SoFi Invest Review

Do you want to be famous? Open a SoFi Invest account, make your profile public, and buy something or even just add it on your watch list. SoFi shares your activity (though not the amounts) on a Twitter-like stream. What’s that — you want information more than fame? Read on to see whether SoFi and its social investor stream stacks up well against more established brokers.

Pros & Cons

Overall Summary

Investment options

SoFi offers some of the most popular current investment choices, including fractional shares, a wide variety of cryptocurrencies and initial public offering (IPO) investing. Retirement accounts and robo-advising are also available. SoFi does not support open-end mutual funds and futures trading.

Cryptocurrency: SoFi offers 30 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ethereum, cardano and dogecoin. Retirement services: SoFi offers retirement services, including traditional, Roth and SEP IRAs. These can be self-directed or set up through its no-fee automated investing advisor.

Commissions and fees

Like the majority of the industry, SoFi offers $0 stock and ETF trades. Retirement accounts also have no annual fee. Its margin rates are phenomenally low. When we conducted our annual testing, SoFi’s rate was 5.25%, close to half the rate of many of its competitors. Margin rates change frequently, so check the current rate before buying on margin.

Penny stocks: SoFi doesn’t charge commission on penny stocks. However, someone needs to clue in SoFi’s chatbot that penny stocks are fully available — the bot told us that OTC stocks can only be sold on the desktop version. We were able to place a buy limit order on our iPhone and in our web browser with no issue.

Fractional shares: Investors can buy fractional shares, known at SoFi as Stock Bits, for as little as $5. Some firms don’t have a $5 minimum.

Options: Options trade commission-free.

Mobile trading apps

SoFi’s mobile app is simple and colorful, but is very limited in functionality. A ton of the stock page screen real estate consists of a social feed about what other SoFi investors are doing with the stock. We’d prefer that space be used for company news or stock research, as it is at most other brokers.

Ease of use: The mobile app gets high marks for ease of use. It is easy to move through from the homepage to a name on your watchlist to the simple trade ticket. There is very little of a learning curve, partly because there is not much to learn. My Irish Setter, a breed not particularly known for a high IQ, was able to place a stock trade with little difficulty.

Watchlists: Watchlists are upfront and easy to use, though features and information are limited. To add a stock to the watchlist, you need to search for the ticker and click a button. We’d appreciate being able to edit the watchlist directly. The watch list data is real-time but not streaming, as with the other quotes.

Charting: Charting consists of very basic line charts. Time frames can be adjusted, but there is no customization and no indicators. Intermediate and advanced traders will not be delighted with SoFi’s simplistic approach.

Trading tools: You can trade stocks, options, ETFs and cryptocurrencies on the mobile app, but beyond a very basic trade ticket and options chains, there are no trading tools. SoFi does offer unique “collections,” shares activity of “Popular Investors” and ranks high-performing investors on a leaderboard. If you enjoy following other investors, read our review of eToro, another social investing platform, which we found to do a more complete job.

Other trading platforms and tools

SoFi Invest offers a bare-bones, basic trading experience that isn’t built for active traders. If you’re among the latter, see our reviews of Fidelity, E*TRADE, tastyworks, TD Ameritrade, and TradeStation.

Platforms overview: SoFi’s website allows trading of stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies — and that is practically all you can do. There are no real trading tools to speak of, other than reading what other SoFi investors are doing.

Charting: Charts are very basic line charts. There is no customization. You cannot add indicators and there are no other charting tools.

Research

SoFi offers little to no research. Stock quote details offer the most basic of fundamental data, extending only as far as market cap, dividend yield and P/E ratio. For the same rate of $0 per stock trade, investors who value research materials can take advantage of significantly more robust offerings at market research leaders Fidelity, E*TRADE, Merrill Edge, Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade.

Education

SoFi’s educational content covers a wide range of topics, but you need to scroll for it on the app and site. Go to the SoFi homepage and scroll down to SoFi Learn.

Learning center: SoFi has a basic learning center. Material covers a variety of subjects, like “What Is the IPO Process?” and “How Does Bitcoin Mining Work?” The presentation is dry, unlike the more engaging content on rival Robinhood. That’s a shame, because we found a well-produced SoFi video embedded in one – just one – article. We hope to see more videos like it in the future.

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 SoFi Invest.

• Average Connection Time: 1-2 minutes
• Average Net Promoter Score: 8.3 / 10
• Average Professionalism Score: 8.4 / 10
• Overall Score: 8.2 / 10
• Ranking: 6th of 14 brokers

Banking services

SoFi offers a broad range of banking services, and placed among Best in Class for this category in our 2023 Annual Review. Products available include personal loans, home loans and the company’s flagship student loans, as well as credit cards and a cash management account that can be linked to a SoFi Invest account for funding. SoFi also offers a full range of personal insurance products.

Final thoughts

SoFi Invest is a relatively new entrant to the field. Here are our top takeaways for the broker for 2023.

1. The firm’s youth shows through in its focus on hot trends like cryptocurrencies and IPO investing, which will appeal to some traders.
2. Unfortunately, it also shows in a narrow roster of investing choices and tools, which will make its functionality inadequate for more active or advanced traders.
3. SoFi’s breadth of banking and other financial services does make it an adequate choice for beginner investors interested in stocks, ETFs and crypto who are looking for one place to manage most of their financial needs.

About SoFi Invest

SoFi traces its roots back to 2011 and Social Finance, Inc, which was founded by Stanford business school students and used an alumni-funded lending model to connect grads with alumni in their communities. In 2012, SoFi became the first company to offer refinancing of student loans. SoFi Invest launched in January 2019.

Is SoFi a good company for investing?

SoFi will prove adequate for people who want to keep all or most of their finances at SoFi and simply want to buy stocks, exchange-traded funds, or cryptocurrencies that they are already familiar with. With so many brokers competing for your business, however, we don’t believe investors need to settle for “adequate.”

Is SoFi Invest safe?

Yes, SoFi Invest is considered safe. It’s a highly regulated broker and carries insurance coverage of up to $500,000 total and $250,000 in cash per customer from the industry standard Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). SIPC coverage insures against loss due to broker insolvency and not against investment losses. It’s very unusual for a broker to become insolvent, but it has happened. If your investment assets exceed the $250,000 cash and $500,000 account owner coverage, you might consider selecting a broker that provides additional coverage.

Is SoFi Invest really free?

SoFi does not charge trading commissions or a monthly charge to keep an account and its margin rate is very low, only 5.25% in October 2022. SoFi, like almost all brokers except for Fidelity, makes money from payments for order flow from exchanges and market makers, which can slightly affect how much you pay to buy or sell a stock or ETF. For most investors, it’s a negligible amount per trade.

Like other brokers, SoFi does have incidental fees. Some examples include closing an IRA account, transferring assets out, and selling an IPO within 120 days of buying it. The incidental fees are generally low compared to other firms. You can find them here.

SoFi’s crypto trading carries some very high hidden fees. SoFi charges markups and markdowns of 1.25%, meaning that if you buy and sell a coin at the same price, you’ll be down by close to 2.5%. Other brokers take less of a haircut on crypto trades.

Can you make money with SoFi?

Yes, you can make money with SoFi, but whether you’ll make money investing has less to do with SoFi and more to do with your investing knowledge and how disciplined you are. Online brokers in the United States are tightly regulated, and the heavy competition keeps prices low.

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.

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.

SoFi Invest 2023 results

For the StockBrokers.com 2023 Review, all U.S. equity brokers we reviewed were assessed on 196 different variables across eight areas: Commissions & Fees, Investment Options, Platforms & Tools, Research, Mobile Trading, Education, Ease of Use, and Overall.

StockBrokers.com also presented “Best in Class” awards to brokers for additional categories Beginners, Options Trading, Futures Trading, Active Trading, IRA Accounts, Investor Community, Penny Stock Trading, Banking Services and Customer Service. A “Best in Class” designation means finishing in the top five brokers for that category.

For more information, see how we test.

Primary categories

Secondary categories

SoFi Invest 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