Pricing Overview

Which Brokers Truly Discount Prices?

Barron's estimated a customer's monthly costs at each of the 18 brokers in this year's "Best Online Broker" ranking. Interactive Brokers was the best deal for both the occasional and frequent trader.

Occasional Trader's*
Monthly Costs
Lowest
Interactive Brokers $20.00
eOption $20.00
Merrill Edge *** $28.90
Lightspeed Trading $24.94
OptionsHouse $49.60
Highest
E*Trade $94.24
Charles Schwab $86.96
Scottrade $81.00
TD Ameritrade $79.60
Average (18 brokers) $59.85
Frequent Trader's**
Monthly Costs
Lowest
Interactive Brokers $839
eOption $875
Lightspeed Trading $1,200
Livevol $1,339
Merrill Edge *** $1,633
Highest
E*Trade $2,947
Scottrade $2,831
Charles Schwab $2,758
Fidelity $2,529
Average (18 brokers) $2,122

All costs assume customer has a minimum of $100,000 in assets with broker. *Occasional Trader: 6 stock and 2 options trades per month. **Frequent Trader: 100 stocks and 100 options trades plus $30,000 in margin debt. ***Assumes customer qualifies for 100 free stocks trades per month.

Lower investment costs will increase your overall return on investment, but lower costs do not guarantee that your investment will be profitable. Information based on Barron's The Best Online Brokers Ranking "How Secure Is Your Securities Portfolio" - March 9, 2015. Barron's is a registered trademark of Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Fixed Rate and Tiered Plans

We offer low commissions on all products, including stocks, ETFs, warrants, options, futures and futures options, single-stock futures, EFPs, forex, bonds, funds and CFDs around the world.

Fixed Rate Plans

Fixed rate plans typically charge a single flat rate per share or contract that includes all commissions and all exchange, regulatory and other third-party fees.


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Tiered Plans

Tiered plans typically charge our low broker commissions, which decrease based on volume, plus exchange, regulatory, and clearing fees. In cases where an exchange provides a rebate, we pass some or all of the savings directly back to you.


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Interest and Financing

Low interest rates, and higher loan values on portfolio margin accounts over $100K.

Interactive Brokers uses internationally recognized benchmarks on overnight deposits as a basis for determining interest rates. We then apply a spread around the benchmark interest rate ("BM") in tiers, where larger cash balances receive increasingly better rates, to determine effective rates on:


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Research Platform

Research, News and
Market Data

Comprehensive research, news and market data for traders, investors and institutions.
  • Interactive Brokers Information System (IBIS) Platform.
  • Reuters, Dow Jones, flyonthewall.com, Briefing.com and other news feeds.
  • Reuters StreetEvents Calendars and Worldwide Fundamentals.
  • Real-time global market data on specific exchanges.
  • Quote booster packs that increase the number of simultaneous Level I quotes.

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Advisor Client Fees

Our automated, flexible client fee options make it easy for you to run your business your way:
  • Charge your clients for services rendered through automatic billing, electronic invoicing or direct billing. Determine advisor client fees at the time of the client's registration, and modify them at any time in Account Management.
  • Easily maintain different fee schedules for multiple client accounts using client fee templates.
  • Charge client commissions to your own Advisor master account.
  • Reimburse fees to client accounts up to a maximum of 50% of invoices (net of any prior rebate) for the trailing 12-month period.

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Advisor Client Fees
Broker Client Markups

Broker Client Markups

Our automated, flexible markup options make it easy for you to run your business your way:
  • Charge your clients for services rendered based on a variety of fee-per-trade markup types for each asset class (e.g. stocks, options, etc.), exchange and currency.
  • Easily maintain different fee schedules for multiple client accounts using client fee templates.
  • Mark down credit and short proceeds credit interest and mark up debit interest.
  • Fully-disclosed brokers can configure and submit electronic invoices in Account Management.
  • View all commission markup schedules for your client accounts on the Markup Summary report in Account Management.

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Additional Pricing Information

Required Minimums

Open an Individual account with as little as USD 10,000 or USD equivalent. For complete details about required minimums, see our Required Minimums page.


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Other Fees

For complete details on cancel/modify fees, trade busts/adjustments and other fees, see our Other Fees page.


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Disclosures
  1. Rates were obtained on January 14, 2016 from each firm's website. Some of the firms listed may have additional fees and some firms may reduce or waive commissions or fees, depending on account activity or total account value. Supporting documentation for any claims and statistical information will be provided upon request.