Paper trading is a real-time simulation environment where you can test your code. You can reset and test your algorithm as much as you want using free, real-time market data. Paper trading simulates crypto trading as well. Paper trading works the same way as live trading end to end - except the order is not routed a live exchange. Instead, the system simulates the order filling based on the real-time quotes.

When you run your algorithm with the live market, there are many things that can happen that you may not see in backtesting. Orders may not be filled, prices may spike, or your network may get disconnected and retry may be needed. During the software development process, it is important to test your algorithm to catch these things in advance.

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Anyone globally can create an Alpaca Paper Only Account! All you need to do is sign up with your email address.

An Alpaca Paper Only Account is for paper trading only. It allows you to fully utilize the Alpaca API and run your algorithm in our paper trading environment only. You won’t be trading real money, but you will be able to track your simulated activity and balance in the Alpaca web dashboard. As an Alpaca Paper Only Account holder, you are only entitled to receive and make use of IEX market data. For more information about our paper trading environment, please refer to Paper Trading Specification.

Paper vs Live

We are thrilled that many users have found paper trading useful, and we continue to work on improving our paper trading assumptions so that users may have a superior experience. However, please note that paper trading is only a simulation. It provides a good approximation for what one might expect in real trading, but it is not a substitute for real trading and performance may differ. Specifically, paper trading does not account for:

• Market impact of your orders
• Information leakage of your orders
• Price slippage due to latency
• Order queue position (for non-marketable limit orders)
• Price improvement received
• Regulatory fees
• Dividends

If you are interested to incorporate these issues into your testing, you may do so by trading a live brokerage account. Even small amounts of real money can often provide insight into issues not seen in a simulation environment.

Paper vs Live

Comparing Other Simulators

Users may be interested to compare their paper trading results on Alpaca with their paper trading results on other platforms such as Quantopian or Interactive Brokers. Please note there are several factors that may lead to performance differences. Paper trading platforms may have different:

• Fill prices
• Fill assumptions
• Liquidity assumptions
• Return calculation methodologies
• Market data sources

Getting Started with Paper Trading

Your initial paper trading account is created with $100k balance as a default setting. You can reset the paper trading account at any time later with arbitrary amount as you configure.

Your paper trading account will have a different API key from your live account, and all you need to do to start using your paper trading account is to replace your API key and API endpoint with ones for the paper trading. The API spec is the same between the paper trading and live accounts. The API endpoint (base URL) is displayed in your paper trading dashboard, and please follow the instruction about how to set it depending on the library you are using. In most cases, you need to set an environment variable APCA_API_BASE_URL = https://paper-api.alpaca.markets

Reset Your Paper Trading Account

You can reset your paper trading account at any time from the dashboard. Go to the paper trading view and push the reset button. Once you reset the paper trading account, the trading history of the paper trading account is wiped out, and a new paper trading account is created based on your requested initial balance. Please make sure to re-generate the API key as the old key is associated with your old paper trading account and is not valid any longer after you reset it.

Rules and Assumptions

• Paper trading account simulates our Pattern Day Trader checks. Orders that would generate a 4th Day Trade within 5 business days will be rejected if the real-time net worth is below $25,000. Please read the Pattern DayTrader Protection page for more details.
• Paper trading account does NOT simulate dividends.
• Paper trading account does NOT send order fill emails.
• Market Data API works identically.
• You cannot change the account balance after it is created, unless you reset it.
• Orders are filled only when they become marketable. This means that a non-marketable buy limit order will not be filled until its limit price is equal to or greater than the best ask price, and a non-marketable sell limit order will not be filled until its limit price is equal to or less than the best bid.
• Your order quantity is not checked against the NBBO quantities. In other words, you can submit and receive a fill for an order that is much larger than the actual available liquidity.
  When orders are eligible to be filled, they will receive partial fills for a random size 10% of the time. If the order price is still marketable, the remaining quantity would be re-evaluated for a subsequent fill.
• Regardless of whether you have a Paper Trading Only account or a real money brokerage account, all orders submitted in paper trading will be matched against the best available current market price (NBBO).