Best Trading Platforms for 2025

Company	Minimum Deposit	Stock Trades	Options (Per Contract)
Charles Schwab	$0.00	$0.00	$0.65

Charles Schwab takes the crown as the #1 Overall Broker of 2025, and for good reason — it offers a tailored solution for every type of investor, no matter your experience level or investment goals. From beginner investors to active traders, Schwab doesn’t just provide a high-level answer; it delivers a solution designed specifically for your needs.

Charles Schwab stands out in the following areas:

A perfect match in TD Ameritrade: Any gaps in its offering were seamlessly filled with the acquisition of TD Ameritrade, resulting in an online trading platform that scores top marks in almost every category we evaluate. For beginners, Schwab’s Investor Starter Kit and Investing 101 programs bridge education and application, making it easy to learn while building a portfolio. For goal-oriented investors, Schwab offers robust tools to set, track, and maintain financial goals, all supported by practical, contextually placed research and education that help guide decision-making.

Portfolio building: What truly sets Schwab apart is its ability to grow with you. If you start as a passive investor, Schwab has everything you need to succeed. But as you evolve in your investing journey, Schwab keeps pace. Active traders gain access to the thinkorswim suite, one of the most advanced trading platforms on the market, offering desktop and mobile tools for technical analysis, position pairing, and multi-leg options strategies. Schwab integrates useful features like in-depth analyst reports, valuation metrics, and fixed-income research with “how to use this” sections that ensure even complex data is actionable.

Advanced tools and insights: Whether you’re scalping gamma, trading iron condors, or diving deep into fundamental analysis, Schwab can handle it. It’s rare to find a stock broker that not only meets investors where they are but stays with them as they grow. Schwab is that broker, offering unmatched tools, education, and support for every stage of your investing journey.

Visit my comprehensive Charles Schwab review to learn more about the thinkorswim platform and find out more about its offerings.

Company	Minimum Deposit	Stock Trades	Options (Per Contract)
Interactive Brokers	$0.00	$0.00	$0.65 info

Interactive Brokers (IBKR) secures the number two spot for best stock broker for 2025 in what was an incredibly tight race. While IBKR is best known for catering to advanced traders and professionals, it also offers features that make it surprisingly accessible to a broader audience.

Interactive Brokers stands out in the following areas:

Platforms & tools: Whether you’re managing a multi-million-dollar portfolio or just starting your investing journey, IBKR has a platform tailored to your needs. Tools like the multisort screener allow you to filter and rank investments with intuitive data visualizations, making complex decisions easier for new investors to understand. Add in its comprehensive goal-planning tools, offering asset allocation guidance, expense tracking, and cash flow projections, and IBKR proves it excels at both institutional-grade trading and long-term financial planning.

Advanced tools and insights: Advanced traders can harness powerful analytics like Sharpe ratio, beta, and correlation metrics, while socially conscious investors can customize portfolios to align with their values. Beginners, meanwhile, benefit from IBKR’s retirement planner and free account consolidation tools, which provide a centralized view of all financial assets.

Educational resources: Although the platform’s learning curve may feel steep, its CFA-accredited courses and other educational resources ensure that investors at any level can grow into its capabilities. IBKR’s ability to serve the most sophisticated traders while offering beginner-friendly tools and global market access makes it a standout choice for any investor, proving that you don’t need a massive portfolio to take advantage of one of the industry’s most robust brokerage platforms.

Visit my full review of Interactive Brokers to learn more about its entire offering.

Company	Minimum Deposit	Stock Trades	Options (Per Contract)
Fidelity	$0.00	$0.00	$0.65

Fidelity earns its spot as the third-best brokerage account for 2025 and distinguishes itself as one of the most versatile online trading platforms I’ve tested.

Fidelity stands out in the following areas:

Research: Its research tools are exceptional — Fidelity’s economic calendar is my go-to for tracking key market events, offering context that explains the "why" behind market movements. The thematic stock screener, highlighting trends like AI or biotech, is another favorite, making it easy to uncover tailored investment opportunities.

Platforms & tools: Fidelity’s widgetized dashboard adapts seamlessly to different investor needs, simplifying navigation for beginners while offering extensive customization for advanced users. As an options trader, I found the OptionsPlay integration invaluable, presenting strategies in an intuitive format, offering income-focused ideas, and flagging potential risks like exercises or earnings announcements.

Tax and retirement planning: While Fidelity excels in retirement planning, its offerings go far beyond that. With tax-advantaged business plans, specialty accounts for charitable giving, and custodial accounts for minors, Fidelity provides solutions for nearly every financial goal. The fixed-income dashboard is another standout, delivering detailed insights like cash flow views and tax-exempt comparisons for bond investors. Fidelity’s portfolio management tools, including external account linking and contextual education, make managing investments straightforward and efficient.

Customer support: Their customer support is equally impressive, with specialized teams for beginners, active traders, and options investors, ensuring expert assistance at every level. Fidelity ranked #1 in our exhaustive customer service testing for 2025.

Whether you’re planning for retirement, exploring global markets, or refining advanced strategies, Fidelity’s innovative tools and reliable platform make it a superb choice. Check out my full review of Fidelity to get all my thoughts about this broker and explore more of its offerings.

Buying a stock means owning a slice of a company. ETFs bundle many stocks into one trade, which can reduce the risk of simply choosing the wrong single company in an otherwise successful industry, theme, or strategy. Before placing your first order, it’s important to understand price discovery, market hours, and how settlement works.

U.S. stock trades settle on T+1 (the day after the trade date), which determines how quickly proceeds and buying power update. Knowing how orders work is just as important. Market orders prioritize speed, while limit orders focus on price. Stop orders can help define exits, and time-in-force instructions control how long an order remains active. Treat these tools as essentials since using them properly helps avoid common mistakes like chasing price or overtrading illiquid stocks.

Start with a standard taxable brokerage if your goal is flexibility. If you are saving for retirement, consider an IRA or Roth IRA to benefit from tax advantages. With most standard brokerage accounts, you can choose to trade in a cash account or apply for margin.

Cash accounts keep things straightforward and avoid interest costs, but you need to be mindful of good faith and free-riding violations tied to unsettled funds. Margin accounts increase buying power but bring added risks, interest charges, and the possibility of a margin call. Active traders with less than $25,000 must also consider the pattern day trader rule, which can limit trading activity. I only enable margin if there is a clear need and a written plan for risk. Confirm SIPC coverage and review the broker’s fee schedule, platform access, and research. Your account type and broker choice should align with your strategy and time horizon.

Transfer only what fits your plan and emergency fund. Fractional shares make it possible to buy blue chips and ETFs without spending hundreds of dollars for a single share, which is a great way to build consistency. I like starting with a broad market ETF to anchor a portfolio, then adding single stocks slowly. Dollar-cost averaging helps tame volatility and reduces the pressure to time entries. Reinvest dividends if your goal is growth, and keep position sizes small at first. The goal is to learn execution and routine while keeping risk contained.

Set up watchlists organized by theme or strategy and take time to learn the order ticket, including advanced fields like bracket orders if your broker offers them. Use screeners to filter by fundamentals or technicals, and keep charts clean and consistent. A few indicators are often enough if you understand what they measure. News feeds and earnings calendars provide context before you trade, not after. If your broker offers paper trading, practice entries and exits there first. I always validate a new process in simulation before committing real capital.

Building a routine and refining your strategy are just as important as placing the trade itself. Read platform tutorials and stock trading books, attend webinars, and study real examples. Define your risk per trade and total portfolio risk, and write down your reasons to buy and what would make you sell. A trading journal helps enforce this discipline. Review results weekly and track mistakes, not just wins. Taxes matter too - holding for more than a year can qualify gains for long-term rates in a taxable account. Stay disciplined around catalysts like earnings, and avoid trading out of boredom. A simple plan you can follow is always better than a complex plan you can’t.

Jessica Inskip is Director of Investor Research at StockBrokers.com, bringing 15 years of experience in brokerage and trading strategy. A former FINRA-licensed rep, she held Series 7, 63, 66, and 4 licenses. Jessica focuses on investor education and brokerage industry research, appears regularly on CNBC, Bloomberg, The Schwab Network, Fox Business, and Yahoo! Finance, and hosts the Market MakeHer podcast.

Blain Reinkensmeyer, co-founder of StockBrokers.com, has been investing and trading for over 25 years. After having placed over 2,000 trades in his late teens and early 20s, he became one of the first in digital media to review online brokerages. Today, Blain is widely respected as a leading expert on finance and investing, specifically the U.S. online brokerage industry. Blain has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company, among others. Blain created the original scoring rubrics for StockBrokers.com and oversees all testing and rating methodologies.

• We used our own brokerage accounts for testing.
• We collected thousands of data points across the brokers we review.
• We tested each online broker's website, desktop platforms, and mobile app, where applicable.
• We maintained strict editorial independence; brokers cannot pay for inclusion or a higher rating.

Our research team meticulously collected data on every feature of importance to a wide range of customer profiles, including beginners, casual investors, passive investors, and active traders. We carefully track variables like margin rates, trading costs, fees, and platform features and use them to help rate brokers across a range of categories measuring ease of use, range of investments, research, education, and more.

At StockBrokers.com, our reviewers use a variety of computing devices to evaluate platforms and tools. Our reviews and data collection were conducted using the following devices: iPhone SE running iOS 17.5.1, MacBook Pro M1 with 8 GB RAM running the current MacOS, and a Dell Vostro 5402 laptop i5 with 8 GB RAM running Windows 11 Pro.

Each broker was evaluated and scored on over 200 different variables across seven key categories: Range of Investments, Platforms & Tools, Research, Mobile Trading, Education, Ease of Use, and Overall. Learn more about how we test.

We tested 14 online trading platforms for this guide:

• Ally Invest review
• Charles Schwab review
• eToro review
• E*TRADE review
• Fidelity Investments review
• Firstrade review
• Interactive Brokers review
• J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing review
• Merrill Edge review
• Public.com review
• Robinhood review
• tastytrade review
• TradeStation review
• Webull review