WEEX Copy Trading API: Endpoints, Limits and 5 Error Codes

The WEEX copy trading API went live on 23 June 2026 (UTC+8), and it is narrower and stricter than a general futures API — which is exactly what makes it worth reading the fine print before you write any code. A lead trader gets one dedicated key, cannot touch spot, cannot trade pairs outside the copy-trading whitelist, and has take-profit and stop-loss behaviour forced into a single shape. Followers get something most exchanges don't expose at all: a REST endpoint that writes their own copy configuration, including slippage caps and per-symbol leverage.

This guide covers what the copy trading API actually does, the endpoint list on both sides, the real parameter ranges for follower risk settings, the error codes that will break your first integration, and how the surface compares with what Binance and Bybit publish.

What the WEEX copy trading API can and can't do

The copy trading API is a futures-only surface split across two roles. A lead trader places orders with a dedicated Copy Trading API Key, and WEEX pushes the resulting execution signals to followers automatically — you never write the fan-out logic yourself. A follower uses a regular API key to configure and control the copy relationship.

Funds, positions and the risk ratio in the copy trading account are isolated from the regular futures account. That isolation is the useful part operationally: a bad day in your discretionary book cannot liquidate the positions your followers are mirroring. It is also a reconciliation chore, because /capi/v3/account/position/allPosition returns copy positions when called with the copy key and regular futures positions when called with a regular key. Same path, different answer, depending on which credential you signed with.

Who can create a copy trading API key, and why you only get one

Only accounts that have passed WEEX elite trader review can create a Copy Trading API Key. You apply through the elite trader programme — as of July 2026 WEEX lists over 5,000 elite traders across 150+ countries and a $2,000,000 elite trader fund. Once approved, the key is created under User Center → API Management → Copy Trading API, gated by your fund password plus two-factor verification.

The limit that matters for your deployment plan: one copy trading key per trader account. There is no second key to rotate to, which rules out the blue/green key-swap most quant teams use for zero-downtime credential rotation. If you rotate, your strategy is dark for the length of the swap — and any followers stay in their existing positions while you are dark. Schedule rotations the way you'd schedule a database migration, not as a background chore.

Authentication is the standard WEEX contract scheme: ACCESS-KEY, ACCESS-SIGN, ACCESS-PASSPHRASE and ACCESS-TIMESTAMP headers, where the signature is HMAC SHA256 over timestamp + METHOD + requestPath + "?" + queryString + body, then Base64-encoded. Bind an IP whitelist. On a key that can move followers' capital, an unbound key is a materially worse risk than on a personal futures key.

Lead trader endpoints reuse the futures order stack

There is no separate "place a copy trade" call. Lead traders hit the standard V3 futures endpoints and WEEX infers the copy identity from the key type:

Three read endpoints are copy-specific: GET /capi/v3/copy/trader/pairs (weight 1, no auth), GET /capi/v3/copy/trader/openOrders (weight 10) and GET /capi/v3/copy/trader/historyOrders (weight 10, 90-day maximum range, cursor pagination via nextKeyId and nextKeyTime).

The field worth instrumenting is followCount on each tracking order. It tells you how many followers are attached to that specific position, and it is the closest thing you get to a real-time measure of your own market impact. A lead trader entering a thin altcoin perp with 3 followers and the same trader entering with 300 are not running the same strategy — the second one is front-running themselves through the copy fan-out. If your average entry slippage degrades as followCount climbs, that is the mechanism, and the fix is position sizing, not a better limit price.

Follower endpoints: where WEEX goes further than most copy APIs

This is the half of the API that is genuinely unusual. Followers get write access to their own copy configuration over REST:

Note the weight asymmetry: closePos costs 50, five times every other endpoint in the set. WEEX gives each IP-weighted endpoint an independent budget of 500 per 10 seconds, so that weight translates to roughly 10 closePos calls per 10 seconds against about 50 for the weight-10 endpoints. A loop that closes tracking orders one by one throttles itself fast, and 429s carry an obligation to back off rather than retry. If you are unwinding a follower book during a fast move, stopCopy plus one decision about the remaining exposure is cheaper than iterating closePos across every position — and it will still be responding when the naive loop is eating rate-limit errors.

Copy trading risk parameters and their real ranges

POST /capi/v3/copy/follower/settings takes either a unified config across a symbol list or a per_symbol array. These are the actual accepted values — the numbers that decide whether your config request succeeds:

Two of these will cost someone money. slippageRatio: 0 reads like the safest value in the table and is the most dangerous: it disables the slippage cap entirely, so a copy order fills at whatever the book offers when the signal lands. If you want protection, the range is 0.001 to 0.01 (0.1% to 1%) and you have to say so explicitly.

The second is a design trade-off buried in a permitted-values note: in per_symbol mode, marginType accepts only trader. Choose granular per-symbol control and you inherit the lead trader's margin mode across every symbol. If you wanted isolated margin on one volatile pair while the lead trader runs cross, per_symbol cannot express it — unified can. Most integrations reach for per_symbol because it sounds more precise, and give up margin-mode control to get there.

One more thing that will bite anyone building a read-modify-write loop: the GET and POST on this path do not share field names. Reading settings back returns settingMode, maxHoldSize and takeProfitRatio; writing them requires settingType, maxHoldQty and stopProfitRatio. The GET also requires a traderId and returns an array — one item for unified, one per symbol for per_symbol. Round-tripping the response object straight back into the POST will fail parameter validation, so map the fields explicitly rather than assuming symmetry.

Which pairs the copy trading API supports, and why you shouldn't hardcode them

GET /capi/v3/copy/trader/pairs returned 124 symbols, all USDT-margined, when checked on 30 July 2026 — from BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT through to newer listings like ASTERUSDT, PUMPUSDT and STBLUSDT. No coin-margined contracts, no spot.

This list moves, and the static versions circulating in launch material are already stale. The static pair table in the WEEX Copy Trading API manual carries 74 tickers; checked against the live endpoint on 30 July 2026, STXUSDT and IPUSDT are in that table but absent from the API response, while BTCUSDT, XRPUSDT and DOGEUSDT are live but missing from the table. Build your whitelist from the document and your bot rejects Bitcoin while accepting two pairs that no longer copy.

Poll the endpoint instead. It carries weight 1 — the cheapest call in the entire copy trading surface — and needs no authentication, so there is no good reason to cache it beyond a trading session. Before you enable a pair, check the contract itself: the BTC/USDT perpetual page shows the live mark price, funding rate and countdown your copy positions will settle against.

The five error codes that will break your first integration

The 50xx block is copy-trading-specific and is where ported code fails:

-5003 and -5004 together are the real porting hazard. Strategy code that scales out of a position with partial take-profits, or that sets a limit-price TP, works fine on a regular futures key and fails on every call with a copy key. Copy TP/SL is all-or-nothing and market-only, because partial or limit exits cannot be mirrored coherently across followers with different position sizes. Plan the exit logic around that constraint rather than discovering it in a live session.

Also budget for -1046 (timestamp expired — sync your clock, don't retry blindly), -1056 (ILLEGAL_IP, meaning the request came from outside your whitelist) and -1059 (HIGH_FREQUENCY_ORDER_LIMITED, a throttle on order bursts that sits separately from the weight budget and is easy to trip with a chatty signal generator). -5000 rounds out the 50xx block and simply tells you to contact WEEX.

How WEEX copy trading API compares with Binance and Bybit

What "copy trading API" means varies sharply by venue, and the difference is worth checking before you assume portability:

The pattern across the industry is that exchanges expose the lead-trader side and keep the follower side inside the app. WEEX publishing a follower-side write endpoint is the meaningful difference: it means a third-party tool, a portfolio dashboard, or a risk overlay can adjust or kill a copy relationship programmatically without screen-scraping. If you are building follower-facing tooling rather than a lead-trader strategy, that is the deciding feature, and it is why the copy API is worth more to integrators than the headline "we have a copy trading API" suggests.

Parameter details change without much fanfare on a surface this new, so treat the official copy trading API reference as the source of truth and diff it against your integration before each release.

What to do next

The WEEX copy trading API is a small, opinionated surface: 10 order-side paths reused from the futures API, 3 lead-trader reads, 7 follower endpoints, one key per trader, and a 50xx error block that encodes most of its constraints. The three things to get right before your first live signal are the pair list (poll it, don't hardcode it), slippageRatio (never leave it at 0 unless you mean unlimited), and full-position market-only TP/SL. Everything else is standard WEEX contract integration.

If you want to lead rather than integrate, the copy trading API is only available after elite trader approval — start with the WEEX Copy Trade hub to see how the product behaves in the UI before you automate it, since the API mirrors those semantics rather than replacing them.

FAQ

1. Who can use the WEEX copy trading API?

Only accounts approved as WEEX elite traders can create a Copy Trading API Key and place copy orders programmatically. Followers do not need a special key — they configure and control copying with a regular API key.

2. How many copy trading API keys can I create?

One per trader account. There is no second key for rotation, so plan credential changes as a scheduled maintenance window.

3. Does the WEEX copy trading API support spot trading?

No. It is futures-only, and only for pairs on the copy trading whitelist — 124 USDT-margined symbols as of 30 July 2026. Spot calls and non-whitelisted pairs are rejected.

4. Can a follower change copy settings through the API?

Yes. POST /capi/v3/copy/follower/settings writes the copy configuration, including sizing mode, max holding quantity, take-profit and stop-loss ratios, slippage cap, margin type and leverage. Followers can also call closePos and stopCopy.

5. Why does my take-profit order fail with a copy trading API key?

Almost certainly -5003 or -5004. Copy keys accept only full-position TP/SL (quantity must be 0) executed at market (executePrice must be null or 0). Partial or limit-priced exits are rejected.

6. What is the rate limit on the copy trading API?

Copy endpoints are weighted by IP, and each IP-limited endpoint has an independent budget of 500 per 10 seconds. Weights differ — closePos is 50 against 10 for most others, so roughly 10 versus 50 calls per 10 seconds. Breaching returns 429, and -1059 is a separate throttle on order bursts.

7. Are copy trading funds separate from my regular futures account?

Yes. Funds, positions and risk ratio are fully isolated, so the two accounts cannot liquidate each other. Note that /capi/v3/account/position/allPosition returns whichever account matches the key you signed with.

Risk Warning

Crypto assets are highly volatile and trading them can result in partial or total loss of capital. The WEEX copy trading API adds risks beyond ordinary futures trading. Leverage on copy positions defaults to 10x and can be set higher, which compresses the move needed to liquidate you. Setting slippageRatio to 0 removes the slippage cap entirely, so copy orders can fill far from the lead trader's price during volatile conditions. As a follower you are exposed to counterparty and behavioural risk from the lead trader, whose strategy can change without notice and whose past results do not predict future performance; as a lead trader, a rising followCount can worsen your own fills through market impact. Automated systems add operational risk: a stale symbol whitelist, an expired timestamp, a rate-limit ban, or an unhandled error code can leave positions open with no active management. The single-key limit means a compromised or rotated credential leaves you with no fallback path. Copy trading does not remove the need to size positions you could afford to lose. Nothing here is investment advice — verify all parameters against the current WEEX API documentation before deploying capital, and confirm the service is available in your jurisdiction.