Hyperliquid Trading Bots and Builder Codes: 3commas, Freqtrade, Hummingbot, API Wallets, Grid & TWAP Bots, and How Builder-Code Apps Like Phantom, Based and Dreamcash Work (2026)

Hyperliquid is one of the most bot-friendly exchanges in crypto: zero gas, a maker rebate structure, a fully documented API with a Python SDK, and API wallets that let bots trade without ever holding a key that can withdraw. As of September 2026, 3commas, Freqtrade and Hummingbot all support Hyperliquid, and a parallel ecosystem of builder-code apps — Phantom, Based, Dreamcash, Liminal, Zerion, Okto and others — routes retail orders to Hyperliquid's order book while earning a small fee. This guide explains API wallets, how to set up each bot framework, grid and TWAP strategies, how builder codes work and what they cost you, the builder-code revenue leaderboard, and the safety rules that stop a bot from emptying your account.

Key takeaways

• Always use an API wallet (agent key) for bots: it can trade but cannot withdraw.
• 3commas supports Hyperliquid perps with DCA, grid and signal bots; Freqtrade and Hummingbot connect through CCXT and native connectors.
• Builder codes let apps charge up to 0.1% on perps and 1% on spot on top of Hyperliquid's fees; you approve the fee once per app.
• Builder-code apps (Phantom, Based, Dreamcash, Liminal, Okto, Zerion) have become a major share of Hyperliquid's retail flow and revenue.
• Native TWAP orders exist in the app; grid bots need an external tool.
• Test on testnet first, then go live with small size and isolated margin.

Hyperliquid API wallets: the foundation of every bot

Before any framework, understand the Hyperliquid API wallet, sometimes called an agent wallet. It is the mechanism that makes bots safe on Hyperliquid:

1. In the app, go to More > API.
2. Click Generate to create a new agent. Give it a name (e.g. "freqtrade-1"). Optionally set an expiry.
3. Sign the approval with your main wallet. This registers the agent's public address as authorised to act for your account.
4. Copy the agent's private key; this is what your bot uses to sign orders.

What an API wallet can do: place, modify and cancel orders; set leverage; open and close positions; update margin. What it cannot do: withdraw to Arbitrum, transfer to another address, or move funds between accounts. If a bot server is compromised, the attacker can trade your account badly, but cannot drain it. You can revoke an agent at any time from the same page.

A few technical points from the Hyperliquid API guide: the /exchange endpoint has address-based rate limits (roughly 10,000 requests initially, then 1 request per $1 of cumulative traded volume), so a bot that spams cancels on a new account will hit 429 errors; batching orders and using modify instead of cancel-and-replace helps. Signatures use EIP-712 and include the chain identifier, so testnet and mainnet keys are not interchangeable. The hyperliquid-python-sdk handles all of this.

3commas and Hyperliquid

Does 3commas support Hyperliquid? Yes. 3commas added Hyperliquid as an exchange in 2025, initially for perpetual futures, and it has become one of the more popular ways for non-programmers to run a Hyperliquid bot.

What works on 3commas Hyperliquid:

• DCA bots (long and short) with safety orders and take-profit ladders.
• Grid bots on perp markets.
• Signal bots triggered by TradingView webhooks (pairs well with alerts described in the charts guide).
• Smart Trade for manual entries with automated TP/SL.

How to connect:

1. Generate an API wallet in the Hyperliquid app as described above.
2. In 3commas, go to My Exchanges > Connect exchange > Hyperliquid.
3. Enter your main wallet address (the account the bot trades) and the API wallet private key (the agent).
4. 3commas verifies the connection and pulls balances.

Limitations as of September 2026: spot market support is partial, some HIP-3 markets are not yet listed in 3commas's pair list, and the platform's fee estimates do not always include hourly funding correctly. 3commas charges its own subscription; Hyperliquid's fees (base 0.045% taker / 0.015% maker, see Hyperliquid fees) apply on every fill, and 3commas orders do not carry a builder fee.

Freqtrade on Hyperliquid

Freqtrade Hyperliquid support arrived through CCXT, and the Freqtrade team has documented Hyperliquid as a supported exchange for both spot and futures. A minimal config.json exchange block:

"exchange": {
  "name": "hyperliquid",
  "walletAddress": "0xYOUR_MAIN_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS",
  "privateKey": "0xYOUR_API_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY",
  "ccxt_config": {},
  "ccxt_async_config": {},
  "pair_whitelist": ["BTC/USDC:USDC", "ETH/USDC:USDC", "HYPE/USDC:USDC"],
  "pair_blacklist": []
},
"trading_mode": "futures",
"margin_mode": "isolated",
"stake_currency": "USDC",
"dry_run": true

Key details:

• walletAddress is your main account; privateKey is the agent key. This is the most common setup mistake. If you use the agent's own address as walletAddress, orders are rejected because the agent has no balance.
• Pair format is BASE/USDC:USDC for perps.
• margin_mode should be isolated so a bug in one pair cannot liquidate your whole account.
• Testnet: set "ccxt_config": {"options": {"sandboxMode": true}} or point the URLs to api.hyperliquid-testnet.xyz; see the testnet and faucet guide.
• Backtesting: freqtrade download-data --exchange hyperliquid --timeframes 5m 1h pulls candles through the same connector.
• Order limits: Freqtrade's default order size must respect Hyperliquid's $10 minimum notional and per-asset size decimals.

Freqtrade is free and open source and is the most common choice for people who want to write their own strategy in Python without building the exchange plumbing.

Hummingbot and custom Python bots

Hummingbot ships a native Hyperliquid perpetual connector and is the standard framework for market-making and grid strategies. Its pure market-making, cross-exchange market-making and hedge strategies all run on Hyperliquid, and its V2 strategy framework supports the kind of directional and grid executors people use for a Hyperliquid grid bot. Because Hyperliquid pays a maker rebate at higher tiers and charges no gas, Hummingbot users report lower operating costs than on almost any other DEX.

For custom Python, the official hyperliquid-python-sdk is the shortest path. A skeleton that places a limit order using an API wallet:

import eth_account
from hyperliquid.exchange import Exchange
from hyperliquid.info import Info
from hyperliquid.utils import constants

MAIN = "0xYOUR_MAIN_ACCOUNT"
agent = eth_account.Account.from_key("0xAPI_WALLET_KEY")
info = Info(constants.MAINNET_API_URL, skip_ws=True)
ex = Exchange(agent, constants.MAINNET_API_URL, account_address=MAIN)

mid = float(info.all_mids()["ETH"])
ex.update_leverage(5, "ETH", is_cross=False)
print(ex.order("ETH", True, 0.05, round(mid * 0.995, 1), {"limit": {"tif": "Gtc"}}))

Notice account_address=MAIN: that is how the SDK tells the exchange the agent is acting on behalf of your main account. The Rust and TypeScript SDKs follow the same pattern.

👉 Open the Hyperliquid app and save 4% on fees

TWAP, grid and copy trading on Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid TWAP

The app has a native TWAP order type: you specify total size and duration (minimum 5 minutes), and the exchange slices the order into sub-orders every 30 seconds, each executed as a market order with a slippage cap of 3%. It is designed for entering or exiting large positions without moving the book. Via the API, the twapOrder action exposes the same functionality to bots. TWAP orders pay taker fees on each slice.

Hyperliquid grid bot

There is no native grid order. Options: 3commas grid bots (easiest), Hummingbot grid executors (most configurable), or a custom script that maintains a ladder of resting limit orders. Grid strategies on perps must account for hourly funding, which can exceed the grid's profit per level in trending markets, and for liquidation risk on the accumulated inventory. Isolated margin and a hard maximum position size are essential.

Hyperliquid copy trading

Two routes:

1. User vaults — deposit into a leader's vault and receive identical fills, with a 10% profit share to the leader. Simple, transparent, no bot required. Explained in the vaults and HLP guide.
2. Mirror bots — a script (or a service like HyperDash's copy feature) watches a target wallet through the WebSocket userFills stream and replicates trades in your account with your own sizing and leverage. More control, more latency, more ways to go wrong. The whale tracker guide explains how to pick a wallet worth following and why most are not.

Hyperliquid builder codes explained

Builder codes are the mechanism that turned Hyperliquid into infrastructure for other apps. The idea: any third-party front end can submit orders to Hyperliquid on a user's behalf and attach a builder fee that the exchange collects and pays to the builder. The rules:

• Maximum builder fee: 0.1% (10 bps) on perps and 1% (100 bps) on spot. The builder chooses any rate up to the cap.
• The user must approve the builder fee once by signing an approveBuilderFee action specifying the maximum they will accept from that builder. After that, orders from the app include the builder's address and fee.
• The fee is charged on top of Hyperliquid's normal taker/maker fee and is visible in the fill details.
• The builder can be any address; builders need a small amount of staked HYPE and must maintain a minimum account balance.
• Users can revoke the approval at any time in the app under More > API/Builders.

For Hyperliquid this is a distribution strategy: the protocol gets volume and its own fees; the builder gets a revenue share without running an exchange; the user gets Hyperliquid liquidity inside an app they already use. The Hyperliquid builder codes dashboard (community-maintained on Dune and Hypurrscan, with an official view planned) shows fees earned per builder, and it has become a leaderboard in its own right.

Builder-code apps you will run into

Builder-code volume grew to a meaningful share of Hyperliquid's total by 2026, and the top builders earn millions per month. That revenue is separate from the protocol fees that fund the Assistance Fund's HYPE buybacks; see Hyperliquid revenue, volume and valuation.

Builder codes vs HIP-3

Do not confuse builder codes with HIP-3. Builder codes let apps route orders to existing markets and take a fee. HIP-3 lets deployers stake 500,000 HYPE to create new markets (stocks, indices, commodities) and set their own fee share. Some projects do both — Liminal and Kinetiq, for instance — but they are different mechanisms. Details on HIP-3 are in the HIP-3 builder markets guide.

What builder codes cost you

If you trade through Phantom, Based or Dreamcash, you pay Hyperliquid's fee plus the builder's fee. On a $10,000 perp trade at base taker rate, that is $4.50 to Hyperliquid and up to $10 to the builder. Trading directly on app.hyperliquid.xyz with a referral link costs $4.32 (4% off) and no builder fee. The convenience is real, but so is the cost; heavy traders should trade directly or through a bot with no builder code. Check any app's builder fee before approving it, and remember the approval sets a maximum the app can charge.

Hyperliquid bots compared

Bot safety on Hyperliquid

Bots lose money in predictable ways. A checklist:

1. Never put your main private key in a bot. API wallet only. Set an expiry on agents you do not use daily.
2. Run on testnet first, then on mainnet with $100, then scale. The testnet guide has the endpoints.
3. Use isolated margin per market so a runaway strategy cannot liquidate unrelated positions.
4. Hard-code a maximum position size and a kill switch. Freqtrade's max_open_trades and stake_amount limits, Hummingbot's kill_switch, or a manual check in your loop.
5. Handle 429 and 422 errors explicitly. A bot that retries a rejected order in a tight loop will burn its rate-limit buffer and can be blocked.
6. Model hourly funding. A grid or basis strategy that ignores funding can bleed 1–3% a day in extreme conditions; see funding rates.
7. Watch for ADL. In a crash, profitable positions can be auto-deleveraged; a bot expecting to close at a target may find the position already gone. Explained in leverage and liquidation.
8. Log everything and reconcile against userFills daily. Silent state drift between bot and exchange is the root of most "the bot did something weird" stories.
9. Verify builder fees before approving and revoke approvals for apps you stop using.
10. Secure the server. Bots run on VPSs with SSH keys in .env files; treat that box like a wallet.

Risk note: automated leveraged trading can lose your entire margin faster than manual trading; nothing here is investment advice.

Bottom line

Hyperliquid's zero-gas order book, maker rebates and API wallets make it the natural home for trading bots: 3commas covers the no-code crowd, Freqtrade and Hummingbot cover Python users, and the official SDKs cover everyone else, all without ever exposing a key that can withdraw. Builder codes extend the same order book into Phantom, Based, Dreamcash, Liminal, Zerion and dozens of other apps at a cost of up to 0.1% per perp trade, which is convenient for casual users and a reason for serious traders to go direct. Start on testnet, use an API wallet with isolated margin, set hard limits, and connect through the Hyperliquid app DEX referral link so your bot's fees start 4% lower. Official API documentation is at the Hyperliquid docs.