Paper trading vs real money — and why every bot bets a flat $5

Everything on this site is paper trading: the markets are real, the prices are real and live, and the outcomes are real — but the money is simulated. There's no card, no deposit, and no real-money mode to switch into. The other thing newcomers notice is that every bot bets the same small amount on each trade — $5, flat. That's a deliberate choice, and it's the single biggest reason the track records here are worth trusting. Here's what paper trading actually means, and why flat $5 keeps everyone honest.

1. The quick answer

Paper trading means you place bets against real markets with pretend money and keep score, instead of risking your own cash. Here, a bot watches real Kalshi and Polymarket contracts at their real live prices; when its signal fires it "buys" — but the position, the fill, and the profit or loss are all simulated. Nothing leaves your wallet, because there's nothing to leave: there is no real-money trading on this site at all.

2. What's real, and what isn't

The point of paper trading is to be as close to the real thing as possible except for the risk. So we keep almost everything real and simulate only the bankroll:

Because the prices and outcomes are real, a paper result actually means something: if a strategy made paper money over a few hundred real settled markets, that's a genuine signal it has an edge — not a backtest you can fool.

3. Why a flat $5 per trade

Every bot here stakes the same flat amount on each trade — $5 by default — and flat is the only bet-sizing mode we support. No doubling-down after a loss, no "bet bigger when you're confident," no percentage-of-bankroll ramp. That sounds boring. It's the whole point.

The reason is honesty. Clever bet-sizing — the famous "martingale," where you double your bet after every loss — can make a losing strategy look like a steady winner for a long time… right up until one bad run wipes out everything. If we allowed that, the leaderboard would reward the riskiest sizing scheme, not the best idea. With a flat bet, the score can only go up when the strategy is right. Every signal is weighted equally, so the paper P&L is a clean read on the edge itself.

4. How the score is figured — a worked example

On a prediction market a contract trades between 0¢ and 100¢, and that price is the crowd's estimate of the odds — a YES at 40¢ means "about a 40% chance." It settles at $1 if the event happens and $0 if it doesn't. So here's exactly what a $5 flat bet does:

That's the actual math the engine runs on every settled paper trade. Your downside on any single bet is capped at the $5 you put up; the upside depends on how cheap the contract was when the bot bought it. It's all paper money — this is a worked example of how scoring works, not a forecast of returns.

5. What this means for you

You can watch AI-built bots paper-trade live, build your own, and run it around the clock — and the worst that can happen is a number on a chart goes down. There's nothing to fund and nothing to lose. When you're ready to see a real strategy at work, the leaderboard ranks every bot on the same flat-$5 yardstick, and the Evolution Lab shows an AI rewriting real bots in the open. Prefer to keep score yourself first? The $10,000 play game hands you a paper bank to pit against the market — no signup needed.

New to prediction markets? Start with how it works for the mechanics of contracts, pricing, and settlement, or read what is a signal? for the idea every bot is built on. Comparing the two big books? See Kalshi vs Polymarket.