Option Alpha

What it is

Option Alpha is a hosted, browser-only platform for automating options trades without code. A bot holds an allocation and position limits; inside it you build automations from decision blocks — scanners that open positions, monitors that close them, symbol loops, indicators, earnings dates, probability checks — and Option Alpha's servers run them against your broker account. Nothing has to stay open on your machine.

Around the bots sit a backtester that turns a tested setup into a bot, one-minute exit options (profit target, stop, trailing stop) on any position, live payoff diagrams, gamma-exposure charts and a symbol screener. Example bots and community templates are cloneable rule sets with their backtest attached.

It is bought to run an options plan on a schedule, which is why it sits beside Composer rather than among the analytics tools, and is listed under options analytics for its trade-finding tools.

Pricing

There is one plan. Pro is $149 a month, or $99 a month billed annually: 50 bots, $100,000 per bot, unlimited backtesting, any supported broker. A partner broker will pay for it instead — TradeStation with $10,000 kept in the account, Tradier with $5,000 funded and $3,000 kept, tastytrade with $5,000 — and then you trade through that broker only.

That is a broker promotion, not a free tier: without a funded account at one of the three, nothing is free after the 30-day trial, which needs no card. Option Alpha charges no commission; the brokers' rates through it run from $0 per contract at Tradier and TradeStation (index options and clearing fees excepted) to $0.65 at Schwab.

Data & coverage

Bots trade on a consolidated NBBO stream, each tracked option updated at most every 500 ms. The universe is a hand-picked list of about 340 liquid US stocks and ETFs plus SPX and XSP. No futures, futures options or forex.

The backtester covers only SPX, SPY, QQQ, IWM and XSP, on one-minute options data. Its depth depends on which vendor page you read: the changelog of 22 June 2026 says up to 45 DTE and history from January 2013 (XSP from 2015), while the backtester's own page still says 0DTE and next-day over three years. Fills are at the mid, with optional slippage, and assignment is not modelled.

Integrations

Four brokers are live: TradeStation, Tradier, tastytrade and Schwab. Webull, Public and Firstrade are signed with no date; Interactive Brokers and E*TRADE are not connected. Fidelity and Robinhood are marked unavailable, because neither offers a commercial API with options support. Schwab demands reauthorisation every seven days, and a lapsed one leaves open positions unmanaged.

Webhooks are inbound: a URL that runs up to ten automations in a bot, pasted into an alert on TradingView, TrendSpider, Zapier or a script. Backtest positions download as CSV. No API and no native app.

Limitations

• Defined risk only: long stock, verticals, iron condors and iron butterflies. No calendars, diagonals, straddles, strangles or naked short options.
• Bots cannot be backtested — only a position setup can, and the vendor says live and backtested results will diverge.
• Bots look on an interval, every 15 minutes by default or 5 or 1, and miss a threshold crossed in between. Each bot opens at most ten positions a day, holds ten, and touches ten symbols a day.
• Blind to the broker side. Assignments, broker closes after 4 pm and corporate actions have to be handled by hand.
• Retail only, under the NYSE professional subscriber definition, and personal use. The terms forbid access through bots, scrapers or AI agents without written permission.
• Some tools rank trades for you. Trade Ideas ranks live spreads by expected value and "Alpha" (EV over max loss, though the same page calls it a proprietary formula still being tuned). 0DTE Oracle ranks today's 0DTE spreads by a one-year backtest of the same setup; Earnings Edge does it over five years of earnings. Top Backtests and Top Bot Templates are leaderboards of other users' setups. None trades by itself, but a bot can be told to open whatever ranks highest inside your filters. It is unrelated to the Trade Ideas scanner.

Alternatives

Composer is the same no-code idea for stocks and ETFs, with its own brokerage. QuantConnect or Lumibot if you would rather code options strategies for any broker. ORATS sells an intraday options backtester with the data under it. OptionStrat and Option Samurai analyse and scan trades without automating them.