How to Connect Your Brokerage to Claude
Last updated July 2026
Short answer
Claude cannot see your brokerage on its own; it is a general assistant with no native view of your accounts or live prices. To let it reason over your real holdings you add a layer between the two. The two honest approaches are an MCP connector that exposes your broker data to Claude, or a connected assistant that links your broker and routes the conversation through Claude (Walnut works this way). That layer usually rides on a regulated data secure aggregator, or a developer broker API like Alpaca or Interactive Brokers, which is what actually reaches brokers such as Robinhood, Charles Schwab, and Fidelity. Whichever you pick, connect with read-only access, verify the permissions, ask Claude about your holdings, and keep trade approval with yourself. Walnut is not an investment adviser.
People ask how to “connect Claude to their brokerage” expecting a setting inside Claude. There is no such setting. Claude is a reasoning model, not a broker integration, so it has no way to log into your account or pull live prices by itself. What you actually do is put something between Claude and your broker: a connector that hands Claude your data, or an assistant that does the connecting for you and talks to Claude on your behalf. This guide is a per-model how-to that complements the per-broker guides. It walks through the approaches, is honest about what Claude alone can and cannot do, and keeps every trade in your hands.
Why Claude alone cannot see your accounts
Start from the honest constraint, because it changes what “connecting” means. Claude is a general-purpose assistant. It is excellent at explaining a concept, weighing a trade-off, or structuring a decision, but it has no built-in link to your brokerage and no feed of real-time quotes. Ask it about your portfolio in a plain chat and it can only reason from what you paste in or what it can search, not from your actual positions.
So connecting a brokerage to Claude is never a toggle inside Claude. It always means adding a layer that reads your accounts and makes that data available to the model. The layer is where the connection, the permissions, and the safety live, and it is the part worth choosing carefully.
The approaches, at a glance
There are two real ways to ground Claude in your holdings, plus a manual fallback that needs no connection at all. Each is described on the same two fields, what it does and how you set it up:
| Approach | What it does / setup |
|---|---|
| MCP connector | Exposes your broker or portfolio data to Claude through the Model Context Protocol, so Claude can read your holdings as a tool during a conversation. You keep using Claude directly; the connector is the bridge that hands it your data. |
| Connected assistant (routes through Claude) | A product that links your brokerage for you and lets you talk about your real holdings through Claude, without you wiring anything up. The assistant handles the connection and the grounding; you just chat. Walnut works this way. |
| Paste your holdings in manually | No connection at all: you copy your positions into a Claude chat and let it reason over the text you provided. It is the simplest path and the least automated, and Claude only knows what you pasted. |
An MCP connector keeps you in Claude and adds a tool that reads your broker. A connected assistant handles the connection for you and routes your questions through Claude. Pasting in your holdings is the simplest path and the least automated. The rest of this guide walks the steps that apply to whichever you choose.
How connecting a broker to Claude actually works
Under the hood, every approach is the same shape: a layer authenticates with your broker, pulls your positions, and makes them available to Claude to read. The layer is usually a regulated data aggregator (a regulated aggregator) or a developer broker API (Alpaca, Interactive Brokers). You authorize it once, ideally read-only, and it hands Claude your holdings as structured data during the conversation. Claude never logs into your broker and never holds your credentials; it only reasons over what the layer passes it.
Which brokers you can reach depends on that layer, not on Claude. Aggregators link brokers such as Robinhood, Charles Schwab, and Fidelity for reading holdings, though whether a given broker also allows trading varies (Robinhood, for instance, is read-only through these aggregators). The table below lines up the layers you can put between Claude and your broker, what each one is, and who each is best for.
| Layer / tool | What it is | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| MCP connector | A small server that reads your accounts and exposes them to Claude as a tool over the Model Context Protocol. | Keeping the chat inside Claude directly and authorizing a tool yourself. |
| SnapTrade | A regulated brokerage-data aggregator that links most major US brokers read-only, with trade support on a smaller set. | Connecting a real broker without handing your login to the app or the model. |
| Walnut | A connected assistant that links your broker and lets you ask about your holdings through Claude, ChatGPT, or a built-in chat. | The low-setup path to ask Claude about holdings you keep at your own broker. |
| Plaid | A financial-data aggregator widely used for account linking, oriented more to balances and transactions than to full brokerage positions. | Apps that need broad bank and account connectivity across many institutions. |
| Alpaca | A developer-first brokerage API with programmatic, agent-ready access to accounts and orders. | Developers wiring a brokerage into their own AI agent or MCP server. |
| Interactive Brokers | A brokerage with a deep API often used to connect a real account to custom tools and agents. | Advanced or programmatic access to a live account you already hold. |
For a head-to-head on the connector layer specifically, see our best MCP connector for brokerages comparison.
Step 1: Pick an approach
Decide how much wiring you want to do before you connect anything.
- MCP connector. If you want to keep chatting in Claude directly and are comfortable authorizing a tool, an MCP connector exposes your broker or portfolio data to Claude through the Model Context Protocol. You keep control of the chat; the connector is just the bridge. See our overview of MCP connectors for investing for how these work.
- Connected assistant that routes through Claude. If you would rather not wire anything up, a product like Walnut links your broker for you and lets you ask about your real holdings through Claude in its own chat. It handles the connection and the grounding; you just talk.
- Paste your holdings in. If you want zero connection, copy your positions into a Claude chat and let it reason over the text. Simple, but Claude only knows what you pasted, and you re-paste whenever things change.
For the general version of this decision across any model, see how to connect a brokerage to an AI assistant.
Step 2: Connect read-only
Whichever approach you chose, connect with the least access that does the job, which for asking questions is read-only. Reading your holdings is enough for Claude to reason over your portfolio; it does not need the ability to move money to answer “how is this position doing” or “what themes am I heavy in.”
Prefer a connection that runs through a regulated data aggregator rather than one that asks for your raw broker password. A connected assistant like Walnut connects your existing broker and reads your holdings read-only by default, so your credentials go to the aggregator, not to the assistant or to Claude. If you are setting up an MCP connector yourself, choose one with the same read-only-first posture.
Step 3: Verify the permissions
Before you rely on anything, confirm what you actually granted. This is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters most.
- Scope. Check that access is read-only unless you deliberately intend to enable trading. If a connector asks for trade permission to answer questions, that is a mismatch worth pausing on.
- What is shared. Confirm the layer reads holdings and not, say, your login credentials directly. A regulated aggregator keeps your password out of the assistant and out of Claude.
- Revocability. Make sure you can disconnect the account and revoke access from the broker or aggregator side, not just from the app.
If any of those are unclear, stop and read the tool’s security and permissions documentation before you keep going. The whole point of the layer is that you can trust what it can and cannot do.
Step 4: Ask Claude about your holdings
Once the connection is live, you can finally do the thing you came for: ask Claude about your real portfolio in plain language. With an MCP connector, you ask in a normal Claude chat and it pulls your holdings as a tool. With a connected assistant, you ask in its chat and it routes the question through Claude with your positions already in context.
Good questions are the ones a general chat could never answer without your data: which positions are lagging, where you are concentrated, how a holding has moved over a window, or what a theme you are considering would add to what you already own. Walnut frames each position against the S&P 500 so the answers are relative, not just absolute, and pairs the chat with web search for context. As always, verify any specific figure before acting on it.
Step 5: Keep trade approval with you
Reasoning over your holdings and executing on them are two different things, and the safe setup keeps them separate. Let Claude explain, compare, and frame trade-offs, but keep the decision and the order in your hands. Any trade should happen at your broker, behind your own explicit approval, never silently on the model’s say-so.
Walnut is built around exactly this line: it is read-only by default, and every trade requires your approval before anything is placed at your broker. Claude describes and reasons; you decide. Walnut is informational and is not an investment adviser, so treat its output as research to check, not instructions to follow.
Where Walnut fits, honestly
To be upfront, since this is our site: Walnut is one of the connected-assistant approaches above, not the only way and not the number one choice for everyone. If you want to keep chatting in Claude directly and are happy to wire up a tool, a dedicated MCP connector may suit you better. Walnut is the low-setup path.
Walnut is the AI investing assistant that talks to the broker you already have and places the trades you approve. It connects your existing brokerage, reads your holdings read-only by default, and lets you talk through Claude, ChatGPT, or a built-in assistant about what you actually hold, with each position framed against the S&P 500. It is not a deep data terminal and not a budgeting app, and because broker feeds rarely pass cost basis it frames returns as window returns rather than realized profit and loss, and says so. Every trade needs your approval, and Walnut is not an investment adviser. Because it is a hosted MCP connector, you set it up by adding its server URL, https://walnutinvest.com/api/connector/mcp, as a custom connector in Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex, then signing in with a free Walnut account and approving read-only access; it never places trades on its own. The full per-client walkthrough lives on the Walnut MCP connector page.
For more on using Claude specifically as your research model, see Claude for investing. If you prefer a different model, the same steps apply to connecting your brokerage to ChatGPT.
The bottom line
Claude cannot connect to your brokerage by itself, so “connecting Claude to your broker” really means choosing the layer that sits between them. An MCP connector exposes your data to Claude while you keep chatting directly; a connected assistant like Walnut links your broker for you and routes the conversation through Claude; and pasting your holdings in is the manual fallback. Whichever you pick, connect read-only, verify the permissions, then ask Claude about your real holdings, and keep every trade behind your own approval. Walnut is not an investment adviser.
Get a recommendation for your situation
Walnut is the AI that knows your portfolio: ask anything in plain English, research any fund, and get an honest second opinion. On the broker you already use, read-only, and you approve every trade. Walnut is not a registered investment adviser.
FAQ
Can Claude see my brokerage account?
Not on its own. Claude is a general assistant with no native view of your accounts or live prices, so by default it can only discuss your money in the abstract. To let it reason over your real holdings you have to add a layer between the two: an MCP connector that exposes your broker data to Claude, or a connected assistant like Walnut that links your broker and routes the conversation through Claude.
How do I connect my brokerage to Claude?
Pick an approach first. An MCP connector points Claude at a tool that reads your accounts, so you keep chatting in Claude directly. A connected assistant such as Walnut links your broker for you and lets you ask about your holdings in its chat. Either way, connect with read-only access, confirm the permissions, and keep any trade approval with yourself. There is no setting inside Claude itself that reaches your broker.
Does Claude connect to my brokerage directly?
No. There is no built-in feature in Claude that logs into your broker. The connection always runs through something else: an MCP server you authorize, or an assistant like Walnut that connects your account through an aggregator and then talks to Claude. Claude reasons over whatever that layer hands it; it never holds your broker credentials itself.
What is an MCP connector for brokerages?
MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard for giving an assistant access to external tools and data. An MCP connector for a brokerage is a small server that reads your accounts and exposes them to Claude as a tool, so Claude can pull your holdings during a chat. You authorize it, ideally read-only, and Claude then reasons over the data the connector provides.
Is it safe to connect my brokerage to Claude?
It depends entirely on the layer you use, not on Claude itself. Prefer read-only-by-default access, a regulated data aggregator, and explicit approval for any trade. Walnut connects, reads your holdings read-only by default, and requires your approval for every trade. Review each connector or assistant’s security and permissions model before you link an account.
Can Claude place trades in my brokerage?
Only if you deliberately connect a layer that allows it and you approve the action, and even then the trade happens at your broker, not inside Claude. A safe setup keeps access read-only by default and puts every order behind your own approval. Walnut is read-only by default and requires you to approve each trade; Claude describes and reasons, but the decision and the order stay with you.
Do I need to be technical to connect a brokerage to Claude?
For an MCP connector, somewhat: you install or point Claude at a server and authorize access, which is more involved than a normal chat. For a connected assistant like Walnut, no: you sign up and link your broker in a few clicks, and it handles the Claude side for you. Pasting your holdings in manually needs no setup at all but is the least automated.
What is the easiest way to ask Claude about my portfolio?
The lowest-effort path that stays grounded in your real holdings is a connected assistant that routes through Claude, because it links your broker and handles the wiring for you. Walnut works this way: connect your existing broker read-only, then ask about what you own in plain language. If you would rather not connect anything, you can paste your holdings into Claude, but you have to re-paste whenever they change.
Which brokers can I connect to Claude?
That depends on the connector or assistant, not on Claude. A connected assistant like Walnut connects your brokerage securely to link most major US brokers for reading holdings, while trade support varies by broker. Some brokers are read-only through these aggregators even when connected. Check the specific tool’s supported-broker list, and see our guide on connecting a brokerage to an AI assistant for the general pattern.
Does connecting my brokerage give Claude my login?
It should not. A well-built connection uses a data aggregator or a scoped authorization rather than handing over your raw broker password. Walnut connects, so your credentials go to the regulated aggregator, not to Walnut or to Claude. Always prefer approaches that avoid sharing your login directly and that limit access to read-only by default.
Is Walnut an investment adviser?
No. Walnut is informational and is not an investment adviser. It lets you connect your real brokerage and talk through Claude about what you hold, with each position framed against the S&P 500, but it does not tell you what to buy or sell. It is read-only by default, every trade needs your approval, and the decision is always yours.
Can I use ChatGPT instead of Claude for this?
Yes. The same pattern applies to other assistants: on its own no general model sees your accounts, so you add a connector or a connected assistant. Walnut lets you talk through Claude, ChatGPT, or a built-in assistant over your real connected holdings, so the model choice is yours. The important part is the connection layer, not which model you prefer.
Walnut is informational and is not an investment adviser. App features, pricing, and availability change; verify current details on each provider's site before deciding. Nothing on this page is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or to use any particular product.
Connect your broker to an AI assistant
Step-by-step guides for each major broker, plus the general setup guides for ChatGPT and Claude, which brokers have an AI assistant built in, and Walnut's MCP connector.