How to Connect a Trading 212 Account to Acubic

Key takeaways

• Connecting Trading 212 to Acubic takes three steps after you have a saved strategy: generate an API key in Trading 212, enable six permissions, then paste the key and secret into Acubic and choose your settings.
• Only Invest and Stocks ISA accounts can be connected; Trading 212's own documentation says its API works only for those two account types.
• Leave both Pies permissions off: the connection reads positions and places orders directly and does not use Pies.
• Trading 212 shows the API secret once, so copy it before closing the panel; you can also restrict the key to Acubic's server IP address.
• Deleting the key in Trading 212, or disconnecting in Acubic, ends access immediately and leaves every position where it is.

The question a Trading 212 user is asking when they search "connect Trading 212 to Acubic" is procedural: they know what they want and they need the steps. This article is that walkthrough, in order, with enough context to understand each step without reading five other pages. If you want to understand what the connection does once it is established, what it can see, and how each automation mode behaves in practice, how Acubic works with Trading 212 covers that separately.

Before you start: build a strategy first

Two things must be in place before you can connect. You need a Trading 212 Invest or Stocks ISA account, and you need a saved strategy in Acubic. The strategy requirement is less obvious but it is not optional.

Acubic binds a broker connection to a specific strategy. The connection is not a general account link: it attaches to a saved strategy, and that strategy must exist before there is anything to connect to. One connection is enforced per strategy at the database level, so two strategies cannot both manage the same Trading 212 account at the same time.

The strategy creation step runs entirely without a broker. Acubic asks about your goals, risk tolerance, and the asset categories you want to include. The engine constructs a target portfolio from your answers and shows you the proposed holdings with their weights. Review them. Nothing touches Trading 212 at this stage. If you want the complete picture of what happens between setting goals and having live positions at your broker, how Acubic works is the end-to-end guide.

Step one: generate a Trading 212 API key

A Trading 212 connection uses an API key, not the OAuth flow that the eToro connection uses. The practical difference is worth understanding. With OAuth, you authenticate on the broker's own login page and the broker issues a scoped token to the third-party application; your password never touches the application at all. With an API key, you generate a separate credential in the broker's settings panel and paste it into Acubic, which uses it server-side from that point on.

Both approaches protect your login credentials. Your Trading 212 password is never shared with Acubic: the API key is a distinct, revocable credential that exists independently of your Trading 212 account login. The moment you delete or revoke the key inside the Trading 212 app, Acubic's access ends, independently of anything you do in Acubic. The off switch is yours, not Acubic's.

To generate the key: open the Trading 212 app, go to Settings, then API (Beta), then New API key. Name it something recognisable, such as "Acubic".

Trading 212's public API documentation confirms how the credential works: "The API uses a secure key pair for authentication on every request", with the API key acting as the username and the API secret as the password. It also states that the API "is currently in beta and is under active development", so the settings screens can change; if a menu name differs from the one above, look for the API section in Settings. Before you choose the permissions, it helps to know what the Trading 212 API key permits in general, beyond this one connection.

Step two: set the permissions

Once you create the key, Trading 212 asks which permissions to enable. Enable exactly these six:

• Account data
• Portfolio
• Metadata
• Orders - Read
• Orders - Execute
• History - Orders

Leave both Pies permissions off. Acubic does not use Pies: it reads positions and places equity orders directly, and the Pies permission is deliberately absent from the required set. Enabling it adds no capability and extends access beyond what the connection needs.

At this point you have one optional choice: whether to restrict the key to Acubic's server IP address. The connection screen inside Acubic displays the server IP. You can paste it into the IP restriction field in Trading 212 before saving the key. Acubic uses the key server-side rather than from your own device, so the restriction does not prevent anything the application needs to do, and it means the key cannot be used from any other address even if it were somehow obtained by someone else.

Copy the API key and the corresponding secret before closing the panel. Trading 212 shows the secret only once at creation time. If you close without copying it, delete the key and generate a new one.

The IP restriction is a documented Trading 212 feature: its API documentation says "you can optionally restrict your API keys to a specific set of IP addresses" (Trading 212 API documentation). An IP address is the network address a request comes from, so a restricted key is refused when it is sent from anywhere else.

Step three: paste the key into Acubic and set up the connection

In Acubic, navigate to the broker connection section for your saved strategy and select Trading 212. Paste the API key and secret into the fields provided. Acubic stores them encrypted at rest and never returns them to the browser.

You then set three values that govern how the connection behaves:

• Capital figure: how much of your Trading 212 account Acubic manages. This defines the boundary within which it reads positions and places trades. Positions outside this figure are not touched. Your account does not need to be dedicated to Acubic: you can hold other positions independently alongside the managed set. The figure can be changed at any time without reconnecting.
• Rebalance frequency: monthly, quarterly, or annually. A monthly schedule catches drift more often but generates more trades and turnover. Quarterly is a reasonable starting point for most diversified portfolios. The frequency can be changed at any time without reconnecting.
• Automation mode: Manual, One-Click Approval or Full Automatic. The next section explains how they differ from eToro.

Invest and Stocks ISA accounts are supported. CFD accounts are not, and the required permission set does not provide access to them regardless.

The account-type rule comes from Trading 212 itself: its documentation says the API is "enabled and usable only for Invest and Stocks ISA account types" (Trading 212 API documentation).

Settings chosen during the Trading 212 connection

Setting	Options	Can be changed later without reconnecting
Capital figure	Any portion of the Invest or Stocks ISA account	Yes, from the next rebalance
Rebalance frequency	Monthly, quarterly or annually	Yes, from the next scheduled run
Automation mode	Manual, One-Click Approval or Full Automatic	Stop automation first, then switch

Which automation modes are available

All three modes are available on a Trading 212 main Invest account from the day you connect: Manual, where Acubic shows a checklist of trades and places no orders; One-Click Approval, where each rebalance waits for you; and Full Automatic, where scheduled rebalances run without a per-order prompt. That differs from eToro, where Full Automatic needs a separate eToro sub-account, because a Trading 212 API key covers the whole Invest account and there is no equivalent sub-account structure. What each mode does on Trading 212, and how to choose, is covered in how to automate a Trading 212 portfolio; one-click vs full-auto rebalancing and eToro vs Trading 212 for automated investing go further into the decision and the broker differences.

What happens on the first rebalance

Once the connection is live, Acubic reads your current Trading 212 positions, compares them against the target weights of the connected strategy, and constructs the minimum set of trades needed to close the gap. On one-click approval, it presents that order set for your review before anything is sent. On unattended, it executes the run and records every order in the audit log.

A rebalance is not a liquidate-and-rebuild. Positions already at their target weight are not touched. If nothing has drifted meaningfully since the portfolio was last aligned, nothing trades. Positions you held before connecting, and any positions outside the automated capital figure you defined, are left exactly where they are. Your Trading 212 account does not need to be cleared of existing holdings before connecting.

Adjusting settings after connecting

All three connection settings can be changed at any time without disconnecting and reconnecting.

• Capital figure: expand or reduce the portion of the account Acubic manages. The change takes effect at the next rebalance run.
• Rebalance frequency: switch between monthly, quarterly, and annually. The new frequency takes effect at the next scheduled run.
• Automation mode: switch between Manual, One-Click Approval and Full Automatic; stop automation first, then switch.

How to disconnect

You can end the connection from inside Acubic, or delete the API key directly from the Trading 212 app. Either action stops Acubic from sending further rebalance orders. Your existing positions are not affected: every holding stays exactly where it is in your Trading 212 account. Acubic stops acting; it does not close anything on the way out.

This is the most important thing to know about the exit. Disconnecting from an automated portfolio tool should never be an event that costs you money, and here it is not. The exit is free and leaves your account unchanged.

Where to go from here

The connection is now established. Acubic will check whether a rebalance is due at the next scheduled date and either send the order set or present it for your approval, depending on the mode you chose.

For the complete reference on what the Trading 212 connection can see, how it handles rejected orders, and how the managed-set boundary works in practice, the detailed guide is how Acubic works with Trading 212. If you are still deciding whether to connect, the automation guide linked in the modes section above covers the full picture before you commit to a mode. To review the integration page with the full setup walkthrough and question list, go to the Trading 212 integration page.

Sources

1. Trading 212 Public API documentation, Trading 212, accessed 12 October 2026.