Overview

Introduction

NautilusTrader is an open-source, production-grade, Rust-native engine for multi-asset, multi-venue trading systems.

The system spans research, deterministic simulation, and live execution within a single event-driven architecture, with Python serving as the control plane for strategy logic, configuration, and orchestration.

This separation provides the performance and safety of a compiled trading engine with the flexibility of Python for system composition and strategy development. Trading systems can also be written entirely in Rust for mission-critical workloads.

The same execution semantics and deterministic time model operate in both research and live systems. Strategies deploy from research to production with no code changes, providing research-to-live parity and reducing the divergence that typically introduces deployment risk.

NautilusTrader is asset-class-agnostic. Any venue with a REST API or WebSocket feed can be integrated through modular adapters. Current integrations span crypto exchanges (CEX and DEX), traditional markets (FX, equities, futures, options), and betting exchanges.

Features

• Fast: Rust core with asynchronous networking using tokio.
• Reliable: Type- and thread-safety backed by Rust, with optional Redis-backed state persistence.
• Portable: Runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Deploy using Docker.
• Flexible: Modular adapters integrate any REST API or WebSocket feed.
• Advanced: Time in force IOC, FOK, GTC, GTD, DAY, AT_THE_OPEN, AT_THE_CLOSE, advanced order types and conditional triggers. Execution instructions post-only, reduce-only, and icebergs. Contingency orders including OCO, OUO, OTO.
• Customizable: User-defined components, or assemble entire systems from scratch using the cache and message bus.
• Backtesting: Multiple venues, instruments, and strategies simultaneously using historical quote tick, trade tick, bar, order book, and custom data with nanosecond resolution.
• Live: Identical strategy implementations between research and live deployment.
• Multi-venue: Run market-making and cross-venue strategies across multiple venues simultaneously.
• AI Training: Engine fast enough to train AI trading agents (RL/ES).

Why NautilusTrader?

Trading strategy research is often conducted in Python using vectorized approaches, while production trading systems are implemented separately using event-driven architectures in compiled languages.

NautilusTrader removes this separation.

A Rust-native core provides a deterministic event-driven runtime for both research and live execution, while Python serves as the control plane. The same architecture, execution semantics, and time model operate across both environments, allowing strategies to move from research to production without reimplementation.

Python bindings are provided via PyO3, with an ongoing migration from Cython. No Rust toolchain is required at install time.

Use cases

There are three main use cases for this software package:

• Backtest trading systems on historical data (backtest).
• Simulate trading systems with real-time data and virtual execution (sandbox).
• Deploy trading systems live on real or paper accounts (live).

The project's codebase provides a framework for implementing the software layer of systems which achieve the above. You will find the default backtest and live system implementations in their respectively named subpackages. A sandbox environment can be built using the sandbox adapter.

Distributed

The platform is designed to be easily integrated into a larger distributed system. To support this, nearly all configuration and domain objects can be serialized using JSON, MessagePack or Apache Arrow (Feather) for communication over the network.

Common core

The common system core is used by all node environment contexts (backtest, sandbox, and live). User-defined Actor, Strategy and ExecAlgorithm components are managed consistently across these environment contexts.

Backtesting

Backtesting can be achieved by first making data available to a BacktestEngine either directly or via a higher level BacktestNode and ParquetDataCatalog, and then running the data through the system with nanosecond resolution.

Live trading

A TradingNode can ingest data and events from multiple data and execution clients, supporting both demo/paper trading accounts and real accounts. High performance can be achieved by running asynchronously on a single event loop, with the potential to further boost performance by using the uvloop implementation (available for Linux and macOS).

Domain model

The platform features a trading domain model that includes various value types such as Price and Quantity, as well as more complex entities such as Order and Position objects, which are used to aggregate multiple events to determine state.

Timestamps

All timestamps within the platform are recorded at nanosecond precision in UTC.

Timestamp strings follow ISO 8601 (RFC 3339) format with either 9 digits (nanoseconds) or 3 digits (milliseconds) of decimal precision, (but mostly nanoseconds) always maintaining all digits including trailing zeros. These can be seen in log messages, and debug/display outputs for objects.

A timestamp string consists of:

• Full date component always present: YYYY-MM-DD.
• T separator between date and time components.
• Always nanosecond precision (9 decimal places) or millisecond precision (3 decimal places) for certain cases such as GTD expiry times.
• Always UTC timezone designated by Z suffix.

Example: 2024-01-05T15:30:45.123456789Z

For the complete specification, refer to RFC 3339: Date and Time on the Internet.

UUIDs

The platform uses Universally Unique Identifiers (UUID) version 4 (RFC 4122) for unique identifiers. Our high-performance implementation uses the uuid crate for correctness validation when parsing from strings, ensuring input UUIDs comply with the specification.

A valid UUID v4 consists of:

• 32 hexadecimal digits displayed in 5 groups.
• Groups separated by hyphens: 8-4-4-4-12 format.
• Version 4 designation (indicated by the third group starting with "4").
• RFC 4122 variant designation (indicated by the fourth group starting with "8", "9", "a", or "b").

Example: 2d89666b-1a1e-4a75-b193-4eb3b454c757

For the complete specification, refer to RFC 4122: A Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) URN Namespace.

Data types

The following market data types can be requested historically, and also subscribed to as live streams when available from a venue / data provider, and implemented in an integrations adapter.

• OrderBookDelta (L1/L2/L3)
• OrderBookDeltas (container type)
• OrderBookDepth10 (fixed depth of 10 levels per side)
• QuoteTick
• TradeTick
• Bar
• Instrument
• InstrumentStatus
• InstrumentClose

The following PriceType options can be used for bar aggregations:

• BID
• ASK
• MID
• LAST

Bar aggregations

The following BarAggregation methods are available:

• MILLISECOND
• SECOND
• MINUTE
• HOUR
• DAY
• WEEK
• MONTH
• YEAR
• TICK
• VOLUME
• VALUE (a.k.a Dollar bars)
• RENKO (price-based bricks)
• TICK_IMBALANCE
• TICK_RUNS
• VOLUME_IMBALANCE
• VOLUME_RUNS
• VALUE_IMBALANCE
• VALUE_RUNS

Currently implemented aggregations:

• MILLISECOND
• SECOND
• MINUTE
• HOUR
• DAY
• WEEK
• MONTH
• YEAR
• TICK
• VOLUME
• VALUE
• RENKO

Aggregations listed above that are not repeated in the implemented list are planned but not yet available.

The price types and bar aggregations can be combined with step sizes >= 1 in any way through a BarSpecification. This enables maximum flexibility and now allows alternative bars to be aggregated for live trading.

Account types

The following account types are available for both live and backtest environments:

• Cash single-currency (base currency)
• Cash multi-currency
• Margin single-currency (base currency)
• Margin multi-currency
• Betting single-currency

Order types

The following order types are available (when possible on a venue):

• MARKET
• LIMIT
• STOP_MARKET
• STOP_LIMIT
• MARKET_TO_LIMIT
• MARKET_IF_TOUCHED
• LIMIT_IF_TOUCHED
• TRAILING_STOP_MARKET
• TRAILING_STOP_LIMIT

Value types

The following value types are backed by either 128-bit or 64-bit raw integer values, depending on the precision mode used during compilation.

• Price
• Quantity
• Money

High-precision mode (128-bit)

When the high-precision feature flag is enabled (default), values use the specification:

Standard-precision mode (64-bit)

When the high-precision feature flag is disabled, values use the specification: