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.
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! 🛠
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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.
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?
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. 💪
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
@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.
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.
@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!
Hey @umitanuki I had a look at "https://github.com/alpacahq/alpa..."
but the historical data did not work.
I like to backtest strategies is there a simple notebook to get the historical option chains
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.
@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
@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?
Thrilled about the launch of Alpaca Options API! Commission-free trading via an API is a major advantage for developers like me who are looking to integrate more financial services. Quick question: Are there specific limits on the number of trades or types of options available?
@oleksandra_vasiukhnyk Yes we are super excited with this launch! This release allows any kind of options trading up to level 2 with all rules applied (390 trades per day to stay in non-professional etc). We continue to work on level 3 and multi leg support in coming quarters
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.
@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
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