If you trade equities the options for the APIs are... 1) IB 2) Laser(Genesis) 3) Anvil(Assent) 4) Sterling 5) LightSpeed 6) LimeBrokerage If anyone has anything to comment on any of these APIs I'd greatly appreciate it.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is atrocious and 10 is perfect. 5 Is average. IB: 6 Laser: Don't know Anvil: Don't know Sterling: 4 LightSpeed: Don't know Lime: Will know real soon Others that I have used: RedSky: 8 nitro
I have already made comments about Laser API on other threads. Some other traders around me had also used Anvil and Sterling for their Blackboxes. They said that the executions from the API for both Sterling and Anvil where great, but the Data feed or handler were not so good and cause most of the problems. So they decided to use third party data vendors and created their own data handler to connect the data to Sterling and Anvil API, and are now very happy with how their Blackboxes run on these two API's. And since then their Blackboxes have been running on these API's for two years.
Is this question about how well the API Library is designed? Or is it just a broker rating, including performace?
I've used IB and from a design point of view it's a bit of a mess, functions take lots of arguments and they are not very well documented. On a C++ level the interface uses MFC types which is fairly retro at this point. On the upside it's fairly easy to learn the basics and get something going & they support all the major programming languages and provide good examples. Also the user groups are pretty active (which could be taken either way). I'd give it a 6.
This is easy. 1) IB - 4 Requires Java-based TWS as "middleware". Unreliable...will stop deliverying data without error or exception thrown. Dozens of "gotchas" and workarounds required for throttling and other subtle server-side limitations. Overall poor tech support and even worse documentation. 2) Laser(Genesis) - 5 Fast. Good sample code. C/C++ only. Ok, C# as well. Docs are decent, but the tech support is NOT. One programmer I know has not been able to program a stop order for over 8 weeks now due to an API glitch that remains unresolved. I found an untrapped exception bug in their Excel COM interface that was confirmed by their manager and I told them where and how to fix it. They refused....told me to use the API instead (a complete rewrite for me !). 4) Sterling - 5 Docs look good, but another trader/programmer said the entire API is full of "gotchas" which are undocumented.
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TWSAPI/ http://www.interactivebrokers.com/cgi-bin/discus/board-auth.pl?file=/2/2.html&lm=1201121223