Algo Trading Platform Checklist: 20 Questions Before You Pay

Twenty questions, grouped by what each group tells you. Built from the things people discover after paying rather than before, which is why some of them look oddly specific.

Can it run your strategy?

Can you express your single most important strategy without workarounds?
Multi-leg structures with per-leg exits — supported, or approximated?
Strike selection by premium, delta or distance, or only fixed strikes?
Can you set separate entry and exit times, and a hard square-off?
Does it handle the expiry day you actually trade?

If the answer to the first is no, nothing else on this page matters. Stop there.

Can you validate it?

Backtesting on real historical data, or synthetic?
How many years, and at what granularity?
Does the report show drawdown, not just returns?
Does paper trading use the same engine as live, or a separate simulator?
Are there limits on how many backtests you can run?

You need the drawdown figure at least as much as the return figure, and a report that buries it is telling you something about its priorities.

What happens when something breaks?

Can you see what your strategy decided, and what the broker replied?
Is there a single control that stops all order placement?
Do you get alerted when a session expires or an order is rejected?
Does the platform tell you a strategy stopped, or do you find out from your P&L?
Who do you contact during market hours, and how fast do they answer?

A single account-wide stop matters more than it sounds, and orders get rejected for ordinary reasons. The difference between a platform that shows you why and one that does not is the difference between a five-minute fix and a lost week.

What does it really cost?

Platform subscription, monthly and annual
Static IP — included or separate?
Market data charges, if any
Per-strategy or per-deployment limits that force an upgrade
Broker charges, which you pay regardless

The full cost breakdown covers the numbers, and the static IP is the line item most often discovered after paying. The headline subscription is rarely the total.

Will you still be using it in six months?

The questions above are about capability. These are about whether the thing survives contact with an ordinary routine, which is a different and more predictive question.

How much manual work does a normal trading day require?
What happens on the day you forget that manual step?
Is a scheduler available so starting is not a daily decision?
Does the interface make the common task easy, or the impressive one?
Is support reachable during market hours, when it matters?

The second item is the honest one. Every platform has a daily step somewhere — usually the broker login. The question is what the platform does to make that the only one, and what it tells you when you miss it.

Why this predicts abandonment

A platform that needs ten minutes of attention each morning is a platform you will stop attending to. Not through laziness — through the ordinary accumulation of busy mornings.

Is it a sound thing to depend on?

Question	Why it matters
Does the platform hold your money?	It should not — funds belong in your broker account
Who authored the ready-made strategies?	Accountable registration beats a username
Is your broker choice independent?	Otherwise two decisions are bundled into one
How long has it been running?	Index options mechanics change; someone has to keep up
Can you export your data?	You should be able to leave

On the first row: Arthalab never holds your funds. Orders go to your broker account and your money stays there throughout.

How to use this

Work through group one for each candidate

Anything that fails here is eliminated. This is usually most of the list.

Then groups two and three

Validation and failure handling. These decide whether you still use it in six months.

Then cost

Compare totals, not headline prices.

Then test the survivor properly

Your real strategy, backtested, then paper traded for two weeks.

The short version

Start by asking whether it can run your actual strategy — most fail here
Check whether paper trading uses the same engine as live
Check what you can see and stop when something breaks
Compare total cost including a static IP, not the headline price
Confirm the platform never holds your funds

Frequently asked questions

Whether it can express your single most important strategy without workarounds. If it cannot, nothing else matters.

A separate simulator only validates your logic. Paper trading on the live engine with simulated fills validates the whole system, which is what you actually need to know.

A static IP for broker whitelisting, market data charges, and per-strategy limits that force a plan upgrade. On Arthalab the dedicated IP is included.

No. Funds belong in your broker account. Arthalab never holds your money — orders are placed into your own broker account.

By who authored them. A SEBI-registered Research Analyst is accountable to a regulator; a marketplace username is not.

Backtest your real strategy, then paper trade for about two weeks. That is enough to replace an impression with evidence.

About twenty minutes for the checklist, then a few days to build and backtest your real strategy, then two weeks of paper trading. The checklist eliminates candidates; the testing confirms the survivor.

Depends which group. Failing a strategy-capability item rules it out. Failing a cost item is a negotiation. Failing a visibility item is the one people underweight and later regret.

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