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Log in to TWS

The first time you log in to TWS, you’ll need to take a little time to populate your screens with data, understand the different allocation methods you can use, and finally practice creating orders.

We strongly recommend that you open a paper trading account as described in Opening a Paper Trading Account to familiarize yourself with Trader Workstation’s many features without accidentally submitting a trade.

You can run TWS directly from your Internet browser (recommended), or download the software to your PC and launch it directly from your desktop as a standalone application. For more information, see the Trader Workstation page on the IBKR web site.

To download and log in to TWS for the first time (Windows)

1. From the LOG IN menu in the upper right corner of the IB website, select TWS or TWS Latest from the drop-down list.
2. Click the DOWNLOAD button on the TWS page that opens to install TWS on your computer and to view download/installation instructions.
3. When the installation is complete, click the TWS icon on your desktop to log in. This launch method is fast, but may occasionally take a few seconds longer when TWS or Java runtime updates are published.
4. In the Login box, enter your username and password and click Login.

For subsequent sessions, you can log in to TWS simply by clicking the TWS icon on your desktop.

For more information

• To learn more about using the browser-based TWS versus the standalone version, see the TWS Users’ Guide.