Webull Review

Webull offers a unique community experience and easy-to-use trading platforms that will satisfy most young investors. However, for everyday investing, Webull lacks the trading tools and features to compete with industry leaders — who, like Webull, also offer $0 stock and ETF trades.

Top Takeaways for 2022

After spending three months testing 15 of the best online brokers for our 12th Annual Review, here are our top findings on Webull:

1. Webull is a community-driven, mobile-focused online broker. Alongside Webull's unique social community features — which won it our Investor Community award in our 2022 Annual Review — our testing found the mobile app to be well-designed and very easy to use.
2. Webull offers more capabilities than Robinhood, but can't compete with the vast amount of trading tools, research, and education provided by traditional full-service brokers such as TD Ameritrade and Fidelity.
3. Like most of the industry, Webull offers $0 trades on stocks/ETFs. Webull also provides $0 option trades and crypto trades. Webull does not currently offer mutual funds, bonds, or futures.

Overall summary

Offering of investments

Webull offers stocks, ETFs, options, and the ability to trade fractional shares and sell shares short. Webull also gives traders access to IPOs without imposing minimum account requirements. Mutual funds, futures, forex, and bonds are not supported. Webull does not offer any banking services, robo portfolios, or advisory services.

Cryptocurrency: Webull offers nearly a dozen popular cryptocurrencies, allowing users to trade the following: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Zcash (ZEC), Stella Lumens (XLM), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Cardano (ADA), Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dash (DASH) through Apex Crypto.

Commissions and fees

Webull charges no commission for trading stocks, ETFs, and options. While most brokers charge $0.65 - $0.75 for option contracts, Webull charges $0. Webull makes money from margin lending, interest on cash balances, and payment for order flow. Almost all brokers, except for Fidelity, sell your order flow to wholesale market makers because it's one of the only ways to directly offset the costs of offering $0 trades. Learn more about order execution quality.

Other fees: Webull does not charge any deposit or withdrawal fees if you use ACH transfer. Wire transfers have an $8 deposit fee and $25 withdrawal fee for domestic clients, and a $14 deposit fee and $45 withdrawal fee for international clients.

Webull does not impose a minimum account balance; however, customers who want to short stocks will have to open a margin account, which requires a minimum deposit of $2,000.

Mobile trading apps

Webull's mobile app is sleek and user-friendly, presenting graphs and data in an easy-to-digest format.

Webull's app is easy to use as well as easy on the eyes. Press play for a walkthrough of its features.

Ease of use: Navigation is a breeze, making the app ideal for newer investors. Webull does a good job keeping the user experience consistent across devices, as the mobile closely resembles the desktop and web version of the platform.

Watch lists: These are basic but very clean and functional. The ticker, name, a small daily chart and current price with price change are listed. Clicking through takes you directly to the stock information and the charts.

Charting: The charting in the app is excellent. It supports a horizontal view and has a great range of customization, indicators, drawing tools, time frames and includes time and sales. You can drag and expand easily.

All in all, while Webull's mobile app offers more features than rival Robinhood’s, it struggles to compete with the extensive amount of trading tools provided by the best stock trading apps.

Other trading platforms and tools

While Webull's web and desktop platforms lack the extensive range of tools found on trading platforms from TD Ameritrade and TradeStation, Webull will satisfy most casual traders. The tools are easy to navigate and use, making it simple for beginners.

Charting: Webull offers a standard lineup of charting features, including several different chart types, adequate drawing tools, 52 technical indicators, the ability to add hotkeys, and grid layouts to compare multiple charts. I found charting to be clean and easy to use on the web platform and nearly identical on the desktop version.

Trading tools: The platforms are effortless to use with a versatile layout that can be customized quickly, thanks to drag-and-drop widget boxes. It includes predefined lists such as Hot ETFs, and essential watch list and screener functionality. I also appreciated that new traders seeking to learn the ropes can practice trading with a virtual portfolio from the Webull desktop, website, and mobile app. There are several unique features, such as the Net Order Imbalance Indicator (NOII). This indicator is integrated into the trade ticket as a research tool that breaks down institutional holdings for a given symbol. You can also code custom indicators. See: Best trading platforms for day traders.

Options trading: Webull is light on options trading tools. You can set up multi-leg trades and you can see a nice Profit/Loss graph on the position. Beyond that, there isn’t much you can do. See: Best options trading platforms.

Quote data: Like Robinhood, traders must pay a monthly fee to view Level 2 quotes after their free data subscription expires. That said, it is worth noting that Webull dropped its Level 2 subscription cost to just $1.99 per month following a partnership with Nasdaq TotalView, and its basic data is free. For options, if you trade at least one options contract per month at Webull, you get real-time options data (OPRA).

Research

Community aside, which is engaging and unique (see below), Webull's research tools fall far short when compared to industry leaders TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab, who also offer $0 stock and ETF trades.

Stock research: For researching stocks, Webull offers a screener, analyst ratings, price targets and company news, and lists out ETFs that include the stock as a holding. Aside from this, no research reports, technical analysis insights, or in-house market commentary is provided. Webull does have a blog, but it seems to mainly involve press releases.

Webull community: The Webull community, a unique feature, acts as a private Twitter feed. Users can comment on individual stocks and news with their thoughts or post reactions to a price movement. Users can also predict whether a stock will rise or fall, earning points for correct predictions. Points are redeemable for Webull products, such as entries to paper trading competitions, where users can win real money by trading virtual portfolios. The functionality of this feature garnered Webull our Investor Community award for 2022.

Education

Aside from some basic articles, Webull offers almost no investor education. Traders seeking interactive courses, webinars, or highly detailed articles should check out top brokers such as TD Ameritrade and Fidelity.

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 2022 Broker Review, 159 customer service tests were conducted over six weeks. Here are the results for Webull.

• Average Connection Time: 3-5 minutes
• Average Net Promoter Score: 5.3 / 10
• Average Professionalism Score: 4.2 / 10
• Overall Score: 5.1 / 10
• Ranking: 12th of 13 brokers

Final thoughts

Webull, like Robinhood, has attracted a loyal following of customers because it is easy to use and was one of the first brokers to offer $0 trades.

Comparing Webull vs Robinhood, Webull offers more features, hands down. That said, when comparing Webull to the best online brokers that also offer $0 stock and ETF trades, Webull left me wanting more.

Is Webull good for beginners?

Webull is simple and easy to use, both in terms of the web platform and the trading app. It also has very low costs across the board. Given these features as well as paper trading ability, Webull made our top five picks for best trading platform for beginners for 2022. Those looking for education will have to find it elsewhere, however.

Can you make money with Webull?

You can make money with Webull as well as you can with most other online brokers. Option traders will especially like the $0 commissions, which you don’t find elsewhere. That said, investing and trading are inherently risky endeavors where making money is never guaranteed.

Is Webull a safe app?

Webull is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, or SIPC, which protects customers’ funds up to $500,000 in the event of a brokerage going bankrupt. Their clearing firm, Apex Clearing, has additional insurance. However, it’s important to understand that, as with any broker, such insurance does not protect against market losses.

About Webull

Webull is part of China-based Fumi Technology, a fintech company that provides real-time market data, analytical tools, and trading technologies. Webull’s technology team is based in Hunan, China, while customer-facing and brokerage operations are located in New York City.

2022 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 12th Annual Review published in January 2022, a total of 3,075 data points were collected over three months and used to score 15 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.

Webull 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

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