Can I paper trade with practice money?

Yes, for free. Every signed-in account has a paper account that starts with $100,000 of practice money. It trades at live prices from the same Trade panel and order ticket as a real account, and no order ever reaches an exchange.

Start paper trading

1. Open a chart in a market that paper trading covers (see the next section), such as NQ or ES futures.
2. Press T, or open the Panels menu and pick Trade.
3. The paper account starts by itself. The line under the market name says Paper and the exchange, for example Paper · CME.
4. Place orders as you would on a real account. The trade ticket guide walks through the form.

Your paper orders and positions show on the chart like real ones. Positions & orders, at the foot of the Trade panel, opens the full list.

Which markets you can paper trade

• CME Group futures: the main equity index, currency, Treasury, energy, metal, grain and crypto contracts, such as ES, NQ, YM, RTY, CL and GC, and their micros.
• US stocks priced in US dollars.
• Forex pairs quoted in US dollars, such as EUR/USD, and commodities priced in US dollars.
• Crypto priced in dollars or dollar stablecoins: spot pairs on Binance, Bybit, Coinbase, OKX, Bitstamp, Bitfinex, Gate and Upbit, and USDT- or USDC-margined swaps on OKX and Gate.

Paper trading is not offered on Binance and Bybit perpetual charts, or on Hyperliquid and Deribit charts. There the Trade panel trades your real account. On a symbol paper trading cannot price, the ticket says Paper trading does not cover this symbol.

How paper orders fill

• A market order fills at the live bid or ask, plus 1 tick of slippage by default. A limit order fills at your price when the market reaches it. A stop market order fills at its trigger price plus slippage.
• Default fees: $2.50 per contract per side on futures, 0.05% taker and 0.02% maker on crypto, and nothing on stocks, forex and commodities.
• Leverage is fixed for each kind of market: 20x on futures and commodities, 10x on crypto, 50x on forex, and none on stocks. There is no leverage control.
• There are no funding payments, no liquidations and no contract expiry.
• On CME futures without a real-time CME data subscription, paper fills use the delayed price, and the ticket says so.
• A market order needs a fresh price, so it is refused while no prices come in, for example when the market is closed. A limit order waits until the price reaches it.

Reset the account or change the starting balance

There is no deposit button. To start again with a different amount:

1. Press the cog in the order ticket to open Trade settings, and scroll to Paper trading. You can also open super search with Ctrl/Cmd+J and type "paper trading".
2. Set the Starting balance, from $100 to$100to100,000,000.
3. Press Reset paper account, then Reset now. Positions, orders, history, trade notes and chart snapshots are wiped, with no undo, and the account starts again at the starting balance.

The same group sets the fees and slippage: Fee per contract, per side, Fee per share, per side, Crypto fee (taker / maker, bps) and Slippage (ticks).

See your results

Press Positions & orders and open the Portfolio tab. For the paper account it shows the account value, the P&L curve, Stats (win rate, profit factor, average win and loss, max drawdown) and a History of your trades. Click a trade to see the chart as it stood when the order filled, and add a Note on why you took it. More in Is there a trading journal?

Good to know

• Your paper account and its settings live in this browser. Another browser or device starts its own paper account, and clearing this site's data erases it.
• Place paper orders from one browser tab at a time. Other tabs show the account but cannot place or change orders.
• Bar replay has no practice trading. The paper account always trades at live prices, never at replayed candles.