Build an IG trading bot with your AI coding agent.

How does IG API access and login work?

You get an API key in My Account on IG's dealing platform, and IG reportedly allows one key per account. API access reportedly cannot be set up from a standalone demo account unless it is linked to a live one. IG publishes no official client library.

Login is a documented API call with your own username and password. Older session versions give tokens that last 6 hours and extend to 72 hours while in use. Version 3 gives short access tokens, 60 seconds in IG's example, renewed with a refresh token.

Your password stays in the runtime secret store, never in chat or the repository. Whether IG's terms limit unattended automated use beyond this is not confirmed. No static IP rule was found in the sources read.

Paper trading an IG trading bot on the demo

IG runs a demo environment with its own accounts and keys. Its sample app is meant for a demo account. Demo limits are lower than live and can change without notice. Demo fills are not live fills (reported).

Super Algo Kit uses the demo for order-flow and error-path tests, not for performance figures. All agent work runs on a demo login.

IG API limits, costs and retail rules

IG's allowances are small and per account (reported). A bot that polls prices and positions in a loop soon runs out of non-trading calls. So prices should come from the streaming feed. A long history download can use the weekly data-point budget in one run.

API fees, spreads, overnight financing and commissions are not confirmed in the card. The UK and Europe pack models costs and taxes; spread bets and CFDs avoid UK stamp duty (reported).

Retail CFD and spread-bet leverage is capped by product, from 30:1 down to 2:1. Providers must close positions at 50% of required margin and protect against negative balances. ESMA's 2018 analyses found 74 to 89% of retail CFD accounts studied typically lose money (reported). That is not a forecast for you; read your own provider's risk warning.

What Super Algo Kit does with IG

The adapter paces trading calls at about 1 a second and treats the historical allowance as a weekly budget. These are the kit's own settings. With version 3 tokens, it refreshes before the access token lapses and stores each new refresh token.

After a timeout, it confirms the deal or matches open positions and activity before anything else. It never sends a second create, because the kit assumes a repeat can open a second position. A dropped streaming subscription can look like a quiet market, so feed freshness is checked on its own.

An independent risk gate sits outside the strategy, with retail leverage presets by product. A kill switch is drilled on the demo before any live step.