publicdotcom-cli

Command-line client for the Public.com Trading API.

Use public to authenticate, inspect accounts, retrieve portfolio and market data, run preflight checks, and submit order-related requests from your terminal.

Install

The recommended installation method for command-line Python tools is pipx:

pipx install publicdotcom-cli

You can also install with uv:

uv tool install publicdotcom-cli

Confirm the CLI is available:

public --help

Quick Start

Generate a personal secret from your Public.com settings, then authenticate:

public auth login
public accounts list
public accounts set-default ACCOUNT_ID
public portfolio show
public market quotes AAPL MSFT

Most account-scoped commands use the configured default account. You can override it with --account-id ACCOUNT_ID or PUBLIC_ACCOUNT_ID=ACCOUNT_ID.

Important Disclosures

This CLI is a developer tool for interacting with the Public API. It is not investment, financial, legal, tax, accounting, or trading advice, and it does not recommend any security, strategy, account type, order type, or transaction.

Trading involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. You are responsible for reviewing all request payloads, account IDs, symbols, quantities, prices, order sides, time-in-force values, and other order instructions before submitting a trading command.

Order placement, replacement, and cancellation requests may be asynchronous. A successful API response confirms submission to the API, not execution, cancellation, fill price, availability, or final order state. Always verify order status after submitting, replacing, or cancelling an order.

Market data, quotes, option chains, greeks, account data, and preflight calculations are provided for informational and operational use through the API. They may be incomplete, delayed, unavailable, or different from final execution values.

You are responsible for complying with all applicable laws, regulations, exchange rules, API terms, account agreements, and internal policies that apply to your use of this CLI. Do not use this tool unless you are authorized to access the relevant account and API credentials.

Personal secrets and access tokens can authorize account access and trading activity. Keep them private, do not commit them to source control, and rotate or revoke them if you believe they were exposed.

Authenticate

Generate a personal secret from Public, then run:

public auth login

The access token is stored with your OS keychain when available. If no keychain backend is available, the CLI falls back to a user-only config file.

Access tokens are short-lived. To let the CLI refresh them automatically, opt in to storing your personal secret:

public auth login --store-secret

Because the personal secret is long-lived, this is optional. The CLI stores it in your OS keychain when available, otherwise it falls back to a user-only config file.

After that, secured commands automatically mint a fresh access token before the current token expires or after a 401 Unauthorized response. You can also refresh manually:

public auth refresh

You can also bypass stored credentials for automation:

PUBLIC_ACCESS_TOKEN=ey... public accounts list
PUBLIC_PERSONAL_SECRET=... public accounts list

Remove stored credentials with:

public auth logout
public auth logout --all

Default Account

Most API operations require the accountId returned by public accounts list. You can store a default account once:

public accounts set-default ACCOUNT_ID
public accounts get-default

Then omit --account-id from account-scoped commands:

public portfolio show
public market quotes AAPL MSFT
public order get ORDER_ID

You can override the default at any time:

public portfolio show --account-id ACCOUNT_ID
PUBLIC_ACCOUNT_ID=ACCOUNT_ID public portfolio show
public accounts clear-default

Example Commands

public accounts list
public accounts set-default ACCOUNT_ID
public portfolio show
public history list --page-size 25
public instruments get AAPL EQUITY
public market quotes AAPL MSFT --type EQUITY
public market option-expirations AAPL
public market option-chain AAPL 2026-05-15
public options greeks "AAPL  260515C00200000"
public options strategy-quote --file examples/strategy-quote.request.json
public historicdata bars EQUITY AAPL YEAR
public historicdata bars EQUITY AAPL DAY --aggregation FIVE_MINUTES
public historicdata bars EQUITY AAPL SINCE_PURCHASE --purchase-date 2024-01-15
public taxlots list
public taxlots symbol AAPL
public taxlots csv --output taxlots.csv

Historic Bar Data

Fetch OHLCV bar data for a symbol over a given time period. The first argument is the instrument type (EQUITY, CRYPTO, OPTION, or INDEX):

public historicdata bars EQUITY AAPL YEAR
public historicdata bars CRYPTO BTC-USD WEEK

Available periods: DAY, WEEK, MONTH, QUARTER, HALF_YEAR, YEAR, FIVE_YEARS, YTD, SINCE_PURCHASE.

Override the default bar aggregation with --aggregation:

public historicdata bars EQUITY AAPL DAY --aggregation FIVE_MINUTES
public historicdata bars EQUITY AAPL MONTH --aggregation ONE_HOUR

Available aggregations: ONE_MINUTE, FIVE_MINUTES, TEN_MINUTES, FIFTEEN_MINUTES, THIRTY_MINUTES, ONE_HOUR, ONE_DAY, ONE_WEEK, ONE_MONTH, THREE_MONTHS, SIX_MONTHS, ONE_YEAR.

When using the SINCE_PURCHASE period, supply the purchase date:

public historicdata bars EQUITY AAPL SINCE_PURCHASE --purchase-date 2024-01-15

Trading requests use JSON files so the exact payload is visible before submission:

public order preflight-single --file examples/order.single-leg.market-buy.json
public order place --file examples/order.single-leg.market-buy.json
public order get ORDER_ID
public order cancel ORDER_ID

Trading commands prompt before submitting order placement, replacement, or cancellation requests. Use --yes only when your automation has already performed equivalent validation and approval.

Order payloads accept optional fields beyond the basics shown above. For example, useMargin controls buying power on order place and order place-multileg: set it to false to evaluate the order against cash-only buying power instead of margin. When omitted it defaults to true (margin applied where the account allows). See examples/order.single-leg.cash-only.json for a sample.

Order-placement and single-leg preflight payloads also accept an optional taxLotMatchingInstructions array (up to 8 entries of {taxLotId, quantity}) to specify which tax lots to close when selling equity. See examples/order.single-leg.tax-lot-matching.json for a sample.

Tax Lots

Inspect unrealized tax lots for the configured (or --account-id) account:

public taxlots list
public taxlots symbol AAPL
public taxlots symbol AAPL --price 150.00

taxlots symbol accepts an optional --price used to value the lots. Export the full set as CSV — by default the base64-encoded response is printed, or pass --output to decode and write the CSV file directly:

public taxlots csv
public taxlots csv --output taxlots.csv

Strategy Quote

Request a quote for a multi-leg options strategy from a JSON request file:

public options strategy-quote --file examples/strategy-quote.request.json

The request body is a StrategyQuoteRequest with a baseSymbol and an optionLegs array (each leg is {symbol, side, openCloseIndicator, ratioQuantity}), plus an optional equityLeg. See examples/strategy-quote.request.json for a sample.

JSON Output

Use --json before the command group to print raw JSON:

public --json accounts list
public --json market quotes AAPL MSFT

Configuration

The CLI supports these environment variables:

PUBLIC_ACCESS_TOKEN=...
PUBLIC_PERSONAL_SECRET=...
PUBLIC_ACCOUNT_ID=...
PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL=https://api.public.com
PUBLIC_AUTO_REFRESH=true

PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL is optional and defaults to https://api.public.com.

Upgrade

pipx upgrade publicdotcom-cli
# or
uv tool upgrade publicdotcom-cli

Development

For local development from a checkout:

uv sync --extra dev
uv run public --help
uv run pytest

Regenerate The OpenAPI Client

The package ships with a generated API client. Contributors who need to regenerate it must place the local OpenAPI spec at the repository root as spec.yaml, then run:

uv run python scripts/generate_client.py

The raw spec uses */* for many JSON responses, which some Python generators do not parse as JSON. The regeneration script normalizes those response content types before running openapi-python-client. This requires network access the first time because it uses uvx openapi-python-client.