Guides

Trading with SnapTrade

🚧 Soft Rate Limit

We recommend limiting trade requests to 1 trade per second per account to maximize execution success.

Setup

Create a Trading Connection

By default, connections are created with read-only permissions. To create a trading-enabled connection, set the connectionType body parameter to trade when calling .

Note: When you build a login link with connectionType=trade, the Connection Portal only lists brokerages that support trading. To let users connect with trading permissions when available and fall back to read-only access elsewhere, use connectionType=trade-if-available instead.

Enable Trading for Existing Connections

To enable trading for an existing read-only connection, you'll need to ask the user to re-authorize access:

  1. Set the reconnect body parameter to the ID of the existing connection.
  2. Set connectionType=trade when calling .
  3. Direct the user to the generated re-authorization URL.

Trading Workflow

Equity Orders

Options Strategies

  • Use for multi-leg option strategies (for example, spreads or condors).
  • The payload accepts multiple legs under a single submission.

Extended-Hours Trading

Extended-hours trading is brokerage-specific and only available when the underlying account and instrument support it.

To place an extended-hours order:

  • Set trading_session="EXTENDED" in the order payload to request execution in pre/post-market sessions.
  • Use a LIMIT order type with an appropriate time-in-force.
  • Most brokerages restrict extended-hours orders to DAY with post-market expiry, though some allow GTC.

Important: Not every brokerage supports complex option strategies, or extended-hours sessions. Review the SnapTrade Brokerage Support Matrix for broker-specific coverage details.