Brokerages
Alpaca
Introduction
QuantConnect enables you to run your algorithms in live mode with real-time market data. We have successfully hosted more than 200,000 live algorithms and have had more than $22B in volume traded on our servers since 2015.
Alpaca was founded by Yoshi Yokokawa and Hitoshi Harada in 2015 as a database and machine learning company. In 2018, Alpaca Securities LLC (Alpaca Securities) became a registered US broker-dealer with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) with the mission to "open financial services to everyone on the planet". In 2022, Alpaca Crypto LLC (Alpaca Crypto) became a registered Money Services Business (MSB) with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Alpaca provides access to trading Equities, Options, and Crypto for clients in over 30 countries. Alpaca also delivers custody, clearing, execution, and billing on behalf of registered advisors.
To view the implementation of the Alpaca brokerage integration, see the Lean.Brokerages.Alpaca repository.
Account Types
Alpaca supports cash and margin accounts. To set the account type in an algorithm, see the Alpaca brokerage model documentation.
Create an Account
Follow the account creation wizard on the Alpaca website to create an Alpaca account.
You will need API credentials to deploy live algorithms with your brokerage account. After you have an account, open the Dashboard page, click the button in the top left to select your real money trading account, and then click . Store your API Key and Secret somewhere safe.
Paper Trading
Alpaca supports paper trading. When you create an Alpaca account, your account is a paper trading account by default. To get your paper trading API credentials, open the Dashboard page, click the button in the top left to select your paper trading account, and then click . For more information about their paper trading environment, see their rules and assumptions documentation.
Asset Classes
Our Alpaca integration supports the following asset classes:
You may not be able to trade all assets with Alpaca. For example, if you live in the EU, you can't trade US ETFs. Check with your local regulators to know which assets you are allowed to trade. You may need to adjust settings in your brokerage account to live trade some assets.
Data Providers
You might need to purchase a Alpaca market data subscription for your trading. For more information about live data providers, see Datasets.
Orders
We model the Alpaca API by supporting several order types, order properties, and order updates. When you deploy live algorithms, you can place manual orders through the IDE.
Order Types
The following table describes the available order types for each asset class that our Alpaca integration supports:
Order Type | Equity | Equity Options | Crypto |
---|---|---|---|
Market | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
Limit | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
Stop market | ![]() | ![]() | |
Stop limit | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
Trailing stop | ![]() | ![]() |
Time In Force
We model the Alpaca API by supporting the following TimeInForce instructions:
Day
DAY
GoodTilCanceled
GOOD_TIL_CANCELED
GoodTilDate
good_til_date
Updates
We model the Alpaca API by supporting order updates.
Handling Splits
If you're using raw data normalization and you have active orders with a limit, stop, or trigger price in the market for a US Equity when a stock split occurs, the following properties of your orders automatically adjust to reflect the stock split:
- Quantity
- Limit price
- Stop price
- Trigger price
Fees
The Alpaca trading for Equity and Equity Options is commission-free. To view the Alpaca trading fees for Crypto, see the Crypto Fees page on the Alpaca website. To view how we model their fees, see Fees.
Margin
We model buying power and margin calls to ensure your algorithm stays within the margin requirements. If you have more than $25,000 in your brokerage account, you can use the PatternDayTradingMarginModel
to make use of the 4x intraday leverage and 2x overnight leverage available on most brokerages from the PDT rule.
Slippage
Orders through Alpaca do not experience slippage in backtests. In live trading, your orders may experience slippage.
To view how we model Alpaca slippage, see Slippage.
Fills
We fill market orders immediately and completely in backtests. In live trading, if the quantity of your market orders exceeds the quantity available at the top of the order book, your orders are filled according to what is available in the order book.
To view how we model Alpaca order fills, see Fills.
Settlements
If you trade with a margin account, trades settle immediately
To view how we model settlement for Alpaca trades, see Settlement.
Security and Stability
Note the following security and stability aspects of our Alpaca integration.
Account Credentials
When you deploy live algorithms with Alpaca, we don't save your brokerage account credentials.
API Outages
We call the Alpaca API to place live trades. Sometimes the API may be down. Check the Alpaca status page to see if the API is currently working.
Deploy Live Algorithms
You must have an available live trading node for each live trading algorithm you deploy.
Follow these steps to deploy a live algorithm:
- Open the project you want to deploy.
- Click the
Deploy Live icon.
- On the Deploy Live page, click the Brokerage field and then click from the drop-down menu.
- Click on the Environment field and then click one of the environments.
- Check the Authorization check box and then click .
- On the Alpaca website, click to grant QuantConnect access to your account information and authorization.
- Click the Node field and then click the live trading node that you want to use from the drop-down menu.
- (Optional) In the Data Provider section, click and change the data provider or add additional providers.
- (Optional) Set up notifications.
- Configure the Automatically restart algorithm setting.
- Click .
The following table shows the supported environments:
Environment | Description |
---|---|
Paper | Trade with paper money |
Live | Trade with real money |
In most cases, we suggest using the QuantConnect data provider, the Alpaca data provider, or both. The order you set them in the deployment wizard defines their order of precedence in Lean.
If you add the Alpaca data provider, enter your API key and secret. To get your API key and secret, see Account Types. Your account details are not saved on QuantConnect.
By enabling automatic restarts, the algorithm will use best efforts to restart the algorithm if it fails due to a runtime error. This can help improve the algorithm's resilience to temporary outages such as a brokerage API disconnection.
The deployment process can take up to 5 minutes. When the algorithm deploys, the live results page displays. If you know your brokerage positions before you deployed, you can verify they have been loaded properly by checking your equity value in the runtime statistics, your cashbook holdings, and your position holdings.