Linking Your Tradovate Account
Linking is the whole "installation" for Tradovate. There's no download and nothing to keep running: you authorize CrossTrade once through Tradovate's own sign-in screen, and from then on CrossTrade can route your webhook orders to Tradovate's cloud API directly.
This guide covers what the Live and Demo environments are, where prop firm accounts belong, how multiple identities work, and what to do when a session expires.
CrossTrade stores only an access token, refreshes it automatically, and never sees your Tradovate password. You can unlink at any time.
Live vs Demo: pick the right door
Tradovate runs two completely separate environments, each with its own login sessions and its own accounts:
Live is the real-money environment. Link it with your personal Tradovate brokerage login.
Demo is the simulation environment. Tradovate's own sim accounts live here — and so does every prop firm account.
You can link both. They show up side by side, and each webhook order routes to whichever account you name.
Trading a prop firm account (Apex, Topstep, Tradeify, or any other Tradovate-based funded firm)? Click Link Demo and sign in with the Tradovate username and password your firm issued. Firm accounts are simulation accounts on Tradovate's Demo environment, and that includes funded/PA accounts: the account stays on Demo after you pass the evaluation, with the firm handling payouts on their side. Link Live is only for a personal real-money Tradovate brokerage login, and authorizing it with a firm-issued login will fail.
Step 1: Start the link
From the Tradovate onboarding page or My Account → Brokers, click Link Live or Link Demo.
You'll be sent to Tradovate's OAuth screen. Sign in with the credentials for that environment and approve the authorization. Tradovate hands CrossTrade a token and sends you straight back.
Step 2: Confirm your accounts appeared
After the redirect, your linked identity appears with its environment tag (LIVE or DEMO), and CrossTrade syncs the accounts under it automatically. You'll see them in the account pickers across the app and in My Account → Brokers.
The account= value you'll use in webhook alerts is exactly the account name shown there — for example DemoAccount or APEX1234.
Account names must be unique across all Tradovate identities you link. If two identities carry the same account name, CrossTrade rejects the ambiguous name instead of guessing which one you meant.
Linking more than one identity
Each environment can hold multiple Tradovate identities: a personal account plus one or more funded-firm logins, or several firms at once. Click Link Live or Link Demo again and sign in with the additional credentials. Every identity's accounts become routable, and the Tradovate Copier can copy across all of them — including live-to-demo and across firms.
Token lifetime: what "expired, re-link" means
Tradovate access tokens are short-lived. CrossTrade renews them automatically in the background, so under normal conditions you never think about this.
Two things can break the chain:
Session eviction. Tradovate enforces a session cap per login. If you sign in elsewhere (another tool, another machine) with the same credentials, Tradovate can evict CrossTrade's session. An evicted session can't renew itself.
True expiry. If a token lapses past its renewal window, the same rule applies: an expired Tradovate session cannot be renewed, because renewal authenticates with the current token.
Either way the fix is the same and takes seconds: click Link Live or Link Demo again and sign back in. Your settings, copiers, and webhook alerts are untouched — only the token is replaced.
While a link is expired, webhook orders to that identity's accounts will fail with an authorization error in Alert History. If you run always-on automation, treat an "expired, re-link" badge as urgent.
Unlinking
In My Account → Brokers you can unlink a single identity or the whole Tradovate connection. Unlinking removes CrossTrade's access token. Active orders and positions at Tradovate are unaffected — unlinking never touches your broker state — and you can re-link anytime.
Troubleshooting
The OAuth screen rejects my login: Check the environment. Firm-issued credentials only work through Link Demo; a personal brokerage login only works through Link Live.
I linked, but my account isn't in the picker: The sync runs right after linking; give it a moment and refresh. If it still doesn't appear, the account may be archived or inactive on Tradovate's side.
Alert History shows an authorization error: The identity's session was evicted or expired. Re-link that environment.
I have two accounts with the same name: Rename one at your firm/broker if possible, or unlink the identity you aren't trading. CrossTrade won't arbitrarily pick between duplicates.
What's next
With the link in place, you're two steps from a working pipeline:
Send your first order → Your First Automated Trade
See everything the Tradovate destination supports → Destinations: NinjaTrader vs Tradovate