Does Fidelity Offer Paper Trading?
As of now, Fidelity does not offer a paper trading account. The most popular
free paper trading account is available at Charles Schwab.
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Fidelity Overview
Although we give Fidelity a strong overall rating, there are some areas that we feel they could improve on. One of these areas is practice or
paper accounts, where you can basically trade using pretend money to test the waters so to speak without needing to risk anything. New and
experienced traders alike use paper accounts to get a feel for the markets or to test new security types or strategies before using their funds
in real life.
Although Fidelity doesn’t currently offer practice accounts, a couple of brokers
(like Charles Schwab) do, and so this article will discuss the benefits
of paper trading.
Practice Accounts for New Traders
Many traders choose to gain real-world experience in the markets with a practice account before investing their hard-earned money. For someone who has never placed a trade or experienced the adrenaline rush of watching their investment quickly increase (or decrease) in value in real-time, paper trading can get them as close to this experience as possible without them taking on any real risk. Some new traders might think it’s a waste of time, but most who have tried it would agree it’s a valuable experience.
Paper accounts don’t just allow newbies to get familiar with entering different order types, but they allow you to feel what it’s like when you’re watching stock prices move in real time. You can really test your discipline when the market forces are trying to get you to act emotionally, and often irrationally. After market close, you can then review your actions to see if you acted objectively to follow your plan in the face of a fast-moving market without having to pay financially for any irrational decisions.
After you’ve gotten comfortable with paper trading and feel you’re able to react to the market’s movements in a logical
and controlled manner you can make the easy switch to trading with real money. Your real account is a mirror-image of
your paper account experience, except now you’re (hopefully) making real money.
Where Can I Start Paper Trading?
As we mentioned, Fidelity doesn’t currently offer a practice accounts, however the good news is that there are other brokers that offer them free
of charge, like Charles Schwab. The broker’s popular
Think or Swim trading platform
has a practice mode that allows you to manage a paper account. Its features are the same as a real Think or Swim account so the experience is
genuine, and the best part is you don’t even need to be a Charles Schwab client in order to paper trade on Think or Swim.
Practice Accounts to Experience More Complex Assets
Practice accounts aren’t exclusively for new investors; many experienced investors continue to use them throughout their investing careers to test out new security types and strategies. For example, most people stick to stocks and ETFs when they first start investing because these instruments are the most simple. But eventually, many traders expand their tool kit to include more complex instruments like options, futures, and fixed income securities. Paper trading these instruments can be a great way to familiarize yourself with how they work before putting your money on the line and risk making a costly mistake that’s due to not understanding how they work.
Paper Trading to Test New Strategies
Even after you’ve become a “master of the markets” and understand complex securities, paper trading can still be a valuable tool to test out new strategies and ideas before risking your capital. For example, maybe you built a custom quantitative stock screener and you want to see if you may have discovered Warren Buffet’s secret sauce by testing it out in real time. You could run the screen and then implement the resulting trades using a paper account and rerun the screen to rebalance the strategy in your practice account as needed. You could then monitor the strategy’s performance results via your practice account in real time.
Fidelity Paper Trading Conclusion
In summary, practice accounts are an invaluable tool that investors of all experience levels can
benefit from. Whether you’re brand new to the markets, wanting to try more complex securities, or
looking for an account to test out a trading strategy, a practice account can be very helpful. The
best part is that they are offered for free by many respected brokers, most notably Webull.
Updated on 1/12/2026.
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