Paper Trading
How to test a strategy without risking real money, how Nyria Paper differs from a broker's own paper account, and which parts of live trading a simulated fill never tests.
Paper trading runs your whole setup, alert source through strategy, parser, bot and sizing, and stops short of putting real money at a venue. It is how you prove a strategy is wired correctly before it can cost you anything.
It is also the part of automation people most often over-read. A clean paper run proves your plumbing works. It does not prove your edge works.
Simulated results are not a prediction of live results, and past results of any kind are not a prediction of future ones. Read the Risk Disclosure before trading real money.
Two kinds of paper
Nyria has two, and they test different things.
Nyria Paper
Nyria's built-in simulated broker. One click, no credentials, no external account, free on every plan. Nyria runs the whole pipeline and replaces the broker call with a simulator that fills at the price on the alert.
Use it to answer: does my alert parse, does it size the way I expect, does the entry and exit pair up correctly, does the bot fire at all?
A broker's own paper account
Some brokers run their own simulated environment with its own API. Nyria connects to it the same way it connects to the live one, picking Paper as the account type at connect time, and orders really are sent over the broker's API and adjudicated by the broker.
Use it to answer: does this specific broker accept the orders my strategy generates? That is a real question. Brokers reject orders for reasons Nyria cannot predict: option approval levels, account permissions, symbol availability, order-type support.
Which brokers offer their own paper account:
| Broker | Paper account | How you connect it |
|---|---|---|
| Nyria Paper | ✅ Simulated by Nyria | One click |
| Alpaca | ✅ | API key + secret from the Alpaca dashboard |
| Tradier | ✅ Sandbox | Account number + access token from the Tradier developer portal |
| Schwab | ❌ Live only | n/a |
| tastytrade | ❌ Live only | n/a |
For Schwab and tastytrade there is no paper path. Test those strategies on Nyria Paper, then go live in small size.
What paper does not test
This is the list that matters. None of it is simulated by Nyria Paper, and only some of it is exercised by a broker's sandbox.
| Not tested on Nyria Paper | Why it matters live |
|---|---|
| Slippage and spread | Nyria Paper fills at the alert's price. A live market order pays the spread, and a wide or thin option can cost far more than the model suggests |
| Queue position and partial fills | A live limit order may fill partly, or not at all. A spread can fill on some legs and not others |
| Broker rejections | Option approval level, PDT, margin, cash-account settlement, unsupported order types, all invisible until a real broker sees the order |
| Liquidity, halts and gaps | Nothing stops a simulated fill. A live order can miss a halt, gap through a level, or find no bid |
| Assignment and expiration | Short options get assigned. Nyria Paper does not model it |
| Funding, liquidation, margin | On perps, funding erodes a position and a move can liquidate it. Simulated leverage sizes the position; it does not liquidate it |
| Corporate actions | Splits, dividends and symbol changes are broker-side facts |
| Your own nerve | A drawdown you did not feel is not a drawdown you have tested |
Because paper fills never pay the spread, a paper P&L will read better than the same alerts traded live, often materially so on options and thin instruments. Treat the gap as expected, not as a bug.
Where paper is right and where it is not
Paper is the right tool for:
- Confirming an alert parses into the trade you meant
- Confirming entries and exits pair up and the bot flattens the way you expect
- Confirming your sizing produces the position you intended
- Rehearsing a strategy change before you push it at a live bot
- Learning the platform without a funded account
Paper cannot substitute for:
- Validating that a strategy is profitable
- Estimating real fill quality
- Discovering what your broker will and will not accept
Going live
The free tier is paper-only. Live trading needs either a Nyria Pro subscription or access to a paywalled strategy whose creator covers your allocation. See Pricing & Limits.
A bot does not migrate from paper to live on its own. You deploy a new bot on the live account, or repoint the existing one, and the first live deploy asks you to accept the risk disclosure.
Before you deploy your first live bot:
- Paper trade the strategy for at least 1–2 weeks
- If your alerts come from TradingView, verify the script does not repaint. See TradingView repainting
- Hold capital for both entries and exits. A credit spread exits as a debit
- Read Known Limitations and Risk Disclosure
- Start at a position size you would be content to lose entirely
Telling paper and live apart in the app
Every bot carries the account type of the integration behind it, and it follows through the whole product:
- The Notifications page has a Live / Paper filter, so you can look at live activity and ignore paper noise. See Notifications
- Trade alerts state the account they came from
- Bot and strategy stats are recorded per bot, so a paper bot's numbers never mix into a live bot's
Next Steps
- Nyria Paper: the built-in simulated broker
- Build Your First Nyria Strategy: a full paper trade, end to end
- When an Order Fails: what to do when a fill does not arrive
- Known Limitations
Link Your Discord Account
Connect Discord to Nyria and invite the bot to a server you administer, so channels there can be authorized as alert sources for a strategy.
Choose an Alert Source
Compare TradingView, Discord, TrendSpider and custom webhooks: what each one can send Nyria, and the rules every alert source has to follow.