Alpaca MCP Server

The Alpaca MCP Server is a fully‑featured bridge between the Model Context Protocol ecosystem and Alpaca’s Trading API. It resolves a common pain point for developers building AI‑powered trading assistants: the need to expose complex market data, order execution, and portfolio management endpoints through a simple, language‑agnostic interface. By implementing the MCP specification, the server lets Claude, Cursor, VS Code, and other clients issue natural‑language commands such as “Buy 100 shares of AAPL” or “Show my crypto portfolio balance,” and receive structured, typed responses without writing custom adapters.

At its core, the server translates MCP tool calls into Alpaca API requests. It supports a wide range of financial instruments—including equities, options, and cryptocurrencies—alongside real‑time market data feeds. Developers can tap into the same functionality that Alpaca offers via its REST endpoints, but through a single, consistent MCP schema. This simplifies integration: a client only needs to configure the server once, after which any supported tool can query market prices, place orders, retrieve trade history, or manage account balances using natural language.

Key capabilities include:

• Unified trading operations: Submit market, limit, and stop orders; cancel or modify existing positions; query open orders and trade history.
• Real‑time market data: Access live quotes, historical bars, and market depth for stocks, options, and crypto pairs.
• Portfolio management: Retrieve equity, option, and crypto holdings; calculate exposure and risk metrics.
• Convenient authentication: Use Alpaca API keys securely stored on the server, eliminating the need for clients to handle credentials.
• Extensible tool set: The MCP server exposes each Alpaca endpoint as a discrete tool, allowing AI assistants to chain calls or combine data from multiple sources.

Real‑world use cases abound: a trader can ask an AI assistant to “Show me my current option positions and suggest rebalancing” while the server fetches live Greeks; a portfolio manager can instruct the assistant to “Buy 5% of my crypto holdings in BTC and ETH” and receive confirmation once the orders are placed; a data scientist can request “Plot the last 30 days of AAPL volume” and receive a chart embedded in the chat. Because the server is HTTP‑based, it can run locally or be exposed via a cloud function, enabling remote teams to share the same trading logic without duplicating code.

Integrating Alpaca MCP Server into an AI workflow is straightforward. Once the server is running, any MCP‑compatible client simply points to its endpoint and authenticates with an API key. The assistant then calls tools like or , and the server handles all protocol conversion, error handling, and response formatting. This decouples business logic from the AI layer, allowing developers to focus on higher‑level strategy while the server guarantees reliable access to market data and execution services.