Paper trading a long-term portfolio before you use real money

Updated 3 November 2026

Paper trading runs your rules against live prices with pretend money. It is the cheapest way to find out whether you understand what your portfolio will do, before any of it is real.

What paper trading is

In paper trading the app prepares orders from your rules and fills them against live market prices, but no order reaches a broker and no money moves. Purffle Wealth starts every new install this way, with ₹1,00,000 of pretend cash, and stays in paper trading until you change the trading mode yourself.

Everything else works as it would with real accounts: holdings, the allocation against your targets, the order log and the activity history.

Overview screen in paper trading, showing net worth, invested amount, cash and allocation — A paper portfolio on the Overview screen. The badge at the top says **Paper trading · Simulated**.

What it can tell you, and what it can’t

Paper trading is good at showing you the mechanics: which orders your rules produce, how often, how large, and how your mix drifts between checks. If an order surprises you on paper, it would have surprised you with real money too.

It is weaker on the things that only real money brings:

Fills. Pretend orders fill at the price the app sees. Real orders can fill at a worse price, partly, or not at all, especially for thinly traded instruments.
Costs and tax. Brokerage, exchange charges and capital-gains tax happen for real only when you trade for real. Keep them in mind when you read a paper result.
Nerves. Watching pretend money fall 15% is not the same as watching your savings fall 15%. Paper trading can’t test how you will react.

Treat a paper result as a check that the rules do what you meant, not as a forecast.

How to run a paper period

Install the app and sign in. It opens in paper trading; there is nothing to switch on.
Set your rules. Pick a risk profile or set your own target weights in Settings.
Add what you already own. Gold, fixed deposits or PPF that have no API can be added as manual holdings, so your targets count them.
Generate a plan and approve it. Read each order and approve the plan; the orders fill with pretend money.
Let it run. Come back after a few month-ends. Read the Activity log to see what happened and why.
Decide. If every order made sense to you, you can connect a broker. If not, change the rules and keep going on paper.

Before you switch to real money

You can explain every order the last few plans produced.
You know where the kill switch is. It stops all orders at once and blocks approvals.
You have set a per-order cap and a daily cap you are comfortable with.
Your broker’s API is set up, including any static IP and daily sign-in it needs. See Connecting a broker API safely.
You have read the terms and accept that markets go down as well as up.

Even after you switch, every live order waits for your approval, and you can go back to paper trading in Settings at any time.

Questions

Does paper trading count against my plan?

No. Plans limit only live broker and exchange accounts. Paper trading is never counted.

How long should I paper trade?

There is no fixed answer. Run it long enough to see your rules act at least a few times, and until every order they produce makes sense to you.

Can I go back to paper trading after connecting a broker?

Yes. Change the trading mode in Settings. Your connected accounts stay connected for viewing.

Please read: Purffle Wealth is software you run yourself. It is not investment advice; Purffle is not a SEBI-registered adviser. Investments are subject to market risk. This guide is general information, not advice for your situation. Read the terms before you invest.