What to use instead of the Robinhood API

The product

"The Robinhood API" means three different things, and only one of them is what most people searching for it want.

The private endpoints. Robinhood's app talks to Robinhood's servers over an HTTP API that has never been published. Community libraries wrap it — the best known is robin_stocks, whose PyPI listing calls it "A Python wrapper around the Robinhood API", MIT-licensed, version 3.4.0 dated 18 May 2025 — and they sign in with your own username, password and second factor. Robinhood's help centre, in its article on third-party connections read on 9 October 2026, is direct about this: "We don't allow trading APIs to be linked to your Robinhood account without written authorization from Robinhood. We also don't allow third-party applications to control or take action on your Robinhood app." The same article says official third-party services never ask for your Robinhood login credentials. Section 29 of the brokerage customer agreement, revised 1 October 2026, adds that you may not use Robinhood's API package or build products on it without its express written consent. That is the subject of this page, and the reason it is marked as restricted.

The Crypto Trading API. On 30 May 2024 Robinhood launched an official REST API for Robinhood Crypto customers in the US: crypto market data, crypto holdings and crypto orders, with keys from a credentials portal. It is the only thing on Robinhood's developer documentation site, which on 9 October 2026 held crypto pages and nothing else. It does not reach stocks or options. The crypto side of this question belongs to our sister site, CryptoMarkets.tools, and is not answered here.

The Trading MCP. On 27 May 2026 Robinhood launched Agentic Trading: an AI agent connects to a Model Context Protocol server Robinhood hosts and trades in a dedicated account. It launched in beta for equities only; the help pages read on 9 October 2026 say an external agent can place long equity, options and crypto orders. The agent gets read access to every Robinhood account you hold, including account numbers, positions, balances and order history, but trades only in an MCP account, which counts towards Robinhood's limit of ten self-directed individual accounts and is funded separately. Trade approvals are on by default for the agents built into the app and off by default for external ones. The customer agreement says access is for your own personal use only, and that Robinhood may handle and route orders from these API products differently from app orders, "which may result in adverse execution quality and/or speed".

So the official answer to "Robinhood API for stocks" is narrower than the question: a tool interface built for AI agents, trading one ring-fenced account. A REST client of your own against your main account, which is what a robin_stocks script was, has no sanctioned equivalent.

What to use instead

Split the job before choosing. A script against the private API usually did one of four things.

If an AI agent is the point. Robinhood's own Trading MCP is the sanctioned route, and nothing in this catalogue replaces it. What an MCP server is and what it licenses is in financial MCP servers, and the licence behind them.

If you were reading the account. Positions, balances and history for a dashboard, a spreadsheet or an app are the part with clean routes. SnapTrade sends the user to Robinhood's own website to sign in and accept a Robinhood access agreement, then serves the account over a documented REST API; its Robinhood page lists the connection as read-only, and its free Build tier covers five connected accounts for development. Plaid Investments is the same job for an app with many users: Plaid's own coverage file, generated 18 September 2026, flags Robinhood for investments, holdings and transactions, and production access is an application with a compliance review. The two are set against each other in SnapTrade vs Plaid Investments, and the code path is in read a brokerage account from code.

If you were tracking your returns. A script that pulled trades to compute performance can be replaced by a tracker that does it for you. Sharesight syncs Robinhood through SnapTrade and reports money-weighted returns, dividends and tax.

If you were placing orders from a signal. TradersPost lists Robinhood as a connection: stocks only, including short sales and the Traditional and Roth IRAs it added on 12 August 2024, with no options or crypto, no bracket, OTO or OCO orders, and no paper trading on Robinhood. Its Robinhood connection page states that TradersPost "is an independent third-party platform and is not affiliated with Robinhood". Read that next to the help-centre sentence on trading APIs above and ask both companies before connecting an account you care about. SignalStack names Robinhood in its integration list as well.

If your code places its own orders. That needs a broker with a documented trading API, which Robinhood does not offer for stocks. ib-async is the Python client for Interactive Brokers' API — orders, positions, history and streaming data through TWS or IB Gateway. Lumibot is a strategy framework with ten broker classes, so the same strategy runs in a backtest and live. Neither is an argument for any particular broker, and this page does not choose one.

What you give up

A REST client against your main account. Nothing official replaces what robin_stocks did. The Trading MCP trades only the MCP account and is shaped as tools for an agent, not as endpoints for a script; SnapTrade and Plaid read the main account and cannot write to it.

Orders and data in one place. A robin_stocks script read the account and placed orders on the same session. Every legitimate route on this page does one half: SnapTrade, Plaid and Sharesight read, TradersPost writes, and the MCP does both only inside the agent's own account.

The account, if you leave. ib-async and Lumibot answer the question properly only at another broker. That is a new account, a transfer, and whatever kept you at Robinhood in the first place; the code becomes simple and the move does not.

Migration notes

Stop storing the password. A script that logs in with your username and password is the case Robinhood's help centre warns about: official services do not ask for them. Every route on this page signs in on Robinhood's own screen or does not touch Robinhood at all.

The MCP is not a drop-in for a script. It authenticates through the agent host, exposes tools rather than endpoints, and works against a separately funded account. A strategy that ran against your main account will run against a smaller one, and trade approvals on external agents start switched off, so turn them on while you test.

Read-only feeds are not real time. SnapTrade's daily plan syncs once a day and its real-time plan fetches on request; Plaid's holdings mostly update overnight. If the old script polled positions every minute, the replacement will not.

Pull the history first. Plaid returns up to 24 months of investment transactions, and Sharesight's card notes that SnapTrade pulls historical trades when the account is first connected. Robinhood's own account statements and tax documents remain the record if the two disagree.