Alpaca
p/alpaca
API for Stock, Options & Crypto Trading
Hiten Shah

Alpaca Options API — Trade options commission-free via API

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Alpaca now offers options through their API. Starting today, developers and traders alike can buy, sell, and exercise. The best part? It’s commission-free.
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Yoshi Yokokawa
Hey Product Hunt 👋 I’m Yoshi, Co-founder CEO of Alpaca. I’m excited to have @hnshah hunt this for us! TL;DR: Options became a more popular but approachable asset class from the “meme stock” movement a few years ago. However, the reality remains that options are still a sophisticated but volatile asset class, requiring well-tested trading strategies. This also means that developers can take advantage of this sophistication and build with our robust, developer-friendly API. Because of this, we’re excited to announce our commission-free Alpaca Options API here on the Product Hunt!! Sign up today and grab your free API keys at https://alpaca.markets/options What’s an option❓ An option is a contract that gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a specific amount of a stock at a predetermined price (the "strike price") within a certain period of time. Why trade options with Alpaca Options API❓ ✅ Commission-free, easy to use API 🧠 Developer-friendly with real-time market data, testing environments, and SDKs like Python ⚡️ Performance plus reliability with 1.5ms order processing and 99.995% uptime 🏆 Backed by industry-recognized organizations like Y Combinator, Portage Ventures, and more 1️⃣ Comprehensive assets in one account: US listed options plus crypto, stocks, and ETFs How much does it cost to trade options❓ Options trading is commission-free for retail investors with Alpaca Options API. When can I start trading❓ Today! Sign up at https://alpaca.markets/options, it takes less than a few minutes. Do you have any options documentation I can review❓ Definitely, check out: https://docs.alpaca.markets/docs.... Happy building! 🛠 — Quick legal note: Options trading is not suitable for all investors due to its inherent high risk, which can potentially result in significant losses. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options before investing in options. This is not an offer, solicitation of an offer, or advice to buy or sell securities, other financial products or open a brokerage account in any jurisdiction where Alpaca is not registered. Please see our disclosure library for important information.
Johan Steneros
I looked into Alpaca long ago for a fintech project and was impressed by what they offerd. Happy to see they are continuing to grow.
Yoshi Yokokawa
Thank you @jsteneros ! We will keep building and shipping products!
Joseph Natoli
Hey @yokokawa244 and the Alpaca Options API team, always good to see products for portfolio diversification. I have yet to trade options, as it's not in my wheel-house, so I can't comment on or review the product. However, I am interested in asking about your entrepreneurial story and launch here. The commission-free model was pioneered by Vlad from Robinhood and fundamentally changed the way stock trading happened. I can only assume you looked to them for inspiration and am curious what lessons you learned from Robinhood's launch (and other similar services) for the development and launch of this product. -J
Hitoshi Harada
@joseph_natoli We learned a lot about what have been done in the industry for the last few years. Our team members even include folks who were there to democratize options trading at Robinhood and other firms. We build it such that we don’t make the same mistakes and built a robust risk management as well while keeping it easy to use.
Trent Kennelly
The is great! I love the inclusion of Crypto. It's vital and so many other platforms miss it. Question: is the 1.5 ms txn time applicable to blockchain txns as well? I work with ethereum very often and it's famously slow.
Hitoshi Harada
@trent_kennelly 1.5ms is the latency of our in-house Order Management System which we innovated a few years ago. It’s 10x or 100x faster than incumbent broker’s system based on our research
Matt
@trent_kennelly @umitanuki where can I place a machine to test the 1.5ms removing internet latency? Can you email the IP or domain please? Is there a load balancer or one server location? Can you specify the data center or geographic location?
Congrats on the launch Yoshi 🚀 How do you monetize, seeing that Alpaca is commission-free?
Kumar Thangudu
How many hours of engineering work did this take to achieve?
Hitoshi Harada
@datarade Truthfully, it’s not about hours, but our team has devoted months of high quality and super dense heads down work to make this happen. It’s actually one of the fastest release of options in the industry as far as I know.
Joseph Iwok
Congrats on the launch, are there plans to create new option trading levels to let users sell naked calls?
Patrick Valoppi
So proud of this team! 🦙 This launch has been touched by everyone at Alpaca in some way. We're super excited to build APIs that both our partners and community loves. PS: Postman also awarded us "Best API" last week, it's been a busy May and we're just getting started. 💪
Dias Khalniyasov
Congrats on the launch! Quick question: where the crypto options are taken from? Binance, Deribit or other?
Hitoshi Harada
@dias_k To clarify, today’s launch is US stock options trading API. Crypto options are something we will expand in the future leveraging what we build on stock options
Amit
I used Alpaca couple years back and really liked what was offered then. It's exciting to see that Alpaca is now coming with the feature of options trading using API.
Hatem Ahmed
I’ve tried Alpaca for stock trading and their product was easy to use and I could tell it was built with quality in mind. Very excited to try out their option trading. Congrats on the launch 🚀
Jean Gérard Bousiquot
Alpaca is great. I usually trade using TradingView. Hopefully the TradingView integration will support options soon. It will be sick.
Tanvir Hasan
Absolutely love this, congrats on the launch of Alpaca Options API! This is a game-changer for developers and traders alike. Super interested in exploring the commission-free options trading through the API. Looking forward to seeing what future updates hold-do you have any plans to integrate with other trading platforms?
Hitoshi Harada
@tmwky Glad to hear you love it! We keep improving and expand the offering including level 3 and multi leg orders
Albert
congrats on the launch, yoshi and team! offering options commission-free through the alpaca options api is a game-changer for developers and traders. curious to know, what inspired alpaca to create a developer-friendly api for trading options? excited to see the impact this will have in the fintech space.
Hitoshi Harada
@mashy We always listen to our users to build what users love. Our developer community asked for it many times for years and we finally did it! Options are quite quantitative by nature and go well with algorithmic approach too. Plus, this is going to be available for our broker partners who start offering options in many countries in the world soon too. We are excited to see many use cases with API that we didn’t think about. Tell us more!
Kubilay Özışık
Great news! Would be nice to see some sample projects -preferably using real-time- using your API
Hitoshi Harada
@kubilayozisik Yes please give a try and give us your feedback. We built it to keep it simple and easy to use as API
George
Congrats on the launch! I will keep an eye on this product
Radzi Nugraha Purba
the documentation is exceptionally clear and self-explanatory. super easy to use!
Ghost Kitty
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Noah Solomon
It's crazy there is an options api now...
Andrew Hawel
Congrats on the launch and on landing all of the great feature spots in WSJ, TechCrunch, and more!
Hitoshi Harada
@andrew_hawel We appreciate all people who recognize our progress, including everyone here. Thank you for your support!