Alpaca · Rate Limits

Alpaca Markets Rate Limits

Alpaca applies per-account rate limits that differ by product and plan. The Trading API is limited to 200 requests per minute per account. The Market Data API is limited to 200 requests per minute on the free Basic plan and up to 10,000 requests per minute on Algo Trader Plus. WebSocket streaming limits are by connection and symbol count: Basic connections are capped (one concurrent stock connection and a limited number of subscribed symbols), while Algo Trader Plus removes the symbol cap. The Broker API has its own per-partner limits governed by the commercial agreement. Exceeding a limit returns HTTP 429; over-connecting a stream returns an in-band error frame (code 406, connection limit exceeded).

Alpaca Markets Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Alpaca on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

It captures 7 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests, connections, and symbols.

The profile also includes 3 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled.

Tagged areas include Market Data, Trading, Brokerage, Rate Limiting, and Quotas.

7 Limits Throttle: 429
Market DataTradingBrokerageRate LimitingQuotas

Limits

Trading API Requests account
requests
200 per minute
Applies to the Trading API on api.alpaca.markets and paper-api.alpaca.markets.
Market Data Requests (Basic) account
requests
200 per minute
Free Basic market-data plan REST limit.
Market Data Requests (Algo Trader Plus) account
requests
up to 10000 per minute
Raised REST limit on the $99/month Algo Trader Plus plan.
Stock Stream Connections (Basic) account
connections
1 concurrent
Basic plan allows a single concurrent stock WebSocket connection.
Stream Symbols (Basic) connection
symbols
capped (for example ~30 symbols)
Basic plan limits the number of subscribed symbols; Algo Trader Plus is unlimited.
Stream Symbols (Algo Trader Plus) connection
symbols
unlimited
No symbol cap on the paid market-data plan.
Broker API Requests partner
requests
per agreement
Broker API limits are set by the commercial agreement with Alpaca.

Policies

HTTP Throttling
REST requests over the per-minute limit receive HTTP 429; back off and retry.
Stream Connection Limit
Opening more concurrent stream connections than the plan allows returns an in-band error frame with code 406 (connection limit exceeded).
Backoff Strategy
Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter on 429 responses and reconnect streams with a delay after disconnects.

Sources