Skip to content

Home › Guides

How to connect Claude to Alpaca via MCP

✓ Written from official docs · checked 2026-10-16

Alpaca's official MCP server runs locally and exposes 65 tools across the Trading and Market Data APIs. These steps come from Alpaca's MCP docs.

Prerequisites

Python 3.10+
uv with uvx
Alpaca API keys (a free paper trading account is enough to start)
An MCP client: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI or PyCharm

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alpaca": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["alpaca-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "ALPACA_API_KEY": "your_alpaca_api_key",
        "ALPACA_SECRET_KEY": "your_alpaca_secret_key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code (CLI)

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

Verify

Restart the client and ask: "What is my Alpaca account balance and buying power?" If account details come back, it is connected.

Safety settings

ALPACA_PAPER_TRADE defaults to true. Live trading only happens when you set it to false and use live keys.
ALPACA_TOOLSETS limits the tools exposed. A read-only example from the docs: account,stock-data,crypto-data,options-data,news (no trading toolset).
Alpaca warns: never paste API keys into chat; orders execute directly against the Trading API, so review AI-suggested orders.
Some real-time data needs an Algo Trader Plus subscription.

Source: https://docs.alpaca.markets/us/docs/trading-api-mcp. Not financial advice.

Related

Get the weekly AI-trading stack update

New MCP servers, broker and data API changes, and safety notes. One email a week, unsubscribe anytime.