Paper trading basics
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Every account starts in paper mode, and the Free tier stays there. Paper trading runs against your Alpaca paper account: real market data, simulated fills, zero dollars at risk.
The PAPER badge
The PAPER badge in the top bar is the environment indicator — it’s visible from every authenticated screen and flips to a pulsing LIVE (plus a striped top bar and an outline around the entire screen) only after the full enable-live ceremony. If the badge says PAPER, no order can touch real money.
What’s real, what’s simulated
| Real | Simulated |
|---|---|
| Market data, signal runs, rankings | Order fills (executed by Alpaca’s paper engine) |
| Order lifecycle, audit trail, reconciliation | Cash and buying power (paper balance) |
| Risk caps, kill switch, every safety control | Profit and loss |
Because the whole pipeline is identical — same signals, same caps, same reconciliation (the routine check that our records match the broker’s) — paper is a faithful rehearsal of live, not a toy mode.