StockPets vs. Paper Trading Apps: A Different Kind of Stock Market Simulator Game

Updated: October 12, 2026 · StockPets team

What’s the difference between paper trading and StockPets?

The short version: paper trading rehearses the present, and StockPets lets you experience the past. A paper trading app usually gives you a pretend cash balance and lets you place simulated orders on today’s market. StockPets starts you in January 1996 with a small farm, a pet companion and 10,000 virtual coins, and moves forward one month per turn through real historical prices.

Both use pretend money, so neither one puts real savings at risk. But they answer different questions. A paper trading tool asks, “How would this order play out today?” StockPets asks, “What does it feel like to live through decades of market history, one month at a time, without seeing what comes next?”

How do paper trading apps usually work?

Paper trading tools come in many forms, and features vary, but most share a few traits:

• They follow the current market, using live or slightly delayed quotes.
• Trading happens on the market’s own clock, during trading hours.
• You start with a virtual cash balance and place simulated orders.
• Many offer several order types, which is useful for practicing order mechanics.
• Many require an account, and some are part of a brokerage’s platform.

That makes them a natural fit for people who want to practice the mechanics of placing trades, or test an idea against today’s prices before deciding anything about real money.

How does StockPets work instead?

StockPets is a cozy pixel game first. Seeds on your farm follow historical US stock prices, using monthly closing prices adjusted for stock splits, with each company’s first recorded month set to 100 coins. You plant by coin budget, with fractional seeds allowed, and harvest any whole percentage from 1% to 100% at the current month’s price. Future charts stay hidden until their month arrives.

Around that sits a life: your pet grows from baby to grown companion over 36 game months, each month brings a small life event, and the room changes from the radio years to the computer and smartphone years. If you want the full picture, start with what StockPets is.

Side-by-side comparison

Time scale: minutes and days vs. months and decades

This is the biggest difference. In real-time paper trading, the interesting stretch is usually minutes, days or weeks. In StockPets, a single turn is a month, and a single pet generation lasts 36 months. Over a few months of short daily check-ins, you can live through the late-1990s internet boom, the 2000–2002 bust, the 2008 financial crisis, the long recovery of the 2010s and the sharp 2020 crash and rebound.

That longer view changes what you notice. Instead of watching a price tick, you watch a crop sit through a rough year, or a whole plot go to zero when a company is delisted. Our guide to learning from market history goes deeper into what that experience can and can’t show.

Real history, with the future hidden

StockPets uses real price history, so nothing is randomly generated until the archive runs out around the present day. After that, the journey continues by re-using the ups and downs of randomly chosen past months. Before then, every month you live through actually happened, but you only see it when you get there.

Who does each one fit?

Paper trading may fit you if…

• You want to practice how orders work on today’s market.
• You’re comfortable creating an account.
• You want to follow live prices during the trading day.

StockPets may fit you if…

• You want to experience decades of market history at a calm, monthly pace.
• You like pixel art, pets and farms more than order books.
• You want a gentle pet-and-farm game; see our guide to playing at your own pace.
• You’d rather play a few minutes at a time and come back later.

Can you use both?

Sure. They don’t really compete, because they do different jobs. A paper trading app is a practice tool for the present. StockPets is a single-player game that uses the past as its world. Someone might enjoy StockPets for the slow story of the market and their pet, and separately use a paper trading tool to understand how real orders behave. The two also feel very different to play: one asks for your attention while the market is open, the other waits patiently on your phone until you decide to turn the page.

What neither one can tell you

Pretend money behaves differently from real money, in both kinds of tools. And past prices, whether you replay them monthly or watch them live, don’t predict what comes next. StockPets is not real trading and not investment advice; its coins can’t be deposited, withdrawn, or exchanged for money or prizes. What it offers is the experience: patience, spreading coins across plots, sitting through drawdowns, and the occasional sudden loss of a delisted crop.

StockPets is a game for iOS and Android. If you’re curious how its prices are built, read how split-adjusted prices work.

StockPets is a game that uses virtual coins only. Nothing on this page is investment advice, and past price changes do not predict future results.