I’m testing strategies on emulator orders all fine, but as soon as I switch to real balance the picture changes, what could be the reason?

Please note that emulator orders are placed faster than real ones, they are bought and sold quicker, because no time is spent on transferring data to the exchange and returning data back to the bot, it does not take into account the filling of bets and other things and reports in emulator trading can be more positive than in real trading.
Therefore, at the beginning you can test strategies and trade hands in the “Emulation mode”, but to get more accurate results, taking into account pings, data forwarding, price slippages, we still recommend to test real trading with a minimum order, which will give you results close to the real ones.