Connect a broker · Alpaca
The quickest way to see While25 trade. A paper account is there as soon as you sign up, and the whole connection is two strings you copy once.
Paper and live have different keys. Generating one on the wrong tab is the single most common mistake here.
PA and open with $100k of pretend money. If you ever want a clean slate, open a second paper account rather than resetting the first.Alpaca shows the secret once. Copy it before you close the panel. Lost it? Generate a new pair and update While25; the old pair stops working.
https://paper-api.alpaca.markets; the live one is https://api.alpaca.markets.Treat the secret like a password: it can place orders. If you paste it anywhere public, generate a new pair immediately.
The key belongs to the other environment. Paper keys do not work against the live endpoint and the reverse is also true. Regenerate on the correct tab.
Generating a new pair revokes the old one. If someone on the desk pressed Generate, everyone using the old pair is locked out.
Paper fills follow real market hours. Outside them an order waits for the next session unless you set it to trade in extended hours.
Open a new paper account from the account menu and generate keys for it. Accounts are created and deleted now rather than reset.
Trading in India instead? See Zerodha or Upstox. Want futures and options on a US account? Interactive Brokers.