Paper trading — also called virtual or simulated trading — lets you buy and sell real stocks with fake money. You get the full experience of the market, including how fees eat into a trade and how a position moves against you, without risking a single riyal. It is the safest place to learn, to test an idea, and to build the discipline that survives contact with real money.
Tasilab is a paper-trading sandbox built specifically for the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul, index TASI). Every fill is a simulation; no order is ever sent to a broker.
What you get
- SAR 100,000 in simulated cash the moment you sign up — one free portfolio, ready to trade.
- Real Saudi-market prices, 15-minute delayed on the free tier.
- Real fees. Commission of
0.155%plus15%VAT on the commission, on every fill — the same math the exchange uses. - Market and limit orders, during real TASI hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:00–15:00 AST. Orders placed outside hours queue for the next open.
- A full REST API and Python SDK. Automate a strategy, place orders from a script, or pull your portfolio programmatically — the same account, through the other door.
- Backtesting and logged experiments so you can test a strategy against history before you paper-trade it live. See the backtesting guide.
Place a paper trade from Python
Prefer to click? Do it all from the dashboard. Prefer to code? A market buy is one call:
import os
from tasilab import Tasilab
tasi = Tasilab(api_key=os.environ["TASILAB_API_KEY"])
order = tasi.buy("2222", quantity=100) # Saudi Aramco, market order
print(order["status"], order["filled_price"])
pf = tasi.portfolio()
print("Cash:", pf["cash_balance"], "SAR")How it compares
Saudi traders already have good ways to practise. Here is an honest map of where each fits — Tasilab is the programmable one, built for people who want to automate and test, not just click.
| Tasilab | Tadawul Simulator | CMA «ثمين» | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual capital | SAR 100,000 | SAR 100,000 | Virtual |
| Real market data | Yes (15-min) | Yes (5-min) | Yes |
| Web-based | Yes | Mobile app | Yes |
| REST API + Python SDK | Yes | — | — |
| Backtesting | Yes | — | — |
| ML / logged experiments | Yes | — | — |
The official Tadawul Trading Simulator and the CMA's «ثمين» tool are excellent for learning to click through a trade. Tasilab is for the next step: when you want to write the strategy, not just execute it by hand.
Who it's for
- Developers testing a hypothesis on TASI symbols without wiring up a broker.
- Students learning algorithmic trading on a market they actually understand.
- Quant-minded traders who want a programmable sandbox before risking capital.