📈 IBKR Shortable Stocks Scraper

Get short borrow rates, fee rates, and shares available across 18 global stock exchanges from Interactive Brokers' Securities Lending & Borrowing (SLB) system. Fresh data, clean JSON, ready for trading systems, quant research, and AI agents.

---

What does IBKR Shortable Stocks Scraper do?

Short selling a stock requires borrowing shares — and the cost of borrowing varies wildly. A boring blue-chip might cost 0.25% per year to short; a hard-to-borrow meme stock can cost 50%+. Knowing the actual borrow rate and shares available before placing a trade is the difference between a profitable short and a bleeding position.

This Actor pulls data directly from Interactive Brokers' public Securities Lending & Borrowing feed — the same data shown to logged-in IBKR clients — and delivers it as clean, structured JSON. Coverage spans 18 stock exchanges globally, far beyond the US-only focus of most free alternatives.

No IBKR account required. No TWS installation. Just JSON, on demand.

---

What data does the Actor extract?

Field	Description
🔤 symbol	Ticker (or IBKR internal code for delisted/unlisted securities)
💱 currency	Trading currency (USD, EUR, JPY, etc.)
🏢 name	Full company name
🆔 contractId	IBKR's internal contract ID — joins with TWS API
🌐 isin	International Securities Identification Number
💸 rebateRate	Interest earned on short proceeds (% annualized)
💰 feeRate	Cost to borrow shares (% annualized) — the money column
📊 available	Shares available to short
📐 availableIsLowerBound	true when IBKR reports "more than" rather than an exact figure
🔖 figi	Bloomberg-compatible global identifier
🌍 country	Source country code
⏰ fetchedAt	When this Actor ran (ISO 8601, UTC)
🕐 fileTimestamp	When IBKR generated the source snapshot (ISO 8601, UTC)

---

Markets covered

Americas — 🇺🇸 United States · 🇨🇦 Canada · 🇲🇽 Mexico

Europe — 🇬🇧 United Kingdom · 🇩🇪 Germany · 🇫🇷 France · 🇳🇱 Netherlands · 🇨🇭 Switzerland · 🇮🇹 Italy · 🇸🇪 Sweden · 🇪🇸 Spain · 🇧🇪 Belgium · 🇦🇹 Austria

Asia-Pacific — 🇯🇵 Japan · 🇭🇰 Hong Kong · 🇦🇺 Australia · 🇮🇳 India · 🇸🇬 Singapore

18 markets in a single Actor. Most alternatives focus on the US only.

---

Who is this Actor for?

• Short sellers verifying that a stock is borrowable and the fee won't eat the trade
• Quant traders and hedge funds programmatically screening short candidates and feeding borrow data into systematic strategies
• Risk managers monitoring sudden fee spikes that signal short-squeeze risk
• Backtesters making short strategies realistic by including real historical borrow costs
• AI trading agents calling this Actor as a tool via Apify's MCP server for natural-language queries
• Locate researchers building daily snapshots of borrow availability across global markets

---

Input

The Actor accepts a JSON input with the following fields:

Field	Type	Required	Description
countries	array of strings	yes	Country codes to fetch. See list below.
symbols	array of strings	optional	If provided, returns only rows matching these tickers
minAvailable	integer	optional	Filter out stocks with fewer shares available than this
maxFeeRate	number	optional	Filter out stocks with borrow fees above this percentage

Available country codes: usa, can, mx, gb, de, fr, nl, ch, it, se, es, be, at, aus, jp, hk, in, sg

Example input — daily US scrape

{
  "countries": ["usa"]
}

Example input — hard-to-borrow stocks in US and UK

{
  "countries": ["usa", "gb"],
  "maxFeeRate": 50,
  "minAvailable": 10000
}

Example input — specific symbols only

{
  "countries": ["usa"],
  "symbols": ["AA", "GME", "AMC"]
}

---

Output

Results are pushed to a dataset, with one row per stock per country snapshot. Exportable as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or HTML.

Example output — easy to borrow (cheap, plentiful)

{
  "symbol": "AA",
  "currency": "USD",
  "name": "ALCOA CORP",
  "contractId": "251962528",
  "isin": null,
  "rebateRate": 3.38,
  "feeRate": 0.25,
  "available": 4500000,
  "availableIsLowerBound": false,
  "figi": "BBG00B3T3HD3",
  "country": "usa",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-05-14T11:35:52.585Z",
  "fileTimestamp": "2026-05-14T11:31:25.000Z"
}

Example output — hard to borrow (expensive, scarce)

{
  "symbol": "3WM",
  "currency": "EUR",
  "name": "WESTERN MAGNESIUM CORP",
  "contractId": "603515870",
  "isin": null,
  "rebateRate": -14.8569,
  "feeRate": 16.7859,
  "available": 300,
  "availableIsLowerBound": false,
  "figi": "BBG000KYNJF9",
  "country": "usa",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-05-14T11:35:52.585Z",
  "fileTimestamp": "2026-05-14T11:31:25.000Z"
}

Notice the negative rebate and 16.79% annual fee — that's IBKR signaling "this is dangerous to short, and we'll charge you accordingly."

---

Why this Actor?

	This Actor	Free web alternatives	Official IBKR TWS API
Programmatic access	Yes (JSON over HTTP)	No (HTML only)	Yes (with software)
No IBKR account required	Yes	Yes	No
No software install required	Yes	Yes	No (TWS / IB Gateway)
Multi-country coverage	18 markets	US-focused	Yes
Clean structured JSON	Yes	No	Partial (TWS format)
Bloomberg FIGI included	Yes	No	No
Historical snapshots	Yes (schedule daily)	No	No
AI agent–ready (MCP)	Yes	No	No
Built-in filters	Yes	No	DIY

---

Use cases

Pre-trade locate research. Run with a symbols filter pre-market to check borrow availability and fee for shorting candidates. Skip names with insufficient supply.

Hard-to-borrow alerts. Schedule daily with maxFeeRate: 5 to spot stocks where IBKR's fee just spiked. Sudden jumps are often early signals of short-squeeze risk.

Multi-market arbitrage. Compare borrow costs for the same security across US, UK, and Hong Kong listings. ADR vs. local-listing borrow differentials are real opportunities.

Strategy backtesting. Match historical position openings with same-day borrow rates for realistic short-strategy P&L. A 20% APR borrow fee can turn a winning strategy into a losing one — backtests that ignore this are lying to you.

AI agent tool. Hook into LLM-powered trading agents via Apify MCP server. Agent calls: "show me US stocks with fee rate over 30% and at least 100k shares available."

Securities lending research. Track aggregate IBKR borrow inventory over time as a proxy for institutional short-selling appetite.

---

FAQ

Where does the data come from?

Directly from Interactive Brokers' public Securities Lending & Borrowing (SLB) file feed. This is the same dataset IBKR exposes to logged-in clients via Client Portal and TWS. The Actor pulls files that IBKR explicitly publishes for download.

How fresh is the data?

IBKR updates the source files multiple times per business day. Each row includes a fileTimestamp showing exactly when IBKR generated that snapshot — typically less than 30 minutes old during market hours.

Why are some symbols not real tickers?

For delisted, illiquid, or unlisted securities, IBKR uses internal contract codes (e.g. 2575343D). These are valid in IBKR's system but won't match ticker symbols on Bloomberg or Yahoo Finance. Use contractId for IBKR API joins, or figi / isin for cross-platform identification.

What does null mean in rebate/fee fields?

IBKR occasionally publishes a row with no pricing data (their internal "NA" marker). This Actor converts those to JSON null, so consumers can handle missing values cleanly rather than parsing string sentinels.

What does availableIsLowerBound: true mean?

IBKR sometimes reports shares available as "more than X" rather than an exact figure — for example, >10,000,000 for securities with abundant supply. In those cases, available holds the lower bound and availableIsLowerBound is true. Treat the real figure as "at least this much." For the minAvailable filter, the lower bound is used as the value, so a stock reported as >10M will pass minAvailable: 1M.

What timezone are the timestamps in?

Both fetchedAt and fileTimestamp are in UTC (ISO 8601 with the Z suffix). IBKR's source files use US Eastern time internally; the Actor converts to UTC with proper DST handling so the result is unambiguous year-round.

Is the data real-time?

It's "indicative" — IBKR's published rates, refreshed throughout the day, not millisecond live quotes. Actual borrow rates at trade execution can differ slightly. This is the same data IBKR's own UI displays to clients, with the same caveat. For screening, research, and backtesting it's the right data; for execution-time decisions, double-check via your live IBKR connection.

What about other brokers' borrow data?

IBKR is one of very few brokers that publishes borrow rates publicly. Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, and most others keep this data internal. For their data you'd need an account with them.

Is it legal to scrape this?

IBKR makes these files publicly available without authentication, explicitly designed for download. The Actor pulls only published files and never accesses anything behind login. As with any data use, factor in IBKR's terms of service for your specific application.

Can I use this Actor with AI agents?

Yes. Apify exposes all Actors via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. AI agents — including Claude, GPT-based tools, and custom LangChain/LlamaIndex agents — can call this Actor as a tool with structured inputs and receive structured JSON results. See Apify's MCP documentation for setup.

How is it priced?

Pay-per-event. You pay only for what you scrape — no subscriptions, no monthly commitments. See the Pricing tab on this Actor's page for current rates.

Can I integrate this with Make, Zapier, n8n, etc.?

Yes — Apify supports integrations with Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack, Google Sheets, GitHub, Airbyte, and more. Webhooks are available for event-driven workflows.

What if a country file is unavailable?

If IBKR temporarily removes a country file or its format changes, the Actor logs a warning and continues with the other requested countries. It won't fail the entire run because of one missing file.

---

Feedback

Found a bug or have a suggestion for improving data quality, performance, or output format? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab.