Most tastytrade logins hold more than one account — an individual account, maybe an IRA, maybe a second one you opened and forgot about. This setting tells your bot which one of them to trade. You'll find it on the Strategies page in the Account Settings card, at the top, labeled TastyTrade Account Number.

You pick from a list — you don't type it

Click the box and you'll see every account on the tastytrade login you've connected. Choose one, then save.

This used to be an empty box you typed into, and that was a genuinely bad idea: an account number like 5WI17076 puts a capital I right next to the digit 1. One wrong character and the bot has a valid-looking account number that doesn't exist — so it quietly does nothing all day, with no obvious error to point at. Picking from the list makes that impossible. The box also uses a typewriter-style font on purpose, so I and 1 don't look alike.

Note

The list comes from the tastytrade login you connected, so it always matches what your broker actually has. If you open a new account at tastytrade, it appears here on its own.

Reading a row

Each row leads with the account number, then tells you only what's worth knowing:

• 5WI48826 — Cash — a plain individual account that settles overnight.
• 5WI18148 — Margin — a plain individual account that recycles capital during the day.
• 5WZ14689 — Roth IRA · Cash — the account type is shown whenever it's something other than an ordinary individual account, because it changes what you're allowed to trade in it.
• 5WI99999 — "Swing" · Individual · Margin — if you've given the account a nickname at tastytrade, it shows in quotes.

Accounts you've closed still appear, marked CLOSED and greyed out so they can't be picked. They're shown rather than hidden so you're not left hunting for an account you know you have.

Picking an account sets Cash or Margin for you

Right below the account number is the Account Type choice — Cash Account or Margin Account. When you pick an account, this follows your broker automatically: choose a margin account and it flips to Margin, choose a cash account and it flips to Cash. See Cash vs Margin Account for what that actually changes.

You're free to override it afterwards. If you do, a warning appears explaining what the disagreement will cost you — for example, setting Margin on a cash account means trades can be rejected for unsettled funds, because the money genuinely isn't back yet.

Example

You connect your tastytrade login and see three accounts: 5WI48826 — Cash, 5WI18148 — Margin, and 5WZ14689 — Roth IRA · Cash. You want the bot on the margin account so it can reuse the same $10,000 several times a day, so you pick 5WI18148 — Margin. The Account Type below switches itself to Margin Account. You hit save, and every strategy now trades that account and nothing else.

"Not on this login"

If the account you'd saved earlier isn't one of the accounts on your current login, it stays selected but is flagged — not on this login, with a warning underneath. Trading is blocked until you choose a listed account.

Your saved choice is never swapped out for you. Silently moving your bot to a different brokerage account would be far worse than showing you the wrong one and saying so. This usually means you connected a different tastytrade login, or that account was closed.

If you see a plain text box instead

If the bot can't reach your broker to ask for the account list — you haven't finished connecting tastytrade yet, or the connection dropped — you'll get a plain box to type into rather than an empty dropdown with nothing in it. Type the number exactly as tastytrade shows it, and once the connection is healthy the list comes back on its own.

Tip

If alerts are arriving but nothing is being traded, this field is worth a look — an account number that isn't set, or one flagged as not on your login, blocks trading entirely. See My Bot Isn’t Trading for the rest of the checklist.

Paper-only accounts don't have this setting at all, because there's no brokerage account behind them — see Paper Trading.