Trading 212 MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for the Trading 212 Public API, packaged as a Docker container with an SSE transport for hosting on Obot (or any MCP host that speaks SSE).

It exposes the account, instruments, orders, history and pies endpoints as MCP tools.

⚠️ This server can place and cancel real orders. It targets the demo / paper environment by default. Only set TRADING212_LIVE=true once you understand the risk.

Environments

Trading 212 runs two fully separate environments, each with its own credentials:

Related MCP server: trading212-mcp-server

Authentication

The Public API uses HTTP Basic auth — Base64("API_KEY:API_SECRET"). Generate the key and secret in the Trading 212 app under Settings > API; the secret is shown only once.

Configuration

Provide config one of two ways (env vars are the simplest):

Environment variables

Config file (Docker volume)

Mount a JSON file at /config/config.json (takes priority over env vars):

{
  "api_key": "your-api-key-here",
  "api_secret": "your-api-secret-here",
  "live": false
}

Running

docker-compose

cp .env.example .env   # then edit values
docker compose up --build

docker

docker build -t trading212-mcp .
docker run -p 8000:8000 \
  -e TRADING212_API_KEY=... \
  -e TRADING212_API_SECRET=... \
  -e TRADING212_LIVE=false \
  trading212-mcp

The server then exposes:

• GET /sse — MCP SSE connection endpoint (point your MCP host here)

• POST /messages/ — MCP message endpoint (used internally by the SSE transport)

• GET /health — liveness check (reports the active environment)

Deploying to Obot

1. Build & push the image (the included GitHub Actions workflow publishes ghcr.io/nigelvanhattum/trading212-mcp:latest on push to main).

2. The Obot catalog entry lives in the obot-mcp-repository repo as trading212.yaml.

3. In Obot, add the server and set TRADING212_API_KEY, TRADING212_API_SECRET, and optionally TRADING212_LIVE.

Tools

Order convention: a positive quantity buys, a negative quantity sells (e.g. -10.5). Orders execute only in the account's main currency.

Searching instruments

The upstream /metadata/instruments endpoint takes no parameters — it returns the entire catalogue (~15k instruments, several MB), which is not something to hand an agent. list_instruments fetches that list once, caches it for 10 minutes, and searches it locally:

Filters combine with AND. Responses carry total (all matches), returned, limit and truncated, so a search that is too broad reports how much it left out instead of silently dropping it.

trading212Id is the API's ticker field — the value the order tools take as their ticker argument. It is named separately here because it is a Trading 212 identifier (AAPL_US_EQ), not a market ticker (AAPL).

Rate limiting

Every Trading 212 endpoint has its own limit and they apply per account, so a burst from this server counts against the same budget as anything else the account is doing. ratelimit.py holds the published limit for each endpoint and puts every outgoing call through a single queue: calls go out one at a time, in the order they arrived, and each waits out its own endpoint's window first.

Consequences worth knowing:

• A tool call can block for a while — list_instruments is 1 req / 50s, so a second call to it waits nearly a minute. Nothing is dropped or rejected; it waits its turn.

• Because the queue is strictly in order, a slow call holds up the ones behind it. Fine at this server's traffic; it is the trade-off that makes the guarantee simple.

• Waits happen on a worker thread, so the SSE transport and /health stay responsive throughout.

• A 429 that slips through anyway (another client on the same account) holds that endpoint back for the interval in Retry-After / x-ratelimit-reset and is retried once.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

The Docker build runs the test suite as a build stage — a failing test fails the image build.

API reference

• Key concepts: https://docs.trading212.com/api/section/general-information/key-concepts

• Environments: https://docs.trading212.com/api/section/general-information/api-environments

• Full API: https://docs.trading212.com/api