How to Set Up PraxAI, Step by Step

Before you buy software, open your firm's written terms and confirm that automated execution is permitted on the account type you hold.

This is first because everything else is wasted if the answer is no, and because it costs nothing to check. Firms differ, account types inside the same firm differ, and policies change on the firm's schedule. A claim you read in a forum thread or an affiliate review is not a source.

The categories worth reading, and the language firms use for them, are in prop firms that allow EAs. If your firm is not one we build files for, that question is answered in which prop firms does PraxAI support.

The first screen in the dashboard does not ask what you trade. It asks who evaluates you.

That order is deliberate. The firm you are measured by determines the limits the automation has to live inside, so the firm is chosen before anything is configured. Once selected, the dashboard hands you the robot for your platform and the setfile built for that firm rather than a blank settings panel.

The setfile is the part worth understanding and the part people scroll past. It is a small text file you can open and read: the fixed lot size per position with a floor and a ceiling, and the behaviour the robot is allowed to have. The protective limits are not in that file. They live in PraxAI GUARD, which carries its own firm rule set, so on the FTMO and FundingPips rule sets the numbers are compiled in and the custom fields do nothing unless you select the Custom rule set.

You can watch this part rather than read it. The dashboard walkthrough is a two minute screen recording with nobody talking over it, also on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aJOsgguG08.

PraxAI ships natively for three platforms and the install differs slightly on each.

On MetaTrader 5 it is compile free: drop the file into the Experts folder, restart the terminal, attach the robot to your chart, load your setfile and switch algorithmic trading on. The full walkthrough with the folder paths is in how to install an EA on MT5.

On cTrader you paste the cBot source into the Automate editor and build it there. On NinjaTrader 8 you paste the strategy source into the NinjaScript editor and compile, which is the futures path for accounts your firm issues on that platform.

If your firm issued the account on Match Trader, TradeLocker or DXtrade, native is not available and the route is a trade copier from a MetaTrader terminal, with the costs described in running an EA on TradeLocker, DXtrade and cTrader.

This is the step that turns a five minute setup claim into a longer afternoon, and it is the one most vendors leave out of the footage.

The software has to be running when the market is open, which means it cannot live on a laptop you close at night or a machine that sleeps. It runs on a VPS that you arrange. We publish a guide for it and we do not sell the machine, so budget for it separately from the licence.

What to look for is proximity to your broker's servers and uptime rather than raw specifications, because this workload is small. The practical version is in do you need a VPS for a prop firm EA, and what happens to execution when the connection is poor is in slippage, spread and execution on a prop firm server.

Do not put software on an evaluation you paid for until you have watched it stop.

Open a demo account, attach PraxAI GUARD with the Custom rule set and set a daily figure small enough to be reached in a session. Let it run and watch what happens. It fires before the number rather than at it, one percentage point early by default, so expect the stop slightly early and read the log line to see which figure it used. It then closes every open position inside its scope, which by default is the whole account, and keeps the account flat until you unlock it.

That single test is worth more than any demo video, including ours, because it is your account, your platform and your numbers. It also teaches you what the halt looks like in the log, so the first time you see it on a real evaluation you do not panic and intervene.

Test it once and you will recognise the halt in the log instead of panicking at it the first time it happens on a real evaluation.

Once it is running, the work changes from setup to maintenance, and there is less of it than people expect.

Re-check your setfile when your firm revises a limit, because our file is maintained by us rather than fed from the firm. Keep an eye on the server staying up. And read the account's own reported history rather than your memory of it when judging whether things are going well.

What changes the day the account is funded is a different problem entirely, covered in AI that trades your live funded account and framed in pass, keep, collect.

If something is stuck at any step, support runs on Telegram at t.me/PraxAIOfficial. What the licence includes is in the Prax AI review.