Sensibull virtual trading vs historical replay: two tools, two jobs

Live virtual trading and historical replay, in plain terms

Live virtual trading means you take a position at current prices, nothing is sent to an exchange, and you watch the position as the market moves. The feature people often call Sensibull virtual trading is Draft Portfolios on Sensibull’s own site. You create and record trades with option prices, P&L and Greeks, and track them before you place them with a broker. People also search for it as Sensibull paper trading, which is not the name Sensibull uses. Its strength is that it works on the market as it is right now.

A historical replay turns that around. You choose a day that already happened, see the option chain as it stood at the minute you pick, place a trade, and move the clock forward. The outcome arrives in a few minutes instead of a few weeks. You can run the same morning twice, change one decision and compare. That is not possible in live practice, where each day happens once.

Replay depth: one live day against any past day

With live practice you get exactly one session per trading day. If you want to see how a short straddle behaves through a gap-down open, you wait until the market gives you one. A replay lets you go straight to it. In the Tradetron simulator you can step by a minute, jump up to an hour, auto-play or go to the close, and once you sign in, hold a position across days to expiry, where it settles at the index close.

The cost is that a replay is a look at the past. It cannot tell you what tomorrow will be like, and the prices are not live. Sensibull’s Draft Portfolios have the opposite trade-off: the prices are current, with a one-minute delay for regulatory reasons, but you only get the day in front of you. Sensibull’s help centre also says it does not have a backtesting or options simulator based on historical data. That article is dated 1 January 2024, so check Sensibull’s site for anything newer.

Data coverage: what each one can show you

Our replay data starts on 1 January 2020 for NIFTY and Bank Nifty, 3 February 2021 for FINNIFTY, 14 September 2023 for Midcap Nifty and 7 August 2023 for SENSEX, in 1-minute steps. The newest day is about 35 days old: 35-day lag; SEBI requires 30. SENSEX runs on approximations, since there is no BSE settlement or margin file in our data and its option chain is thinner than NIFTY’s. If a strike did not trade in a minute, we show its last price from earlier that day, greyed, and never fill the gap with a model.

A live tool has no data-lag question to answer, because it uses the market as it is. That is a real advantage if your aim is to follow a trade you may actually place this week.

Analysis tools: what you can read

Sensibull’s Strategy Builder offers 25+ prebuilt strategies with P&L curves and Greeks, and its free plan includes the basic option chain, FII and DII data and the events calendar. For a trader who plans a position and then monitors it, that is a complete set.

The Tradetron replay is narrower and deeper on one day. You read Delta, IV, open interest and change in OI beside each strike, plus PCR and max pain, and watch the payoff at expiry and at a target time, with 1 and 2 sigma bands and what-if controls for spot and IV. Position Greeks move with the clock, and a trade log lists every entry and exit. Our public simulator has no save, share or import today.

What happens after practice?

With Sensibull, the natural next step is placing the trade through a connected broker. It connects to Zerodha, Angel One, Upstox and ICICI Direct and says there are no extra charges to trade from it. That suits a trader who is deciding on a trade now.

After a replay, the natural next step is to ask whether the idea would have held up over many days. On Tradetron you tell Cookie, our AI, what you did by hand: the entry time, the strikes as distance from ATM, and the exit. Cookie writes an algo with an entry rule and a stop-loss or time exit. You backtest it on years of data, and when you are ready you deploy it with your broker. Algo trading carries risk, and a backtest describes the past, not the future. The public simulator does not pass trades to Cookie by itself, so you describe your setup. For a worked example see from a manual replay to an algo.

Price, as checked on 15 Oct 2026

Sensibull is free for Zerodha users. For other brokers, the one-month Pro plan was shown at Rs 800 a month, with no GST note on the page. It also gives new non-Zerodha users a 3-day mini-trial and a 7-day free Pro trial with no card. Draft Portfolios and the Strategy Builder sit in Pro.

The Tradetron simulator has no charge: preset days need no account, and a free Tradetron account opens every trading day in the data. Because the two do different jobs, price should not be the deciding factor. Prices change, so check each provider’s own site.

Where Sensibull is stronger

• Live prices. It works on the market as it is, which a historical replay cannot.
• Mobile apps. It has iOS and Android apps. Our simulator works in a phone’s browser.
• Reach. It reports 180k+ daily users, a much larger base than ours.
• Broker-linked trading. You can go from a plan to an order in one place.
• Prebuilt strategies. 25+ in the Strategy Builder.
• Free for Zerodha users.

Using both

A reasonable routine is to use a replay to learn how a structure behaves, and live tracking to follow a trade you are considering now. Start with a real day: replay NIFTY on 3 June 2024 from 09:15, a session that opened 3.50% higher and then went flat. For the other comparisons, see StockMock, Opstra and AlgoTest, or go back to the option simulator. The guide to practising options with replay explains how to get the most from it.

Questions traders ask

Keep reading

• Free NIFTY & Bank Nifty option simulator: replay a real day
• Option simulator: replay a real trading day
• StockMock simulator compared
• Opstra simulator compared
• AlgoTest simulator compared
• Practice options trading with replay

Historical replay for education and analysis. Past prices; not investment advice. Nothing here places orders. Algo trading carries risk.