ibkrcp

ibkrcp is a lightweight R client for the Interactive Brokers Client Portal REST API. It covers session management, account and portfolio queries, market data retrieval, and order placement and cancellation.

Prerequisites

ibkrcp communicates with the IBKR Client Portal Gateway, a lightweight Java process that must be running locally before any function calls are made. The gateway exposes the REST API on https://localhost:5000.

1. Download the Client Portal Gateway from the IBKR API page
2. Start the gateway: bin/run.sh root/conf.yaml (macOS/Linux) or bin\run.bat root\conf.yaml (Windows)
3. Log in via the browser prompt at https://localhost:5000
4. Confirm the session is live before trading

Installation

Install the released version from CRAN:

install.packages("ibkrcp")

Or the development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("sactyr/ibkrcp")

Usage

Session management

library(ibkrcp)

# Confirm the gateway is running and the session is alive
ibkr_ping()

# Check authentication status (authenticated, connected, competing)
ibkr_auth_status()

Account and portfolio

# Get all accounts
accounts <- ibkr_portfolio_accounts()
account_id <- accounts$account_id[1]

# Portfolio summary (cash balances, net liquidation, etc.)
ibkr_portfolio_summary(account_id)

# Current open positions
ibkr_portfolio_positions(account_id)

Market data

# Look up a contract by symbol. Returns the raw IBKR response: an unnamed
# list of matches, each with $conid, $symbol, and $companyHeader (which
# carries the exchange, e.g. "... - ASX"). Note $description holds the
# exchange code ("ASX"), not a text description.
contracts <- ibkr_search_contracts("VGS")
match   <- Filter(function(x) x$symbol == "VGS" && x$description == "ASX", contracts)
conid   <- match[[1]]$conid

# OHLCV price history (daily bars, 1 year)
prices <- ibkr_get_price_history(conid, period = "1y")

# Trading schedule (trading days, public holidays)
schedule <- ibkr_get_trading_schedule(symbol = "VGS", exchange = "ASX")

Orders

# Place a market order
ibkr_place_order(account_id, conid, side = "BUY", quantity = 10)

# View live and open orders
ibkr_live_orders()

# Cancel an order
ibkr_cancel_order(account_id, order_id = "1001")

SSL note

The Client Portal Gateway runs on localhost with a self-signed certificate. ibkrcp disables SSL peer and host verification for all requests (ssl_verifypeer = FALSE, ssl_verifyhost = FALSE). This is intentional — verifying SSL against localhost is not meaningful — and follows IBKR’s own API guidance.

Scope and roadmap

ibkrcp covers the endpoints needed for a basic automated trading workflow: session management, account queries, market data, and order management. The Interactive Brokers Client Portal API is significantly broader than what is currently wrapped — real-time streaming, additional order types, transaction history, and more remain as future work.

Contributions are welcome. If there’s an endpoint you need that isn’t covered, please open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

Related

• IBKR Client Portal API documentation
• IBKR Client Portal Gateway download