How to Automate a Topstep (TopstepX) Account from Sierra Chart

How to run automated trades on a Topstep (TopstepX) account using Sierra Chart as your signal engine — the honest way, plus a free open-source bridge. No monthly bridge fee.

You can automate a Topstep account from Sierra Chart. You just can't do it directly — and the reason is the whole story.

Here's the short version, since it's what you came for: TopstepX runs on the ProjectX Gateway API, and Sierra Chart has no native connector for it. So you bridge them. A small program sits between the two: it reads your order intents out of Sierra Chart and submits them to your Topstep account through the ProjectX API. That's it. That's the entire trick, and I'll give you the script that does it for free.

Now the part the "automate your prop account" ads skip. A bridge is plumbing. It moves an order from A to B. It does not have an opinion about whether that order is any good — and a machine that fires bad orders faster than you could by hand is not an upgrade, it's a liability. So this post is two things: how to wire it up, and the guardrails that keep automation from turning a funded account into a smoking crater. The first part takes ten minutes. The second part is the actual job.

Why Sierra Chart can't just click "connect to Topstep"

There are two different things people mean by "connect Sierra Chart to Topstep," and conflating them is where the confusion starts.

• Data and charting. Sierra Chart can display Topstep-routed market data. That's a solved problem and not what we're doing here.
• Automated order execution. Sending orders — programmatically, no human clicking — into a TopstepX funded account. That is a different pipe, and it does not exist natively.

TopstepX is Topstep's own platform, and its automation surface is the ProjectX Gateway API (gateway.docs.projectx.com if you want to read along). It's a real, documented API — authenticate with a key, place and manage orders, read fills. Sierra Chart, meanwhile, is a superb charting and execution front-end with its own open DTC protocol for talking to the outside world. Two good systems. No wire between them. The bridge is that wire.

What the bridge actually does

Strip it down and the bridge is a translator with three jobs:

That's the whole architecture. There's no AI in it, no black box, no "our proprietary engine." It's a few hundred lines that speak DTC on one side and ProjectX on the other. The reason I'm belaboring how simple it is: simple is the point. The moment someone sells you a bridge as a mysterious product with a monthly subscription, they're charging you rent on a piece of plumbing you could own outright.

Why I'm giving the script away

Because it's plumbing, not edge.

The thing that makes money in this business is your edge — the validated logic that decides when to buy and sell, and the discipline that proves it isn't just an overfit curve. That's the hard part, the part worth paying for, the part I keep private and build carefully. Moving the resulting order from Sierra Chart to Topstep is not that. It's a solved engineering problem, and charging a recurring fee for it is exactly the kind of thing this desk exists to call out.

So the rule here — the same one that runs across everything at OPTD — is simple: the methodology is free, and so is the plumbing. What's paid is the validated research tooling. A bridge script contains zero alpha. Handing it to you costs me nothing and saves you a subscription. Take it.

This is also, bluntly, the difference between an operator and a vendor. A vendor sells you the pipe and hopes you never look inside. An operator hands you the pipe, because the pipe was never the valuable part.

Setting it up

Four steps. The first three are wiring. The fourth is the one that matters.

1. Get your TopstepX (ProjectX) API key

In your TopstepX dashboard, enable API access and generate a key. That key is what authenticates every request the bridge makes to the ProjectX Gateway on your behalf. Treat it like a password — it can place orders on your funded account.

2. Point Sierra Chart at the bridge

Configure Sierra Chart to emit the order intents you want automated. The clean path is DTC — Sierra Chart's own protocol — so the bridge subscribes to your signals directly. You do not need to write ACSIL C++ for the basic setup; a study that emits signals, or a simple watched-file handoff, is enough to get running.

3. Run the bridge

Start the bridge with your API key. It authenticates to ProjectX, listens for Sierra Chart signals, and routes each one to your Topstep account. At this point you technically have automation. Do not point it at a live funded account yet.

4. Add the guardrails — before anything touches a funded account

This is the step the bridge sellers don't put in the demo, because it isn't sexy and it's where the actual risk lives.

Automation removes the human circuit breaker — the you that would have hesitated, noticed the news spike, or just walked away. You have to put that circuit breaker back in code:

• A hard daily-loss kill switch. If the account is down $X on the day, the bridge stops sending orders and cancels open ones. Non-negotiable. This is also how you stay inside Topstep's own loss limits instead of blowing the account and the evaluation in one bad morning.
• Max position and max-orders-per-minute limits. A logic bug that fires an order in a loop should hit a wall at contract two, not contract two hundred.
• A heartbeat / dead-man's switch. If Sierra Chart, the bridge, or your connection dies mid-trade, the system should fail flat and safe, not leave a naked position no one is watching.

If you take one thing from this post, take this: wire the kill switch before you wire the profits. An automated account with no circuit breaker isn't a trading system, it's a machine for finding out how fast you can hit your daily loss limit.

What this does not do

Let's be honest about the boundaries, because the ads won't be.

The bridge does not give you an edge. It will faithfully automate a losing strategy straight into the ground — arguably faster and more reliably than you could manage by hand. It has no idea whether your signals are any good. If your logic is an overfit backtest that never really worked, the bridge just makes the losing efficient.

It also doesn't validate anything. Whether your setup survives out-of-sample, whether your fills are realistic, whether the "edge" is real or a data artifact — that's the work that happens before you ever automate, and it's the work this whole desk is really about. The bridge is the last mile. The first mile is where trading is actually won or lost.

Automate a proven edge and you've bought yourself consistency and freedom from screen-babysitting. Automate a hunch and you've built a very reliable way to lose money. Same script. Completely different outcome. The script isn't the variable — you are.

FAQ

Does Topstep allow automated trading? Yes. TopstepX exposes the ProjectX Gateway API specifically so you can connect your own automation. You're still fully responsible for staying inside Topstep's risk and consistency rules — the API doesn't exempt you from them, and your kill switch is what keeps you honest.

Can Sierra Chart connect to Topstep directly? For charting/data, yes. For automated order execution on a TopstepX account, no — that requires a bridge to the ProjectX Gateway API, which is what this script provides.

How do I get a Topstep API key? Enable API access in your TopstepX dashboard and generate a key. It authenticates the bridge to the ProjectX Gateway. A dedicated step-by-step is coming in the connection guides.

Is the bridge script really free? Yes. It's execution plumbing, not an edge, so I open-source it. Paid bridges charge a monthly fee for the same wire. What's paid on this desk is the validated research and backtest tooling — never the plumbing.

Do I need to know C++ / ACSIL? Not for the basic setup. Sierra Chart's DTC protocol (or a simple signal-file handoff) is enough. ACSIL only comes in if you want to generate signals inside Sierra Chart itself in C++, which is a separate topic.

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Get the bridge script. It's open-source and documented — drop your email and I'll send it the moment it ships, along with how the rest of the one-person desk gets built. Free method, free plumbing, no signals, no hype.