October 4, 2026
Paper Trading on Bybit: What the Simulator Gets Right
A HookTrader paper account can follow Bybit USDT perpetuals as well as Binance USDⓈ-M Futures. You pick the exchange when you create the account, on any plan, with no API key.
A paper account on Bybit is not a price chart with a calculator attached. It fills your orders the way Bybit would, charges what Bybit charges, holds your position to Bybit's margin rules and refuses what Bybit refuses. This is what it does.
Bybit's live prices
Your entry fills at the live best bid or ask on Bybit's order book, at the moment the order executes. A buy lifts the ask, a sell hits the bid. You pay Bybit's spread, and if price moves between your alert and the fill, you see that.
Stops and targets trigger on Bybit's mark price, the price Bybit uses to decide liquidation.
One setup difference from Binance: a strategy on a Bybit paper account names its symbol when you create it, because Bybit publishes prices per symbol. HookTrader subscribes to that symbol's feed before your first alert, so the first fill is priced from a live quote. The auto-lock option, which pins a strategy to the symbol of its first alert, is not offered on Bybit.
Bybit's fee: 0.055% on every fill
Each fill pays Bybit's standard perpetual taker fee of 0.055% of notional. Entry, each partial target, a trailing exit and the final close all pay it. A round trip costs about 0.11% of your position before the market has moved. The fee leaves your practice balance as each fill lands, and your P&L is reported after fees.
Binance paper accounts charge Binance's rate, 0.05%. Run the same strategy on both and the Bybit copy finishes a little lower on fees alone.
Bybit's contract rules
Every symbol's rules are loaded from Bybit: the price step, the lot step, the minimum order size and the 5 USDT minimum order value. Your orders are rounded to them. A strategy sized to 54 DOGE at 0.09255 comes to 4.9977 USDT, which is under Bybit's minimum, and the entry is refused.
The account runs in one-way mode, one position per symbol. A reduce-only order that arrives after the position is already flat is rejected, and a stop or target written against a position is cancelled when that position closes.
Bybit's margin tiers decide your liquidation price
Bybit's maintenance margin is a ladder, per symbol. The rate steps up as your position grows, and a larger position is liquidated sooner. The simulator reads Bybit's full risk-limit ladder for every symbol and uses your symbol's tier, including the deduction Bybit applies so the maintenance figure does not jump at a tier boundary.
Two examples at 10× isolated:
| Position | Bybit tier | Maintenance rate | Liquidation price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 BTC at 50,000 | tier 1 | 0.33% | 45,148.99 |
| 2,000 SOL at 100 | tier 3 | 0.58% | 90.525 |
A 1 BTC long is liquidated at 45,148.99 on Bybit. The same position on a Binance paper account, where the simulator uses a single 0.5% rate, is liquidated at 45,226.13, about 77 USDT earlier. A 200,000 USDT SOL position has climbed two tiers on Bybit and goes earlier than the single rate would say.
The ladder is refreshed from Bybit once a day, and a tier change reaches your open paper positions at that refresh.
Liquidation itself works as it does on the exchange. An isolated position is closed when its own margin is used up. Cross positions share the wallet and go together when the wallet can no longer carry them. The close is priced at the mark, as an order you never sent. If a gap takes the account below zero, the balance stops at zero.
Bybit's refusals, in Bybit's codes
The simulator says no where Bybit says no, with the same code a live Bybit account returns:
- Not enough balance for the entry at your leverage:
110007, "available balance is insufficient". The entry opens no trade and your balance does not move. - An order under the symbol's minimum value:
110094. - A stop or target placed through the current mark price: refused, not armed. Your existing stop stays where it was.
Each refusal shows on the strategy's Signals tab with Bybit's reason, which is what you would see live.
Leverage and margin mode
A new paper account starts at 1× leverage, on Bybit as on Binance, so a practice account never opens on a live-sized default. Set the leverage and margin mode you want on the account page. The simulator holds every position to what you set: the leverage divides the margin an entry needs, and the margin mode decides whether a position stands on its own margin or shares the wallet.
When Bybit's price feed is interrupted
If the price feed goes quiet for a minute or more, the simulator pulls Bybit's 1-minute candles for the gap and checks every resting stop and target against each candle's high and low. A candle that touched both your stop and your target is read as the stop hitting first. Liquidation is checked at the candle's worst price for your position. A stop the market crossed during the gap is filled, not forgotten.
Where it still simplifies
- Funding is not charged. A live Bybit position held across a funding time pays or receives it.
- Fills are priced at the top of the book, whatever the size. A large order on a thin symbol fills worse live.
- Margin mode is per symbol on paper. On a Bybit unified account it is set for the whole account.
- A changed risk limit reaches an open paper position at the next daily refresh. Bybit gives a notice period before it tightens one.
- Leverage above a symbol's cap, and a margin-mode change with a position open, are accepted on paper. Bybit refuses both. This is the next thing to close.
- Live trading on Bybit is not available yet. A Bybit paper account is for finding out what your strategy does on Bybit's prices, fees and margin before that arrives.
Start one
On Exchanges, press Create account, choose Paper account, then Bybit. Name it, set a starting balance, and name the symbol your strategy trades when you create the strategy. The free plan includes two paper accounts, which can be one on each exchange or two on one.