Fidelity Review

Fidelity is strong across all the categories we cover, but where it really shines brightest is in its astounding array of research and market commentary. Call it Stockpicker Paradise.

Pros & Cons

Overall summary

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Investment options

From stock trading to retirement guidance, Fidelity easily accommodates most investors’ needs, unless you like trading exotic investments such as futures or maybe Pokemon Charizard cards. Fidelity’s crypto offering is a bit thin on coin choices and a bit pricey in markups and markdowns.

Cryptocurrency: Clients in 38 states can trade bitcoin and ethereum through a Fidelity Crypto account. Though crypto trading is promoted as commission-free, it’s not free. There’s an up to 1% markup or markdown embedded in the execution. A few other brokers offer more coins and charge less.

Fractional shares: Fractional shares trading enables investors to buy a fraction of a share instead of a whole share. For example, for a stock trading at $500 per share, investors can buy 1/10th a share for $50. In 2023, Fidelity remains one of our favorite brokers for fractional shares trading thanks to its meticulously designed order ticket and dedication to giving customers the lowest-cost executions.

Other investments: While futures and forex trading aren’t offered, international trading is, which lets customers trade in 25 countries and exchange between 20 currencies. In the international trading department, only Interactive Brokers, which is a favorite for many pros, offers more global access.

Retirement services: Fidelity offers traditional, Roth and rollover IRAs alongside excellent education and tools for retirement planning, and the broker charges no miscellaneous fees for IRA accounts.

Commissions and fees

After factoring in order execution, where Fidelity is one of the best, Fidelity’s $0 stock and ETF trades consistently yield additional value for customers, and it skips some charges many other brokers routinely drop on their customers.

Penny stocks: Unlike many brokers, Fidelity charges no additional fees for trading penny stocks.

No payment for order flow: Rare in the industry, Fidelity does not accept payment for order flow, or PFOF, and indicates the amount of price improvement received on eligible orders.

Zero expense ratio mutual funds: Fidelity distinguishes its offering with several zero expense ratio mutual funds, helping investors save on costs, even compared to funds available from traditionally lowest cost provider Vanguard. For example, FNILX, FZIPX, FZROX, and FZILX come with no minimum deposit and a zero expense ratio. Transaction fee mutual funds cost $49.95 to purchase, nothing on redemption.

Incidental fees: All brokers have incidental fees. Unlike many other firms, Fidelity doesn’t charge for transfers out. Most of the other unusual fees are either lower than average or in line with the industry. If you expect to rack up incidental fees, use our broker comparison tool to find the best broker for you.

Mobile trading apps

Fidelity offers two mobile applications for traditional customers. Both accept the same Fidelity username and password, so you can choose and use them as you see fit. One is the “flagship” Fidelity experience; the other, Bloom, caters to personal finance novices.

One promising addition this year is the Fidelity Youth App, which offers a curated and parent-friendly savings, spending and investing experience. Parents should be very excited about this financial education opportunity, but should also remember that teens will always be teens. A member of our editorial team invited her teen to trial the app, and her teen’s question was, “Can I withdraw it to my Venmo?” which, of course, would defeat the purpose of the app.

Fidelity Investments app: Fidelity’s flagship mobile experience is cleanly designed, bug-free, and efficient to use. Buying and selling shares is a cinch, and if you want to read up before you pull the trigger, there’s plenty of worthwhile content to dive into whenever you have a spare moment. While Fidelity gets a big thumbs-up for its user-friendly flagship mobile app, it omits some features that casual and active traders will miss, such as ladder trading. Those looking for a dedicated trading app might want to check out Charles Schwab’s thinkorswim, tastytrade, and E*TRADE’s Power E*TRADE.

Ease of use: Navigation is simple, and finding what you’re looking for is easy, thanks to excellent design and readily understood icons.

Customizable dashboard: Upon logging in, a customizable dashboard experience greets you. The customization is nice, but chances are you won’t need to tweak too much. I use Fidelity on a regular basis for my personal investing and I’m happy enough with the layout that I don’t feel any need to change anything.

Charting: Having visited Fidelity’s historic and extensive Chart Room in Boston, color me unsurprised that the mobile app has some powerful charting. There are over a hundred technical indicators and 12 different chart types, which is more than enough for most. Dividends, earnings, and splits may also be plotted, which is incredibly valuable for those like me who use both charts and fundamentals in making investment decisions.

Other unique features: Research is robust and exactly what one would expect to find after using the website. Among many other highlights of the mobile app is the note-taking functionality, which allows you to log personal thoughts on individual stocks and the broader markets. There’s also live streaming TV from Bloomberg within the mobile app.

Fidelity Bloom: Bloom won our Best New Tool award last year. It’s a saving and spending app that uses behavioral finance principles, brief challenges, and positive reinforcement to tackle emotional issues and mental roadblocks that prevent people from achieving financial goals. Fidelity borrows from the field of heuristics, which are mental “shortcuts” people take in making complex decisions. It’s a unique approach that I think can help many people, especially those just starting to save for the future. I’d like it even more if it incorporated investing into its saving feature.

Fidelity Mobile app gallery

Other trading platforms and tools

Traders will inevitably be curious about Active Trader Pro, Fidelity’s desktop trading platform, which has a decent array of trading tools. Keeping it real, the platform could use an extensive refresh. Most investors can skip ATP and will be very pleased with the browser experience.

Active Trader Pro: If you want to fire off trades quickly at Fidelity, Active Trader Pro has a more trader-friendly workflow than the website, but it also leaves a lot to be desired.

My primary gripes with ATP are its choppy feel and stale design. Some elements are slow to load, and a few widgets are simply windows pointing to web pages. Often the platform didn’t keep up with my mouse movements. That might be due to its Java base; other platforms that use HTML5 are quicker.

On the positive side, Active Trader Pro includes several unique, home-brewed tools, including Real-Time Analytics (streaming trade signals) and Trade Armor (real-time position analysis). Options traders have a variety of analyses open to them.

Website watch lists: Fidelity’s website watch list is one of my favorites among all the brokers I test. Streaming quotes are included, and there are 62 columns of data to choose from. Furthermore, the workflow is seamless, making it a breeze to transition to researching the stock further or placing a trade in the docked order ticket.

Web Charting: The browser Chart+ view is one of the most functional browser-based charting experiences among all the brokers I tested this year. Much of that’s due to the exceptionally well-implemented automated technical pattern recognition and chart analyses from Trading Central. Charts are crisp and cleanly laid out and include over 30 different drawing tools, more than 100 studies, custom user profiles, alerts, notes, and more.

Research

Fidelity’s actively managed mutual funds have their roots in deep research (read “One Up on Wall Street” by Fidelity superstar manager Peter Lynch if there’s any doubt). That legacy continues in the suite of available research. Fidelity’s is a veritable Garden of Readin’ for thoughtful investors.

Stock research: When I pulled up research on Apple shares, Fidelity offered 12 reports to choose from. That might sound like overkill, but it also allows you to find a research source that best fits your investing style. My favorite, for what it’s worth, is Zacks. Though Fidelity provides more than enough third-party research for most investors, I also like the deeper dives available from the proprietary research teams at Merrill, E*TRADE, and J.P. Morgan.

Fund research: If you’re more of a fund buyer than a stock picker, you’ll be pleased with fund research coverage. I found PDF reports from Morningstar and FactSet for the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) ETF. Open end mutual fund data is sourced from Morningstar.

Market news and research: Fidelity provides rich market commentary, like other top-tier brokers, but it’s exceptionally good at curating third-party news and thought pieces. Where some brokers provide simple news feeds, Fidelity scours and presents the best of the web and it consistently chooses well, shortening the time needed to stay current on market events.

Screening for trade ideas: Fidelity’s stock, ETF, and mutual fund screeners are easy to use, rich in data, and set the benchmark for the industry. Thematic investing, ESG (environmental, social and governance) data, Morningstar ratings — the list of features is extensive.

Education

There’s something for everyone in Fidelity’s educational offerings. Fidelity does a great job of organizing content into roadmaps with progress tracking, as well as sorting by experience level, category and content type. Articles, videos, webinars, infographics, courses, and even podcasts are made available to customers.

Learning center: Fidelity’s Learning Center collects educational content in one spot, including archived webinars, classes for beginners, and a large variety of well-stocked categories. There’s even an AI-driven recommendation engine to suggest educational content. Fidelity’s YouTube channel provides a library of archived videos organized by playlist with related educational content published throughout the week. The Youth App has its own learning center that offers investing tips, articles, videos, and a couple of calculators for parents as well as teens.

Retirement education: Fidelity stands out with its retirement education. There’s a comprehensive financial planning tool that can pull information from outside accounts, allowing you to track your progress toward retirement and other spending goals. It won’t take the place of a certified financial planner, but it could be helpful for tracking your financial progress and identifying habits that might be holding you back. Before committing to use it, take a moment to decide whether you’re comfortable providing that much access to your personal financial data.

If you want to skip doing any deep-dive financial planning, there are plenty of in-house calculators to provide you with a proper diagnosis of your financial position. To show the depth of their tools, aside from the usual “How much money will you have to retire?” worksheets, Fidelity has a “Substantially Equal Periodic Payments/72(t) Calculator” that can help you find out the most tax-efficient IRA withdrawal amounts if you are below 59½ years old.

Customer service

To score Customer Service, StockBrokers.com partners with customer experience research firm Confero to conduct phone tests from locations throughout the United States. For our 2023 Broker Review, 168 customer service tests were conducted over six weeks, with wait times logged for each call.

Customer service representatives were asked for assistance or details in several areas of broker services, including account opening, trading tools, apps, rollovers, active trading, and more. Here are the results for Fidelity.

• Average Connection Time: 1-2 minutes
• Average Net Promoter Score: 8.8 / 10
• Average Professionalism Score: 8.4 / 10
• Overall Score: 8.6 / 10
• Ranking: 3rd of 14 brokers

Banking services

While Fidelity is not itself a chartered bank, it does offer banking-related services and delivers a reliable experience that includes access to more than 200 retail service centers. A cash management account is available and includes bill pay and a debit card. The Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature credit card offers 2% cashback on all purchases. Fidelity Bloom, a program tailored to personal finance novices, also provides rewards. Fidelity offers no loyalty rewards for using multiple products, an area in which Bank of America - Merrill Edge is unsurpassed. Given Fidelity’s thrifty approach, this isn’t surprising.

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Final thoughts

The Green Machine continues to dominate our broker rankings on the strength of its breadth of services, ease of use, low costs and compelling educational content. While some other brokers might do a better job for short-term traders and professional investors, everyday investors will find Fidelity to be an excellent choice.

Here are our top takeaways for Fidelity:

1. Fidelity delivers value across its entire client experience. The Fidelity website and mobile app both breezed through our rigorous usability assessments. Furthermore, thanks to a plethora of educational resources, Fidelity is a winner for beginners.
2. Fidelity shines for research, whether you're viewing stock, ETF, and mutual fund quotes or running through a screener to find investment ideas.
3. Though the Active Trader Pro desktop platform is usable for day trading and options trading, it’s in serious need of a refresh.

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Is Fidelity a safe company to invest with?

Yes, Fidelity is one of the safest brokerages to invest with. It’s an industry leader with a stellar reputation and fully regulated in the U.S. with the SEC and FINRA, is trusted by over 43 million people and holds over $11.5 trillion in assets under administration.

Money held in an investment account with Fidelity is protected by SIPC insurance, which covers up to $500,000 in securities ($250,000 cash maximum) per customer. Funds held in Fidelity’s cash management account are swept to partner banks and protected by FDIC insurance.

Finally, Fidelity provides additional coverage in excess of SIPC limits through Lloyd’s of London for up to $1 billion across all customer accounts, and with up to $1.9 million per customer for cash.

Is Fidelity FDIC insured?

U.S. brokers, including Fidelity, are not covered by the FDIC. Instead, accounts are protected by the Securities Investors Protection Corporation (SIPC) and additional coverage through Lloyd’s of London. Fidelity does offer a cash sweep program that will park your available cash in up to 20 FDIC-insured banks, allowing you to obtain FDIC coverage far in excess of the typical $250,000 limit.

Is Fidelity good for beginners?

Yes, Fidelity is one of our top choices for beginners, thanks to a solid combination of educational content and easily navigated mobile apps and web pages. Fidelity also offers fractional share stock and trading, but it doesn’t let you practice trading with a virtual portfolio.

How much money do you need to open a Fidelity account?

There is no minimum to open a Fidelity brokerage account or monthly service charges for an open account, but, as at most brokers, some investments do have minimum initial purchases.

Does Fidelity have hidden fees?

Like all brokers, Fidelity has incidental fees. You can find them listed here. Though Fidelity is usually very clear in its pricing, there is one exception: It markets its bitcoin and ethereum trading as “commission free,” but footnotes disclose an up to 1% markup or markdown.

What is the downside to Fidelity?

Fidelity has been a perennial outperformer in our brokerage testing over the years and has a strong reputation within the industry. Like all brokers, Fidelity has particular strengths and weaknesses. Fidelity is particularly strong in stock and market research, but some other brokers offer more robust active trading platforms with cutting-edge features and very advantageous pricing.

What does Active Trader Pro do?

Fidelity Active Trader Pro is a downloadable trading platform from Fidelity designed for active traders. Like any decent trading platform, it’s filled with customizable widgets and charts. Most investors don’t require the complex tools in Active Trader Pro and the platform feels a bit dated compared to some of its competitors.

Does Fidelity Active Trader Pro cost anything?

Use of Active Trader Pro, Fidelity’s downloadable trading platform, doesn’t cost anything. The tool-laden platform is free to Fidelity brokerage customers, and Fidelity doesn’t have account minimums or inactivity fees.

About Fidelity

Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Fidelity was founded in 1946 and is one of the largest asset managers in the world (1). As of October 2023, Fidelity serves over 43 million individual customers and holds over $11.5 trillion in total customer assets under administration (2).

2023 Review methodology

Our mission at StockBrokers.com is simple: provide thorough and unbiased reviews of online brokers, based on an extraordinary level of hands-on testing and data collection. Our ratings and awards are based on this data and our experts’ deep authority in the field; brokers cannot pay for preferential treatment. Here’s more about trustworthiness at StockBrokers.com.

For the StockBrokers.com 13th Annual Review published in January 2023, a total of 3,332 data points were collected over three months and used to score 17 top brokers. This makes StockBrokers.com home to the largest independent database on the web covering the online broker industry. All research, writing and data collection at StockBrokers.com is done by humans, for humans. Read our generative AI policy here.

As part of our annual review process, all brokers had the opportunity to provide updates and key milestones and complete an in-depth data profile, which we hand-checked for accuracy. Brokers also were offered the opportunity to provide executive time for an annual update meeting.

Our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .001% each year, providing site visitors quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test.

Fidelity fees and features data

The data collection efforts at StockBrokers.com are unmatched in the industry. The following tables show a deeper dive into the offerings available at this broker. You can also compare its offerings side-by-side with those of other brokers using our Comparison Tool.

In addition to meticulous annual data collection by our in-house analyst, every broker that participates in our review is afforded the opportunity to complete an in-depth data profile. We then audit each data point to ensure its accuracy.

Trading fees

Account fees

Margin rates

Investment options

Order types

Beginners

Stock trading apps

Stock app features

Stock app charting

Trading platforms overview

Trading platform stock chart features

Day trading features

Investment research overview

Stock research features

ETF research features

Mutual fund research features

Options trading overview

Banking features

Customer service options

About the Editorial Team