Trading bots
Bots on Hyperliquid and Aster. The Bots page, Start a bot, ready setups, run lengths, what the bot key can do, the risks and your first bot.
On this page
A bot places and manages orders for you by rules you set: a price range for a grid, or a ladder of buys for a DCA bot. Prow runs your bots on its servers, 24/7, so they keep trading when your phone is locked or your laptop is closed. Open them from Bots in the sidebar, or the Bots tab on a phone.
Market signals is a different page, in the Settings menu (on a phone, Profile > Market signals). It is market information only and never trades. See Market signals.
The Bots page
One row at the top holds Bots, Stop all (while a bot runs), Start a bot, Deposit and the bell. Under it:
- The summary: Running (for example 1 of 2), In bots (what your bots may use), Total PnL and Today (what the trades your bots closed today made, after fees).
- My bots and History: each bot with its direction, type and leverage, venue and runtime, its Status, In the bot and Total PnL, and Pause (or Resume) and Stop on the row. Tap a row to open the bot's page. History lists stopped bots with why they stopped, Copy settings and a bin to remove the row. See Manage a bot.
- What your bots did: one line for each trade, profit taken, start, pause and stop, with what a closed trade made or lost. All activity opens the whole list.
- Ready setups, on the right (under the other cards on smaller screens): settings you can start from, with All types, Any length and Any direction filters. All setups opens the Start a bot window. See Ready setups.
On a phone, Start a bot sits next to the title, the summary takes two rows, Stop all sits at the end of the tabs, and each bot is a card with Pause and Stop.
Before your first bot
Until you start one, the page shows Start your first bot in three steps, with how many are done:
- Connect a venue: Hyperliquid or Aster, one signature from your wallet.
- Deposit: USDC to the venue you connected. The step says the smallest amount a ready setup starts from.
- Pick a ready setup from the list next to it.
How a bot works sits under them: it trades inside the limits you sign, your money stays on the venue, you can stop it any time, and there is one bot per market. On a first visit with no bot running, the Start a bot window opens by itself.
Bot types
| Bot | What it does | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Grid | Buys low and sells high inside a price range. On spot (no leverage, no liquidation) or futures (Long, Short or Neutral, with leverage) | Sideways markets |
| DCA | Buys more as the price falls and sells the whole position at a profit target. Spot, or futures Long or Short | Buying dips |
| QFL | A DCA bot that opens a deal only when the price cracks below a recent low it bounced from. Hyperliquid futures, Long | Sharp drops that bounce |
Ladder: builds a futures position in steps as the price moves against it and takes profit in steps on the way back. Bitsgap calls it COMBO. See Ladder bot.
Arbitrage: holds a long on one market and a short on another in the same coin, on Hyperliquid and Aster, to earn the funding difference. Market-neutral, but it can still lose money: in our tests this way of trading earned about 0.3–1.4% a year, less than cash, and the bot as it is set up today lost about 0.9% a year over the last 180 days. See Arbitrage bot.
Spot hedge: shorts a coin on Hyperliquid against the same number of coins you hold, so the price stops moving your balance, and collects funding while longs pay it. It never trades your spot; a fast rise can close the short at its guard. See Spot hedge.
The settings use the same words as Bybit, Binance, Bitsgap and 3Commas: lower and upper price, number of grids, base order, extra buys (safety orders elsewhere), volume scale, take profit. If you used bots there, every field will look familiar. See Grid bot and DCA bot.
Venues and markets
- Hyperliquid: perps (futures grid, DCA and QFL) and spot (spot grid and DCA).
- Aster: perps. Aster spot bots are not offered.
- Lighter: no bots. Lighter keys can only sign inside your browser, so a server can't run a bot with them.
Bots trade only markets on Prow's list of markets with a deep order book, where a bot's orders and its stop can fill near the price. Short and Neutral bots and leverage above 3x are available on the deepest markets only, such as BTC and ETH. A bot never starts on a market where the account holds a position or runs another bot.
Where bots run
Bots run on Prow's servers, not in your browser. For this, each venue account gets one extra key called Prow Bots. Prow creates it on its servers and stores it encrypted. You approve it once with your wallet, like your device's trading key.
| The Prow Bots key can | The Prow Bots key cannot |
|---|---|
| Place and cancel the bot's orders | Withdraw funds |
| Set the bot's leverage and isolated margin | Transfer funds to anyone else or another account |
| On Aster only: move funds between your own spot and futures (Prow never does this for bots) |
Prow's servers check every order against the limits you sign for each bot and refuse the rest. That check runs on Prow's servers, not on the venue: if they were compromised, the key could still trade (and on Aster move funds between your own spot and futures, never out of the account) until you remove it or it expires.
It expires after 30 days, and you renew it with one signature. On Aster it only works from Prow's servers. See The Prow Bots key.
Start a bot
There are two ways in:
- From a ready setup. Tap a setup in Ready setups on the Bots page or in the Start a bot window. The bot's builder opens with that setup filled in, and once Prow has checked it the start review opens by itself. If your balance is short, the review says what the setup needs and how much more to deposit, with Deposit in place of Sign and start.
- Set it up yourself. Press Start a bot, pick the type on the left (on a phone, the chips at the top) and press Set up myself. On a computer, Run a bot in Trade's market header opens Start a bot on BTC-PERP (or the market you are on): each type opens its builder on that market, and See ready setups opens the Bots page.
The Start a bot window lists the bot types on the left and the selected type's ready setups on the right, with a coin search and the Any length, Any direction and Fits my balance filters. All setups puts every type in one list. QFL's pane lists its ready setups once Prow has computed them, each saying where the coin is against its recent base; until then it shows that live list. Arbitrage's pane lists the funding gaps between venues now. Spot hedge's lists the spot coins a bot can protect.
The builder looks like Trade: the market header (pick the market there, as on Trade), the chart with the bot's levels, the order book, your bots under them, and the bot panel on the right with Bot settings and Ready setups. On a phone, Set up Grid bot (or the type you picked) at the bottom opens the panel. To set a bot up:
Check the type and the venue
The panel's title names the type and says whether it runs on futures or spot ("DCA bot, futures", "Grid bot, spot"), and the chip next to it (Grid, DCA and so on) switches the type. The market you picked in the header sets futures or spot. The venue box shows what is available there. Picking another venue moves the bot to the same coin on that venue.
Pick the direction
Long, Short or Neutral (grid only). Short and Neutral are offered on the deepest markets only.
Enter the investment
What the bot may use from the account. 25%, 50% and Max fill in a share of the available balance (Max leaves 1% for fees).
Set the leverage (futures)
1x to start; up to 3x, and 4x or 5x on the deepest markets. Spot bots have no leverage row.
Pick a run length
1 to 3 days, 3 to 15 days or 25+ days: ready settings for this coin, by how long you plan to run the bot. See Run length. The other settings are under Manual adjustment.
Press Continue and review
Continue checks your settings (the minimum investment, the stop, the liquidation price) and opens the review in the same press; it does not run them on past prices. It stays off while something needs fixing, and the line under it says what. Start HYPE Grid (with your coin and type) shows the investment, the range or orders, the stop loss, the max loss and, when you picked a run length or a ready setup, its result over its last days. Before it starts lists the signatures your wallet will ask for. Limits you sign, All settings and What the bot key can do open under them. Turn on the risk acknowledgement.
Press Sign and start
On the first bot of an account, Enable bots on Hyperliquid (or Aster) approves the Prow Bots key with one signature. If the account has not approved the Prow fee, Approve the Prow fee is one more. Then Sign the bot's limits: your wallet shows the market, the largest investment, the highest leverage, the max loss, where the stop may sit, the price range, the highest Prow fee and an end date. While your wallet works, the button reads Signing 1 of 2. Steps you did before are skipped.
The review then says HYPE Grid is running and what it placed, with Back to my bots and Open bot. If you approved the bot key less than an hour ago, it says HYPE Grid starts at 10:05 instead: Prow waits 15 minutes after a new bot key, for safety, and you can Cancel start until then.
Run length
The three run lengths are settings fitted to how much this coin has moved lately, for how long you plan to run the bot:
| Run length | For a bot running | Fitted on |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 3 days (tight settings) | 1 to 3 days | the last 3 days of 5-minute price bars |
| 3 to 15 days (medium settings) | 3 to 15 days | the last 14 days of 15-minute price bars |
| 25+ days (wide settings) | 25 days or more | the last 60 days of hourly price bars |
The range is not a fixed percentage: a quiet coin gets a narrow one, a volatile coin a wide one. Then several ranges and steps are tried, and the one that held up most consistently when started on many different days is kept.
For most bot markets Prow computes these settings ahead of time (every few hours), so they appear at once; a setting computed more than 10 hours ago says so. Where there are none (a market without them, or while that service is down), the setting is fitted the same way, on the same days, when you pick it.
Under the buttons, one line sums the picked setting up: its result on the days it was tuned on, for example "Last 14 days: +0.6%, drawdown −0.3%, 35 trades". The settings were chosen on these same days, so this looks better than reality. Read it as a check that nothing breaks, not as what to expect. Prow works these results out once a day on its own server. See Past results.
Tested (green, next to Run length and the line) means the setting passed our test on later periods it wasn't tuned on. Its (i) gives those periods' typical result, how many lost money and the dates it was tuned on. Without Tested, the (i) says why it didn't pass, and the panel offers Try a setup that held up. Hover a button (or press and hold it on a phone) for the full story: the result on its tuning days, how the same settings did when started on other days, and the later periods.
Manual adjustment shows what the bot will run with in one line, for example "Range 41.20 to 54.80, 20 grids, 2x, stop loss 39.10". Open it for the Grids slider (how many grids the range is cut into, with the step it gives; it only goes as far as counts that can run), and the rest of the type's settings, with Advanced at the end. Changing a setting there turns the run length off: the settings are then your own.
Ready setups
Ready setups are settings for liquid coins on Hyperliquid and Aster, for each bot type, direction and run length. You find them in three places: the Ready setups card on the Bots page, the Start a bot window, and the Ready setups tab next to Bot settings in the builder ("Grid setups for your balance, tested on past days").
Each row shows the market and its direction, the type and run length, and the amount it starts from at its leverage, for example "Grid, 3 to 15 days, from $290 at 3x". On the right is its figure, for example "+1.8% per 7 days".
The list is ordered by how the tuning method did on later periods it wasn't tuned on, never by its result on the tuning days. For each setting, the method was re-run without each of several recent periods and then tested on them. A setting is Tested when at least 4 such periods ran and the older ones made money, mostly beat simply holding the coin at the bot's own exposure, and did better than the same setting on the other coins over the same days, with no liquidation and a drawdown within the run length's limit; and only when that holds beyond what chance alone gives across all the settings tested. The row's figure is the typical result of those older periods, reduced by the share luck could explain. That is still a small sample, and the settings you start are tuned on the latest days.
- What your balance runs comes first (Tested first, then the highest figure). The first of them is marked Recommended when your balance runs it at 1x.
- What your balance doesn't run comes next, the closest first, each with what it needs, for example "Needs $97 at 3x, you have $64.60".
- A market where you hold a position or already run a bot is last and faded, with the reason.
Pick a row to start from it; nothing is placed until you press Sign and start. Once a week, Weekly strategy update in Settings > Notifications can tell you about one setting that kept working on later days.
Safe defaults
- 1x leverage, Long, and a stop loss that is always on. Futures bots use isolated margin: a bot's position can't liquidate your other positions, but it uses the account's free balance.
- Max loss: the bot closes when its total PnL reaches this loss. The default is 30% of the investment.
- Grid step of about 1% by default, and never less than 3 times the fees of a round trip, so each grid trade can earn more than it pays. Smaller steps are allowed with a warning: in our tests they lost more.
- Short and Neutral grids come with a red risk line. Leverage above 3x is offered only on the deepest markets, with the same red line.
What we found when we tested bots
Before launch we ran grid and DCA bots over months of Hyperliquid and Aster prices, starting a bot on every day of the period:
- The strongest long grid we tested at 1x (1.5% step, 15% stop) lost a median of 6.8% per 90 days, and 3 in 4 starts lost money.
- Neutral and Short grids with leverage lost 55% to 91% over 180 days and were liquidated in 20% to 30% of starts.
- DCA with growing extra buys and a stop made a median of +1.6%, with 31% of starts losing. That is no better than chance.
These are past, simulated results. They don't predict what a bot will do next. They are why the defaults are cautious and why every bot has a stop.
Common questions
Can Prow take my funds through a bot? The Prow Bots key can't withdraw or send funds to another account, so it can't send your funds anywhere. On Aster it could move funds between your own spot and futures, which Prow's servers never do for bots. In normal running the worst a bot can do is trade badly inside the limits you signed, which Prow's servers enforce. If Prow's servers were compromised, an attacker could trade with the key (for example into bad prices on a thin market) until you remove it or it expires within 30 days. See If something goes wrong.
Do bots share my balance? Yes. A bot uses the free balance of the account it runs on. Futures bots use isolated margin, but draw on the same free collateral as your manual trades. Use a separate account if you want them apart.
Can I trade the same market by hand? It's better not to. One bot per market per account. If you trade the bot's market by hand or cancel one of its orders, the bot pauses so it doesn't fight you.
Where do I see my bots outside Bots? On Portfolio: the Bots card shows how many run and each bot's PnL, with All bots and Start a bot, and the Bots tab on the positions card lists them with Manage (Resume on a paused one).
What does it cost? The same Prow fee as your manual orders: 0% until Dec 31, 2026, then 0.025% per trade. Plus the venue's fees and funding on futures. See Fees.
What happens if Prow's servers go down? Orders already on the venue stay there, including the bot's stop loss. The bot catches up when the servers are back.
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