where to find apis for traders
the most popular brokers supporting api access in the traditional stock and futures markets include tradestation tdameritrade and interactivebrokers but many smaller brokers have expanded access over time apis are more common among forex brokers where third party applications and trading systems such as metatrader have been commonly used for many years many brokers provide online documentation for their apis developers can find out exactly how to authenticate with the api what data is available for consumption how to place orders through the api and other technical details it s essential to be familiar with these details before choosing a broker when looking for specific functionality some brokers also provide libraries in various languages to make interaction with their api easier for example a broker may offer a python library that provides a set of functions or methods for placing a trade rather than having to write your own functions to do so this can help accelerate the development of trading systems and make them less costly to develop 