Paper trading
Test a strategy without real money, and see how Nyria Paper differs from a broker's paper account.
Nyria Paper is Nyria's own simulated broker, and it is free on every plan. Fills are simulated, with no real money behind them: a market order fills at the quoted bid or ask, and a limit exit inside the spread fills at its own price. Use it to prove the whole setup works, from the alert to the order, before a live account sees it.
Paper trading runs your whole setup, from the alert to the bot's order. It shows the setup works. It doesn't show whether the strategy makes money.
Two kinds of paper
Nyria Paper
Nyria Paper is the simulated broker built into Nyria, free on every plan. A market order pays the quoted spread and never slips, and a limit exit inside the spread fills at once at its own price, so paper P&L reads better than live. How fills are simulated has the full rule.
Use it to check that the bot fires, that Nyria reads each alert the way you meant it, and that every exit closes the entry it belongs to. Check the quantity on each order too: it shows how your budget per entry sizes. To check a reading without a bot, paste the alert into the alert tester.
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, through Connect paper account in the broker's dialog. Orders go over the broker's API and the broker decides what happens to them.
Use it to find out whether this broker accepts the orders your strategy sends. Brokers reject orders for reasons Nyria can't see in advance, such as your option approval level, account permissions, symbol availability and order-type support.
| Broker | Paper account | How you connect it |
|---|---|---|
| Nyria Paper | Simulated by Nyria | One click |
| Charles Schwab | Live only | n/a |
| Tradier | Sandbox | Account number + access token from the Tradier developer portal |
| tastytrade | Live only | n/a |
| Alpaca | API key + secret from the Alpaca dashboard |
Test Charles Schwab and tastytrade strategies on Nyria Paper.
What paper does not test
Nyria Paper doesn't simulate these, and a broker's sandbox covers only some:
| Not tested on Nyria Paper | Why it matters live |
|---|---|
| Slippage and spread | Nyria Paper fills a market order at the quoted bid or ask, so it pays the spread but takes no slippage. A live market order can fill past the quote, 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 and unsupported order types stay 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 exercise | A short option can be assigned before it expires, and an option in the money at expiry becomes shares at a broker. Nyria Paper models neither: it settles an option held to expiry in cash, at its intrinsic value from the underlying's official close |
| Funding, liquidation, margin | On perpetuals, funding erodes a position and a move can liquidate it. Nyria Paper charges no funding and never liquidates, whatever the leverage |
| Corporate actions | Splits, dividends and symbol changes are broker-side facts |
Going live
Paper is free on every broker. Without a plan you can run up to 10 paper bots, on Nyria Paper or on a broker's own paper account. A bot on a live account needs a Nyria Pro plan, or access to a Premium strategy you've bought. Some Premium strategies can be run on paper for free: their page and Discover card say Free on paper. See pricing and limits.
To go live, open the Go live page from the dashboard's Go live button. It takes you through a plan, connecting your broker, and Run this bot live, which starts a new bot on your live account with the paper bot's strategy and settings, at a size you confirm. The paper bot keeps running on paper. You can also deploy a bot on the live account, or edit a bot and pick the live account. A live deploy asks you to accept the risk disclosure.
Before you deploy your first live bot:
- Paper trade the strategy for 1–2 weeks
- If your alerts come from TradingView, check the script doesn't repaint. See TradingView repainting
- Hold capital for both entries and exits. A credit spread exits as a debit
- Read the known limitations and the risk disclosure
- Start with a budget per entry you can afford to lose in full
Telling paper and live apart in the app
Every bot carries the account type of the integration behind it:
- The Live / Paper switch at the top of the Dashboard and My bots shows one kind of bot at a time
- The Notifications page filters by Live or Paper
- 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
- Your first strategy: a full paper trade, end to end
- When an order fails: what to do when a fill does not arrive
- Known limitations