Alpaca's options market data comes in two feeds: the free indicative feed on the Basic plan, whose quotes are modified derivatives of OPRA and whose trades are delayed 15 minutes, and the real OPRA feed on Algo Trader Plus at $99/month. Basic streams up to 200 option quotes and allows 200 historical requests a minute; Algo Trader Plus raises that to 1,000 quotes and 10,000 requests. Historical options data starts in February 2024. All of this is from Alpaca's market-data documentation, read 2026-10-11123. For anything that prices off the live bid and ask, you need OPRA.

What is the difference between Alpaca's indicative feed and OPRA?

Alpaca's own definition: the indicative pricing feed "is a free derivative of the original OPRA feed: the quotes are not actual OPRA quotes, they're just indicative derivatives. The trades are also derivatives and they're delayed by 15 minutes." OPRA is "the consolidated BBO feed" of the Options Price Reporting Authority and is only available to subscribed users2.

Basic (free) Algo Trader Plus ($99/mo)
Options feed Indicative (modified quotes, trades delayed 15 min) OPRA (consolidated BBO)
WebSocket option quotes 200 1,000
Historical data limitation Latest 15 minutes restricted None
Historical API calls 200 / min 10,000 / min
Stocks feed in the same plan IEX only All US exchanges

Table from Alpaca's "About Market Data API" page, read 2026-10-111.

How do I stream options quotes and trades?

Connect to wss://stream.data.alpaca.markets/v1beta1/{feed}, substituting indicative or opra for {feed}; the sandbox URL is wss://stream.data.sandbox.alpaca.markets/v1beta1/{feed}3. Asking for a feed your subscription does not include fails at authentication. Unlike the stock and crypto streams, the option stream is msgpack-only, so a hand-rolled JSON client will not work; Alpaca's SDKs handle the encoding3.

The quote cap counts option contracts, not underlyings. A scanner watching several chains at once runs into 200 quickly and needs the 1,000-quote OPRA plan or a strategy that rotates subscriptions.

Does the option chain endpoint include Greeks?

Yes. GET /v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying_symbol} returns, for each contract of the underlying, the latest trade, the latest quote, the Greeks "calculated using the Black-Scholes model" and an implied volatility4. Its feed parameter defaults to opra if you subscribe and to indicative otherwise4, so Greeks on a Basic account are computed from the indicative feed.

curl -H "APCA-API-KEY-ID: $KEY" -H "APCA-API-SECRET-KEY: $SECRET" \
  "https://data.alpaca.markets/v1beta1/options/snapshots/AAPL?feed=indicative"

How much options history does Alpaca have?

Since February 2024 only, according to the historical option data page2. That is enough for recent-regime research and paper-trading validation, not for multi-cycle backtests. For deeper options history you need a data vendor: Massive's Options Developer plan ($79/month) includes 4 years of options trades as flat files, and its Options Advanced plan has quotes back to March 2022 and trades back to June 20145.

Which feed should an options strategy use?

  • Learning the API, paper trading, end-of-day research: indicative on Basic. Treat its quotes as approximate and its trades as 15 minutes late.
  • Anything that keys off the live spread (entries at mid, spread filters, market making): OPRA on Algo Trader Plus, $99/month.
  • More than 200 contracts at once: OPRA, for the 1,000-quote cap.
  • Backtests before February 2024: a separate options-history vendor.

Platforms on Alpaca's Broker API buy options data differently: the Standard and StandardPlus3000 plans add options for $1,000/month, while StandardPlus5000 and StandardPlus10000 include them1. Trading requests are a separate budget of 200 per minute per account; see Alpaca API Rate Limits 2026.

Connects to

References

Footnotes

  1. Alpaca. "About Market Data API" (Basic: indicative options feed, 200 option quotes over WebSocket, 200 historical calls/min, latest 15 minutes restricted; Algo Trader Plus $99/month: OPRA, 1,000 quotes, 10,000 calls/min; Broker API options pricing). Read 2026-10-11. https://docs.alpaca.markets/us/docs/about-market-data-api ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Alpaca. "Historical Option Data" (data since February 2024; indicative vs OPRA definitions). Read 2026-10-11. https://docs.alpaca.markets/docs/historical-option-data ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Alpaca. "Real-time Option Data" (wss://stream.data.alpaca.markets/v1beta1/{feed}; sandbox URL; msgpack only). Read 2026-10-11. https://docs.alpaca.markets/docs/real-time-option-data ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Alpaca. "Option chain" API reference (GET /v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying_symbol}; latest trade, quote, Black-Scholes Greeks, implied volatility; feed defaults). Read 2026-10-11. https://docs.alpaca.markets/reference/optionchain ↩ ↩2

  5. Massive. "Flat Files: Options Quotes" and options pricing (Developer 4 years of trades; Advanced quotes from 2022-03-07, trades from 2014-06-02). Read 2026-10-11. https://massive.com/docs/flat-files/options/quotes ↩

Frequently asked questions

Does Alpaca's free plan include options data?
Yes, through the indicative feed. Alpaca describes it as a free derivative of OPRA whose quotes are modified and whose trades are delayed 15 minutes. Basic streams up to 200 option quotes and allows 200 historical requests per minute (read 2026-10-11).
How much is Alpaca OPRA data?
The OPRA feed comes with Algo Trader Plus at $99/month, which also adds the full SIP stock feed, 1,000 WebSocket option quotes and 10,000 historical requests per minute.
Does Alpaca provide options Greeks?
Yes. The option chain endpoint GET /v1beta1/options/snapshots/{underlying} returns Black-Scholes Greeks and implied volatility with the latest trade and quote for each contract. Without an OPRA subscription it uses the indicative feed.
How far back does Alpaca options history go?
February 2024, per Alpaca's historical option data documentation. Earlier options history needs a separate data vendor.