How to Use TradingView Paper Trading (Full Setup Guide)
Paper trading is the step between backtesting and risking money: live prices, live emotions, no capital at stake. TradingView includes it free on every plan.
Turning it on
Open the Trading Panel at the bottom of the chart (or press the panel toggle in the bottom-right).
Select the Trading tab, then choose Paper Trading from the broker list.
Click Connect. You start with a simulated balance you can reset at any time.The panel now shows Positions, Orders, History and Account Summary, exactly as a live broker connection would.
Placing an order
Right-click the price level on the chart → Trade → Buy/Sell places an order at that level.
Or use the Buy/Sell buttons at the top of the trading panel for market orders.
The order ticket lets you attach a stop loss and take profit in price, ticks or percent. Attach them at entry, every time — that habit is most of what paper trading is for.Drag the resulting lines on the chart to modify the order. Right-click a position → Close position to exit.
Resetting the account
Account Summary → the settings icon → Reset Paper Trading Account clears balance, positions and history. Useful between experiments, but don't reset after every losing week: the drawdown periods are the data.
What paper trading cannot simulate
real slippage, partial fills in thin markets, and the feeling of a live account. Fills assume you get the price you clicked. Treat results as optimistic.
Making the results mean something
A paper account only tells you something if you run it like a real one:
Fix a starting balance that matches your real one. Trading a $100,000 paper account and a $2,000 real account produces two different traders.
Fix risk per trade before you start and size every position from the stop distance — the position size calculator does the arithmetic.
Trade one plan for a fixed sample. Thirty to fifty trades, same rules. Switching approach after three losses tells you nothing about either.
Screenshot every entry and exit. Paper accounts don't keep the chart context; your journal has to.
Log the reason you entered, not just the result. A profitable trade taken for the wrong reason is a problem, not a win.Paper trading vs bar replay vs backtesting
| Method | Speed | What it tests |
|---|
| Backtest | Instant | Whether the rules had an edge historically |
| Bar replay | Fast | Whether you can execute the rules candle by candle |
| Paper trading | Real time | Whether you can execute them while waiting, in real hours |
Use all three in that order. Most plans die at step three, when the waiting starts — which is exactly why it's worth finding out for free.When to go live
Move to real money when you've completed a full sample under fixed rules, your risk per trade never exceeded your own limit, and you can describe your entry criteria in one sentence. Start smaller than feels meaningful.
Educational content only. Nothing here is financial advice, and trading carries a substantial risk of loss.
