Installation
Requirements
- Python 3.9 or newer.
- A Backtest360 API key. Create a free account at backtest360.com/sign-up; a free-tier key comes with the account. See Authentication.
Install the client
pip install backtest360
The client depends only on httpx and pandas. There are no other runtime dependencies, and it bundles no data provider — you supply price data as a pandas.DataFrame, or use the engine's bundled sample datasets.
Verify the install
With your key in the BACKTEST360_API_KEY environment variable (see Authentication):
from backtest360 import Client
print(Client().version())
# {'version': '0.6.1', 'engine': '0.12.1',
# 'api_contract': '4', 'expected_client_contract': '1'}
A successful response confirms the client is installed and can reach the engine; the exact numbers track the deployed engine. To confirm your key specifically, call Client().me(), which returns your account and plan and fails with an auth error if the key is missing or invalid.
Optional: a data source
The client works with any OHLCV DataFrame you provide. For a self-contained first run you can use the bundled sample data (client.sample_data("SPY")) with no external package. To pull your own market data, common choices are:
pip install yfinance # Yahoo Finance
pip install tiingo # Tiingo
pip install pandas-datareader # FRED, and other sources
See Use your own data for the required frame shape.