Which Brokers Can Claude Trade With?

The broker landscape for AI trading changed more in the first half of 2026 than in the previous decade. Six US brokers now run first-party MCP servers: Interactive Brokers, Webull, Public, Robinhood, TradeStation, and Alpaca, all launched within the year. Before 2026, none of them offered an official path for an AI agent to read positions or place orders in a live account.

What MCP is

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that lets AI agents connect to external services and take actions rather than just answer questions. In trading, it means an AI connected to your broker can pull your current positions, fetch live quotes, and submit orders, all in response to a plain-language prompt.

Instead of copying data from your portfolio into a chat window, the AI reaches your account directly. The standard was introduced by Anthropic in late 2024 and adopted rapidly across developer tools and enterprise software. The broker integrations that launched in 2026 are the retail trading industry's response to that adoption.

The baseline before 2026

Before this year, connecting an AI to a broker account meant using unofficial, unsanctioned tools. Robinhood had no public stock or options API. The only wrappers that existed operated in a legal gray area and broke regularly when Robinhood updated its private endpoints.

Many brokers prohibited automated trading in their terms of service outside their own approved platforms.

Alpaca was the notable exception. Its REST API had been available to retail traders since 2018, making it the backbone of a generation of retail automation tools and remaining the most accessible official broker API through the end of 2025. Its first-party MCP server, layered on top of that API, arrived in 2026 alongside the other five.

The current landscape, broker by broker

Six US brokers now offer a first-party MCP server. Three more have official APIs that community-built MCP servers use without formal broker endorsement. Four have no public API or MCP support at all.

First-party MCP servers

Interactive Brokers launched its integration with full certification through the Claude and ChatGPT connector marketplaces. The agent reads your positions, researches markets, and drafts trade instructions, but order submission happens on an IBKR platform. The AI session never reaches the order book.

Connector URL: api.ibkr.com/v1/api/mcp-public. No added cost, no minimum to connect, and any MCP-compatible client works.

TradeStation shipped the first MCP server at any US broker in January 2026 and won StockBrokers.com's Annual Award for #1 Innovation. Claude and ChatGPT are the only supported clients, and access requires a $10,000 minimum eligible balance and a paid subscription to either AI platform. Confirmation is enforced on every order before it reaches the market.

Webull launched in June 2026 and offers the widest execution toolkit of the group: stocks, ETFs, options including multi-leg strategies, futures, crypto, and event contracts. Four connection methods are available, including a local server that keeps your API keys on your own machine. Connector URL: api.webull.com/mcp.

Robinhood launched Agentic Trading in May 2026, opening its platform to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Grok, and any other MCP-compatible client. The agent connects to a dedicated agentic account separate from your primary portfolio, and coverage includes equities and options during the current beta. Connection in Claude Code: claude mcp add robinhood-trading --transport http https://agent.robinhood.com/mcp/trading.

Public runs a hosted MCP server requiring no setup beyond browser authorization. It connects Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity and covers stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, and tax lots. Connector URL: mcp.public.com/mcp.

Alpaca rounds out the first-party list, and it covers the most ground of the six: market, limit, stop, stop-limit, and trailing-stop orders across stocks, options, and crypto, including multi-leg options strategies, plus account, position, and watchlist management. It connects to nine AI tools and IDEs, including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, and VS Code.

Paper trading comes with $100,000 in simulated funds, and going live is just a matter of swapping API keys. Connector URL: alpaca.markets/mcp-server.

Community-only tier

Charles Schwab, E*TRADE, and TastyTrade all have official APIs, but the only MCP servers using them are community-built projects the brokers have not endorsed or certified. They work, but you are outside official support if something goes wrong.

No public API

Fidelity, Ally Invest, Merrill Edge, and Firstrade have no public API for AI tools to connect to. There is no path for an agent to reach these accounts.

Connecting an agent to your broker

Taking Robinhood as the example: in Claude Code, you run claude mcp add robinhood-trading --transport http https://agent.robinhood.com/mcp/trading, then authenticate with /mcp and select robinhood-trading. Robinhood walks you through opening a dedicated agentic account during that setup flow.

Once connected, you can ask Claude to check your buying power, analyze a position, or place an order, all in plain language, routing through Robinhood's Trading MCP to your agentic account.

Claude Desktop uses the same URL but through Settings > Connectors > Add custom connector. ChatGPT, Cursor, Grok, and Codex each work through their own settings menus using the same endpoint. Interactive Brokers appears in both the Claude and ChatGPT certified connector directories, so you can add it without entering a URL manually.

For Webull's local server, setup runs through uvx and reads your API key and secret from a config file, keeping credentials off any external server. The local server defaults to Webull's sandbox rather than a production account, which is useful for testing before anything touches real money.

Where the guardrails diverge

All six first-party servers let an AI read your account and discuss your positions. Where they diverge is what the AI can do without you.

• Interactive Brokers keeps the AI out of execution entirely.
• TradeStation enforces a confirmation step before any order ships.
• Webull lets the AI place orders but gives you configurable caps and a read-only mode.
• Robinhood contains the agent to a separate account.
• Public lets approved agents run unattended.
• Alpaca lets the agent place orders directly, with no built-in confirmation step or dollar cap, and leans on paper trading instead of a live gate to catch mistakes before they cost money.

None of that is a ranking. Each broker made its own call about how much judgment to hand the AI before a human has to step in.

Part 2 of this series digs into what those calls mean in practice, including a real case where an AI reasoned its way to a plausible-sounding but wrong options trade, and whether anything caught it before the order went through.

Sources:

• StockBrokers.com, "Best Brokers for AI Trading Agents in 2026: MCP Tested" (Jessica Inskip, Jul 31, 2026)
• Robinhood Agentic Trading overview and support documentation (robinhood.com)
• Alpaca MCP Server documentation (alpaca.markets)
• Webull MCP Server announcement (June 2026)

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