Alpaca review

Alpaca provides APIs for trading stocks, options and crypto, plus brokerage tools for businesses that want to add investing to their own services. Its trading APIs are aimed at developers building algorithmic trading apps; its Broker API is for embedding brokerage capabilities in another product. The product description also lists market data, paper backtesting and OAuth connections for apps, bots and platforms such as TradingView.

Developers can use SDKs for Python, .NET/C#, Go, Node and other languages. Market data includes real-time and historical options data for multi-leg strategies. The pricing tiers differ by product: Trading API plans are priced around data access and API-call limits, while Broker API plans are organized by request capacity. That distinction matters when comparing the free options or estimating what a production integration will cost.

Alpaca covers several parts of a trading stack through APIs, rather than limiting the product to market data or order execution. The product description includes trading for stocks, options and crypto, brokerage integrations, paper backtesting and SDKs across several common developer languages. That gives teams a route to prototype and then build a customer-facing investing service on the same platform.

The pricing page lists free entry tiers for both Trading API and Broker API users:

• Free (Basic) costs $0 per month and includes 200 API calls per minute, IEX equities data, indicative options feeds, historical data back to 2016, and WebSocket access for 30 equity symbols and 200 options quotes.
• Standard for Broker API costs $0 per month, with 1,000 requests per minute, five stream connections and unlimited stream symbols.

For Trading API users, Algo Trader Plus costs $99 per month and raises the limit to 10,000 API calls per minute, with SIP real-time equities, OPRA options and more than seven years of historical data, according to the pricing page. The free tiers make it possible to start without a subscription, though their data and throughput limits shape what that means in practice.

The free Trading API tier is a basic-data option, not full-market coverage: it caps requests at 200 per minute, limits WebSocket access to 30 equity symbols and 200 options quotes, and uses IEX equities data with indicative options feeds. The pricing page lists Algo Trader Plus at $99 per month for higher throughput and SIP/OPRA feeds. Annual-billing prices are not published.

Broker API pricing can climb quickly if the free Standard tier is not enough. Standard includes 1,000 requests per minute and five stream connections. The listed StandardPlus tiers cost $500 per month for 3,000 requests per minute, $1,000 for 5,000, and $2,000 for 10,000; the last tier includes 10 stream connections. Standard and StandardPlus3000 also pay an additional $1,000 per month for the options indicative feed. Options are included at no extra charge in StandardPlus5000 and StandardPlus10000. Broker data is real-time IEX or 15-minute-delayed SIP, so check the feed and request cap your product needs before comparing the headline price.

Alpaca has free plans, but full market data and higher Broker API request limits cost extra. The pricing page lists Trading API Free (Basic) at $0/month: 200 API calls per minute, IEX equity data, indicative options feeds and historical data back to 2016. Algo Trader Plus is $99/month for 10,000 calls per minute, SIP real-time equities, OPRA options and more data access. That is the paid Trading API tier; the Broker API has a separate price ladder.

Broker API Standard is $0/month for 1,000 requests per minute. StandardPlus3000 costs $500/month; StandardPlus5000 is $1,000/month; and StandardPlus10000 is $2,000/month. Options indicative data adds $1,000/month on Standard and StandardPlus3000. Options are included at no extra charge on the two higher tiers listed.

Prices are monthly. Annual-billing prices are not published. Check which API and data feeds your app needs before comparing the free tiers: free does not mean full-market data, and the Broker API’s request-volume upgrades get expensive quickly.

Treat a move to Alpaca as an API integration project, not a plug-and-play platform swap. Alpaca offers trading and Broker APIs, plus SDKs for Python, .NET/C#, Go and Node, but the published information does not establish compatibility with another provider’s code or APIs. Plan to review your order flows, market-data requirements and authentication setup, then adapt and validate the integration before routing live activity.

The published materials do not say what data or account records you can export, or how portable they are if you leave. Confirm export formats, retention and any transfer steps with Alpaca before committing; don’t assume an SDK makes your data or trading logic portable.

We don’t have Reddit posts or comments in the published material for this review, so we can’t verify what tends to make Alpaca users leave. The clearest cost-related reason to reassess is published pricing: Broker API plans rise to $500, $1,000 and $2,000 per month for higher request limits, while some options feeds add $1,000 per month. Compare those costs with your expected volume and feed needs before switching.