The Best Open Source (And Free) Crypto Trading Bots

A crypto trading bot lets you automate your strategy, so you can act on market movements even while you sleep.

But not every free bot works the same way. In this guide, we'll break down two different kinds of free trading bots.

Self-hosted open-source frameworks like Freqtrade, OctoBot, Jesse, Hummingbot, and Passivbot. You run these on your own machine or server, the code is public on GitHub, and you keep full control of your strategy and your API keys.

Free bots built into an exchange like Pionex. There's no code to install, but the platform is closed-source and holds your funds while the bots run.

We picked these six based on active development, cost, exchange support, and how much technical setup they ask of you. Let's walk through each one.

Why choose an open-source bot?

Five of our six picks are open source, and that's not an accident. Open-source bots give you three things a closed platform can't.

Transparency. The code is public, so anyone can audit exactly what the bot does with your account. There are no hidden functions moving your funds.

Self-hosting and control. You run the bot on your own machine or server, which means you hold your own API keys and decide exactly how your strategy behaves.

No platform-shutdown risk. A closed bot can be discontinued overnight. An open-source project lives on GitHub, so even if the original team moves on, the code stays available and the community can keep it running.

Whichever bot you pick, run it safely. Give your API keys trade-only permissions instead of withdrawal access, test any strategy in dry-run (paper trading) mode before you risk real money, and host the bot on a VPS if you want it trading 24/7.

1. Freqtrade

Best for automated strategy building and machine learning

Freqtrade is the most actively developed free crypto trading bot on this list, and it's fully open source. It's written in Python, so if you can read and write a little code, you can build, backtest, and run your own strategy.

Freqtrade has shipped new releases nearly every month since 2017, which is a strong signal that the project isn't going anywhere. That matters. A trading bot you can't trust to stay maintained is a trading bot you shouldn't hand your API keys to.

Features

Pricing: Free (open source)

Exchanges: 13 spot exchanges and 7 futures exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, OKX, and Bybit, plus many more through CCXT

GitHub stars: 53,200+

Experience level: Advanced

2. OctoBot

Best for no-code automation for beginners

OctoBot is the friendliest open-source bot on this list. It's free, self-hosted, and comes with a web interface that lets you set up strategies without writing any code.

If you're new to automated trading but you still want the control and transparency of open-source software, this is a great place to start. You get the auditability of public code without needing to be a Python developer to use it.

Features

Pricing: Free (self-hosted, open source). OctoBot also offers a paid cloud plan if you'd rather not run it yourself.

Exchanges: Binance, Hyperliquid, and 15+ others

Experience level: Beginner

3. Hummingbot

Best for market making and cross-exchange arbitrage

Hummingbot is an open-source framework built for high-frequency strategies like market making and arbitrage. It's more advanced than the others here, but it's also one of the most powerful free tools available.

The project is governed by the Hummingbot Foundation, where HBOT token holders vote on which exchanges get supported and how connectors are maintained. That community governance is part of why its connector list keeps growing.

Features

Pricing: Free (open source)

Exchanges: 50+ connectors spanning centralized exchanges (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX)

GitHub stars: 19,300+

Experience level: Advanced

4. Jesse

Best for strategy research and backtesting

Jesse is an open-source Python framework focused on researching and defining your own trading strategies. If your goal is to test an idea rigorously before you risk real money, Jesse is built for exactly that.

It's simpler to pick up than Freqtrade or Hummingbot, so it sits nicely in the middle for traders who know some Python but don't want a steep learning curve.

Features

Pricing: Free (open source)

Exchanges: Major spot and futures exchanges, geared toward research and futures trading

GitHub stars: 8,300+

Experience level: Intermediate

5. Passivbot

Best for hands-off grid and DCA automation

Passivbot is an open-source bot built around a single idea: automated grid and dollar cost averaging (DCA) strategies that don't try to predict the market. Instead of forecasting price, it places layered orders that aim to profit from volatility in both directions.

It's actively developed and written in Python with performance-critical parts in Rust. Because its default approach doubles down on losing positions, it's powerful but risky, so it sits firmly in the advanced camp. Test it thoroughly in dry-run mode before you go live.

Features

Pricing: Free (open source)

Exchanges: Binance, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, Gate.io, KuCoin, Hyperliquid, and more

GitHub stars: 2,100+

Experience level: Advanced

6. Pionex

Best for hands-off traders who want free built-in bots

Pionex is different from the others on this list, and it's important to be clear about how.

Pionex is not an open-source framework. It's a closed-source crypto exchange that gives you 16 free trading bots built directly into the platform. You don't install anything or run any code, and the exchange holds your funds while the bots trade.

That trade-off is the whole point. You give up the transparency and control of self-hosted software, and in return you get bots that work out of the box with no technical setup at all. For a lot of beginners, that's a fair deal.

Features

Pricing: Free bots, with a 0.05% trading fee

Exchanges: Pionex is its own exchange. US users can sign up on Pionex.US, which is registered with FinCEN as a Money Services Business and offers the same free bots.

Experience level: Beginner

Sign up for Pionex

What happened to Gekko and Enigma Catalyst?

If you've read older roundups, you may be looking for Gekko and Enigma Catalyst. Both were popular open-source bots in their day, but neither is maintained anymore. Gekko's repository has been archived and read-only since 2020, and Enigma Catalyst stopped active development back in 2018. We've left them off this list because running an unmaintained bot with your exchange keys is a real security risk.

How crypto tax software can help

Automated trading is great for your strategy. It's less great for your tax records.

Remember, when you trade away cryptocurrency, whether you do it by hand or through a bot, you incur a capital gain or loss depending on how the price has changed since you received it. A bot that makes dozens of trades a day can create hundreds of taxable events in a single tax year.

That's where reporting gets complicated. Starting with the 2025 tax year, US exchanges report your gross proceeds to the IRS on Form 1099-DA. Cost basis reporting follows for the 2026 tax year. Because Form 1099-DA often shows your proceeds without your original cost basis, the gains on it can look far larger than what you actually owe.

Luckily, there's an easy fix. CoinLedger connects to hundreds of exchanges, wallets, and trading bots, pulls in your full transaction history, and calculates your real gains and losses in minutes. You can report accurate numbers instead of trusting whatever lands on your 1099-DA.

More than 700,000 investors around the world use CoinLedger to take the stress out of tax season. The platform holds a 4.6-star rating across 1,200+ Trustpilot reviews.

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