How to link your Alpaca paper account

1. Create a free Alpaca account

Go to alpaca.markets and choose Sign up. Use your email, confirm it, and set a password. Alpaca may ask a few identity questions (name, country, date of birth) - that is their standard onboarding and is fine; you do not need to deposit anything or complete the funding steps. If it offers to open a live brokerage account, you can skip that - paper trading works without it.

2. Switch to Paper

Once you are in the Alpaca dashboard, look at the top-left for a drop-down or toggle that says Live / Paper. Set it to Paper. The page header usually turns a different colour and shows the paper account's $100,000 balance. Everything you do from here on happens in the paper account.

3. Generate an API key

On the right-hand side of the paper dashboard there is a box called API Keys (on some layouts it is under your profile menu → API Keys, or at Paper Trading → API Keys). Click Generate (or Regenerate). Alpaca shows two values once: the Key ID (starts with PK) and the Secret Key (a long string). Copy both now - the secret is not shown again. If you lose it, just regenerate a new pair.

Paper keys begin with PK. Live keys begin with AK and are refused by this site, so there is no way to link a real-money account by accident.

4. Paste them here

Create your MONSTER account (or log in), then open My account, paste the Key ID and Secret into the two boxes and press Link paper account. The site checks the keys with Alpaca's paper endpoint; when they are accepted you will see your paper balance and any open positions.

5. Choose a risk level and start following

Pick Low, Medium or High and press Start following. Low means positions about half the size the desk itself takes relative to your balance; Medium matches the desk; High is up to one and a half times. The desk only trades during US market hours (14:30-21:00 UK time, Monday to Friday) plus crypto around the clock, and it checks once an hour, so expect the first positions to appear during the next US session after your account is enabled. You can change the level or stop following at any time; stopping closes the mirrored positions at the next hourly check.

"Those keys were not accepted." Nearly always the Alpaca toggle was still on Live when the key was generated. Switch to Paper and generate a new key. Also check there are no spaces copied before or after the values.

I can't find API Keys. Make sure you are on the paper dashboard (step 2), then look at the right-hand column; on narrow screens it may be below the main chart. Alpaca's own guide is at docs.alpaca.markets/docs/paper-trading.

Can I use a live account? No. This service connects to Alpaca's paper endpoint only. That is deliberate - it is a public test of the system, not a product for real money.

What can the site do with my keys? Read your paper account and place paper orders on it. Alpaca paper keys cannot move money anywhere. You can revoke them in Alpaca at any time, or press Unlink here, which deletes them from our server.