Expert rating
Our expert rating is the average of the areas listed here, each scored out of 5 by our team.Our experts have rated Interactive Brokers Stock Trading Review: Our Top Rated US Stock Broker across five key areas of our review framework.
- Pricing5.0
- Market Access5.0
- App & Platform5.0
- Customer Service4.0
- Research & Analysis5.0
Pros
- Low trading fees
- Advanced platforms
- Global market access
Cons
- Potentially complex for beginners
- High cash balance requirement
- Limited customer support
See full expert review
Our verdict
Amazing technology, and always first to market with innovative trading tools. Interactive Brokers lets you trade stock on 90+ international exchanges, with $0 commission and some of the lowest financing rates in the industry.
Is Interactive Brokers a good stock broker?
Yes, IBKR is an excellent US stock broker, low costs, excellent market access and superb apps and platforms.
Pricing: Interactive Brokers is very cheap for trading stocks, especially in the IBKR Lite account, where commissions are $0 on US-listed stocks and fractional stocks. For more advanced traders, IBKR Pro commissions are USD 0.0005 to USD 0.0035 per share, but you get significant price improvements from IB SmartRouting.
If you are trading stocks on margin, Interactive Brokers have some of the lowest margin loan financing rates in the industry from USD 4.83% to USD 5.83%.
You can also actually get IBKR to pay you by letting them borrow your fully paid up stocks and letting them lend them out to short sellers, through their stock yield enhancement program.
Market Access: IBKR probably has the best market access of all the stock brokers we compare. You can trade a huge range of international stocks and IBKR has local access to over 90 stock exchanges. There are very few stocks you cannot trade on IBKR.
Apps & Platforms: Interactive Brokers' stock trading apps and platforms are seriously good. When I traded on the desktop workstation platform, I was able to pair trade two stocks against each other.
IBKR is one of the few platforms that allows you to do this. Probably because when I interviewed IBKR founder Thomas Peterffy before testing the platforms, he told me that he thinks the most successful stock traders are ones that trade one company against another.
Customer Service: Because Interactive Brokers is one of the largest stock brokers in the world, customer service is largely automated and they were even using automated chatbots before the AI revolution took over.
This is a good example of how they are at the forefront of stock trading technology. However, it can be a bit of a pain trying to get through to someone on the phone if you are not a large customer with a personal stock broker.
Research & Analysis: You get lots of research and analysis from Interactive Brokers, including the IBKR Campus, for beginners to improve their stock trading. For longer-term investors, there is fundamental data on 30,000 companies and over 5,000 analyst ratings to give you an indication of whether a stock is a buy or a sell.
Richard is the founder of the Good Money Guide (formerly Good Broker Guide), one of the original investment comparison sites established in 2015. With a career spanning two decades as a broker, he brings extensive expertise and knowledge to the financial landscape.
Having worked as a broker at Investors Intelligence and a multi-asset derivatives broker at MF Global (Man Financial), Richard has acquired substantial experience in the industry. His career began as a private client stockbroker at Walker Crips and Phillip Securities (now King and Shaxson), following internships on the NYMEX oil trading floor in New York and London IPE in 2001 and 2000.
Richard’s contributions and expertise have been recognized by respected publications such as The Sunday Times, BusinessInsider, Yahoo Finance, BusinessNews.org.uk, Master Investor, Wealth Briefing, iNews, and The FT, among many others.
Under Richard’s leadership, the Good Money Guide has evolved into a valuable destination for comprehensive information and expert guidance, specialising in trading, investment, and currency exchange. His commitment to delivering high-quality insights has solidified the Good Money Guide’s standing as a well-respected resource for both customers and industry colleagues.