Alpaca Markets Broker API
Browse all Alpaca Markets APIs✓ Official Vendor SpecFinanceBankingbasic131 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Open brokerage accounts, manage funding and ACH relationships, trade on behalf of customers, run rebalancing programmes, and handle journals across accounts via the Alpaca Broker API.
Use for: I need to open a brokerage account for a new customer, Submit KYC documents for an existing account, Set up an ACH relationship for an account, Place a limit order to buy 10 shares of AAPL for account {id}
Not supported: Does not handle market data, retail self-directed trading, or non-brokerage banking — use for branded brokerage account opening, funding, trading on behalf of customers, and rebalancing only.
The Alpaca Broker API lets businesses open and manage brokerage accounts and offer stock, options, and crypto trading to their end users under their own brand. It covers the full account lifecycle including onboarding, KYC and CIP, ACH and bank relationship setup, funding wallets, journals between accounts, trading on behalf of accounts, watchlists, corporate actions, and rebalancing portfolios. The API uses HTTP basic authentication for server-to-server calls and exposes both production and sandbox endpoints. With 131 endpoints, it is the broadest of Alpaca's three APIs and is intended for fintechs building branded investing products.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Broker API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Broker API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
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Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with Broker API.
Open and update brokerage accounts with KYC and CIP information
Set up ACH relationships and funding wallets for an account
Place, replace, and cancel orders on behalf of an account
Move cash between accounts via journals, including batch journals
Run automated rebalancing portfolios, subscriptions, and runs
Subscribe to account, journal, transfer, and trade events via SSE
Manage watchlists and read corporate action announcements
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Broker API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Customer onboarding and account opening
Fintechs onboarding new customers create brokerage accounts via POST /v1/accounts, then upload identity documents to /v1/accounts/{account_id}/documents/upload and CIP information to /v1/accounts/{account_id}/cip. Document downloads, account status events, and onboarding-related Onfido SDK token retrieval are all part of the same surface, so onboarding does not require gluing together multiple vendors.
Call POST /v1/accounts with the new customer's identity payload, then upload a passport scan via POST /v1/accounts/{account_id}/documents/upload.
Trading on behalf of accounts
Apps trade on behalf of their users by calling POST /v1/trading/accounts/{account_id}/orders with the order parameters and managing positions through the same /v1/trading/accounts namespace. Open orders, watchlists, portfolio history, and PDT status are all reachable from this branch, which keeps trading flows in one cohesive subtree.
Place a buy limit order for 5 shares of MSFT at 420.00 USD on account ACCT-1234 via POST /v1/trading/accounts/ACCT-1234/orders.
Funding and journals
Funds flow into accounts via ACH (POST /v1/accounts/{account_id}/transfers) and between accounts via journals (POST /v1/journals). Batch journals, reverse batch journals, and crypto funding wallets cover the full set of money movement patterns a brokerage needs without leaving the API.
Initiate an ACH deposit of 5000 USD into account ACCT-1234 via POST /v1/accounts/ACCT-1234/transfers.
Automated rebalancing programmes
Robo-advisors register model portfolios via /v1/rebalancing/portfolios, subscribe accounts to portfolios, and trigger rebalancing runs. The rebalancing endpoints model the full subscription and run lifecycle, which lets advisors run scheduled rebalances without orchestrating individual orders manually.
Subscribe account ACCT-1234 to portfolio PORT-9 via POST /v1/rebalancing/subscriptions, then trigger a manual run via POST /v1/rebalancing/runs.
AI agent investing assistant
An AI agent acting on behalf of a managed-account customer can read positions, propose orders, and place trades after explicit confirmation. Through Jentic the agent searches by intent, loads the order schema, and executes — the basic auth credentials are kept in the Jentic vault and never appear in the prompt context.
Use Jentic to search 'place a buy order for an Alpaca brokerage account', execute POST /v1/trading/accounts/{id}/orders after confirmation.
Key Endpoints
131 endpoints — the alpaca broker api lets businesses open and manage brokerage accounts and offer stock, options, and crypto trading to their end users under their own brand.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
POST
/v1/accounts
Create a new brokerage account
GET
/v1/accounts/{account_id}
Retrieve an account by ID
POST
/v1/trading/accounts/{account_id}/orders
Create an order for an account
GET
/v1/trading/accounts/{account_id}/positions
List open positions for an account
POST
/v1/accounts/{account_id}/transfers
Request a new transfer
POST
/v1/journals
Create a journal between accounts
POST
/v1/rebalancing/runs
Trigger a rebalancing run
GET
/v2/events/trades
Subscribe to trade events via SSE
POST
/v1/accounts
Create a new brokerage account
GET
/v1/accounts/{account_id}
Retrieve an account by ID
POST
/v1/trading/accounts/{account_id}/orders
Create an order for an account
GET
/v1/trading/accounts/{account_id}/positions
List open positions for an account
POST
/v1/accounts/{account_id}/transfers
Request a new transfer
POST
/v1/journals
Create a journal between accounts
POST
/v1/rebalancing/runs
Trigger a rebalancing run
GET
/v2/events/trades
Subscribe to trade events via SSE
Why Jentic?
Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.
Credential isolation
Alpaca Broker basic auth credentials are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents call operations by intent and Jentic injects the Authorization header — the raw API key and secret never enter the prompt context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search 'open a brokerage account' or 'place an order for an Alpaca account' and Jentic returns the matching operation with its full input schema, including the account_id parameter and order body.
Time to first call
Direct Alpaca Broker integration: 1-2 weeks across onboarding, ACH, trading, journals, and event streams. Through Jentic: under a day for the per-operation calls — the discovery layer removes most reading of the docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
Complementary
Stripe
Stripe handles fee collection from end customers outside the brokerage flow
Use Stripe when the fintech needs to collect platform or subscription fees in addition to investing
FAQs
Specific to using Broker API through Jentic.
What authentication does the Alpaca Broker API use?
HTTP basic authentication for server-to-server calls. Through Jentic, the basic auth credentials are stored encrypted in the vault and injected at execution time, so they never appear in agent prompts or logs.
Can I open a brokerage account through the Broker API?
Yes. POST /v1/accounts creates a new brokerage account. KYC, CIP, and identity documents are uploaded via /v1/accounts/{account_id}/cip and /v1/accounts/{account_id}/documents/upload to complete onboarding.
How do I place an order on behalf of an account through Jentic?
Run pip install jentic, search 'place an order for an Alpaca brokerage account', load the input schema for POST /v1/trading/accounts/{account_id}/orders, and execute with the symbol, quantity, side, and order type.
Can I move cash between two accounts via the API?
Yes. POST /v1/journals creates a journal between accounts. POST /v1/journals/batch and POST /v1/journals/reverse_batch handle one-to-many and many-to-one transfers in a single call.
Does the Broker API support automated rebalancing?
Yes. The /v1/rebalancing endpoints expose model portfolios, account subscriptions, and rebalancing runs. Use POST /v1/rebalancing/runs to trigger a manual rebalance against a configured portfolio.
Is there a sandbox environment for the Broker API?
Yes. The spec lists a sandbox endpoint at https://broker-api.sandbox.alpaca.markets alongside the production endpoint. Use the sandbox to develop and test before pointing at the production base URL.
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