Latest or current stock price

hi

Does alpaca offers API to get the current price of a stock ? I am new to stock trading. I looked into market data API, it offers a bar data API. Can someone point me to right api for current stock api ?

I apologize if silly question.

Hi :wave:

There is no such thing as “the current price of a stock” on the US stock market.

There are bids and offers indicating the prices people are willing to buy / sell a stock. You can see these using the latest quote endpoint.

The latest trade endpoint shows you the last price someone payed for the stock, but naturally this doesn’t mean that your order should also fill on this price.

Bars are trade aggregates for a given interval. For example minute bars show you the Open / High / Low / Close trade prices in a given minute. Depending on your application, this can also be used to get a sense of the price.

Hope this helps.