Alpaca Reviews 

I've been using Alpaca for trading stocks since 2023, then a couple of years. Never had an issue and I'm quite surprised about the negative reviews. I really cannot complain: low fees, good API with a good documentation, the money withdrawn usually arrives the next day. I live in the UK and I know Alpaca is not regulated by the FCA, but it's registered with the SEC and is regulated by the FINRA. It is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC): it means protection for customers.
Really happy so far

1. No ACATs - ACH, wire, only.
2. Email only OFFSHORE customer support, that replies once a day, after market hours
3. ACH linking works intermittently.
4. ACH Success Requires Emailing Support – ACH may work only if you email customer support for assistance.

After one week of attempting to use their platform, I still do not trust their ability to move money in and out of my account. Funds could easily get stuck at any point, and other customer reviews reflect similar concerns.

For these reasons, I have refrained from trading with them. They initially invited me to test their software three years ago. Back then, they lacked margin and options trading, calling themselves a "brokerage" (which was laughable). While they now offer both features, they still struggle with reliable money transfers and account management.

I recommend checking back in five years, but for now, I suggest looking elsewhere.
One week later, I still do not trust that they could move my money in and out of their account. Money may get stuck at any stage - see other reviews

For the above reasons, I did not trade with them - they invited me to test their software - 3 years ago. Back then they had no margin or options trading, and they called themselves a "brokerage" LOL. Now they have both, but still cant move money, let alone accounts - reliably. Come back in 5 years, look elsewhere for now

Absolutely DO NOT USE Alpaca if you trade crypto!!!

Short Version: I have experienced multiple instances where I have set stop-limit orders 20-30% below the current market price and a price glitch on their end caused those stop-limit orders to execute despite being 20-30% below the current market price. I have reached out to their support to work with them to get this resolved, but they have been absolutely terrible to work with and left me out to dry for THOUSANDS of dollars.

Long Version:

Issue 1: Orders executed at the incorrect price
YFIUSD: My stop limit was set to $10,115. Looking at the minute chart on Alpaca’s website on 12/12/24 05:37, you can see that the price experienced an obvious pricing glitch where it opened at $11,469, dipped 14.25% down to $9,835, then rose back up 16.36% to close at $11,444, all in the span of 60 seconds. This was an obvious pricing glitch that triggered my stop limit order 14% below the current market price and caused my position to get incorrectly liquidated.

SUSHIUSD: My stop limit was set to $1.88. Looking at the minute chart on Alpaca’s website on 12/11/24 19:19, you can see that the price experienced an obvious pricing glitch where it opened at $2.5, dipped 24.8% down to $1.88, then rose back up 34.57% to close at $2.53, all in the span of 60 seconds. This was an obvious pricing glitch that triggered my stop limit order 25% below the current market price and caused my position to get incorrectly liquidated.

Issue 2: Incorrect positions reissued for both SUSHIUSD and YFISUD
After a week of continuously reaching out to their support team, they finally replied and reissued me shares of both SUSHIUSD and YFIUSD but this was not the resolution I asked for. I had asked that they honor the sale as if it had been executed at market price when the glitch occurred. And on top of that they were reissued at the incorrect sale price, which doesn't make any sense. Reissuing them a week later also doesn't make any sense as I was denied the opportunity to mange my position, and in the case of YFIUSD I was reissued ABOVE the current market price! Meaning that I was already down money when they appeared in my account. I would have been better off just placing a market order at the current price. I lost $1,391.73 due to the pricing glitch and their attempt to resolve it just made it worse.

After they acknowledged that they should not have reissued the shares in the manner they did, they went silent for another week before just reopening new positions in my account on Christmas Eve without telling me again at the incorrect price. Do you know how insane it is to open crypto positions in someone's account for thousands of dollars without telling them on Christmas Eve? I lost more money from them doing this because the price had dropped again by the time I had realized that they reissued these shares.

Again, I reached out to them, bringing up flagging that they clean up this mess and cover my losses for these reissued shares that I never asked for, but they refused and went silent again. After about another week of me reaching out to them, I got escalated to someone higher up who then opened SHORT positions in my account without telling me, which to me is even MORE DIABOLICAL. Luckily, I caught those pretty quickly and closed them. But it has been an absolute nightmare to deal with them for errors that they are 100% at fault for.

Finally, they credited my account $400, despite me losing upwards of $3,000 total between the error of the stop losses being executed way below market price, and the losses incurred from them reopening positions in my account without telling me, and the price plummeting before I realized what's going on and closed them out.

Absolutely DO NOT USE ALPACA IF YOU TRADE CRYPTO. This has happened multiple times, and there's not a doubt in my mind that it will happen again with them. You will lose money in the long run if you plan to use them.

My first test payment of 1050$ was not credited into my account, despite meeting all legal and formal requirements, and their support until this point was beyond doubt the worst “support” experience I’ve ever had in my life, my rightfully owned funds would simply be retained without any further attempt or even investigation, which constitutes fraud as they provably received my funds. They say stuff like "difference in name" and similar but justify straight away fraud by that - as far as my experience went with their "support".

I’m extremely disappointed with Alpaca's handling of my account closure. Despite repeated attempts to get clarity, I’ve received no substantive responses about what account activity supposedly violated any Customer Agreements.

My transaction history for 2024 is minimal (and only two in 2023), with no actions that could be remotely considered a violation. Furthermore, I haven’t had any communication with Alpaca throughout 2024 until a few weeks ago when I discovered—completely out of the blue—that my account was being closed. This decision was made without warning, prior notification, or any explanation.

Alpaca’s failure to provide transparency or even acknowledge legitimate concerns reflects poorly on their customer service and overall reliability. I expected much better from this company, and this experience has left me with a negative impression of their practices.

#alpaca very bad experience with them... opened account, seems every thing fine, transferred money, then surprised transaction not refleted, i was in hurry to catch buying opportunity of crypto before pulling back, they informed me we recived your money but your account is not active as we need proof of address.
it was a shock for me becasue i was checking the money on daily basis to reflect and did not get a single notification to complete missed info ( not professional at all )
then i uploaded the proof ( utility bill) and kept waiting more 3 days with no reply on my mails and no one cares.
They are very bad according to me and regret to transfer money to them, at end i missed a buying opportuniy with 20% growth of Dogecoin crypto at that date.

I would never suggest #alpaca

i love company 3yrs experience..

Two years and 3000+ trades expirience with Alpaca
I have been working with Alpaca.markets for 2 years and over 3000 real trades.

Alpaca is the best broker for stock trading that I've had (and I've tested about 20 brokers in my career). - - Fantastic order execution.
- True market spread.
- Genuine 0% commission on stocks even for clients outside the USA.

I work with them trading my algorithms every day, and it was one of the best decisions in my trading business.

Alpaca is the absolute worst company to deal with. Despite knowing full well what account of mine to use they continued and knowingly tried to send money to a closed account and continued to blame my bank for the error. I can see from the bank's side that Alpaca was using the incorrect number and they were not using the bank account number they themselves told me they were using. Don't mess with people's money. This company has no accountability, no shame, no care or concern for those that try to interact with them. By far the worst company I have ever experienced.

I've read some of the other reviews and I'm familiar with some of the shortcomings of Alpaca. However, considering the limited number of brokers that provide API support, Alpaca stands out as the absolute best.They offer an excellent API product that is effortless to integrate with and provide outstanding documentation for reference when implementing integrations. While their support can occasionally be slow, it is relatively good and generally very helpful.

I have zero reservations in recommending them to anyone that asks

I closed my account but I have been waiting two months to get my money back and there is no sign that Alpaca wants to give me my money back. Tomorrow I will call the SEC they should not be allowed to do business

I initially alpaca.markets a try because they were the only broker offering what seemed to a decent REST API at the time.
For one, beware of the spread they offer on most securities, it's huge compared to other brokers. Still manageable, though.
Now, the really ugly part. Like others commenters, things went messy when I tried to widthraw. Their UI is plain broken, and they managed to loose track of my funds for a month and a half now, having sent them to an old closed account of mine.
Support is utterly useless, and don't event seem to understand how their own payment processor (CurrencyCloud) functions or how money transfer does work.
All they do is trying to buy time over and over...
Definitively not on my recommendation list.

Twice they have lost considerable amounts of my money transferred in and out of my account. In my opinion they are not fit to handle client money and should lose their licence

If you get past the UI bugs and manage a couple of profitable trades, then you'll hit a UX wall. First, the popup for withdrawal lists states that you need to contact support to withdraw the money. Then, the support will ask you to use the website to trigger the request, but due to a bug, you have to do some JavaScript console magic: they provide an 8-page document to explain how to enable the old UI (you will need some years of experience in web development to understand it). And after you finally fix their provided scripts you get a message that you will be contacted by support.
And then three weeks pass by and nothing happens.
I was writing them every day for two more weeks without a result. They are just asking me to be patient.

Everything except money withdrawal seems to work eventually, is this an accident or yet another shady service...