Crypto API Reference #

Crypto API allows you to build algo bots, access real-time crypto prices, place orders and manage your crypto portfolio.

In order to start trading with Alpaca API, please sign up here.

Once you have signed up and have familiarized yourself with our API, please check out our python client to begin writing your own algo!

Authentication #

Every private API call requires key-based authentication. API keys can be acquired in the developer web console. The client must provide a pair of API key ID and secret key in the HTTP request headers named APCA-API-KEY-ID and APCA-API-SECRET-KEY respectively.

Here is an example using curl showing how to authenticate with the API.

curl -X GET \
    -H "APCA-API-KEY-ID: {YOUR_API_KEY_ID}" \
    -H "APCA-API-SECRET-KEY: {YOUR_API_SECRET_KEY}"\
    https://{apiserver_domain}/v2/account

Alpaca’s live API domain is api.alpaca.markets.

Paper Trading #

Alpaca’s paper trading service uses a different domain and different credentials from the live API. You’ll need to connect to the right domain so that you don’t run your paper trading algo on your live account.

To use the paper trading api, set APCA-API-KEY-ID and APCA-API-SECRET-KEY to your paper credentials, and set the domain to paper-api.alpaca.markets.

After you have tested your algo in the paper environment and are ready to start running your algo in the live environment, you can switch the domain to the live domain, and the credentials to your live credentials. Your algo will then start trading with real money.

To learn more about paper trading, visit the paper trading page.

Rate Limit #

There is a rate limit for the API requests. When it is exceeded, the API server returns error response with HTTP status code 429. The rate limit is 200 requests every minute per API key.

General Rules #

Time Format and Time Zone #

All date time type inputs and outputs are serialized according to ISO8601 (more specifically RFC3339). The communication does not assume a particular time zone, and this date time serialization denominates the time offset of each value.

Numbers #

Decimal numbers are returned as strings to preserve full precision across platforms. When making a request, it is recommended that you also convert your numbers to strings to avoid truncation and precision errors.

IDs #

Object ID in Alpaca system uses UUID v4. When making requests, the format with dashes is accepted.

904837e3-3b76-47ec-b432-046db621571b

Assets and Symbology #

An asset in this API is a tradable or non-tradable financial instrument. Alpaca maintains our own asset database and assigns an internal ID for each asset which you can use to identify assets to specify in API calls. Assets are also identified by a combination of symbol, exchange, and asset class. The symbol of an asset may change over the time, but the symbol for an asset is always the one at the time API call is made.

When the API accepts a parameter named symbol, you can use one of the following four different forms unless noted otherwise.

- "{symbol}"
- "{symbol}:{exchange}"
- "{symbol}:{exchange}:{asset_class}"
- "{asset_id}"

Typically the first form is enough, but in the case multiple assets are found with a symbol (the same symbol may be used in different exchanges or asset classes), the most commonly-used asset is assumed. To avoid the ambiguity, you can use the second or third form with suffixes joined by colons (:) Alternatively, asset_id is guaranteed as unique, in the form of UUID v4. When the API accepts symbols to specify more than one symbol in one API call, the general rule is to use commas (,) to separate them.

All of four symbol forms are case-sensitve.

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