How much do online brokers charge in 2026?

The $0 commission is now the default rather than a selling point. Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, Public, Robinhood, E*Trade, Webull, moomoo, tastytrade, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, PNC, TIAA and U.S. Bank all publish $0 for an online US stock or ETF trade. So the useful comparison has moved to five other lines.

• Options. Either $0, a per-contract fee (usually $0.65), or a per-order charge plus a per-contract fee, as at U.S. Bank.
• Account fees. Mostly gone, with exceptions: Vanguard's $25 a year unless you choose e-delivery, and Transamerica's $50 a year on IRAs under $10,000.
• Transfer out. The fee for moving a whole account to another broker, between $0 and $100.
• Fractional minimum. The smallest dollar amount you can put into one stock, which matters when a $100 deposit is split five ways.
• Help from a person. A trade placed by phone costs $25 at Chase, Schwab, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, and $55 at TIAA.

Public and Robinhood come first because they are the brokers Walnut points people to when they want it to place buys (at Robinhood, in an Agentic account). E*Trade, tastytrade, Webull and moomoo also take buys you approve. Every other broker in the table is read in full: holdings, a keep, trim or exit read, and the assistant working on what you actually own.

Prices as each broker publishes them, checked October 2026, before SEC, FINRA, exchange and clearing fees. "Not published" means the figure was not on the broker's public price pages, not that it is free. moomoo's help center lists $75 for each stock transferred out; an older fee schedule shows $100 per ACATS transfer.

What does Vanguard charge?

Online stock, ETF and Vanguard mutual fund trades are $0. The yearly account service fee is $25, waived when you choose e-delivery, options cost $1 a contract, and a full transfer to another firm costs $100. Fractional buys are limited to Vanguard's own ETFs, from $1. Digital Advisor, its robo service, starts at $100 and costs no more than $20 per $10,000 a year on top of fund costs. Full page: Vanguard with Walnut.

What does Citi Self Invest charge?

Online and mobile stock and ETF trades are $0, with leveraged and inverse ETFs excluded. There is no account minimum and no IRA annual fee. Citi's own fee document lists options as not available in Self Invest, and moving the whole account out costs $95, the same as closing a retirement account. Wealth Builder Plus, the guided option, needs $25,000 and charges 0.60% a year, which is $150 on $25,000. See Citi with Walnut.

What does PNC charge for investing?

Self-directed investing has a $0 annual fee, no opening or maintenance fee, no minimum balance and $0 commission on online stock and ETF trades. It requires an eligible PNC banking relationship. PNC does not publish options or transfer-out pricing on its self-directed page; it points to the fee schedules in its client relationship summary. PNC Directions, a managed fund portfolio, starts at $5,000 and costs 1.00% a year with an $80 minimum. See PNC with Walnut.

What does TIAA Brokerage charge?

Online stock, ETF and options trades carry no commission, and opening an account costs nothing. A trade placed with a live agent costs $55, plus $2.50 a contract on options. Transaction-fee mutual funds cost $50 a trade, and moving a full account out costs $50. See TIAA with Walnut.

What does U.S. Bank charge for investing?

Online stock, ETF and closed-end fund trades are $0, and so are no-load mutual funds. Options cost $4.95 an order plus $1 a contract, the steepest options pricing in this table for a small trade. A phone trade adds $25, a wire costs $30, and moving the account out or closing an IRA costs $100. Self-directed accounts are open to existing U.S. Bank clients. See U.S. Bank with Walnut.

What does WellsTrade charge?

Online stock and ETF trades are $0 and online options cost $0.65 a contract. A stock or ETF trade placed with an agent costs $25, a no-load transaction-fee fund costs $35, and moving the whole account out costs $49.95. Stock Fractions start at $10 in the app. Intuitive Investor, the Wells Fargo robo advisor, needs $500 and charges 0.35% a year plus fund expenses. See Wells Fargo with Walnut.

What does eToro charge?

In the US, eToro lists no commission on stock trades and no commission or contract fee on options, with regulatory fees of $0.02 a contract each for the Options Regulatory Fee and the LQT fee. Crypto costs 1% to buy or sell, and withdrawals are $0 with a $30 minimum. Outside the US, ETFs are free, stock trades cost $1 or $2 depending on the country, and a withdrawal from a USD account costs $5. See eToro with Walnut.

What does Upstox charge?

Upstox is an Indian broker, so its prices are per order in rupees. Equity delivery and options cost ₹20 per executed order, and intraday costs ₹20 or 0.1%, whichever is lower. Account opening is free, maintenance is ₹0 in the first year and then ₹300 plus GST a year, and each sale from a demat account carries a DP charge of ₹20 plus GST per scrip. See Upstox with Walnut.

Public, Robinhood, Fidelity, Vanguard and Schwab are where most people already hold an account, so they are the comparison people ask for most. On a plain stock or ETF trade they are identical. They part ways on options, the cost of leaving and the smallest buy.

Fidelity is the only one of the five that lists no fee to transfer out. Public and Robinhood charge nothing for stock options but $100 to leave. Vanguard is the only one with an account fee, and the only one where fractional buying stops at its own ETFs. The brokers hub has every broker Walnut connects, region by region.

Public vs Robinhood vs Fidelity

All three charge $0 on stock and ETF trades. Public and Robinhood charge nothing on stock options, Fidelity $0.65 a contract. Fidelity charges $0 to transfer out against $100 at the other two, and fractional buys start at $1 at Robinhood and Fidelity and $5 at Public. Public and Robinhood both take buys you approve in Walnut; Fidelity is read in full and stays view-only.

tastytrade vs E*Trade vs Public

Stocks and ETFs are $0 at all three. Options are where they differ: tastytrade charges $1 a contract to open, capped at $10 a leg, and nothing to close; E*Trade charges $0.65, or $0.50 with 30 or more trades a quarter; Public charges $0. Leaving costs $75 at tastytrade and E*Trade and $100 at Public. All three take buys you approve in Walnut.

Citi vs Wells Fargo vs Public

$0 online stock and ETF trades and $0 to open at all three. Moving the whole account out costs $95 at Citi, $49.95 at Wells Fargo and $100 at Public. WellsTrade sells options at $0.65 a contract, Public at $0, and Citi Self Invest not at all.

PNC vs Schwab vs Public

$0 stock and ETF trades everywhere. The bigger difference is access: PNC's self-directed account needs a PNC banking relationship, while Schwab and Public open to anyone eligible. Schwab charges $0.65 an options contract and $50 to transfer out; Public charges $0 and $100.

TIAA vs Fidelity vs Public

$0 online stock and ETF trades and $0 to open at all three, and all three offer IRAs. TIAA charges $50 to move a full account out, Fidelity $0 and Public $100. A trade placed through a TIAA agent costs $55.

Transamerica vs Vanguard vs Public

These are different kinds of account. A self-directed Transamerica IRA holds a menu of 20 or more Transamerica funds and charges $50 a year under $10,000. Vanguard offers stocks, ETFs and funds at $0 a trade, with a $25 yearly fee waived for e-delivery. Public offers stocks, ETFs and more at $0, with no account fee.

U.S. Bank vs Fidelity vs Robinhood

$0 stock and ETF trades at all three. Options cost $4.95 an order plus $1 a contract at U.S. Bank, $0.65 a contract at Fidelity and $0 at Robinhood. Transfer out is $100 at U.S. Bank, $0 at Fidelity and $100 at Robinhood, and only U.S. Bank requires an existing banking relationship.

Empower vs Fidelity vs Public

Empower Brokerage includes 1,000 free online trades a year, then charges $6.95 a trade; Fidelity and Public charge $0 throughout. Empower's dashboard is free, and its managed accounts start at 0.50% a year (Premier) and 0.89% (Personal Strategy, from $100,000). More detail is on the Empower pricing guide.

Take an investor who buys stocks and ETFs every month, trades four stock option contracts a month in one order each month, and moves the account once. Stock and ETF trades cost $0 at every broker here except Empower past 1,000 trades, so the options and the transfer decide the bill.

• Public or Robinhood: 48 contracts at $0 is $0, plus $100 to leave. Total $100.
• Fidelity: 48 contracts at $0.65 is $31.20, plus $0 to leave. Total $31.20.
• Schwab: 48 at $0.65 is $31.20, plus $50 to leave. Total $81.20.
• tastytrade: 48 contracts opened at $1 is $48, closing is free, plus $75 to leave. Total $123.
• U.S. Bank: 12 orders at $4.95 is $59.40, plus 48 contracts at $1 is $48, plus $100 to leave. Total $207.40.

Without options and without moving, every one of those totals is $0. Leave out the transfer and Public and Robinhood come out cheapest; leave it in and Fidelity does. A Vanguard account kept on paper statements adds $25 a year on top of any of this.

A fund's expense ratio is charged inside the fund and shows up only as slightly lower returns. Over a long horizon it can cost more than every line in the table combined, which is why the fund you hold matters as much as the broker you hold it at.

Sales of stock also carry small SEC and FINRA regulatory fees, which brokers pass through. Order routing can carry a cost too: Public charges $0 for its default wholesale routing and $0.003 a share if you choose Smart Order or lit-exchange routing instead. And a broker with no trading fees earns elsewhere, from interest on uninvested cash, margin loans and paid tiers such as Public Reserve ($20 a month), Robinhood Gold ($5 a month) and Webull Premium ($3.99 a month).

Public also lists a $3.99 monthly inactivity fee, but only on accounts worth less than $70 with no activity for six months.

The marketing page and the fee schedule rarely say the same amount of detail. The marketing page leads with $0; the schedule, usually a PDF linked from the footer, holds the transfer, wire, paper statement and phone-trade charges. Most of the figures in this guide came from those documents rather than the headline pages.

Three lines tend to be easy to miss. The first is the outgoing transfer fee, which only matters on the day you leave and is therefore the one people find out about last. The second is any fee tied to account size or activity, such as Vanguard's e-delivery waiver or Public's small-account inactivity charge. The third is the per-order part of options pricing, which looks small next to a per-contract fee until you place many one-contract orders.

Incoming transfers are usually free (Public lists $0 for an incoming ACAT), so the cost of a move sits almost entirely with the broker you are leaving. A fee schedule also carries a date: Public's says it was last updated in October 2026, and a schedule more than a year old is a reason to look for a newer one.

Walnut is an AI investing app, not a broker, and it adds nothing to any price in this table. Connecting a broker is free, and you sign in at the broker, so Walnut never sees your login and never holds or moves money. The assistant is free up to a per-session allowance; Walnut Unlimited lifts that limit for $9.99 a month on the web. The full breakdown is on what Walnut costs.

Once connected, Walnut reads every account you link and sets each holding against the S&P 500, so you can see concentration and how each holding has done against the index, which no price list shows. You can design a basket with target weights and, at Public or in a Robinhood Agentic account, have Walnut place the buys you approve, previewed first. E*Trade, tastytrade, Webull (US and Canada), moomoo, Questrade, Wealthsimple, Trading 212 and Stake also take orders you approve. Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard and the other brokers here are read in full and stay view-only.

Recurring buys into a basket spend cash already sitting at the broker, so the broker's own commission and fractional minimum still apply to every order. At Public, that means each leg of a basket buy has to be at least $5.

Public: fee schedule (last updated October 2026) and fractional shares disclosure. Robinhood: Robinhood Financial fee schedule and fractional shares. E*Trade rates and fees. tastytrade pricing and its commissions and fees schedule. Webull pricing. moomoo pricing and transferring stocks out. Fidelity pricing and fees. Schwab pricing and pricing guide. Vanguard commissions and fees. J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing pricing. Citi pricing, commissions and fees. WellsTrade commissions and fees. PNC self-directed investing. TIAA Brokerage summary of commissions and fees. U.S. Bank self-directed brokerage fees. Empower investment accounts. Transamerica IRA. Interactive Brokers stock commissions and other fees. eToro US fees. Upstox brokerage charges. All checked October 2026; brokers change prices, so the live schedule wins.

Walnut is not a registered investment adviser. This guide describes published prices and is not a recommendation to open, keep or close any account.