When an investor wants to purchase an options contract, typically you'll start by showing a list of possible contracts, organized by expiration date and type (call or put).

## Retrieving a chain

Each underlying stock or ETF instrument will have contracts that expire on different expiration dates. Some offer weekly-issued contracts, some monthly-issued, and some even daily.

Use the `GET instruments/:instrument_id/options/expiration-dates` endpoint to retrieve all expirations dates currently available for a security.

After you have a date to investigate, use `GET /instruments/AAPL/options?expirationDate={2022-05-15}` to retrieve all available option contracts for that date.

## Getting prices and details

Once you have an individual option contract's ID, you can get more details about that option using the `GET options/:id` endpoint.

You can also retrieve real-time quotes for this contract using the [Retrieve Quote (referential feed)](🔗) API. Learn more in [Displaying prices and information](🔗).