Educational only, not financial advice. Broker features, options-approval requirements, and fees change and vary by account — verify current details on the broker’s own site.
Alpaca is an API-first broker built for programmatic and automated trading, popular with developers and trading apps. It’s also one of the two brokers NoVo connects to (alongside the other), which makes this guide a little different: you can trade 0DTE SPY on Alpaca manually, or connect NoVo and have it execute on your Alpaca account in one click.
Step 1: open and approve a Alpaca account
Open a Alpaca account and get options-trading approval at the level that permits buying calls and puts. You fund and control the account yourself — that’s the point of NoVo being non-custodial: your money stays in your Alpaca account, and NoVo only ever gets permission to trade, never to withdraw. Confirm your approval level covers long options and that same-day expirations are available (how to check).
Steps 2–4: the trade itself
Trading 0DTE SPY on Alpaca follows the universal steps: find today’s SPY expiration, pick a responsive near-the-money strike (not a far-OTM lottery), place the order (start with one contract), and set your stop and exit before you’re in. On 0DTE, decay is fast — have a plan.
The NoVo difference on Alpaca
Here’s where Alpaca stands apart from the other brokers: because NoVo connects to it, you don’t have to do steps 2–4 by hand. NoVo maps the SPY dealer levels and, on your call, executes on your Alpaca account in one click — strike, sizing, a protective stop, and an exit ladder — while you stay in charge of direction. That’s the whole reason NoVo uses Alpaca: a solid API that lets the cockpit trade cleanly in your own account.
On most brokers, you trade 0DTE by hand. On Alpaca, you can — or you can let NoVo map the levels and execute for you, in your own account, one click.
Getting started
To run NoVo on Alpaca: open and fund your Alpaca account, get options approval, and connect it to NoVo. Then you get the dealer-map read and one-click execution on top of your own broker — non-custodial, structure not signals, and no profit promises. Compare the two supported brokers in Tradier vs Alpaca through NoVo, and see NoVo’s plans to get set up.