IB Paper Trading?

You're correct Levi its safe to enter your IB paper credentials into the wizard and it will deploy to your IB paper account. We'll make this more explicit to help future users.

I've used IB Paper Trading with QC several times.  There's a few things to know:  

1. Setup your IB Paper trading system during trading hours.  I always get communication errors if  trying to "go live" after hours.
2. You can only have one connection to IB (with the same credentials) at a time.  If you try to connect using TradeStation or some other service, it will give you an error.
3. If you blow up your account, you can reset it in the account management page at IB to any amount.  It's always good to reset the balance when starting a new strategy.
4. Expect errors, disconnects, communication failures, unexecuted orders, etc.  However, if you get a communication failure after hours, you can probably ignore it.

In spite of these frustrations, it's definitely worth the hastle.  I wish more brokers offered paper trading.

Just a note on Matts comment -- "You can only have one connection to IB (with the same credentials) at a time" -- this is by design for your safety as we maintain algorithm state in QuantConnect -- and if your algorithm state/variables/portfolio gets out of sync with IB your algorithm can behave in unexpected ways. We try to get around this by providing as much functionality as possible through the web UX.

Matthew Williams 

Do you know if the production IB connection to QC suffers the same unexpected problems you describe about the paper trading account?

I think some of the frequent 'ignorable-disconnects' are due to the IB servers performing daily maintenance. Depending on the exchange/asset(i.e. forex), you may see an additional restart around 17:00 as well if I recall from testing via IB API pre Lean.

I am able to launch QC IB paper servers anytime, so long as it is not during these down times. If you can log into TWS, you can log in via a QC server(IB Gateway). That is how I check what the point of failure is if I get the 'failed to connect check password' when launching. The worst is trying Friday night, before Coarse fires, as IB has an extended downtime and I usually just want to sleeeeeeep...

Recently I had an issue with price data causing a silent crash on IB paper. I use QC data and was failing to sub to pre-market while trying to perform orders RIGHT at the equity market open (a fraction of a second before the data was available for some of my IB paper servers by chance). I only mention this as an example of slight frictions when going live. Thank goodness for QC support , paper accounts, and QC support.

In order to manage algos, like I would separate traders(and allows for a dedicated paper account per algo/sub-account), I use the IB Proprietary Trading Group – Separate Trading Limit account structure as an LLC. This gives me a great deal more flexibility but relies on QC's live data to be affordable. Possibly something to check out if you are scaling up your operation or are just sick of Linked Accounts.

Thanks Derek, great insights. The IB Proprietary Trading Group, is that type of account IB offers?

I notice you mention that you have several paper accounts, are they from the one or several IB accounts? I'm curious to know how you structure your QC -> IB algos given that we're limited to 1 QC server to 1 IB account.

Yes it's an account type for a business(not individual). It allows one master account to own any number of sub accounts, each independent from eachother and with a paper login. I think they aggregate the $10 fee depending on usage, all in the IB docs. The master can also be logged in as a supervisor when the others are working(not sure paper is visible but works well for live). Has many benefits, and some shortcomings.

the same rules also apply to the family and friends account with one master and several "clients" (max 15)

but its for individuals of course... max "15"

I do not get my paper trading to work. IB phone suppor told me to use lower cases in the user name. So now I can login in the webtrader. However, deploying my algo fails. Any ideas?

Quant Trader please send an email to support so we can pull down the logs. Generally this is caused by: 

 - Incorrect user name / password.
 - IB servers not responding.
 - Leaving 2FA enabled so our system can't login.
 - Having assets not supported by QC in the portfolio (e.g. bonds)

As always - beyond general recommendations we'll need logs to debug and recommend any direction.

I have reached out to support as I can sign in on the website without token (2FA), but not run. Pitty there is no AppID and secret key on IB like in Azure...

I'm about to deploy to IB paper account, but I have a dumb question. 

It doesn't look like there are two sets of credentials for real and paper account. There is just a toggle on between live and paper account on my IB lite mobile app but all with the same credentials. 

well then how do I know I am using my 'paper account'? 

forgot about my previous post. Just found out IB has different username for paper trading account after logging in from desktop.