Simulated and live accounts
What a simulated account models, what it does not, and how live trading is enabled.
Simulated accounts
A simulated connection uses real market data and virtual money. Fills walk the live order book; stops, take-profits, ratchets, trailing stops and funding behave as they would live, through the same code path. It is free, and on every plan it can trade.
It is optimistic in known ways:
- no queue position: a resting limit fills when the price trades through it;
- order-book walking uses snapshots, not every update;
- liquidation and margin are approximations;
- there is no exchange latency and no exchange-side rejection.
get_connection_info lists these for the connection, and the dashboard marks every simulated page with a violet SIMULATED band.
Live accounts
Live trading needs a paid plan and a trade-only API key. Every live page in the dashboard carries a red LIVE — real funds band.
Live trading is enabled exchange by exchange, after we have verified orders, stops and expiries end to end on that exchange with a small real position. The connect page shows which exchanges accept live keys today.
Before you switch an agent from simulated to live:
- Run it in paper mode on the live connection first, so every trade is a preview.
- Set your leverage cap and maximum order size on the connection page.
- Consider the equity guard and, for agents, a heartbeat.