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So I'm getting really sick of E*TRADE and, being a developer, would love to find an online broker that offers an API. It would be great to be able to write my own trading tools, and maybe even modify existing ones.

Based on my research so far, I've only found one option. Interactive Brokers offers a multi-language API (Java/C++/ActiveX/DDE) and has some fairly decent commission rates to boot. I want to make sure there aren't any other options out there I should be considering. Any ideas?

Update: Based on answers so far, here's a quick list...

General Grievance
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Wilco
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8 Answers8

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I vote for IB(Interactive Brokers). I've used them in the past as was quite happy. Pinnacle Capital Markets trading also has an API (pcmtrading.com) but I haven't used them.

Interactive Brokers:

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/?f=%2Fen%2Fsoftware%2Fibapi.php

Pinnacle Capital Markets:

http://www.pcmtrading.com/es/technology/api.html

Jared Burrows
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kamajo
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  • IB does seem to be the best option, and so far the only one with a wide range of language support. – Wilco Sep 29 '08 at 15:42
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    Language support doesn't necessarily translate into multiple platform support though (lots of APIs still require a DLL) – nall Sep 15 '11 at 05:04
  • Alpace (https://alpaca.markets/) is free and it has free integration for Market data feed with IEX and Polygon (https://polygon.io/) for free for US Markets as of this writing. (And more cool api will come in the near future). I request moderator to reopen this question. – Peru Mar 16 '20 at 04:02
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Looks like E*Trade has an API now.

For access to historical data, I've found EODData to have reasonable prices for their data dumps. For side projects, I can't afford (rather don't want to afford) a huge subscription fee just for some data to tinker with.

Joe Holloway
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I've been using parts of the marketcetera platform. They support all kinds of marketdata sources and brokers and you should easily be able to add more brokers and/or data providers. This is not a direct broker API of course, but that helps you avoid vendor lock-in so that might be a good thing. And of course all the tools they use are open source.

jilles de wit
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openecry.com is a broker with plenty of information on an API and instructions on how to do yours. There are also other brokers with the OEC platform and all the bells and whistles a pro could ask for.

David Cain
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Ameritrade also offers an API, as long as you have an Ameritrade account: http://www.tdameritrade.com/tradingtools/partnertools/api_dev.html

J. Taylor
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    I know this is an old question, but it's what came up while I was searching. Just an FYI, TD Ameritrade (at the time of me writing this) requires an account with 500k or 30 trades per quarter to use their API. However, support did say they were looking at relaxing this a bit. – Jared May 19 '14 at 14:26
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.NET Client Library for TD Ameritrade Trading Platform:

TD Ameritrade .NET SDK, also available via NuGet

Konstantin Tarkus
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  • I know this is an old question, but it's what came up while I was searching. Just an FYI, TD Ameritrade (at the time of me writing this) requires an account with 500k or 30 trades per quarter to use their API. However, support did say they were looking at relaxing this a bit. – Jared May 19 '14 at 14:26
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There are a few. I was looking into MBTrading for a friend. I didn't get too far, as my friend lost interest. Seemed relatively straigt forward with a C# and VB.Net SDK. They had some docs and everything. This was ~6 months ago, so it may be better (or worse) by now.

IIRC, you can create a demo account for free. I don't remember all the details, but it let you connect to their test server and pull quotes and make fake trades and such to get your software fine tuned.

Don't know much about cost for an actual account or anything.

Howler
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Only related with currency trading (Forex), but many Forex brokers are offering MetaTrader which let you code in MQL. The main problem with it (aside that it's limited to Forex) is that you've to code in MQL which might not be your preferred language.

AsTeR
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  • Update to this: A fair few popular forex brokers support CTrader now which lets you code in c# :) – dalcam Jan 27 '22 at 16:41