The Best Open Source (And Free) Crypto Trading Bots

In this guide, we’ll walk through some of the best free & open source crypto trading bots available on the market. Our team reviewed dozens of options and picked the best options based on usability, features, and exchange support. 

Pionex

(Technical Experience Needed: Beginner)

Pionex is a cryptocurrency exchange that offers low fees and free cryptocurrency bots. Because Pionex’s bots are easy to use and set up, it’s one of the best choices for beginner cryptocurrency traders.

Features:

- Pionex provides 16 free trading bots for retail investors. Bots include the grid trading bot (buy and sell crypto within a specific price range), crypto arbitrage bot (exploiting price differences), and the DCA bot (dollar cost average cryptocurrency buys). 

- Pionex’s bots are free to use — but you will have to pay Pionex’s 0.05% trading fee. 

- While Pionex is not available in America, US users can use Pionex.US. 

Price: Free forever

Mobile Apps: iOS & Android

Hummingbot

 (Technical Experience Needed: Intermediate/Advanced)

Hummingbot is an open-source Python framework that allows traders to build bots on 20+ centralized and decentralized exchanges.

Hummingbot provides tools to implement trading strategies like arbitrage. In addition, it’s highly customizable for users with advanced Python knowledge! 

Features:

- Hummingbot offers access to market scanners to capitalize on arbitrage opportunities, comprehensive analytics to optimize your strategies, and a consolidated view of your portfolio. 

- Pre-built strategy templates include market making, arbitrage, and cross-exchange market mining. 

- Community support available on Discord, forums and GitHub discussions.

Gekko

(Technical Experience Needed: Intermediate/Advanced)

Gekko is currently the most popular open source crypto trading bot with over 10,000 stars on Github. Right out of the box, users are given a web GUI that allows them to import historical market data, backtest their strategies, and run them live on their favorite exchange. 

One of Gekko’s strong points is its ability to chart results from backtesting and live trading which makes it perfect for beginners to immediately start running a strategy. It also has extensive documentation on how to develop your own strategies.

Overall, Gekko is an excellent tool for both intermediate and advanced traders — its simple web GUI makes it easy to quickly backtest and analyze your strategies! We recommend you run Gekko on your local machine to test and develop your crypto trading strategies. Once you have your strategy ready to go live, install it on a VPS like Vultr to guarantee 24/7 uptime and low latency trades.

Gekko Pros:

• Support for dozens of exchanges including Kraken and Gemini 
• Easy installation 
• Simple user interface
• Paper/live trading modes
• Trade notification support via Plugins

Gekko Cons:

• Minimal details for backtesting
• Difficult for beginners

Enigma Catalyst 

(Technical Experience Needed: Advanced)

Enigma’s Catalyst is an algorithmic trading platform for crypto traders built on top of the Zipline project. This platform is made for experienced Python developers looking to develop, backtest, and live trade their strategies across multiple cryptocurrency exchanges. 

Catalyst currently supports live trading across 90+ exchanges including Poloniex and Bittrex. It’s a great tool for advanced crypto traders with coding knowledge!

Catalyst Pros:

• Great documentation
• Active community
• Statistical analysis and machine learning library support
• 90+ exchanges supported

Catalyst Cons:

• Lengthy installation process
• Difficult to setup in the cloud

What are the tax implications of crypto trading bots?

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‍Remember, crypto trading activity is subject to tax. When you trade away cryptocurrency — whether manually or through a bot — you’ll incur a capital gain or loss depending on how its price has changed since you originally received it. 

If you’re looking for an easy way to stay on tax liabilities, try CoinLedger. The platform integrates with hundreds of trading bots, exchanges, and wallets to make it easier than ever to report your cryptocurrency transactions. 

‍Get started with a free account today.