Real life trading API

Question

Do you know an API that lets you trade with real life stock or currency?

If so, please describe your experience:

ease of development
commissions
sandbox environment?
etc.

And subvert Wall Street's control over the "cost" of trades? Hahahaha. That's funny. — S.Lott, Apr 13 '09 at 17:34
They do exist, but the ones I have seen are crazy expensive. — Chris Ballance, Apr 13 '09 at 17:37
@ceejayoz-It would either be a really good day or a really bad day if you did! ... either way it would be a life changing event! ;-) — John MacIntyre, Apr 13 '09 at 18:41
TD Ameritrade Client Library for .NET http://github.com/kriasoft/tdameritrade — Konstantin Tarkus, Aug 19 '13 at 12:22

dirkgently · Accepted Answer · 2009-04-13T17:45:31.980

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AFAIK, TradeStation is the most famous of the lot. Most other trading softwares provide APIs (NinjaTrader, MetaStock etc). FWIW, there are even competitions of automated trading systems -- see this.

Also, this is something that the exchange has to support and your broker has to allow. Most exchanges I know of, do not allow automated trading without prior permission.

edited Apr 13 '09 at 17:45

answered Apr 13 '09 at 17:37

dirkgently

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FWIW, I don't think the MetaStock API allows you to make trades; their software is strictly Technical Analysis, so it just gets prices. – Jeff Barger Apr 13 '09 at 17:52
@Jeff Barger: There's some kludge: – dirkgently Apr 13 '09 at 18:00
TradeStation also has an HTTP based api, check out the docs at: http://tradestation.github.io/webapi-docs/ – dk. Jan 05 '14 at 21:40
we need an update on this answer; it can't be used for HFT right? – Jan 20 '16 at 21:33
TradeStation needs a 50k deposit to get access to their API. Just so you know... – Carles Estevadeordal Mar 14 '19 at 22:17
Interactive Brockers API is a trap, slowly eating enormous amount of development time. Their Client Portal Web API demo has an expired SSL certificate (expired 1 year ago). You can only have one login session at any time, any type of client (Trader, API and Web), So you can not follow your API activity. I could not reach their customer support yet. Things you can do with a simple API like Alpaca in a day will take weeks of workarounds with Interactive Brockers API – profimedica May 31 '20 at 21:07

Jon · Answer 2 · 2009-04-13T18:01:54.017

There are many brokers who will give you access to an API which lets you trade. Obviously you will be paying commissions to them as well as the bid/ask spread which may be wider than the direct markets. They will all differ in the types of instrument that they allow you to trade.

If you want an easy way in, you can use shrink-wrapped software such as Tradestation (horrible proprietary language), NinjaTrader (a little better, C#-based), or SmartQuant (better, C#-based). These generally have pre-built interfaces to a number of brokerages who will actually execute the trades. InteractiveBrokers also has a direct API but they have a reputation for being a pain to deal with.

I would recommend checking alternative forums, such as EliteTrader which has a wealth of information on the relative merits of different brokerages. There are also plenty of folks on there trading through APIs.

i think those services does not offer real time data :( – frabiacca Nov 04 '10 at 10:24 — frabiacca, Nov 04 '10 at 10:24

score 15 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 15 '09 at 16:37

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Try TD Ameritrade - they have a nice API, relatively low trading fees, and a good help forum . Link to their API offering overview.

answered Apr 15 '09 at 16:37

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TD Ameritrade has huge costs. I mean - why pay $10 per trade when you can use Interactive Brokers, and pay $1 per trade? Its no contest. – Contango Aug 11 '10 at 11:15
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One reason, because Interactive Brokers has high account minimums. TD is like $100 or something ridiculously small. – extracrispy Mar 14 '13 at 05:59
TD Ameritrade Client Library for .NET github.com/kriasoft/tdameritrade – Konstantin Tarkus Aug 19 '13 at 12:23
This can be good for just getting real time quotes for free. – train Feb 02 '16 at 16:20
EDIT: It seems like there's a $25,000 account minimum to access their APIs... – train Feb 02 '16 at 17:21

score 12 · Answer 4 · 2009-04-13T17:50:13.840

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Most electronic stock exchanges don't provide an API, they provide a message specification. To get them to accept your messages (i.e. to trade directly with them), you will have to spend a very large amount of money. and become a member of the exchange - that's what IBs do. Even a live market data feed (which you would need in order trade sensibly) can be ridiculously expensive.

edited Apr 13 '09 at 17:50

answered Apr 13 '09 at 17:41

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Correct. You must be a member to trade directly, so effectively you are talking to an API for a 'broker/dealer' that talks to another API directly to the exchange. The exchanges make a good portion of their money from selling real time data feeds. – Joshua Davis Nov 27 '10 at 02:50

score 11 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

11

This is similar to a question I asked a couple of years ago: What online brokers offer APIs?

I would recommend looking into Interactive Brokers, which is the one I ended up choosing. Their API supports multiple languages including Java, C++, ActiveX and Excel's DDE. You can effectively do just about anything via the API that you can do using their fairly robust trading platform.

As a broker alone it's hard to beat IB's crazy low commissions (most of my orders are so low they get rounded up to the $1 minimum commission per order). Combine that with a fairly straightforward API and it's hard to beat.

Also, take a look at my question (linked above, and here) for more information on brokers that offer APIs.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

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answered Dec 29 '10 at 19:36

Wilco

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Just to add to what was said about InteractiveBrokers, they are high commissions if you trade a lot of shares, e.g. more than 1500. The commissions are per-share traded. They have commission examples of $150,000 on their website for trading millions of shares. – May 17 '11 at 23:40
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To add to Anon's comment, the commissions are here: http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=commission (For US is is 0.005 USD/share, with a max of 0.5% of trade value; so a $150K commission implies buying 30 million shares of something...) – Darren Cook Aug 26 '11 at 13:57
To my knowledge IB API connects to their program while it is running on your desktop. It does not seem very useful really... – Carles Estevadeordal Mar 14 '19 at 22:24

AdamB · Answer 6 · 2011-08-10T22:38:45.880

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I've just started playing around with TradeKing's API. Its dead simple and uses oauth. The $5 trade commission isn't bad either.

E-trade also has an api, but you have to go through some hoops to get production access. They also provide realtime streaming via a comet interface. There don't seem to be any libraries out there for etrade either except for the java ones etrade provides.

edited Aug 10 '11 at 22:38

answered Aug 10 '11 at 22:20

AdamB

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You have to be US citizen... – Carles Estevadeordal Mar 14 '19 at 22:25

score 6 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 11 '14 at 20:42

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https://www.quantopian.com

i suppose the newest, but has an online ide / debugger / visualizer, and integration with interactive brokers for paper trading and real trading. great community for R&D too

answered Mar 11 '14 at 20:42

JasonS

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Quantopian does not let you live trade, only test your algorithm, which is not the same. – Dmitri Zaitsev Jun 21 '15 at 12:03
quantopian does let you live trade + paper trade via an integration with interactive brokers (IB). you need an IB account though. – JasonS Jun 30 '15 at 22:36
Thanks for the correction :) Is it limited to IB? Any other broker? – Dmitri Zaitsev Jul 01 '15 at 03:28
IB only, and you need to fund your IB account to paper trade, but it works! – JasonS Jul 12 '15 at 02:07

score 3 · Answer 8 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

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Go through the links on this page.

Lists a number of open source api's. Haven't tried any yet, but planning to check out active-quant.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

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answered Nov 15 '09 at 17:36

baskin

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score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 13 '09 at 17:40

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Contact your target Stock Exchange for trading API and test server. If your target Stock Excnage is on OMX platform, you will be provided with X-Stream API (unmanaged c++) and docs.

answered Apr 13 '09 at 17:40

Davorin

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score 1 · Answer 10 · edited Jan 28 '17 at 03:54

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You may also want to take a look at TD Ameritrade .NET SDK hosted at Github

edited Jan 28 '17 at 03:54

gchao

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answered Nov 15 '10 at 11:52

Konstantin Tarkus

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score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Apr 13 '09 at 17:37

I believe there is an API for working with ETrade and some of the other trading software. I don't think you're going to find an API for executing trades without making use of a commercial product, though. If you're trying to do some analysis of trades, though, there are APIs available for retrieving quotes, listening to ticks, getting historical data for a symbol, etc. As I said at the beginning, many of the existing commercial products have an API for writing code to work with them.

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Feb 20 '14 at 15:32

I have used NinjaTrader and MetaTrader to trade currencies and futures products.

Ninja trader is very easy to use. I don't have super in depth coding skills although I can hold my own, and it worked for me just fine.

Their application is free to download. They have also created an "app" where you can choose different technical indicators to create trading strategies.

Having traded for awhile using automated systems, winning and losing, I would highly suggest using TICK DATA when you trade. Automated trading in the sense where you are using technical indicators to make your trading decisions is very competitive and very fast. Meaning, if you are using data such as 1min data, you are going to be behind the profitable trades, if there are any for your system.

I can tell you that as a day trader, the days of sitting at your screen and trading when the 1 min moving average crosses the 10 min, or something similar to that, are over. Not to say longer term strategies don't work, they do, on the daily charts.

My point is, use tick data no matter what platform you use. Ninja Trader is pretty good. Sign up for the tick data, and use that to trade. You'll have a better shot at being profitable if you are using technical indicators.

Real life trading API

12 Answers12