backtesting.py VS blankly

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?

Looks interesting.

I recently came across this newer platform Blankly with similar goals, it has great docs and easy to get started

https://github.com/Blankly-Finance/Blankly

Have a look at line 25 & 26 of Alpaca_api.py. The URLs don't match the "sandbox" URLs that Alpaca gives it's users.

Hey we developed and open sourced a python package called Blankly. It allows you to merge the live environment with the development environment by allowing models to be backtestable, paper tradable, and then immediately run live without changing any code (except strategy.backtest() becomes strategy.start()). It's all free and open source of course so I like using it more than online platforms and theres no sketchy IP claims.