You don't need to be a DevOps engineer to run your own 24/7 trading agent on a VPS. Three steps: get a server for $6/month, install the agent with one command, open the setup interface in your browser. That's it.
What you'll need
• A DigitalOcean account (or any Linux VPS provider)
• A computer with a terminal (macOS Terminal, Linux shell, or Windows PowerShell)
• About 10 minutes
Get a $6/month Droplet on DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean calls their VPS instances Droplets. The smallest plan is more than enough for the trading agent — 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB SSD.
- Create an account at digitalocean.com
- Click Create → Droplet
- Choose Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (or 22.04)
- Select the Basic plan, $6/month (1 GB / 1 CPU)
- Choose a datacenter region close to your exchange (Frankfurt for Binance/Bybit EU, New York for US)
- Under Authentication, choose SSH Key — paste your public key
- Click Create Droplet
Recommended Droplet settings
No SSH key yet?
macOS / Linux: run ssh-keygen -t ed25519 in your terminal, then
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub — copy the output and paste it into DigitalOcean.
Windows: open PowerShell and run the same command. Or use
PuTTYgen to generate a key.
After ~30 seconds your Droplet is ready. Copy the IPv4 address — you'll need it in the next step.
Connect via SSH and Install the Agent
Open your terminal and SSH into the server using the IP from DigitalOcean:
ssh root@YOUR_DROPLET_IPOnce connected, run the one-line installer. It installs Docker, clones the repository, and builds the Docker image — all automatically:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Quantilan/trading-agent/main/install.sh | bashThe install takes 2–3 minutes (mostly Docker image build). When it finishes, run make setup once to create your config files:
cd trading-agent
make setupWhat the installer does
Installs Docker and Docker Compose via the official script
Clones the Quantilan trading agent repository
Builds the Docker image with all dependencies
Prints the next steps when done
Security note
The Setup GUI binds only to 127.0.0.1 — it is never exposed to the public internet. You access it through an SSH tunnel (Step 3), so no firewall rules need to be opened.
Open the Setup GUI in Your Browser
The Setup GUI runs on port 8080 on the server. To access it securely from your local machine, open an SSH tunnel — this forwards the server's port 8080 to your local browser.
Open a new terminal window on your local machine and run:
ssh -L 8080:localhost:8080 root@YOUR_DROPLET_IPKeep this terminal open. Now open your browser and go to:
http://localhost:8080You'll see the Quantilan Setup GUI. Fill in your exchange credentials, Telegram bot token, signal source, and risk settings. Run the connection tests — when everything is green, click Start Agent.
Shortcut: make tunnel
Not sure of the exact SSH command for your server? Run make tunnel on the VPS — it prints the ready-to-use command with your server's IP already filled in.
You're done
The agent starts immediately and runs 24/7 in the background.
You can close your browser, disconnect the SSH tunnel, even shut down your laptop —
the agent keeps running on the VPS.
Control it anytime via your personal Telegram bot: /start, /positions,
/pnl, or type trading commands directly.
Managing Your Agent
SSH back into the server any time to check logs or restart:
make logs # tail live agent logs
make stop # stop the agent
make restart # restart (reloads config)
make status # container statusTo update to the latest version:
git pull
make build && make restart # fast rebuild with cache
# or, after a requirements.txt change:
make rebuild && make restart # full clean rebuildTotal Cost
Running your own 24/7 trading agent on a VPS costs less than a coffee per day:
Other VPS providers
DigitalOcean is used as the example here, but any Linux VPS works. Hetzner (€4.5/month, EU-based) and Vultr ($6/month) offer similar plans with the same Ubuntu setup. The install.sh script works identically on all of them.
Ready to Deploy?
Get a VPS, run one command, and your agent is live in under 10 minutes.