Educational only, not financial advice. Broker features, options-approval requirements, 0DTE availability, and fees change and vary by account — verify current details on the broker’s own site. NoVo is independent and not affiliated with the brokers named.

Alpaca is the odd one out here: an API-first brokerage where the “platform” is documentation and the order ticket is a line of code, or a community dashboard built on top. Options, including 0DTE SPY, arrived as an API product first.

Enable options on the account

Options access is requested in the dashboard and granted by level; buying long calls and puts is the entry grant. Confirm the account (paper or live) actually has same-day expirations enabled (does my broker offer 0DTE SPY).

The chain is an endpoint

There is no chain screen to scroll — you query it, or use a frontend that does. Today’s SPY expiration exists every weekday (SPY lists a 0DTE every weekday); wherever it renders, read the quote and pick a strike by the same rule as everywhere: responsive near-the-money strike over far-OTM lottery ticket.

Paper first is the culture

Alpaca’s paper environment is a first-class citizen, and rehearsing there before funding is the norm. Live, Place the order at one contract and set your stop programmatically at fill — decay is fast on 0DTE, a hard stop beats a mental one, and an unattended script that drifts into the close is how accounts die.

Code executes exactly what you told it. The market keeps grading whether what you told it was smart.

The part no broker gives you

An API gives you clean hands on the order; it gives you no eyes on the structure. That’s where NoVo fits: it maps the dealer levels on SPY, QQQ and IWM and keeps a scored record of what that structure has tended to mean. It does not connect to Alpaca or any other broker — you place every trade yourself. Either way: start small, and remember levels are structure, not signals.