> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.ziplime.limex.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How We're Different

> Ziplime vs. generic AI assistants and vs. other Lime Trading products

## vs. generic AI assistants (ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code, and similar)

The obvious question is: "can't I just ask ChatGPT to write me a strategy?" In practice, general-purpose language models run into systematic problems specifically in trading:

* They tend to write naive brute-force logic that's slow and easy to get wrong.
* They don't account for commissions and slippage, so results look good on paper but don't hold up in reality.
* They silently use data that didn't exist yet at the time of the trade (look-ahead bias), which makes results unreliable.
* They don't model how and in what order orders would actually be filled.
* They produce backtest code that doesn't carry over to live trading without a rewrite.
* They don't provide a working environment — no data, no charts, no storage of results, no execution.

Ziplime's real value isn't the language model itself — it's **everything built around it**, to the standards of leading hedge funds: a correct engine, honest cost accounting, protection against common mistakes, one logic shared between backtest and live trading, ready-made data and metrics, and a team of specialized agents.

In short: a generic AI assistant produces code that *looks* like a strategy but can produce misleading results. Ziplime produces a methodologically sound result.

## vs. other Lime Trading products (Lime Direct and Lime Trader)

These three products for active trading serve different people and don't compete with each other.

| Product                                                              | Who it's for                               | Main value                                                | Typical use case                                          |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| [**Lime Direct**](https://lime.co/lime-direct-api-and-fix-protocol/) | A narrow group of technical teams          | Minimal latency, direct exchange access via FIX           | High-frequency trading, market making, arbitrage          |
| [**Lime Trader (REST API)**](https://lime.co/rest-api-python-sdk/)   | Users who build everything themselves      | Flexibility and fine control, a "bare" API                | Custom-built trading systems                              |
| **Ziplime**                                                          | Retail investors and amateur quant traders | A ready-made AI-powered environment, low barrier to entry | Quantitative strategies on one-minute-and-above intervals |

If a customer needs minimal latency, high-frequency trading, or market making, point them to **Lime Direct**. If they want to build everything from scratch on a bare API, point them to **Lime Trader (REST API)**. Ziplime fits users for whom the idea and the math of the strategy matter more than execution speed or infrastructure.

Ziplime and Lime Trader audiences can overlap, but they're different types of users: Lime Trader users like to build everything by hand, while Ziplime users want the AI to own the environment and the code. Note that for live trading, Ziplime itself uses **Lime Trader (REST API)** under the hood — it just hides all of that complexity behind a simple interface.