Alpaca Markets Alpaca Market Data API
Browse all Alpaca Markets APIs64
AI ReadinessAI-Aware (B)64/100
Official vendor OpenAPI document · agent-readyFinanceBankingapiKey45 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Pull historical and latest bars, quotes, trades, snapshots, and news for US stocks, options, crypto, and forex from Alpaca's market data service.
Use for: I need to fetch the latest quote for AAPL, Get historical 1-minute bars for TSLA over the past week, Retrieve the option chain snapshot for SPY, Pull crypto bars for BTC/USD over the past 24 hours
Not supported: Does not handle order placement, account management, or fundamentals data - use for market data retrieval across stocks, options, crypto, and forex only.
The Alpaca Market Data API provides real-time and historical market data for US equities, options, crypto, crypto perpetual futures, and foreign exchange. Endpoints cover historical bars, quotes, trades, and auctions for stocks, options chains and snapshots, crypto bars and orderbooks, forex rates, screeners for movers and most-actives, news articles, corporate actions, and company logos. Authentication uses APCA-API-KEY-ID and APCA-API-SECRET-KEY headers. Both production and sandbox endpoints are exposed.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Alpaca Market Data API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Alpaca Market Data 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.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Falpaca.markets%2Fmarket-data" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Falpaca.markets%2Fmarket-data" | 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 Alpaca Market Data API.
Pull historical and latest bars, quotes, and trades for US stocks
Read option chains, snapshots, and trades for listed options
Fetch crypto bars, quotes, trades, and orderbooks across regions
Stream-style snapshots for single symbols or multi-symbol queries
Pull forex latest rates and historical currency-pair rates
Read corporate actions and news articles
Run screeners for top market movers and most-actives
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Alpaca Market Data API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Real-time quote and price feed
Trading interfaces poll latest quote endpoints (e.g. GET /v2/stocks/quotes/latest, GET /v2/stocks/{symbol}/quotes/latest) to render live pricing for selected symbols. Snapshots return the most recent bar, quote, and trade in a single call so the UI does not have to assemble three separate requests.
Call GET /v2/stocks/{symbol}/snapshot for AAPL and post the latest price and volume to a Slack trading channel.
Historical bar download for backtesting
Quants pull historical bars via GET /v2/stocks/bars or per-symbol /v2/stocks/{symbol}/bars for backtest pipelines. Crypto and options have parallel historical endpoints, so a single integration covers cross-asset backtesting without juggling multiple data vendors.
Pull 1-minute bars for SPY from 2026-01-01 to 2026-03-31 via GET /v2/stocks/SPY/bars and write to a parquet file.
Options chain and snapshot lookups
Options strategies depend on chain and snapshot data, served by /v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying_symbol} for the chain and /v1beta1/options/snapshots for multi-contract snapshots. Latest quotes, latest trades, and historical bars are also exposed for individual contracts to support implied-vol calculations.
Fetch the option chain for SPY via GET /v1beta1/options/snapshots/SPY and return all contracts expiring this Friday.
Crypto and forex pricing
Crypto bars, quotes, trades, and orderbooks are reachable under /v1beta3/crypto/{loc}, with crypto perpetual futures under /v1beta1/crypto-perps/{loc}. Forex rates are served from /v1beta1/forex/latest/rates and /v1beta1/forex/rates for historical data, so cross-asset agents only need one credential set.
Pull the latest BTC/USD bar via GET /v1beta3/crypto/us/latest/bars and the latest EUR/USD rate via GET /v1beta1/forex/latest/rates.
AI agent market context retrieval
An AI agent answering 'what is the price of TSLA right now?' calls the snapshot endpoint, parses the result, and returns a clean answer. Through Jentic the agent searches by intent for the snapshot operation, loads the input schema, and executes - credentials never enter the prompt context.
Use Jentic to search 'get latest stock price', execute GET /v2/stocks/{symbol}/snapshot for the symbol the user asked about, and return the latest trade price.
Key Endpoints
45 endpoints — the alpaca market data api provides real-time and historical market data for us equities, options, crypto, crypto perpetual futures, and foreign exchange.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
GET
/v2/stocks/{symbol}/snapshot
Snapshot of latest bar, quote, and trade for a symbol
GET
/v2/stocks/bars
Historical bars for multiple symbols
GET
/v2/stocks/quotes/latest
Latest quotes for multiple symbols
GET
/v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying_symbol}
Option chain snapshot for an underlying
GET
/v1beta3/crypto/{loc}/bars
Historical crypto bars
GET
/v1beta1/forex/latest/rates
Latest forex rates
GET
/v1beta1/news
News articles for symbols
GET
/v1beta1/screener/{market_type}/movers
Top market movers
GET
/v2/stocks/{symbol}/snapshot
Snapshot of latest bar, quote, and trade for a symbol
GET
/v2/stocks/bars
Historical bars for multiple symbols
GET
/v2/stocks/quotes/latest
Latest quotes for multiple symbols
GET
/v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying_symbol}
Option chain snapshot for an underlying
GET
/v1beta3/crypto/{loc}/bars
Historical crypto bars
GET
/v1beta1/forex/latest/rates
Latest forex rates
GET
/v1beta1/news
News articles for symbols
GET
/v1beta1/screener/{market_type}/movers
Top market movers
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
A
Alpaca Market Data API
- AI-Aware (B)64/100
99
Foundational Compliance60
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility46
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience94
Agent Usability50
Security70
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
99
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: A+Signals: 4
97%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
100%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
100%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
60
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: B-Signals: 4
20%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
96%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
25%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
46
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: DSignals: 4
46%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
98%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
42%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
94
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
94%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
50
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: C-Signals: 1
50%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
70
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: B+Signals: 1
70%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring the Alpaca Market Data API by hand means sending its API key headers to data.alpaca.markets and encoding the stock, option, crypto, and forex reads across their versioned paths yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the Alpaca Market Data API from the API Directory, store the API key once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
The Alpaca Market Data API puts the symbol in the URL path (/v2/stocks/{symbol}/snapshot, /v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying_symbol}), so a rule can pin your agent to one symbol. This API is read-only, so you choose which of these data reads the agent may call.
Credential isolation
Your Alpaca Market Data API key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'get a stock snapshot' or 'read latest crypto bars', and Jentic returns the matching Alpaca Market Data operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using Alpaca Market Data API through Jentic.
What authentication does the Alpaca Market Data API use?
Two header-based API keys: APCA-API-KEY-ID and APCA-API-SECRET-KEY. Through Jentic, both values are stored encrypted in the vault and injected at execution time, so they never appear in agent prompts or logs.
Can I get the latest price snapshot for a stock?
Yes. GET /v2/stocks/{symbol}/snapshot returns the latest bar, quote, and trade in a single call. Use GET /v2/stocks/snapshots for multi-symbol snapshots in one request.
How do I pull historical 1-minute bars via Jentic?
Install Jentic One, import the Alpaca Market Data API from the API Directory, then have your agent search 'historical stock bars from Alpaca', load the input schema for GET /v2/stocks/{symbol}/bars, and execute with the symbol, timeframe, and date range. Repeat per symbol or use the multi-symbol endpoint for bulk pulls.
Does the API cover options data?
Yes. /v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying_symbol} returns the option chain, and per-contract endpoints expose latest quotes, latest trades, and historical bars. Condition codes and exchange codes are available under /v1beta1/options/meta.
Are crypto and forex pricing supported?
Yes. Crypto bars, quotes, trades, and orderbooks are under /v1beta3/crypto/{loc}, crypto perps are under /v1beta1/crypto-perps/{loc}, and forex latest and historical rates are under /v1beta1/forex. One credential set covers all four asset classes.
What is the difference between the multi-symbol and per-symbol endpoints?
Multi-symbol endpoints (e.g. /v2/stocks/bars) accept a comma-separated list and return data keyed by symbol; per-symbol endpoints (e.g. /v2/stocks/{symbol}/bars) return data for a single symbol. Choose multi-symbol when batching across a watchlist.
Is there an Alpaca Market Data MCP server?
Yes. Alpaca publishes an official MCP server, and its documented tools cover market data queries for bars, quotes, trades, snapshots, and option chains. You can also connect the Alpaca Market Data API directly through Jentic: your agent gets the full 45-endpoint surface from the spec without loading another server's tool definitions into its context, your APCA-API-KEY-ID and APCA-API-SECRET-KEY are injected at call time by your own self-hosted Jentic One instance instead of sitting in an MCP client config file, and your rules decide which operations the agent may call.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Alpaca Market Data API?
Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which Alpaca Market Data operations and credentials the agent may use. Since this API is read-only, you choose which data reads the agent can call, whether that is the stock snapshot at GET /v2/stocks/{symbol}/snapshot, the option chain at /v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying_symbol}, or the crypto and forex reads. The symbol sits in the URL path, so a rule can pin the agent to a single symbol.
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