Paper Mode vs Live Mode

Paper mode: real prices, zero risk

In paper mode, your bot tracks real Polymarket trades and simulates what would have happened if it had placed those orders — using actual market prices, fees, and slippage estimates.

Nothing is sent to Polymarket. No real orders are placed. No real money moves.

Paper P&L is as accurate as the simulation can make it. Fees and slippage are estimated from actual market conditions, not assumed to be zero.

Live mode: real orders, real money

When you switch a bot to live, it places actual orders on Polymarket through your connected wallet. Real money moves in and out of real positions.

Live mode respects all the same risk controls as paper mode — stop-losses, budgets, and caps still apply.

Mode is per bot

One bot can be live while every other bot is in paper. Mode is not a global account setting. This lets you:

• Keep most bots in paper while testing a strategy
• Go live with a wallet you’ve back-tested and paper-traded for weeks
• Run a live bot at small size alongside a paper bot to compare real vs simulated fills

How to switch modes

1. Go to My Bots in the sidebar
2. Click the bot you want to change
3. Find the Mode toggle on the bot’s settings panel
4. Switch between Paper and Live
5. Confirm — the change takes effect immediately

Switching from live back to paper stops all open orders first. Positions that are already open remain open until they close naturally or are manually exited.

What changes when you go live

A note on slippage

Paper mode estimates slippage based on market liquidity. In live mode, actual fill prices may differ slightly depending on order book depth at execution time. For liquid markets, the difference is small. For illiquid markets, it can be larger.