--- title: "Crypto backtesting after every cost · Trado Strategy Lab" description: "Backtest crypto perpetuals on years of 1-minute data for 900 coins, after fees, funding, slippage and liquidation, with a verdict that admits weak evidence." canonical: "https://algo.trado.trade/backtesting" lastModified: "2026-10-06" --- # Backtesting that charges you for everything the market would A backtest is only useful if it is honest. The Lab replays your rules on years of 1-minute data for 900 Binance perpetuals, prices every trade after fees, funding and slippage, models liquidation, and tells you plainly how much to trust the result. ## What every trade is charged A backtest runs under an execution profile: one broker's fees, slippage, funding, leverage caps, lot and tick rules, account currency and liquidation model. The default profile models Binance USDⓈ-M futures. Nothing is optional and nothing is left at zero by default. - **Fees and slippage** on every entry and exit, so a strategy that trades often pays for it. - **Funding** on every position held across a funding time. - **Instrument rules:** each coin's lot size, tick size and leverage cap apply, so an order the exchange would refuse is refused here too. - **Liquidation**, modelled for isolated and cross margin: a position that would have been liquidated is liquidated, not rescued by hindsight. ## The data is already there The Lab holds years of 1-minute bars for 900 Binance USDⓈ-M perpetuals, with funding rates and instrument data, refreshed twice a day. You choose coins and dates; there is nothing to download, clean or store. A run can replay 1-minute bars, use the trade tape for exact stop and target fills, or work at trade level. A run says when a coin did not have enough history for a filter to be ready, instead of quietly trading without it. ## A report that says where it works Each run produces a full strategy-tester report with a chart of every trade. Beyond the headline numbers it breaks the result down so one lucky stretch cannot hide. - **Market regimes:** every trade is grouped by the market it entered in (bull, strong bear, weak bear, sideways, with a high-volatility flag), so you see which conditions paid and which did not. - **By coin and by period:** whether a few coins or a few days carried the result. - **A verdict in plain words:** from “Made money broadly” to “Lost money”, including “Too few trades to tell”. - **An evidence meter** that reads Not enough, Weak, Moderate or Strong, because ten trades are not a result. - **A leverage audit** showing the caps that applied to each coin. ## Optimization that checks itself When you search for better parameters, the optimizer offers grid, random, genetic, TPE, CMA-ES and NSGA-II searches, and validates with a holdout period and walk-forward testing. It shows heatmaps, parameter importance and how stable the neighbourhood around the best settings is, and reports Monte Carlo resampling, the probability of backtest overfitting and the deflated Sharpe ratio. Read about [overfitting in backtests](https://algo.trado.trade/learn/overfitting-in-backtests.md). ## Backtesting questions ### Can a backtest look into the future? The engine runs the same decision code bar by bar that the live runner uses, built-in indicators are checked against published reference values, and custom Python indicators are checked for look-ahead before they can be used. ### Whose fees and funding does it use? The default execution profile models Binance USDⓈ-M futures. A profile is a named, versioned set of fees, slippage, funding, leverage caps, instrument rules and liquidation model, so results are reproducible. ### How long does a backtest take? Small runs finish in seconds; long or many-coin runs go to elastic compute and show an estimate and the credit price before you start. ### Does a good backtest mean it will make money? No. A backtest describes the past. The Lab is built to make that description honest, not to promise a result. Read [why backtests lie](https://algo.trado.trade/learn/why-backtests-lie.md). ## Next steps - [Join the waitlist](https://algo.trado.trade/waitlist) - [See pricing](https://algo.trado.trade/pricing) ## Related - [Why crypto backtests lie](https://algo.trado.trade/learn/why-backtests-lie.md): Look-ahead, missing costs, survivorship and ignored liquidation flatter backtests. A checklist to test any backtest, and how the Lab answers each point. - [Crypto data for backtesting](https://algo.trado.trade/learn/crypto-data-for-backtesting.md): Clean 1-minute crypto data is a project before it is a strategy. What good backtesting data needs, where DIY pipelines break, and what the Lab holds. - [Overfitting in backtests](https://algo.trado.trade/learn/overfitting-in-backtests.md): Tune a strategy long enough and the past looks perfect. Why overfitting feels like success, and the checks that expose it: holdouts, walk-forward, stability. - [Paper trading for crypto strategies](https://algo.trado.trade/paper-trading.md): Take a backtested strategy to paper trading in one click. The same rules run on live Binance prices; going live is a separate step you approve.