FAQ + Help
Quick answers to the questions we hear most. Search across every section, or jump straight to what you need.
Getting started
What UpsideOnly is and how to sign up.
UpsideOnly is a paper trading platform where you make risk-free trades using virtual money across global equity, commodity, forex, and crypto markets. Your trades help power our machine learning models, which trade with our own money. When those trades are profitable, we share 50% of the profits with our top-performing users. You never risk your own money trading — but you can still earn real payouts.
Yes! No if's or but's!
No experience needed. UpsideOnly is designed for traders of all levels. You start with a $100,000 virtual balance and can explore markets risk-free. Our Education Hub (coming soon) will also help you learn the basics if you're just getting started.
The catch is that we take all the risk. Our AI models filter the noise out from your trading instincts, and combine it with the rest of the global UpsideOnly community to act on powerful signals. We trade with our own money so you don't have to. Your insights, our AI, both our profit.
Paper trading means making simulated trades with virtual money instead of real money. You get $100,000 in virtual USD to trade across global markets. Your trades are real in every way except the money — you'll see real market prices, real P&L, and real competition against other users.
Visit upsideonly.com and sign up with your email address and a password. You can also sign up instantly via Google, Apple, Facebook, or X. No additional documents are required to create an account.
One account is all you need. Just like you only have one brokerage account for stocks, you only need to manage one UpsideOnly account.
Just an email and password, or a social sign-on. No extra documents are required at sign-up. A light identity verification applies only when you earn and withdraw a payout, to make sure funds aren't flowing to sanctioned regions.
A Participation Deposit (PD) is a small refundable deposit between $1 and $500 that makes you eligible for higher payouts. It exists to keep the platform fair and prevent bots from gaming the system. It is never used for trading, never put at risk, and can be withdrawn at any time. Users who make even small deposits are less likely to be bots and more likely to make considered, reliable predictions. The deposit is held safely in U.S. Treasury Bills in an external account by a separate fiduciary, and can be withdrawn at any time. This helps us make sure the profits you earn aren't being divided up by bots.
Your deposit tier determines your Priority Multiplier — a weighting applied to your payout calculation. A higher deposit tier means a proportionally larger share of the payout pool for the same percentile rank performance. If you're eligible for a payout, a higher deposit helps you earn more.
Your deposit is held securely in US Government T-Bills — widely considered the safest asset in the world. This helps protect your deposit from banking and insolvency risks. It is never used for trading or any other operational purpose, and can be returned to you at any time, in accordance with our Terms of Service.
You can trade across 25 global markets spanning equities, commodities, forex, and crypto. The full list of available assets is visible on the trading page.
Paper Trading & Account
How paper trading works, order types, and balance management.
Every user starts with $100,000 in virtual USD. This is a standard benchmark across all users so that leaderboard rankings and payout eligibility are calculated on a level playing field.
UpsideOnly supports Market Orders, Limit Orders, Stop Losses, and Take Profits.
A market order executes immediately at the current market price. Use this when you want to enter or exit a position right now without specifying a price.
A limit order lets you set a specific price at which you want your trade to execute. The order will only execute if the market reaches your specified price.
A stop loss automatically closes your position if the price moves against you to a level you specify — limiting your downside. For a long position, your stop loss must be set below your entry price. You can set a stop loss in the order entry form as you create your trade.
A take profit automatically closes your position when the price reaches a target level you specify — locking in your gains. For a long position, your take profit must be set above your entry price. You can set a take profit in the order entry form as you place your trade.
On a long position the valid price hierarchy is: Stop Loss below Entry Price, Entry Price below Take Profit. If your take profit is below your entry price the position would close at a loss immediately. The platform validates these fields in real time to prevent conflicting orders from being submitted.
Limit orders only execute when the market reaches your specified price. If the market never reached your limit price before you cancelled the order or the position auto-closed, it will remain unexecuted.
Yes — you can hold multiple open positions in the same asset simultaneously. Any combination of a long and short position will net out to a final direction. Positions of the same direction sum together.
Your P&L is calculated as the difference between your entry price and current or exit price, multiplied by your position size. Both unrealized P&L (on open positions) and realized P&L (on closed positions) are displayed separately on your dashboard and trading page.
All open positions automatically close after 4 weeks regardless of market hours. UpsideOnly is designed to reward short-term trading — long-term buy-and-hold positions are automatically closed to keep signals meaningful for our models and competition fair for all users.
Yes — you can reset your virtual balance back to $100,000 at any time. Resetting your balance also resets your leaderboard rank, active trading streak, and any pending payout eligibility for the current competition cycle. Past payouts already earned are not affected.
Your rank resets to zero and you start fresh in the current competition cycle. Any payout eligibility you had built up in the current cycle is also lost. Past payouts already earned and withdrawn remain yours.
There is no limit on the number of resets. Frequent resets do not help you game the payout system — to earn a payout you must still significantly outperform your peers from whatever your starting balance is.
Competitions & Leaderboard
Weekly and monthly cycles, ranking, and per-market boards.
Weekly competitions run from Saturday 00:00 Eastern to Friday 23:59 Eastern. Payouts are distributed the following day — Saturday — and can be withdrawn or rolled into your Participation Deposit for a higher tier.
Monthly competitions run from the first to the last day of each calendar month. Only the top three performing users on a percentage gain basis win a payout. This is the jackpot mechanism — payouts here are significantly larger. Any user with any level of Participation Deposit or alternative eligibility is eligible.
Yes. Both cycles run concurrently — participating in one does not exclude you from the other. To earn the most you should trade in as many markets as you'd like, as often as you'd like.
Your rank is determined by your percentage return from your investment on an asset or asset class within the current competition cycle. Dollar P&L is shown as a secondary metric but ranking is always based on percentage gain to keep the playing field level regardless of position sizes.
In addition to the overall leaderboard, there are dedicated leaderboards for each market category — Stocks, Crypto, FOREX, Commodities, and Indices — so traders can see how they rank against others trading the same markets.
Yes — your trades across different markets contribute to each relevant market leaderboard simultaneously, as well as the overall combined leaderboard.
Tiebreaker logic is applied — whoever achieved the given return first wins.
The leaderboard updates in near real-time as positions are opened and closed.
Payouts & Profit Sharing
How profit sharing works and how to receive payouts.
UpsideOnly trades its own capital using signals derived from the collective paper trades of our users, analyzed by proprietary AI models. When those trades are profitable, 50% of the profits are distributed to the pool of eligible users. Your share of that pool is determined by your percentile rank and your Participation Deposit tier.
Your paper trades are analyzed by our machine learning models as trading signals. Users who earn the most on a paper trading basis provide the most significant signal, and therefore earn more of the winnings.
The top 3 performing users — based on percentage gain — across the whole UpsideOnly community earn a jackpot payout for contributing extraordinary signal. Only users with a Participation Deposit are eligible.
Weekly payouts are distributed every Saturday for the prior week's cycle. Monthly jackpot payouts are distributed at the start of the following month.
The minimum withdrawal is $5.
You can add a bank account to withdraw payouts by clicking the payouts pill in the top right corner of the screen, then clicking the Withdraw button. Once you complete KYC and activate 2FA, you may add a bank account.
No — USDC and other crypto payouts are not yet supported.
Payout processing times depend on the method selected. Bank transfers may take 1–3 business days depending on your bank.
Yes — a KYC check is required before any payout is released. Larger payouts above certain thresholds will trigger additional KYC. This is required to ensure payouts are not distributed to sanctioned jurisdictions.
Tax obligations vary by jurisdiction and individual circumstances. UpsideOnly does not provide tax advice — please consult a tax professional for guidance specific to your situation.
UpsideOnly provides a record of your total earnings on the platform in your account profile section. How to use that information for tax purposes is between you and your tax professional.
Your pending payout eligibility for the current cycle resets. You would need to rebuild your performance from the new starting balance to re-qualify. Any previously withdrawn earnings are not affected.
Gamification, Titles & Achievements
Your trading style and how it's calculated.
Your trading style is a metric that characterizes your trading behavior based on your last 30 days of activity. It is calculated from signals like position size, trade duration, order type usage, and consistency.
Your style shows "Still Developing" when you have fewer than 15 trades or your recent trading signals are not yet strong enough to produce a confident classification. Keep trading and your style will update on the next weekly recalculation.
A Hybrid style means your trading behavior scores nearly equally across two styles with less than 10 points separating them. It is a genuine classification — not a fallback — and means you are a multi-strategy trader who doesn't fit neatly into one box.
Every Sunday at Eastern midnight using a rolling 30-day window of your most recent trades.
Account, Security & Verification
2FA, KYC verification, and account management.
Go to Account Settings and select Security. Follow the steps to connect an authenticator app. 2FA is required before payout eligibility is confirmed.
2FA protects your earnings. Since real money payouts are involved, we require this additional layer of account security to prevent unauthorized withdrawals.
KYC (Know Your Customer) is an identity verification required before any payout is released. It ensures payouts are not distributed to sanctioned or prohibited jurisdictions. It does not affect your ability to paper trade.
A government-issued photo ID is required for the standard light KYC check. Larger payouts above a set threshold will trigger a full KYC requiring additional documentation via our third-party verification provider.
KYC verification time varies from a few minutes to several days. We make every effort to be quick and thorough with this process.
Contact our support team via the chat widget and we will help identify the issue. Common reasons for rejection include a blurry ID image, expired document, or name mismatch.
Go to Account Settings and select the relevant field under your profile information. You will be asked to verify your identity before changes are applied.
You may initiate account close in the Settings tab. Any unclaimed payout balances must be withdrawn before an account can be closed.
Your personal data is handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Anonymized trading data may be retained for platform improvement purposes.
Change your password immediately and enable 2FA if not already active. Contact our support team right away via the chat widget so we can review your account activity and secure it.
Referrals
Refer friends and boost your Participation Deposit tier.
When you refer a friend who signs up and makes their first deposit, both you and your referral receive a temporary boost to your effective Participation Deposit tier — giving you both a higher Priority Multiplier for one month without needing to deposit more money.
Your unique referral link is available in the Profile section under Account Details, and in the email you received upon account creation or newsletter sign up.
A referral counts as active once the referred user has signed up and completed a Participation Deposit.
There is no limit on the number of people you can refer.
Yes. Please contact [email protected] for more information.
Technical & Platform
Browsers, mobile, exports, bugs, and support.
UpsideOnly supports all modern browsers including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge. For the best experience we recommend using the latest version of Chrome or Safari.
UpsideOnly is fully usable on mobile browsers. A native mobile app is coming soon.
Try refreshing the page first. If the issue persists, clear your browser cache or try a different browser. If the problem continues, contact support via the chat widget.
Go to Account Settings and select Downloads. You can export your full trade history as a CSV or download a formatted PDF performance summary.
Report bugs via the support chat widget. Detailed bug reports including your browser, device, and steps to reproduce help us fix things faster.
Click the chat icon in the lower right corner of any page to reach our support team. If the chatbot cannot resolve your issue it will be escalated to a human agent.
Automated chat support is available 24/7. Escalated human support responses are typically provided within 24 hours.
UpsideOnly is a prediction game and trading simulator — not a financial brokerage. Users of UpsideOnly do not make actual trades in stocks, derivatives, or any other financial instruments. UpsideOnly does not run a fund or managed account.
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