Introduction & Quickstart

Get an API key, make your first request, and learn how plans, daily quotas and errors work across every ApexTick product.

ApexTick is a market data and financial intelligence platform. One API key gives you access to four products, each unlocking more as you move up the plan staircase:

#Quickstart

#1. Get an API key

Create a free account at dash.apextick.com. The Hobbyist plan costs nothing and needs no card. Your key is on the API key page of your dashboard settings, where you can also regenerate it. Keys start with dk_ followed by 64 hexadecimal characters.

Store it in an environment variable so it never ends up in source control:

export APEXTICK_API_KEY="dk_your_key_here"

#2. Make your first request

All REST endpoints live under the base URL https://api.apextick.com. Send your key in the apikey header:

curl -s "https://api.apextick.com/v1/market/quote?symbol=AAPL,MSFT" \
  -H "apikey: $APEXTICK_API_KEY"

A successful response:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "symbol": "AAPL",
      "timestamp": "2026-10-16T14:30:05Z",
      "price": 190.12,
      "change": 1.19,
      "change_percent": 0.63,
      "open": 189.2,
      "high": 191.2,
      "low": 188.5,
      "previous_close": 188.93,
      "volume": 52310400
    }
  ]
}

#3. Pick your product

• Get notified when a price, indicator or volume condition is met: Alerts & Intelligence Engine.
• Give your AI assistant market tools: ApexTick MCP Server.
• Send daily briefings to your Discord, Telegram or newsletter audience: Briefings & Digests.
• Build on raw data over REST or WebSocket, or in Excel: Data API, Streaming and Excel Add-ins.

#Authentication

Every request to ApexTick authenticates with your API key in the apikey header. The same key works for the REST API, the WebSocket stream, the hosted MCP server and the Excel add-ins.

GET /v1/market/quote?symbol=SPY HTTP/1.1
Host: api.apextick.com
apikey: dk_your_key_here

• Keep your key secret. Call ApexTick from your server, never from browser code or mobile apps that ship the key to users.
• One key per account. Each API key, and each MCP seat on multi-seat plans, may only be used by the person or application it was issued for.
• Rotate it if it leaks. Regenerating the key in the dashboard invalidates the old one immediately.

Requests without a key, or with an invalid key, receive 401 Unauthorized.

#Symbols

ApexTick uses standard market notation everywhere: REST, WebSocket, MCP tools and Excel functions. Send symbols in upper case.

Use ticker search to find a symbol by name. Equities are served as active intraday snapshots; crypto, select futures and benchmark forex pairs are real-time.

#Plans and Limits

Every plan includes all four products. Higher plans unlock more endpoints, deeper history, more alerts and more MCP tools in a strict staircase.

#Daily quotas and overage

• Quotas are counted per UTC calendar day and reset at 00:00 UTC. Unused quota does not carry over.
• Hobbyist is hard-capped: once you reach 500 requests, further requests return 429 until the next UTC day. You are never billed.
• Paid plans are never cut off. Every request above the daily quota on any UTC day is billed at your plan's overage rate on your monthly invoice, regardless of your total monthly usage.
• Per-minute rate limits apply to every plan. Requests above the limit return 429.

#Data depth

Candle history is limited by plan. If you request a range that starts before your plan's depth, the from date is moved forward to the earliest date your plan allows; the request still succeeds with the shorter range.

#Endpoint access by plan

Endpoints outside your plan return 403 Forbidden from the gateway, with a message naming the plan you need.

#Errors

Errors return a JSON body with a human-readable error message. Some errors add context, such as the plan limit you reached:

{ "error": "Active alert limit reached for current plan", "limit": 50 }

#Support

All support is asynchronous by email; there are no phone or video calls.

• Technical and account questions: support@apextick.com
• Billing, invoices and payments: billing@apextick.com

We typically reply within 1 business day, with priority handling for Quant & Community and Enterprise plans.