IG Trading

A local Python MCP server for IG's REST Trading API. It provides account/history, market data, position, working-order, and trade-confirmation tools, plus guarded OTC trade actions. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by IG Group.

Trading leveraged products can result in losses exceeding deposits. Start with an IG demo account.

Version 0.8.4

• Makes snapshotTime and snapshotTimeUTC represent the same instant in the requested timezone, using IG's authoritative UTC candle timestamp.
• Caches completed historical candles only for their actual resolution intervals, so sparse or capped IG responses leave gaps eligible for refetch rather than marking an entire request as complete.
• Automatically clears legacy historical-price coverage when opening an existing cache database.

Version 0.8.3

• Adds HOUR_4 and DAY support to ig_get_current_candle, aggregating hourly stream candles in IG-aligned market-session windows.
• Aligns REST-seeded stream segments with IG's market-local history timestamps and adds derived-candle debug diagnostics.

Version 0.8.2

• Applies Ruff formatting required by CI.

Version 0.8.1

• Adds MINUTE_15 support to ig_get_current_candle by aggregating IG's five-minute streaming candles, with REST seeding for completed segments in the active interval.

Version 0.8.0

• Adds ig_get_current_candle, backed by IG Lightstreamer consolidated chart subscriptions for forming OHLC candles at second, one-minute, five-minute, and hourly resolutions.
• Reuses in-memory subscriptions and latest candle snapshots, with clean shutdown and idle-subscription cleanup.

Version 0.7.0

• All tools require an IANA timezone, such as Australia/Sydney.
• Temporal inputs require ISO-8601 datetimes with an explicit UTC offset.
• IG response timestamps are converted to the requested timezone, including daylight-saving offsets.

Version 0.6.2

• Normalizes all historical-price snapshotTimeUTC response values to ISO-8601 UTC with a Z suffix, matching request and cache timestamps.

Version 0.6.1

• Sends historical-price datetimes in IG's required offset-free UTC format.
• Retries empty or malformed historical-price responses instead of caching them as permanently covered periods.
• Automatically ignores existing empty historical-price cache coverage.

Version 0.6.0

• Normalizes activity-history timestamps to IG's offset-free datetime format and validates date ranges before making the request.
• Corrects all working-order API routes for IG's live and demo gateways.

Version 0.5.0

• Includes safe request method, URL, and body details in non-2xx IG API errors; credentials are redacted.
• Logs each successful API response with its allowance object.
• Logs historical-price cache and IG API candle counts and byte totals at DEBUG level.

Setup

1. Create a demo or live IG API key in the IG trading platform.
2. Copy .env.example to .env and set the values, or export the same variables in the MCP client's environment.
3. Install and run with uv:

uv sync
uv run ig-mcp

Required environment variables:

Variable	Description
IG_API_KEY	API key generated for the selected IG environment.
IG_IDENTIFIER	IG login identifier.
IG_PASSWORD	IG login password.
IG_ENVIRONMENT	demo or live; defaults to demo.
IG_ACCOUNT_ID	Optional active account ID. IG's login-selected account is used when omitted.

The server keeps OAuth tokens in memory only. It sends credentials to IG only during login and never returns tokens from tools.

API Call Cache

Persistent caching is enabled by default to reduce IG API usage. Cached data is stored in ~/.cache/ig-mcp/cache.sqlite3; set IG_CACHE_PATH to use another location or IG_CACHE_ENABLED=false to disable cache reads and writes.

The server caches categories for 6 hours, category instruments for 1 hour, market searches for 10 minutes, and activity/transaction history for 5 minutes. A successful trade or working-order change invalidates cached activity and transactions for the active account.

All tools require an IANA timezone so timestamp responses use the caller's local offset, including daylight-saving changes. Temporal inputs must be ISO-8601 datetimes with an explicit UTC offset. The service converts them to IG's required UTC format before forwarding the request:

ig_get_activity(
  from_date="2026-08-10T10:00:00+10:00",
  to_date="2026-08-10T15:16:00+10:00",
  timezone="Australia/Sydney",
)

Trading-sensitive data is never cached: account details, market snapshots, positions, working orders, confirmations, and all write operations. OAuth tokens, API keys, passwords, and HTTP headers are never written to the cache.

Historical price requests use a persistent candle cache. Request an explicit offset-aware range and the server calls IG only for completed candle intervals that are not already covered. Sparse or capped responses do not mark missing intervals as cached. The current, potentially incomplete candle is never cached and is fetched from IG for every request. Returned candle timestamps use the requested timezone; snapshotTime and snapshotTimeUTC identify the same instant; cache timestamps remain UTC internally.

Version 0.8.4 clears legacy coverage metadata automatically. To force a complete historical-price refresh, stop the server and clear both price-cache tables, then restart it:

sqlite3 "$IG_CACHE_PATH" \
  "BEGIN; DELETE FROM price_coverage; DELETE FROM prices; COMMIT; VACUUM;"

When IG_CACHE_PATH is unset, use ~/.cache/ig-mcp/cache.sqlite3 instead.

ig_get_historical_prices(
  epic="CS.D.EURUSD.CFD.IP",
  resolution="MINUTE",
  from_date="2026-08-01T10:00:00+10:00",
  to_date="2026-08-01T22:00:00+10:00",
  timezone="Australia/Sydney",
)

Streaming Current Candles

ig_get_current_candle subscribes to IG's Lightstreamer chart feed the first time an epic and resolution are requested. The server keeps the latest forming candle in memory and later calls return the newest received snapshot without a REST price request. It supports SECOND, MINUTE, MINUTE_5, MINUTE_15, HOUR, HOUR_4, and DAY. MINUTE_15 combines IG's five-minute stream candles. HOUR_4 and DAY combine hourly stream candles, using IG's current HOUR_4 or DAY candle to align the active time window to the instrument's market session. Their first requests may make REST history requests to seed completed segments in the active interval.

ig_get_current_candle(
  epic="CS.D.EURUSD.CFD.IP",
  resolution="MINUTE",
  timezone="Australia/Sydney",
)

The response includes IG's bid and ask OHLC values, update time, tick count, and consolidated, which becomes true when IG closes the candle. Call the tool again to get later updates: MCP tool responses cannot be pushed to an agent after a tool call returns. Set IG_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG to log the derived window chosen from IG, REST segment-seeding ranges and counts, and the assembled candle's segment count. Idle subscriptions are removed when a later streaming request arrives; streaming data is never persisted.

File Logging

Operational logging is enabled by default and writes only to ~/.cache/ig-mcp/ig-mcp.log, keeping MCP stdout reserved for the protocol. Set IG_LOG_PATH to use another location, IG_LOG_LEVEL to select DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, or CRITICAL, or IG_LOG_ENABLED=false to disable it. Each successful API response log includes its allowance object. At DEBUG, historical-price logs include returned candle counts and serialized byte totals from the SQLite cache and IG API separately.

Logs rotate at midnight UTC. The active log and one prior daily archive are retained; older archives are removed automatically.

MCP Client Configuration

Example configuration for a local stdio-capable MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ig": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["--directory", "/absolute/path/to/ig-integration-mcp", "run", "ig-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "IG_API_KEY": "your-demo-key",
        "IG_IDENTIFIER": "your-identifier",
        "IG_PASSWORD": "your-password",
        "IG_ENVIRONMENT": "demo"
      }
    }
  }
}

Trade Safety

All tools that create, update, close, or cancel a trade/order require confirm: true.

When IG_ENVIRONMENT=live, they additionally require this exact parameter:

{"live_confirmation": "LIVE_TRADE_CONFIRMED"}

Use ig_get_market to inspect a market's dealing rules before submitting an order. Trade tools validate the main IG field dependencies before making API calls, but IG remains the authority for account-specific eligibility, sizes, and price rules.

Testing

uv run pytest

Tests mock all IG API traffic and do not need credentials.