Should a trading bot know your brokerage password?

What password access actually grants

Your brokerage login is not a trading permission — it is everything: transfers, linked bank accounts, personal information, security settings. Software holding those credentials can do anything you can do, and so can anyone who compromises that software. The bot's security becomes your account's security, and you have no way to audit either.

Password-sharing also breaks the broker's ability to protect you. Their systems cannot distinguish the bot from you, terms of service are typically violated (jeopardizing the account itself), and fraud protections may not cover activity conducted with credentials you handed over voluntarily.

• Full-account scope: transfers and settings, not just trades.
• Invisible: the broker sees you, not the software.
• Revocation means changing your password and hoping nothing was persisted.
• Terms-of-service violations can forfeit both the account and its protections.

The API alternative, and the rule of thumb

Official agent APIs invert every one of those properties: the connection is scoped to what the API permits, confined (in Robinhood's agentic design) to a dedicated sub-account, visible to the broker as software with the broker's checks applied to each order, and revocable at the broker level in one action while your login stays yours.

The rule of thumb is absolute: a vendor whose setup instructions include 'enter your brokerage username and password' has disqualified themselves, whatever else is attractive about the product. Our own desk cannot be configured with credentials at all — the official API connection is the only path it supports.

First-party data — from our own desk

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