Alpaca Markets Alpaca Market Data API

Name: Alpaca Market Data API
Brand: Alpaca Market Data API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecFinanceBankingapiKey45 Endpoints

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.

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 | sh

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 instance

Jentic 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

GET STARTED

Start building with Alpaca Market Data API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

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.

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

Why Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

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.

Time to first call

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?

Run pip install jentic, 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.

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.