Alpaca Brokerage Account (Live Trading)

After creating an Alpaca Paper Only Account, you can enable live trading by becoming an Alpaca Brokerage Account holder. This requires you to go through an account on-boarding process with Alpaca Securities LLC, a FINRA member and SEC registered broker-dealer. We now support brokerage accounts for individuals and business entities from around the world.

With a brokerage account, you will be able to fully utilize Alpaca for your automated trading and investing needs. Using the Alpaca API, you’ll be able to buy and sell stocks in your brokerage account, and you’ll receive real-time consolidated market data. In addition, you will continue to be able to test your strategies and simulate your trades in our paper trading environment. And with the Alpaca web dashboard, it’s easy to monitor both your paper trading and your real money brokerage account. All accounts are opened as margin accounts. Accounts with $2,000 or more equity will have access to margin trading and short selling.

Individuals

Alpaca Securities LLC supports individual taxable brokerage accounts. At this time, we do not support retirement accounts.

Businesses/Incorporated Entities

You can open a business trading account to use Alpaca for trading purposes, but not for building apps/services.

👀

Alpaca currently accepts entities that are Corporations, LLCs and Partnerships in the U.S., and around the world. There is a $50,000 minimum deposit required for opening a business account at Alpaca.

Markets Supported

Currently, Alpaca only supports trading of listed U.S. stocks and select cryptocurrencies.

The Account Object

The account API serves important information related to an account, including account status, funds available for trade, funds available for withdrawal, and various flags relevant to an account’s ability to trade.

An account maybe be blocked for just for trades (trading_blocked flag) or for both trades and transfers (account_blocked flag) if Alpaca identifies the account to be engaging in any suspicious activity. Also, in accordance with FINRA’s pattern day trading rule, an account may be flagged for pattern day trading (pattern_day_trader flag), which would inhibit an account from placing any further day-trades.

Please note that cryptocurrencies are not eligible assets to be used as collateral for margin accounts and will require the asset be traded using cash only.

Sample Object

{
  "account_blocked": false,
  "account_number": "010203ABCD",
  "buying_power": "262113.632",
  "cash": "-23140.2",
  "created_at": "2019-06-12T22:47:07.99658Z",
  "currency": "USD",
  "crypto_status": "ACTIVE",
  "non_marginable_buying_power": "7386.56",
  "accrued_fees": "0",
  "pending_transfer_in": "0",
  "pending_transfer_out": "0",
  "daytrade_count": "0",
  "daytrading_buying_power": "262113.632",
  "equity": "103820.56",
  "id": "e6fe16f3-64a4-4921-8928-cadf02f92f98",
  "initial_margin": "63480.38",
  "last_equity": "103529.24",
  "last_maintenance_margin": "38000.832",
  "long_market_value": "126960.76",
  "maintenance_margin": "38088.228",
  "multiplier": "4",
  "pattern_day_trader": false,
  "portfolio_value": "103820.56",
  "regt_buying_power": "80680.36",
  "short_market_value": "0",
  "shorting_enabled": true,
  "sma": "0",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "trade_suspended_by_user": false,
  "trading_blocked": false,
  "transfers_blocked": false
}

Account Properties

Account Status ENUMS

The following are the possible account status values. Most likely, the account status is ACTIVE unless there is an issue. The account status may get to ACCOUNT_UPDATED when personal information is being updated from the dashboard, in which case you may not be allowed trading for a short period of time until the change is approved.