Alpaca MCP Server for Claude

Safety notes

Alpaca MCP Server can expose account balances, buying power, positions, orders, activities, watchlists, assets, market data, news, corporate actions, stocks, crypto, options data, and trading tools to the MCP client.
Trading tools can place stock, ETF, crypto, and option orders, cancel orders, close positions, liquidate portfolios, replace orders, and exercise or mark do-not-exercise option contracts.
Paper trading is the default documented mode; setting `ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE=false` points trading calls at live Alpaca accounts and can result in real financial losses.
Require explicit human approval before any order placement, cancellation, liquidation, option exercise, live-account change, or strategy involving leverage, margin, extended hours, crypto, or options.
Use `ALPACA_TOOLSETS` to restrict the server to read-only or data-only toolsets when trading tools are not needed.
The upstream order override code warns that read timeouts may happen after an order was sent; users should check open orders before retrying to avoid duplicate trades.

Privacy notes

Alpaca API keys, secret keys, account IDs, balances, buying power, portfolio history, activities, positions, orders, watchlists, option contracts, crypto holdings, and trade history can be exposed to the MCP client.
Prompts and responses may include private trading strategy, portfolio allocation, order intent, symbols, quantities, prices, client order IDs, and market data queries.
MCP clients, model providers, terminal history, logs, and chat transcripts may retain financial data and trading instructions.
Upstream documentation states the server sends an Alpaca MCP user agent string for API calls; review Alpaca privacy and disclosure materials for account data handling.

Prerequisites

Python 3.10 or newer and uv or uvx available.
Alpaca API key and secret key for a paper trading account or an explicitly approved live account.
Review of Alpaca account permissions, paper versus live mode, options approval, crypto availability, and market data subscription limits.
A narrow `ALPACA_TOOLSETS` allowlist for the workflow whenever full trading access is not required.
Human review procedures for any order placement, cancellation, position closing, option exercise, or live account action.

Schema details

Install type: cli
Troubleshooting: No

Source repository stats

Scope: Source repo

Collection metadata

Estimated setup: 15 minutes
Difficulty: advanced

Tool listing metadata

Disclosure: Official Alpaca MCP server published as the `alpaca-mcp-server` PyPI package under an MIT license. Trading and market-data use is subject to Alpaca account, brokerage, crypto, options, and data-plan terms.

Full copyable content

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alpaca": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["alpaca-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "ALPACA_API_KEY": "YOUR_ALPACA_API_KEY",
        "ALPACA_SECRET_KEY": "YOUR_ALPACA_SECRET_KEY",
        "ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE": "true",
        "ALPACA_TOOLSETS": "account,stock-data,crypto-data"
      }
    }
  }
}

About this resource

Content

Alpaca MCP Server is Alpaca's official MCP server for the Alpaca Trading API. It uses FastMCP and Alpaca OpenAPI specs to expose account, trading, portfolio, asset, market data, watchlist, news, corporate action, stock, crypto, and options workflows to MCP clients.

Use it for supervised paper-trading, account analysis, portfolio review, market data retrieval, and carefully gated trading workflows. Treat live-trading mode as a financial operations capability that requires human approval and explicit risk controls.

Source Review

These sources were reviewed on 2026-06-06. Prefer the live repository, README, PyPI metadata, license, package manifest, MCP registry metadata, CLI entrypoint, FastMCP server builder, toolset definitions, and order override implementation for current setup and behavior details.

Features

Run as a stdio MCP server with uvx alpaca-mcp-server.
Configure paper or live trading with ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE.
Restrict exposed capabilities with ALPACA_TOOLSETS.
Read account information, account configuration, portfolio history, and account activities.
Retrieve and manage orders, positions, watchlists, assets, market calendar, market clock, corporate actions, and news.
Place stock, ETF, crypto, and options orders through curated order tools.
Retrieve stock, crypto, options, fixed income, and index market data depending on enabled toolsets and account/data access.
Use OpenAPI-derived tools plus hand-crafted overrides for complex order and market-data endpoints.

Installation

Configure the MCP client with Alpaca credentials. Keep paper trading enabled unless a live-trading workflow is explicitly approved:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alpaca": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["alpaca-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "ALPACA_API_KEY": "YOUR_ALPACA_API_KEY",
        "ALPACA_SECRET_KEY": "YOUR_ALPACA_SECRET_KEY",
        "ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE": "true",
        "ALPACA_TOOLSETS": "account,stock-data,crypto-data"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code users can add it with:

claude mcp add alpaca --scope user --transport stdio uvx alpaca-mcp-server --env ALPACA_API_KEY=YOUR_ALPACA_API_KEY --env ALPACA_SECRET_KEY=YOUR_ALPACA_SECRET_KEY

Set ALPACA_TOOLSETS to the smallest set needed. For data-only use, omit the trading toolset.

Use Cases

Ask Claude to summarize paper account balances and buying power.
Retrieve current positions and open orders for review.
Pull recent stock, crypto, or options market data.
Check market calendar, market clock, news, and corporate actions.
Manage watchlists for research workflows.
Test paper-trading order flows under human supervision.
Restrict Claude to market-data toolsets for analysis-only sessions.

Safety and Privacy

Alpaca MCP Server can place real trades when configured for live trading. Keep paper mode enabled for experiments, use data-only toolsets whenever possible, and require human confirmation for every trading, cancellation, liquidation, or option-exercise action.

Options, crypto, margin, extended-hours, bracket, stop, trailing-stop, and multi-leg strategies carry significant financial risk. Claude-generated orders are not investment advice and can be wrong, stale, incomplete, or unsuitable for the account.

Alpaca credentials and account data are highly sensitive. Do not paste real API keys into prompts or shared logs. Treat MCP transcripts as financial records when they contain balances, positions, orders, symbols, quantities, prices, portfolio history, activities, or strategy details.

Duplicate Check

Existing entries cover financial research and market data tools such as Drillr and TradingView, but no Alpaca MCP Server, alpacahq/alpaca-mcp-server, alpaca-mcp-server PyPI package, or Alpaca Trading API MCP entry was found in content/mcp.

#trading#finance#market-data#stocks#crypto