Alpaca: shares and crypto

US shares, options and crypto on your own API key — and no futures at all, which matters if your strategies trade them.

Alpaca has no futures

Not “not yet” — they do not offer them. A strategy that trades MNQ, ES or NQ cannot be pointed at an Alpaca account, and Tradeus refuses the subscription when you set it up rather than failing at the first live alert.

Alpaca issues you a key pair from your own dashboard. Paper and live are separate accounts with separate keys on separate addresses — a paper key is simply refused by the live one. A paper account is free, needs no verification, and is the sensible place to start.

What the two halves can do

Bought and sold as usual. Alpaca can hold a stop and a target on the order itself, though Tradeus does not use that yet — see below.

Crypto

Market and limit orders only. Alpaca accepts no attached stop or target on crypto at all, and crypto cannot be sold short.

Stops

Because one account covers both halves, Tradeus holds your stop itself rather than leaving it with the broker. The trade log says so on every order.

Shorts

No sell opens a short on Alpaca. A sell reduces or closes what you hold and stops there.

Crypto is spelled with a slash at Alpaca — BTC/USD where your chart says BTCUSD. Tradeus translates both ways, so your alerts keep the name you already use.

Alpaca is not a prop-firm platform, and no firm on the connect screen lists it. If you want an Alpaca account filed under a firm anyway: connected with a key, it goes under the firm you picked first like any other; connected through Alpaca's own sign-in page, the firm cannot travel with it — the connect screen tells you so — and you file it with Edit firm on Broker setup once it is connected. See Connect a prop firm account.

Open in Tradeus

Connect a broker — requires an account.

Step-by-step

Send a TradingView alert to an Alpaca account

Alpaca is the odd one out here, and the most useful thing this page can do is say so before you spend an evening on it: there are no futures. If you came looking for a way to automate a funded futures account, this is the wrong broker and one of the other pages is the right one. If you trade US shares or crypto, three differences are worth knowing first.

Also in Connect a broker

Which brokers workSix you can connect today, what each one asks for, and which of them copy a trade you place by hand.
Connect a prop firm accountPick the firm, then the platform it gave you: how each broker takes the firm, filing older logins, nicknames and flattening one account.
Connecting RithmicWhich system to choose, and why the gateway matters.
Connecting TradovateOAuth and nothing to choose — and why you sign out at Tradovate between two firms' logins.
Connecting TradeLockerYour own login, the Server box copied exactly — and what the reading refuses to guess while a hedge is open.
Connecting Capital.comA key you make yourself, with a password that is not your account's.
MetaTrader 5 in your terminalA small program runs in your own MT5 and reports to Tradeus. No password leaves your machine — and copying stops when the machine does.
Accounts and what their status meansSix states, which of them stop trading, and how to file, name and flatten your accounts.
A broker login belongs to one Tradeus accountAnd removing the connection does not change that.

MetaTrader 5 in your terminal Accounts and what their status means