How to Deploy Alpaca’s MCP Server Remotely On Claude Mobile App

Alpaca — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 16:01:20 +0000

The launch of Alpaca’s official MCP Server allows Large Language Models (LLM) clients like Cursor, ChatGPT, and Claude to research, analyze, and place orders through natural language or code. This guide demonstrates how to connect the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to Claude Mobile App, emphasizing transparent execution, and a code-optional path that can expand into full automation.

Prerequisites

To use Alpaca’s MCP Server remotely, make sure you have the following tools ready:

Alpaca API keys (with paper or live trading access optional)
To find your Alpaca API keys, please check our “How to Get Alpaca’s Trading API Key and Start Connect” or “How to Start Paper Trading with Alpaca”
Python with version 3.10 or higher
Docker account
GitHub account
uv (Install using the official guide)
AI tool (MCP Client) with a paid subscription is preferred - We use Claude with “pro plan” as an example
Terminal (macOS/Linux) | Command Prompt or PowerShell (Windows)
Any cloud service such as AWS, Azure, GCP - We use Render as an example

How Remote Alpaca’s MCP Server Helps Traders with AI

With a self-hosted remote version of Alpaca’s MCP Server, you can bring Alpaca’s Trading API directly into your favorite AI interface and streamline essential parts of your trading workflow through natural language or code. Some examples of what you can do include:

Asking AI to pull your Alpaca trading account details, portfolio positions, unrealized P&L, market data, and company news
Analyzing market trends, earnings highlights, and price movements with AI assisted reasoning
Building and refining trading algorithms in a single, connected workflow
Automating repetitive tasks using an AI powered Command Line Interface (e.g. Claude Code, Gemini CLI)
Placing trades through natural language or programmatically using Alpaca’s Trading API

Overview of Setting Up

Here’s a quick overview of how to set up a remote Alpaca’s MCP Server, connect it to the Claude mobile app, and bring AI into your trading workflow.

Install Alpaca’s MCP Server locally, then build and push a Docker image
Deploy the Alpaca’s MCP Server remotely using a cloud service
Connect it to Claude AI to execute trades through natural language

We will cover each step in more detail below.

Step 1: How to Install Alpaca’s MCP Server and Build and Push a Docker Image

Let’s walk through setting up Alpaca’s MCP Server. First, we’ll install it locally and then build a Docker image.

Step 1-1. Install the Alpaca’s MCP Server

Start by installing Alpaca’s MCP Server on your local machine. Open Terminal (macOS/Linux) or Command Prompt/PowerShell (Windows), then enter the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-mcp-server.git
cd alpaca-mcp-server

Step 1-2. Login to Docker and Containerize to Push
Before we move forward, make sure you install Docker (you could also install Docker desktop for visibility). After you installed Docker, run the following commands to confirm you installed Docker on your computer.

docker version
docker info

Then, log in to Docker Hub through CLI. You’ll be prompted for your Docker Hub username and password. This is required for pushing Docker images to Docker hub later.

docker login

How do we connect Docker and Docker Hub together?
They use the same account system. When you sign up on hub.docker.com, that same username and password are used to authenticate Docker on your local machine. Once you log in through the terminal or Docker Desktop, your local Docker client is linked to your Docker Hub account automatically.

Once you login to your Docker account, use your Docker username (e.g. alpaca) and your preferred Docker Image name (e.g. sato-alpaca-mcp-server) to build and push the Docker image to Docker hub. We name the tag as latest here.

docker buildx build --pull --platform=linux/amd64 -t username/custom-docker-image-name:v.1.0.1 . --push

If you have a Docker Desktop app, you could see the Docker Image was built.

You can also check your Docker image was pushed to a Docker hub.

You can do a sanity check locally by running the following command in terminal:

docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 -e PORT=8000 username/custom-docker-image-name:latest python -m alpaca_mcp_server.server --transport streamable-http --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

You would likely see the following:

INFO:     Started server process [1]
INFO:     Waiting for application startup.
StreamableHTTP session manager started
INFO:     Application startup complete.
INFO:     Uvicorn running on http://0.0.0.0:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)

Step 2: How to Deploy Remote Alpaca’s MCP Server Using Render: Cloud Application Platform

Now that we’ve pushed the Docker image (containerized Alpaca’s MCP server) to Docker Hub, we can host it as a web service using a cloud application platform such as Render. You can use any cloud platform you prefer, but for this tutorial, we’ll use Render because of its simplicity.

At Render’s dashboard, create a new project

And then, Click “Create new service.”

Select “Web Service” to start the service.

Click “Existing Images” and add the pushed Docker image URL (username/custom-docker-image-name:latest). Please make sure to add the latest tag at last. And then, hit the connect button.

And then, choose your instance for Alpaca’s remote MCP server. We use Free for this tutorial.

Set the environment variables for Alpaca’s MCP Server, namely, ALPACA_API_KEY and ALPACA_SECRET_KEY.
HOST=0.0.0.0
ALLOWED_HOSTS=your-app-name.onrender.com (e.g., sato-alpaca-mcp-server-v1-0-1.onrender.com)

If you are new to Alpaca, you can find your API keys in your Alpaca dashboard.

In the “Advanced” settings, set the Docker Command on Render to the following so that the web service runs with streamable-http bound to 0.0.0.0:$PORT. And then, hit “Deploy Web Service”

alpaca-mcp-server serve --transport streamable-httpalpaca-mcp-server serve --transport streamable-http --host 0.0.0.0 --port $PORT

After connecting successfully, you should be able to see the logs showing the URL to connect with (e.g. https://alpaca-mcp-server-v1-0-3latest.onrender.com).

Step 3: How to Connect Claude AI and Trade with English on Mobile

Now that you’ve remotely “self-hosted” Alpaca’s MCP Server, we can connect it as a remote MCP server.

Step 3-1. Connect Remote Alpaca’s MCP Server with Claude Webpage

You need to add it as a custom connector on the Claude webpage to use the MCP server in the Claude mobile app. Enter your preferred MCP Server name (for example, Alpaca’s MCP Server) and use https://alpaca-mcp-server-v-1-0-3latest.onrender.com/mcp as the Remote MCP Server URL (making sure it ends with mcp).

Now, you should be able to see Alpaca’s MCP server connected with Claude's website.

Step 3-2. Use Alpaca’s MCP Server on Claude Mobile App

Now that we connect it with the Claude system, we can open up Claude mobile and check.

Open the Claude mobile app. On the chat screen, tap the plus (+) icon next to the message box to open additional options.

In the menu that appears, scroll and tap Manage Connectors to view all available and custom connectors.

In the Connectors list, look for Alpaca’s MCP Server under Custom Connectors. Tap it to enable and start using it within your Claude’s mobile app.

After confirming Alpaca’s MCP server connected with the Claude app, you can enjoy the power of AI on trading with the Alpaca’s Trading API.

Security Considerations for Remote MCP Deployment

Running an MCP server remotely introduces a few important security considerations. Many early stage examples such as FastMCP are designed for local testing and may not include authentication or encrypted communication by default.

When a server is publicly accessible, it is possible for external requests to reach it. If the server handles sensitive information such as Alpaca Trading API keys, this can create a risk of unauthorized access or unintended tool execution.

To reduce these risks, a secure deployment should include HTTPS or TLS for encrypted communication and a reliable token based authentication method. Taking these steps helps protect your credentials and ensures that only trusted clients can interact with your MCP server.

Conclusion

With “self-hosted” remote Alpaca's MCP server and AI interface, we can put your idea into working trading action quickly, powered by Alpaca’s Trading API. Want to try it yourself? Explore the GitHub repository to get started.

If you're new to Alpaca, sign up on our website and embark on your own trading journey!

As we put these concepts into practice, feel free to share your feedback and experiences on our forum, Slack community, or subreddit! For those looking to algorithmic trading with Alpaca’s Trading API, here are some additional resources:

Hacktoberfest 2021 🎃 Celebrate Open Source with Alpaca

Alpaca — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 22:18:37 +0000

October is for open-source celebrations and Alpaca is excited to participate! For the first time ever, we’re actively seeking Hacktoberfest contributions. Contribute to our open-source projects in the month of October and win cool Alpaca swag. 👕

What is Hacktoberfest?
Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open source software hosted by DigitalOcean, and encourages worldwide participants to contribute to open-source projects hosted across GitHub.

Getting Started
Make sure you have an account, then register on the official site and start contributing to any participating open source project between Oct 1 - Oct 31. You must make at least four pull requests (PRs) in the month of October in any GitHub-hosted repository/project with the hacktoberfest label in order to qualify. To make sure that your pull request is valid, please adhere to Hacktoberfest's quality standard.

Earn Hacktoberfest and Alpaca Swag
The first 50,000 participants who meet the contribution criteria set by DigitalOcean receive a Hacktoberfest T-shirt.

In addition, if you’re one of the first 20 participants to submit one or more successfully merged pull requests to our open source projects, you’ll receive an Alpaca T-shirt. 🦙

Why Contribute to Alpaca’s Open Source Projects?
Alpaca is a fast-growing fintech company that is democratizing global access to financial markets with a developer-friendly stock and crypto trading API.

By contributing to Alpaca's open source projects, you’re helping the entire community become more efficient and productive and empowering developers worldwide to build fintech apps.

Here’s a list of our Hacktoberfest-eligible repositories:

https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api-go

https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api-csharp

https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api-python

https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api-js

https://github.com/alpacahq/marketstore

We hope you have fun contributing to and celebrating open source this month!