Hi, I have been doing paper trades and considering making actual trades in the near future. However the web site that I see does not seem to have leads to trading. It seems to be a paper trade only site. Any inputs are appreciated. Thanks!
ptrader
The paper-trading site and a live brokerage are usually separate services, so it makes sense the site you’re on has no order-entry route. Before funding anything, I’d check whether it offers a data export so you can compare your paper results against real fills and spreads. Also confirm what account types and order types a broker actually supports, since paper fills often hide slippage and fees. Starting with very small position sizes can make the transition less abstract.
Good question — this trips up a lot of people because Alpaca keeps paper and live trading as two separate environments.
To get started with live trading you’ll need to upgrade your account to a live brokerage account (the paper account alone doesn’t give you live trading access). On the Alpaca dashboard there should be an option to open a live account — you’ll go through a standard brokerage onboarding (identity verification, etc.) and fund it.
Once that’s done, the key difference in your code is just the API keys. Your paper keys won’t work for live orders. In your Alpaca dashboard you’ll find a separate set of live API keys — swap those in and point your client to the live base URL (https://api.alpaca.markets instead of the paper URL).
If you’re using alpaca-py it looks like this:
python
# Paper
client = TradingClient("PAPER_KEY", "PAPER_SECRET", paper=True)
# Live
client = TradingClient("LIVE_KEY", "LIVE_SECRET", paper=False)
One thing worth doing before you switch: double-check your order logic carefully in paper mode first, especially position sizing and stop losses. Live orders execute immediately with real money, so there’s no “undo.”
Good luck with the transition!