Copy trading on Tradovate, the free way

Tradovate has a copier built in. It's free, it's already in your platform, and for two to five accounts at one firm it does the job. It also has one quirk that trips up nearly everyone on day one — so let's deal with that first.

The one thing to understand before anything else

With Group Trading on, the quantity you type is the total across the group, not the size per account.

Want 1 contract on each of 5 accounts? You type 5. Tradovate splits it — one contract each.

Get this backwards and you either take a position five times bigger than you meant, or the order is rejected. Which is why your order size always has to be a multiple of your account count.

Setting it up

Six steps, about five minutes. Do it on a quiet evening, not two minutes before the open.

1. 01 Turn the add-on on Application Settings → Add-Ons → find Group Trade → toggle it on and click Activate.
2. 02 Log out and back in Not optional, and not a suggestion. The feature won't appear until you do. If you can't find Manage Groups in the next step, this is why.
3. 03 Open Manage Groups Click the Accounts dropdown at the top of the platform and choose Manage Groups.

   

4. 04 Create the group and name it Hit the + icon and give it a name you'll recognise under pressure — "Lucid Funded x4" beats "Group 1".

   

5. 05 Drag your accounts in, set Qty, save Drag accounts from the left panel into the group on the right, set the quantity each account should receive, and save.

   

6. 06 Select the group before you trade Back in the accounts dropdown, pick the group rather than an individual account. This is the step people forget — if a single account is selected, nothing copies and you're trading one account with a five-lot position.

   

Where it falls short

The setup guides usually stop at "you're done". Here's what you'll actually run into.

• Limit 1 No bracket orders ATM strategies — automatic stop-loss and take-profit attached on entry — don't work across a group. You'd be setting exits by hand on every account, which defeats the point. This is the big one for most people.
• Limit 2 One login only The group only covers accounts under the same Tradovate login. Apex on one login and Tradeify on another means two separate setups, and you still can't fire them together. If you're multi-firm, this alone rules it out.
• Limit 3 Every account gets the same size No ratios, no "leader trades 2, follower trades 1", and no trading the micro contract on the small accounts while the big ones trade E-minis. A $50K eval takes exactly what a $150K funded account takes.
• Limit 4 No per-account risk settings You can't give individual accounts their own daily loss limit or profit target. If one account is close to its drawdown, the group won't protect it.
• Limit 5 Flatten All doesn't work with groups The platform-wide close-everything button stops working once Group Trading is on — you close each account by hand. During a news spike, that's genuinely dangerous. Know it now, not then.
• Limit 6 Not in TradingView, not on mobile Trades have to be placed inside the Tradovate platform itself, on web or desktop. If you chart and enter from TradingView, this won't fire.
• Limit 7 No journal, and small delays are possible There's no per-account performance view, so comparing accounts means doing it yourself. Tradovate also notes replication can lag slightly, which on fast scalp entries can mean different fills.

So is it enough for you?

Yes, if all of these are true:

2–5 accounts at one firm, one login

Fine

You manage exits manually

Fine

You trade inside Tradovate itself

Fine

Accounts are all similar size

Fine

Accounts across multiple firms

Won't work

You need brackets on entry

Won't work

You enter from TradingView

Won't work

Mixed account sizes

Won't work

For most people scaling their first two or three accounts, native Group Trading is genuinely the right starting point — and it's free, which matters when you're still buying evaluations. The moment you cross into a second firm, need brackets, or want per-account risk control, you've outgrown it. That's when a proper copier starts making sense.

This is my personal experience, not financial advice. Trading futures carries risk, including loss of evaluation fees. Copy trading policies, platform features and pricing change — always confirm the current rules with your prop firm and the current pricing on the provider's own site before relying on anything here.