Updated Jan 2024 (added 1 more stock market simulator) – read below
Want to test your trading skills? You can use any of the listed best Virtual stock trading simulators currently in India.
Being an avid trader, these kinds of simulated trades can hone your skills.
As a saying goes:
‘The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”
When you are learning to trade, it is advised not to put your money in the market at the beginning itself, but rather, paper trade for some time.
This is a good idea. Always. It saves you a lot of money in the long run.
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But the question then asked is that paper trading may sound good in the beginning but it doesn’t provide the real experience of trading in the stock market. And thus the success you get in paper trading is not easily replicated in the real stock market.
This is where stock market simulators come into the picture.
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What is a stock simulator or virtual trading platform?
A stock market simulator is an approach for trading, where you trade using virtual money on real stocks.
It is a step up from maintaining a paper journal or excel journal that is not able to maintain with required details. A simulator helps you to have a feel of how the real stock market behaves and the profitability of your trading strategy.
When you open an account with a stock simulator website, you are presented with a certain amount of virtual cash ( Rs. 2,00,000 or more) which you can use to buy/sell stocks in the simulated stock market.
The prices shown are mostly from delayed feed and thus are quite close to reality.
Benefits of virtual stock simulator
- You get a realistic idea about buying, selling, and other mechanics of the stock market.
- You don’t need to maintain the trading journal to calculate your profit or loss of paper trading.
- It helps you to practice & improve your trading strategy without losing money.
When used along with reading about trading strategies, these stock market simulators help in gaining the required experience and developing the necessary skills.
To deal with the volatility and uncertainty of the stock market, you need a well-tested trading strategy. This is a basic requirement to make money from trading in the stock market.
There are couple of disadvantages too:
- Just like paper trading, as real money is not involved, the emotional factor is not trained for real trading.
- The real-life scenario of slippage, brokerage, traded prices and other small details are not there in these virtual trading platforms.
- Also, in most of the simulators – real time updation of prices is not there. what you get is slight delay in the price. In case of Front page and trading view, the delay is very less.
With this in mind, here is the list of popular stock market simulation games that you can use to develop yourself as a trader.
7 Best Stock Market Simulators for virtual trading:
Front Page – Paper Trading
Frontpage has grown to 1M+ downloads in year 2023 and the reason is simple – This no nonsense simple to use tool has provided value.
You can check download the app, and check it out yourself using this link – Frontpage – Paper Trading.
Best part – it’s free to use.
You can only register using your mobile number. Once you have downloaded the app, input your number, select a username and you are good to go.
You get ₹ 10,00,000 (ten lakh) of virtual capital to trade. Best part is you can trade in all the instruments – which means you can practice options selling too.
Here is one of sample trade I took today ( Jan 2024, second week).
Give it a try.
Trading View – Paper Trading Simulator
I am personally using tradingview for the last 1 year and by all means, currently, this is one of the best charting platforms which is not tied to any broker. You can get all the access to charts in the free account itself, though the pro version is totally worth it.
Shown above is an actual screenshot from my Tradingview Pro account. While playing around with strategy testing, saw this wonderful tool provided by TradingView now. Paper trading.
As you can see, it has virtual capital of 1,00,000 which you can use for paper trade. This along with the strategy tester on the left makes TradingView a good platform to practice virtual trading.
Moneybhai – Moneycontrol
https://moneybhai.moneycontrol.com/
This is by large the most popular virtual trading game for Indian market. Run by moneycontrol.com, the biggest site on market news, the game is let’s you trade in stocks, mutual funds, fixed deposits and bonds.
You can invite your fellow traders, interact with other players and can participate in trading competition league. By large features of this game are good enough to train you well as stock trader.
The only issue with Moneybhai is that you don’t see price movements. You need to check prices elsewhere and then chose to have either market order or limit order to buy or sell stocks.
Stock Market Challenge 2 – Dalal Street
https://www.dsij.in/Stock-Market-Challenge
This game is joint effort creation of Bombay Stock Exchange and Dalal Street Investment Journal. And it shows. This is real time stock market game. As with moneybhai, you can create virtual portfolio in this game.
Along with that, you can test out different strategies of trading the market. You can share your thoughts with other traders, on the platform itself.
Trakinvest – Simulator
This is good platform, but in free mode you get:
- Trading in 1 Exchange (Max 10 Trades)
- Pin/Watchlist of stocks
- Follow Other Traders
- Copy Trades
- Practice Game Simulations
These features are good enough for a beginner. You can learn the basics of putting an order, tracking your positions, and using charts in a much more practical way.
MoneyPot
Personally, I have not tested this game. But it was sent to me by one of the trader’s in our forum.
It gives Rs. 2 Lakh as virtual cash to trade with. The amount is good enough to learn to trade. Give it a try and see if it suits your purpose.
Bonus virtual trading platform for options traders
I recently reviewed Sensibull – the options strategy platform. This platform integrates with 4 of the top brokers in India.
If you are looking for a stock simulator for trading in futures and options, you should check out my detailed review of the Sensibull – virtual trading platform. It also has an India’s Best trader program ongoing.
The main thing is that in their paid plans, they also provide access to their virtual trading platform.
You can read more about this virtual trading platform for options trading.
From what I have seen, Zerodha also gives you an option to access trading view charts. If you wish free access to these charts – Open Zerodha account here.
Final thoughts on using a stock simulator
As trading involves real money from day one, it is a good idea to learn and practice trading much before you put your money in the stock market for trading.
Playing in stock market simulator games, help you to understand how it works in real trading. You get to know the profitability of your trading strategy with real prices of the stock market.
On top of that, there are many important things like managing your trades, stop losses, etc. that you only learn when you apply them in the market.
Though these platforms and tools mentioned above don’t have the real-life experience a real simulator should, they are as close to real trading as it can be.
I’m interested to understand trading.
I have put together a course on how trading. Please visit – learn.traderspit.in
Hi, sir have just started trading, can you please add me in your trading community what's app or telegram group, for me to ask doubtful questions in the process.
I am interested to understand trading
We can talk
hi, nice post but you forgot to include stock broker’s apps. Stock trading apps are also important
Hi Rohit,
– is their any simulator available for paper trading OFF MARKET HOURS
– With all features like, usual indicators, timeframes
– which is probably based on last one year actual nse data
– say for, eg, if we get train on Banknifty simulator, wouldnt that actually train a rookie?
ThanksundefinedPramod
Hi Pramod,
No, there is not direct OFF MARKET HOURS based trading simulator currently there. but there is a workaround. For example, if you wish to test some strategy on bank nifty futures based on last 1 year data, then you can do so on paper trading feature of tradingview.com
Let’s say you have gone through a gargantuan amount of resources on financial markets and have created a trading strategy which you are really confident about. However, when you go online and think about opening a trading account, there is a lingering doubt if the strategy can really work. This is exactly the reason why stock market simulators were created.
Great work, Thank you, biggest stockbroker offering the lowest, cheapest brokerage rates for futures and options, commodity trading, equity and mutual funds. The best online trading platform for stocks, IPOs, mutual fund in India.
I have been looking for this Investing in the Stock Market article since long time. Thanks author.
I am in search of a virtual trading platform to trade Nifty 50 and options there of. Trading view doesn't permit virtual trading in Nifty 50
Me too Lau se
Hi , Mr Rohit
Can I connect with you ?
Dr Himani Tapasvi
Hi Himani,
You can drop me a mail at rohit@traderspit.in
This post was very well written, and it also contains a lot of useful facts. I enjoyed your distinguished way of writing the post. Thanks, you have made it easy for me to understand.
very good information on your website. interested in virtual trading in nifty futures and options. kindly help.
Thanks, Rohit. you have written well about the stock market simulator. Paper trading is helpful for stock traders. it saves time. People can learn more from this article.
Hi Rohit – do let me know if this happend
We at trader’s pit are working on developing a more real-time API based stock market simulator for the Indian stock market, if you are interested in testing out the beta phase will release in December 2020, then please send a mail to admin @ traderspit .in
To learn stock trading
I want learn stock marketing
I want to learn by virtual demo training.
Hi, I would be interested in trying your market simulator API. I tried mailing you, but the mail address seems to be invalid. Please let me know if you guys are accepting beta testers. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing the valuable information, this will be very much helpful
50000
Rupes
I am also interested in this.
How often do you update this list?
Hi Brasch,
Normally such tools keep evolving and thus stay relevant for long durations. Still, we check our blog posts every 6 months to keep them current. Also, we welcome our readers to share any tool with us, similar to those mentioned above. If the new tool is good, we do include that in our list. Please use the contact page for submitting such information.
Thanks