account balances are included in these totals.
The balances and the coins held in a paper 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 orders, smart orders, managing positions, viewing orders and everything else
- My Positions
- Trading Analytics
- Signal Bot
- Grid Bot (Spot paper accounts only — Grid Bot is not available for futures)
- Portfolio
The Trading Terminal
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
Paper accounts are automatically grouped together under Paper accounts 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 individual paper accounts in the Trading account list on the left to include or exclude them from the Portfolio view. Note that paper account balances are never included in the total balance shown at the top of the Portfolio page or at the top of each page in Altrady — those totals reflect live accounts only.
Bots
Signal Bot is available for both spot and futures paper accounts.
Grid Bot is available for spot paper accounts only. Grid Bot is not supported on futures exchanges, live or paper.
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
Fees are always debited in quote currency. Fee discounts are not applied, 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 of 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 long 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.
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: on 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 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.
Futures paper accounts
The following differences apply specifically to futures paper accounts.
Margin type
Only Isolated margin is supported for futures paper accounts. The Cross margin option is visible in the Trading widget but will return an error if selected.
Liquidation price
A liquidation price is shown in the Position Info widget for open futures paper positions. This is calculated by Altrady and is shown for information only. Liquidations are not processed on paper accounts — your position will remain open regardless of price movement.
Funding rates
Funding rates are not simulated on futures paper accounts. For positions held over extended periods, this means the paper account PnL will diverge from what a live account would show over the same period.
Position mode
Position mode (One-Way or Hedge) works the same way as on a live futures account for the same exchange. The available modes depend on the exchange — see Trading Futures with Altrady for details per exchange.
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, that bot will be included in the count of Signal Bots allowed for your account.
Grid Bot is not available for futures paper accounts (or any futures account). Spot paper accounts can be used with Grid Bot, and count towards your Grid Bot limit in the same way.
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.
- Futures paper accounts: explore position modes (One-Way vs Hedge), practice opening and closing futures positions, and test Smart Orders and Signal Bot strategies on futures markets — without any risk to real funds, and without needing to fund a live futures exchange account first.
What happens if I run out of funds on my paper trading account?
There are three options:
1\. 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"
2\. 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.
3\. Edit the balances in the account. See below.
Editing Balances
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 of 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 is 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.
Related Articles
Managing Multiple Accounts on the same exchange
Updated on: 05/03/2026
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