The Best Online Stock Trading Sites

You’re not going to find lower fees than Ally Invest, especially as an active investor. In a nutshell: It’s the most affordable broker there is, with a rock-bottom commission structure and easy entry point, plus a quality platform that gives you access to the entire universe of stocks and ETFs. Where some discount brokers focus on only one kind of trader — options, for example, or high-net-worth investors — Ally Invest provides an excellent experience for investors of all kinds.

It’s the blend of great trading tools with low prices that makes Ally Invest a standout. A focus on discount costs can be a red flag for quality (what is it skimping on?), but Ally Invest truly delivers with sophisticated calculators, profit-loss estimators, and more. Ally Invest also offers a robust research library that incorporates visual slides and interactive media into its market data. Let’s dig into that discount pricing. At $4.95 a trade, Ally Invest’s fee structure is the lowest out there, matched (but never beat) by other players. Those low fees alone make it one of the best discount brokers, but they also have no inactivity charge and only a $50 full outgoing transfer fee. If you’re an active investor, 30+ trades per quarter or $100,000+ balance, you get a discount that takes equity trades down to $3.95. That significant discount makes Ally Invest the cheapest platform for active investors.

We’re not the only ones who think Ally Invest is a remarkable service. Barron’s has rated Ally Invest’s past self, TradeKing, at least 4 out of 5 stars for the past 10 years, and it regularly racked up kudos for its offerings with StockBrokers.com. But in 2017, there was a rash of price slashing from pretty much every top-tier discount broker, and the competition is getting stiffer. Case in point: Fidelity dropped its pricing from $6.95 to match the $4.95 flat rate of Ally Invest, but its perks aren’t quite as accessible for newcomers, and its barrier for entry is higher: You need to fund your account with at least $2,500, and it requires a $50,000 deposit to score the 300 commission-free trades it offers as a sign-up bonus. Vanguard, as another example, charges as much as $20 a transaction if you want to trade stocks or funds by another provider.

*Fidelity requires a $2,500 deposit to open an account.

New investors need two things from their online stock trading platform: an easy learning curve and lots of room to grow. E*Trade has both. Their platform boasts a library of educational videos, articles, and webinars for each type of investor. Once you’ve mastered the fundamentals, read up on market news, reports, and commentary from E*Trade analysts.

The only real drawback to E*Trade: Commission fees start at $6.95. It’s not until investors make more than 30 trades a quarter that the fees drop down to $4.95 that OptionsHouse and Ally Invest off up-front. While E*Trade can’t match OptionsHouse or Ally Invest’s low flat fees, it racks up points for its transparent pricing model. Take OptionsHouse, which E*Trade actually acquired in 2016. OptionsHouse is known for its super-low fees, but buried in the fine print, OptionsHouse says it actually charges $0.0005 per share on penny stocks. Let’s compare the two, imagining you execute 500 transactions in the quarter for about 50,000 shares each. That adds up to about a $500 transaction for a stock trading at 1 cent — pretty modest overall. With E*Trade, there are no surcharges for low-priced stocks and no inactivity or other surprise add-on fees.

For new investors, we also liked TD Ameritrade’s platform, Trade Architect, which walks you through the ordering process as you use the interface. But when it comes to commission fees, TD Ameritrade falls short. Its fees stay at $6.95 per trade, for stocks, ETFs, and options. E*Trade does require an investment minimum for new brokerage accounts ($500), but for most investors, you’ll need at least that much to see real growth.

Even though the flat rates are the same after 30 trades, the per-share fee can really rack up if you’re trading a high volume of low-priced shares.

Beyond the math, though, E*Trade and Charles Schwab are very similar. In 2016, Barron’s rated them within one point of each other, and you can trust both these veteran brokers to have the resources, research, tools, and platforms to accommodate penny stock trading and far beyond.

*Fees drop from $6.95 to $4.95 at 30 trades per quarter

TD Ameritrade has been a powerful player in the online stock trading ecosystem for years, and even though its pricing structure is more expensive than some of the other discount brokers, there are many traders who think its best-in-class trading platforms, Trade Architect and thinkorswim, are worth it.

Trade Architect is often in the shadow of thinkorswim, but the web-based platform is streamlined and easy to use, and particularly appealing to beginning investors. It has a tab-based navigation that lets users flip between trading tools and their account overview, plus charts, stock screeners, heat maps, and more. Its Trade Finder feature is an excellent tool for novices, allowing investors to make some selections (think direction, timing, allocation), and then walking them through the ordering process while spotlighting different strategies that map to their selected guidelines. All-up, Trade Architect achieves a good balance of key information without being overwhelming.

Thinkorswim, on the other hand, is designed for advanced investors. It’s a desktop application that gives TD Ameritrade customers free access to tools and features that pretty much any other broker would charge a premium for, including research reports, real-time data, charts, and technical studies. Customizable workspaces, extensive third-party research, and a thriving trader chat room where investors can share strategies and tips are also included. Where Trade Architect keeps information overload in check, thinkorswim is a firehose.

Thinkorswim is a standout especially in options trading, with quick-to-get options-trading tabs (just click “spread” if you want a spread, and “single order” if you want one leg) plus just-in-time links that explain the strategies on the order page. Its Strategy Roller feature lets investors create custom covered calls and then roll those positions from expiration to expiration. There’s also a fully functional mobile app.

The flipside to such robust platforms is cost. Even though TD Ameritrade lowered its fees in 2017 from $9.99 to $6.95, pretty much every other major discount broker slashed its prices too — Fidelity, for example, dipped from $7.95 to $4.95. That means TD Ameritrade remains one of the more expensive options out there, even with over 100 commission-free ETFs. That said, it continues to be one of the largest trading platforms in the world, with nearly $740 billion in assets, and has ranked as the best platform for novices by Barron’s five years running. Since it acquired Scottrade, our favorite platform for beginners, in 2016, we can predict it will continue getting better and better over the coming years.

If you already have a firm handle on your investment strategy and want to maximize your profits, OptionsHouse is excellent. What it lacks in some of the investor education features that competitors like E*Trade and TD Ameritrade can claim, it makes up for with its low-cost, streamlined trading platform.

OptionsHouse’s biggest draw is its pricing structure: $4.95 plus $0.50 per contract, with absolutely no minimum to join or to maintain an account. A single-leg options contract is $5.45 all-in. Even better, the low prices apply to futures and stock trades as well, giving you a cost-effective way to manage your entire portfolio. (Who wants the hassle and cost of multiple brokers for multiple things?)

Along with competitive pricing, OptionsHouse has one of the most accessible platforms around: clean design, loads of information, and truly user-friendly tools. Trigger Alerts lets users set up their accounts to automatically purchase an order based on a particular scenario. For example, you can set an alert to buy any number of shares of one stock if its direct competitor falls by a certain percentage. When that’s triggered, you get an alert on any device that lets you confirm the purchase or ignore in one simple reply. Tools like tradeLAB help dissect options spread, with green smiley faces for the statistical probability of making a profit, and red frowns for a loss. OptionsHouse also offers a “dime buyback program” that makes it easy to close any short options without paying commission fees.

Barron’s named OptionsHouse “Best for Options Traders” and gave it a 4.5 out of 5 stars overall, and a perfect 5 for its mobile performance. Whether you prefer to trade via desktop, tablet, or mobile, its customizable interface seamlessly transitions between all three — though, admittedly, customers seem to love or hate the app.

Beginners to the more advanced world of options may feel more comfortable with the resources and education that E*Trade and TD Ameritrade excel at, including on-demand videos that show each click of a trade, webinars on strategy, and in-person tutorials at physical branches. (Since E*Trade acquired OptionsHouse in late 2016, we can anticipate a merger of tools, services, and support that will help OptionsHouse grow here, although it hasn’t happened yet.)

OptionsHouse does fall short in mutual funds — it charges $20 per trade, as opposed to Ally Invest’s $9.95 — currency trading, and commission-free ETFs, but for the active trader who know what they’re doing, it’s one of the best platforms available.

*Fees drop from $6.95 to $4.95 at 30 trades per quarter

If there’s a way to slice and dice the market, Fidelity has thought about it. Its platform wins for user-friendly design, plus there are tons of educational resources for deeper research. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer who enjoys geeking out over data and analysis, Fidelity’s tools will help take the guesswork out of finding funds and nosing out strategies.

We admired Fidelity’s platform that lets you explore your options with a slick and intuitive design, complete with color-coded rankings and charts that call out what’s important. You can sort stocks by size, performance, and even criteria like sales growth or profit growth. Want to sort ETFs by the sectors they focus on, or their expenses? Done. There’s even a box to check if you want to only explore Fidelity’s commission-free offerings. A few other discount brokers do offer screeners, but none match the depth and user-friendliness of Fidelity’s.

When it comes to research, Fidelity is pretty much in a league of its own. The intellectually curious can dive into research from more than 20 providers, including Recognia, Ned Davis, and McLean Capital Management. Fidelity’s Learning Center featured videos are organized by topic – including not just the concept, but also how to apply those concepts to your own investments using the Fidelity platform. It’s a powerful way to learn investing techniques and immediately put them to practice.

Fidelity’s accolades keep stacking up. Kiplinger’s 2016 Online Broker Survey ranked Fidelity best overall against seven other major brokers. Investor’s Business Dailyranked Fidelity among its top five brokers based on site performance, research tools, and customer service. Barron’s 2016 Online Broker Survey compared 16 platforms, and awarded Fidelity with the top overall score of 34.9 out of a possible 40.0, stating, “Fidelity Investments made it to the top this year due to the variety of trading and investing tools, and the quality of its trade execution.”

Better yet, Fidelity dropped its commission fees from $7.95 to $4.95 in February 2017, making it competitive with other historically low-cost platforms like Ally Invest and OptionsHouse.

That said, some of Fidelity’s advanced tools are only available to high-volume traders (for example, charting with Recognia requires a significant 120 trades per year to use, and its Active Trader Pro requires 36 trades per year). TD Ameritrade stands out in contrast by offering its premium tools to anyone with an account. With that said, even Fidelity’s basic tools are high-quality enough to make it a top pick.