Terminal vs API
Two ways to interact with the Tradepost marketplace as a Liquidity Provider or Supply Provider.
Tradepost Terminal
A web-based interface for managing bids, creating strategies, submitting inventory, and monitoring order flow in real-time — think Bloomberg for real-world asset liquidity.
Best for:
- Getting liquidity up fast — create Strategies directly in the UI without writing code
- Manual bidding and price discovery (Liquidity Providers)
- Submitting inventory and reviewing offers (Supply Providers)
- Monitoring the live bidding feed to see market activity as it happens
- Tracking your live portfolio feed — open positions, pending transfers, order status
- Reviewing incoming supply before committing to bids
- Confirming transfers and managing fulfillment
- Human-in-the-loop workflows on either side of the marketplace
- Getting started — exploring the market before building integrations
Use cases:
- A Liquidity Provider deploying broad Strategies across asset categories without engineering work
- A ticket broker monitoring the live feed and bidding manually on high-value opportunities
- A card shop testing the market on a new category before scaling
- A trading card retailer submitting inventory and managing offers manually
- A team or venue reviewing instant cash offers on their primary supply
- Ops teams managing transfer confirmations and exceptions
- Any Liquidity Provider or Supply Provider without engineering resources to build an integration
TPX API
A programmatic interface (GraphQL + webhooks) for automated bidding, inventory submission, strategy deployment, and real-time event handling.
Best for:
- Fully automated bidding via Conditional Bids and Strategies (Liquidity Providers)
- Automated inventory submission and offer management (Supply Providers)
- High-volume participants who can't manually review every transaction
- Integrating Tradepost into existing systems (inventory management, pricing engines, ticketing platforms, ERPs)
- Building custom workflows around offer lifecycle events
- Participants with engineering capacity who want to scale
Use cases:
- A market maker deploying Strategies across thousands of SKUs via code
- A platform embedding Tradepost offers into their own product (Enterprise tier)
- A trading desk piping bid requests into their proprietary pricing model
- A ticketing platform pushing inventory programmatically as it becomes available
- An IP rights holder integrating instant cash offers into their existing fan app
- Any Liquidity Provider or Supply Provider who wants to operate programmatically at scale
Comparison
| Terminal | TPX API | |
|---|---|---|
| Interface | Web UI | GraphQL + webhooks |
| Strategy creation | Yes — deploy Strategies without code | Coming soon |
| Bidding (Liquidity Providers) | Manual or via Strategies | Fully automated via Conditional Bids / Strategies |
| Inventory submission (Supply Providers) | Manual entry | Programmatic via API |
| Live bidding feed | Yes — real-time market activity | Via WebSocket subscription |
| Live portfolio feed | Yes — positions, orders, transfers | Via WebSocket / webhooks |
| Transfer confirmation | Click-to-confirm in UI | processPartnerTransfer mutation |
| Setup effort | None — sign in and go | Requires integration work |
| Best for scale | Low-to-high volume (with Strategies) | High volume |
| Best for exploration | Yes | No |