Frequently asked questions.
Build, test, and run algorithmic strategies, without code and without giving up control.
General questions
Who is Mangrove for?
Mangrove is built for self-directed investors who want to automate their trading without giving up control and RIAs who are looking for a more streamlined platform to manage their clients portfolios.
- If you’re a retail crypto investor who’s tired of black-box bots but still wants AI-assisted tools, Mangrove gives you a safer way to trade.
- If you’re an aspiring quant who wants to build structured systems without having a degree in math, Mangrove gives you the power to build like a pro.
- If you’re a busy professional who wants to trade without staring at charts all day, Mangrove gives you the automation, plus the risk protection, you need.
- If you’re a registered investment advisor (RIA) who is hesitant to jump into the water with digital assets due to trust, compliance, and regulatory uncertainty, Mangrove provides the calm waters to wade in before jumping in the deep end.
Mangrove meets you where you are. Whether you’re an independent investor or a registered investment advisor, Mangrove gives you an ecosystem to thrive, regardless of the tides.
What is Mangrove’s mission?
Mangrove Technologies aims to be known as the most trusted platform for digital asset management, bringing all of your accounts under one roof. Leveraging AI at scale and combining professional-grade risk controls with radical accessibility, we are defining a new standard where everyday investors can automate their portfolio with peace of mind. When you think of Mangrove, think of safety, intelligence, and democratized finance – just as Shopify is to e-commerce or Figma is to design.
Is Mangrove free to use?
Yes. The Beginner plan is free forever and needs no card: connect two wallets, run two strategies, adopt two from the marketplace and run up to 25 backtests a month. There are no hidden fees, and Mangrove only collects fees on profitable trades, none on losing ones.
Subscriptions are optional and buy capacity, not access. Intermediate and Advanced raise those limits and let you publish strategies to the marketplace, and every plan can be cancelled at any time.
Is Mangrove safe?
Yes, and here’s how:
- Your money is never controlled by AI-bots
- Mangrove never takes custody of your funds
- Every strategy includes built-in risk controls (account preferences, portfolio rules, position sizing, stop losses, safety limits, circuit breakers, advanced quantitative metrics, etc)
- Designed for SOC 2 compliance, aligned with NIST 800-53 and 800-171 standards
Is this just another trading app?
No. Most trading apps let you place trades. They don’t help you build or manage a real system, across disconnected accounts. Mangrove helps you design, test, and run strategies in one place, with full transparency and built-in protection. No other trading app gives you the tools to be your own fund manager. Mangrove does.
Is this crypto-only?
Currently, yes, but stock trading is coming soon. The platform is designed to support both asset classes.
Strategy building & AI
Does Mangrove use AI to trade for me?
No. The AI helps you build, test, refine, and analyze, but not execute. It offers suggestions, explains logic, and helps debug your strategies. Strategies must pass rigorous backtesting, which happens automatically without complicated interfaces, configurations, or instructions. Furthermore, Mangrove employs multiple layers of checks and balances, and trades are executed, or rejected, deterministically, no AI black box is ever connected to your money.
Do I need to understand AI or trading strategies?
No, but it helps! In fact, the more you use Mangrove, the more you will understand AI and trading strategies. The truth is that AI is misunderstood by even so called ‘experts’, and as a result, is often misused. We seek to change this.
Do I need to write code?
No. Mangrove offers a fully no-code interface with our AI Copilot. More advanced users may check the ‘Advanced Mode’ toggle to open up a code panel if they wish.
If you do want to build on Mangrove, there is a whole developer ecosystem behind it: a REST API, Python and TypeScript SDKs, MCP servers, and plugins for Claude Code. The developer portal is the way in.
Where can I learn how any of this actually works?
There is a full knowledge base inside the app, and you do not need an account to read it. Eight chapters cover market foundations, instruments, core trading concepts, strategy design, risk management, indicators, chart patterns and quantitative methods.
- An alphabetical index of all 223 trading signals, each with its parent indicator, type and category.
- 99 indicators with their formulas, parameters and API references.
- A glossary of 80+ terms, for when something in the interface is unfamiliar.
It is organised by skill level as well as by topic, so you can start at the beginning or jump straight to the thing you are stuck on.
Can I test my strategy before risking money?
Strategy testing is actually required before a strategy is allowed to be deployed.
You can:
- Backtest on historical data
- Paper trade in real-time
- Run Monte Carlo simulations against different market conditions
At a minimum, your strategy will be backtested, and the AI Copilot will help you every step of the way. Strategies are then scored based on metrics such as IRR, Sharpe, Calmar, and Sortino. A strategy must meet minimum thresholds or it will be rejected from live execution.
Is any of it open source?
The signal library and the knowledge base are. They ship as the mangrove-kb Python package — 223 signals, 99 indicators and the trading-education documents — free for noncommercial use under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0.
The MangroveAI platform itself is closed source; you use it through the API or the Python package. Signal and indicator metadata, knowledge-base search and public market education are free and need no account at all.
How is Mangrove different from bots or signal services?
We don’t sell signals or run trades for you. Mangrove gives you full system-building capabilities with oversight, risk management and transparency, plus AI support that keeps you in control.
Security & trust
Is Mangrove regulated?
Mangrove is not a financial advisor, broker-dealer, investment company, money services business, nor money transmitter business. However, to achieve certain goals related to offering products and services under development, our classification may change. Therefore, we’re building with regulatory alignment in mind and pursuing SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliance with controls modeled on NIST standards.
Can I connect my own wallet or exchange?
Yes! Currently you must connect an external wallet or account to execute trades. In the future we will offer custodial services.
What makes Mangrove trustworthy?
- Guardrails and compliance baked into the product, not added later
- AI-Copilot safety features and separation of control
- Transparent performance analytics
- Reputation system for creators and strategies
Monetization
Can I earn money from the strategies I create?
Yes. You can publish your strategies to the Mangrove marketplace and earn when others subscribe to them.
How does strategy monetization work?
- You publish your strategy to the marketplace
- Others subscribe to it and begin trading
- When they win, you win
Can I keep my strategy private?
Yes. Strategies are private by default — nothing you build is visible to anyone else unless you choose to publish it to the marketplace, and publishing is a paid-plan feature, so on the Free plan they stay private full stop.
Even when you do publish, the details of your strategy are never shared. Adopters can run it and see its performance; they cannot see how it works.
What’s Mangrove’s incentive?
Mangrove was built by traders, for traders. Actually, Mangrove was born out of a pivot – initially it was going to be a crypto quant fund. When we realized a platform didn’t exist to manage the fund the way we thought it should be, we built Mangrove.
We’re aligned with user success. We earn from:
- A small fee (0.85%) on profitable trades
- A share (20%) of earnings from monetized strategies
No upfront charges. No predatory pricing. Just aligned incentives.