How to set up a Hyperliquid trading bot in 5 minutes

Setting up an AI trading bot on Hyperliquid takes four steps and about five minutes — assuming nothing goes wrong. This guide walks you through each step honestly: what you'll click, what you'll sign, what each signature actually does, and the handful of friction points where new users typically stall. We use HyperPerps AI as the example because we built it, but the underlying flow is similar for any non-custodial Hyperliquid trading bot.

Before you start

Three prerequisites — none of them blocking, but worth checking:

A way to acquire USDC. Either a debit/credit card (the bot will route you through Coinbase Onramp), or USDC already in an existing wallet you can send from.
$50 minimum recommended. Hyperliquid's per-trade minimum notional is $10. Below ~$50 in your account, fees and the per-trade floor crush the math the bot's risk sizing depends on. $200+ is where it actually breathes.
Five minutes of attention. Don't start the flow if you're about to step away — there are signature popups that time out, and resuming mid-flow is more friction than just doing it in one sitting.

You do not need: an existing Hyperliquid account, a MetaMask wallet, a seed phrase, or any prior crypto trading experience. The flow handles all of that.

The four steps

Step 1~30 sec

Create your wallet

Open trade.hyperperps.app and click Get Started. You'll see Privy's sign-in modal — pick email, passkey, Apple, or Google. Privy provisions a real wallet for you behind the scenes (it's an Ethereum EOA controlled by your auth method — same address on every login). If you already have MetaMask, Rabby, or a WalletConnect-compatible mobile wallet, click "Already have a wallet?" and connect that instead.

What you sign in this step: two one-time signatures. The first approves Hyperliquid's builder fee (so we get paid 0.02% per trade — that's our entire revenue). The second creates the agent wallet — a separate keypair that can place trades on your behalf but cannot withdraw or transfer funds. Both are free, no gas required, and only need to happen once per wallet ever.

Step 21–2 min

Fund USDC on Arbitrum

Hyperliquid runs on its own L1 but accepts deposits via Arbitrum. So you need USDC on Arbitrum first, then bridge it across. Two paths from the funding screen:

Buy with a card via Coinbase Onramp (Apple Pay supported). $50+ recommended. The USDC lands in your wallet on Arbitrum within 1–2 minutes once payment clears.
Send from your own wallet if you already hold USDC on Arbitrum. The funding screen shows your address with a copy button; send from any wallet that supports Arbitrum.

What you sign in this step: nothing on our side. You're just receiving USDC into your own wallet. The card flow has its own KYC if you've never used Coinbase Onramp before.

Step 3~1 min

Bridge to Hyperliquid

Once USDC is in your wallet on Arbitrum, click Bridge. This moves the USDC into your Hyperliquid Perps account in two automatic on-chain steps: an ERC-20 transfer to Hyperliquid's bridge contract, then a Spot→Perps internal transfer.

If your wallet has $0 ETH on Arbitrum (which is normal for a brand-new Privy wallet), we automatically airdrop a tiny amount of ETH (~$0.05) so you can pay the bridge gas. You don't need to top up beforehand.

What you sign in this step: one ERC-20 transfer to Hyperliquid's bridge contract address. The signature pops up in your wallet UI; you click approve. The transaction confirms in ~30 seconds on Arbitrum, and Hyperliquid credits your Perps account a few seconds later. Same plumbing as if you bridged manually on app.hyperliquid.xyz.

Step 4~1 min

Choose your settings and deploy your AI

You're now on the Bot Config screen. Three things to set:

Strategy preset: Scalp (15-minute timeframe, faster signals), Intraday (1-hour, balanced — recommended for most), Swing (4-hour, fewer trades, bigger targets), or Position (multi-day). The preset auto-tunes the indicator weights, the AI's evaluation throttle, and the minimum risk-reward floor.
Symbol: which Hyperliquid perp the bot focuses on. BTC and ETH are the most liquid; lower-cap perps work but have wider spreads.
Risk per trade: 1–2% is the standard recommendation. The bot sizes positions from this percentage — wider stop-loss means smaller position, never the other way around.

Optional but powerful: under "Custom strategy," write plain-English instructions the AI applies on every evaluation. Examples: "only trade between 8am and 4pm NY time," "skip trades within 30 minutes of CPI release," "favor breakouts over mean-reversion." The AI reads your prompt alongside the structured market data and treats it as a hard preference. Safety floors (atomic brackets, R:R minimum, position cap) stay in effect regardless — you can shape the AI's thinking but can't disable the rails.

Hit Deploy. The bot is live. You should see a Running indicator turn green and the event log start streaming evaluations within a minute.

Common gotcha: if your initial deposit is slightly below $50 (e.g. you bought $50 of USDC but Coinbase took fees and ~$48 arrived), the bot will deploy but the first eligible trade may not fit within Hyperliquid's $10 per-trade minimum at your chosen risk percentage. Either lower risk-per-trade temporarily, or top up to $60-100 before deploying. The Deposit pill in the header lets you bridge more whenever you're ready.

What to expect from the first trade

The bot doesn't trade immediately. It evaluates the current setup, scores readiness on a 0–100 scale, and only places a trade when the score crosses your threshold AND the AI's reasoning supports it. On a quiet market day this might take hours; on a volatile day it might take minutes.

Every evaluation — whether it leads to a trade or not — appears in your event log with the AI's full reasoning attached. Read these. The first few will tell you whether the bot's thinking matches your expectations, and you can refine the custom prompt if it doesn't.

Each trade arrives as an atomic four-leg order: entry, stop-loss, take-profit-1 (50% of position), take-profit-2 (50%). All four levels are placed in a single signed transaction — there is no window where the position is naked. A trailing stop kicks in once price moves in your favor, locking in profit progressively without widening risk.

Ready to walk through it?

The four steps take about 5 minutes. Zero monthly cost — 0.02% builder fee per trade plus standard Hyperliquid maker/taker fees.

Launch HyperPerps AI →

No email required. No credit card. Funds stay on Hyperliquid.

Troubleshooting

The Privy modal won't open

Usually a browser extension (uBlock, Privacy Badger) is blocking Privy's modal frame. Allow privy.io on the site or try in an incognito window. On mobile Safari, ensure cross-site tracking isn't disabled for your session.

My USDC arrived on Arbitrum but the Bridge button is greyed out

The bridge button enables once your Arbitrum USDC balance reaches the operational floor (~$45). If you sent less, top up to that amount and the button enables automatically — the page polls your balance every few seconds. If you sent the right amount but the page still hasn't updated, give it 30 seconds for the RPC to catch up, or refresh.

The bridge transaction is taking forever

Arbitrum confirms in ~250ms per block, so the actual confirmation should land in seconds. If it's been more than a minute, the transaction is probably stuck in the mempool — check your wallet for the pending tx and increase the gas if needed. Hyperliquid's credit happens automatically once the bridge contract sees your tx; that's another few seconds after confirmation.

The bot deployed but isn't placing trades

That's expected behavior, not a bug. The bot evaluates setups continuously and only trades when the readiness score AND the AI's reasoning both clear the threshold. On a flat market day, a Swing-preset bot might evaluate dozens of times before finding a setup it'll act on. Watch the event log — if you see evaluations firing with reasoning attached, the bot is working as designed.

Can I undo the agent wallet if I change my mind?

Yes. Hyperliquid's UI at app.hyperliquid.xyz has an "Approved Builders" section showing your active agent wallets. Revoking takes one click and one signature — the bot loses trade permission immediately. Your funds stay in your account; you just lose the bot's ability to place orders on your behalf.