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Frequently Asked Questions

To get started with FINRA's API Platform first familiarize yourself with the content published here on the API Developer Center starting here.

FINRA's API platform is a sophisticated REST based solution with advanced querying capabilities. Becoming familiar with its features will help you build a proper connection to the platform.

Once familiar with the features of the platform, the next step will be to get access to the API Console hosted on FINRA Gateway.

FINRA's API Service is a strategic FINRA initiative to support the automation goals of member firms and encourage the innovation opportunities that APIs offer to the broader financial services industry.​

The  API Developer Center is about making it faster and easier for developers to find the information they need to build automated compliance solutions that improve risk management and lower regulatory cost using the FINRA API Platform.

When initially launched in 2020, FINRA member firms were required to have an active WebEFT subscription to access the API platform.

Beginning 10/4/2021,FINRA launched a fee structure that provides four (4) API account or credential types:

  1. Test Credential - provides access to test or mock data at no cost.
  2. Public Credential - provides access to publicly available data at no cost. Usage is capped at 10 GB of data download each month.
  3. Firm Credential - provides FINRA member firms access to the full compliment of API platform features including access to public data and all Firm specific data. Fee is $1650.00/month per firm plus a data overage fee of $250 per 10GB data used beyond an initial 10GB of data usage.
  4. Organization Credential - provides a non-member organization access to a range of API platform features including public data. Fee is $1650/month per organization plus a data overage fee of $250 per 10GB data used beyond an initial 10GB of data usage.

FINRA member firms may create test, public, and firm credentials.

Other organizations that are not FINRA member firms may create test, public, and organization credentials.

Individuals may create test and public credentials.

Please see the fees section of the API Developer Center for more information.

Contact API support at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Yes. The datasets available via the DAPI platform will include test datasets containing randomized data for test purposes. All Test Credentials provisioned via the API Console access to these test datasets.

NOTES:

  1. A Test Credential can only access datasets identified as "MOCK" datasets. Test credentials CANNOT be used to access production data and the API user must provision a Firm, Organization, or Public API Credential to access production data.

  2. The test data is a SAMPLE of the data available in production. It is not the complete dataset available in production.

  3. Test Credentials acquired from the "Request Test Access" feature on the API Developer Center (no l onger available) prior to 1/21/2022 can continue to use those credentials as test credentials through 3/31/2022. Please see the documentation for Individual Users for more information.

An API support center is available on the API Developer Center, where you can submit a support request via email. Please review the FAQs on the Support page and on the various Product pages before submitting a support request.

The FINRA API team will do its best to help you overcome any issues getting starting or using  the API platform.

The best thing to do for this is to subscribe to be notified about API platform status alerts, general alerts, and news & updates content posted on developer.finra.org website via email or as notifications on FINRA Gateway or both. 

You can ONLY do so if you have a FINRA Gateway account with access to the API Console. If you do not have account you'll first need to obtain one by referring to the The API Console section under 'Getting Started' in the Documentation page. 

If you do have a FINRA Gateway account with access to the API Console, you can click the Subscribe button on the News & Updates page. You will be directed to the Notification Preferences page on FINRA Gateway if you are logged in. If you are NOT logged in, you will first be asked to log into FINRA Gateway and then you will be re-directed to the Notification Preferences page. You can then subscribe to the following categories of content under API Developer Center

  1. API Platform Status: Notifications dealing with system status of the API Platform
  2. General: Notifications dealing with general announcements on upcoming features and APIs 
  3. News & Updates: Notifications dealing with latest FINRA API news, upcoming events and releases

Yes. However, the FINRA member firm must provision a Firm Credential via the FINRA API Console and provide the credential information to the service provider/vendor.

The FINRA API Team is considering a new feature that would allow vendors/service providers to automate the process of provisioning API Credentials for customers that are FINRA member firms.

Please contact the API Team if this is something you may be interested in and to learn more about our potential Service Provider Connect feature.

The Submission API and its supporting notifications are upcoming products that will become available in 2023. FINRA is providing early technical specifications (documentation) to allow API users to begin planning for the integration.  These specifications are limited to Create Individual and U4 submission use cases. Additional use cases (e.g. U5 submission, etc.) will be addressed later in 2023 and beyond.  Please note that the final specifications may differ from this initial version. To provide feedback or to ask clarifying questions contact the API team via email at [email protected]