alpaca-py VS backtesting.py

Alpaca, as mentioned before, is pretty easy. They have a python client (https://alpaca.markets/docs/python-sdk/) that's pretty good. Free trades on equities is nice. The problem with alpaca is that their free equity data is 15min delayed. I've also found their margin accounts to be hard to use programmatically so I only trade long with them. They have crypto but their commissions are high.

I'm trying to use the Alpaca Markets API (https://alpaca.markets/docs/python-sdk/) to automate investments, so I connect the Pico to the internet then simply import

Ive been personally implementing some quant trading with their new python module - https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-py

We chose backtesting.py for a backtesting framework. There are several to choose from but that one seems like the most well-supported and actively worked on at the moment.

The process might vary a bit based on what you want to trade, but I've had some success with back-testing by using the IBKR API to download historical data for the stocks I want, then plugging in that data to some other back-testing framework, like https://kernc.github.io/backtesting.py/

https://kernc.github.io/backtesting.py/ offers nice way to zoom backtesting. It has some bugs, but good for visualization.

Are there any free trading platform options to import and backtest millisecond historical tick data? Do you use something like https://github.com/kernc/backtesting.py and then translate algorithms into mql4/5 or pinescript?

But even if you don't know that, you can Google the library to find its documentation and installation instructions - in this case, here where it does indeed tell you to run pip install backtesting.

Sure. My strategy is actually very simple using common indicators like MACD and RSI. Most of the code is actually based on https://github.com/kernc/backtesting.py and I use it to check whether I should buy or sell on a particular day. Hope this helps!

I'm leaning towards using the backtesting.py library, but from the example on their main page, it looks like you need to program your strategy using their library?