Best Online Brokers For 2026: These 10 Brokerages Top The Rest

Best Online Brokers 2026

ANNE STANLEY
08:00 AM ET 01/23/2026

For investors, 2025 was another year of double-digit gains for stocks, as investment in AI expanded, corporate earnings kept growing and companies adjusted to tariffs. But where will 2026 take investors? Are their online brokers helping customers make the most of these market opportunities or could they be doing more?

Investors Business Daily has for 14 years been here to help with our customer-driven rankings of the best online brokers. The Best Online Brokers for 2026 can help you decide where to take your business. We partnered with research and data analytics firm Magid and asked thousands of investors to rate their primary online broker on their overall customer satisfaction and the service attributes they think are important.

How AI, The Fed And Government Policy Will Move The 2026 Stock Market

See All Videos

We found that while technology and artificial intelligence are transforming the online brokerage industry, investors say the fundamentals of security, price and great customer service remain their top priorities.

In our 2026 special report, 18 major brokers qualified for the survey analysis. We recognize 10 as the best online brokers overall. We also recognize the top five brokers in 20 key performance categories that investors told us are important.

Best Online Brokers 2026: 10 At The Top

The 10 top brokers in this year’s survey are:

JPMorgan Self-Directed Investing, part of JPMorgan Chase (JPM)
Fidelity Investments
Vanguard
Interactive Brokers (IBKR)
Merrill Edge, part of Bank of America (BAC)
Zacks Trade
SoFi Active Investing (SOFI)
Tastytrade
Charles Schwab (SCHW)
E-Trade, owned by Morgan Stanley (MS)

See Our Full Special Report: IBD’s Best Online Brokers For 2026

A key theme in 2025 was security. The more than 4,000 respondents in our survey ranked website security as the most important service they want from their online broker, followed by trade execution/speed/price, investment research and customer service.

Schwab, Fidelity and Vanguard ranked highest in customer satisfaction for website security. For the next most-important attribute, trade execution/speed/price, the brokers at the top of the list were Fidelity, Schwab and Merrill Edge.

Fidelity has been named to the IBD Best Online Brokers list for all 14 years of the survey. Schwab has made the list for 13 years. This is the third year in a row Merrill Edge has made the list. Among this year’s winners, JPMorgan excelled, ranking first in five of the 20 attributes.

See The Top 5 Brokers In Every Attribute

The other brokers that qualified for the survey analysis based on the number of their customers who provided ratings were Robinhood Markets (HOOD), TradeZero, Moomoo, Firstrade, TradeStation, Public, Ally Invest (part of Ally Financial (ALLY)) and Webull, owned by Webull Corp. (BULL). Read more about the survey methodology.

Best Online Brokers Face Tech And Demographic Shifts

Between technological and demographic changes, massive shifts have been occurring in the financial services industry in recent years.

“Concepts such as roboadvice and gamification have helped illustrate the role that technology is playing in changing the way people interact with financial markets. Cultural phenomena like the meme stock movement and the crypto boom have demonstrated how quickly investor sentiment can swing,” Broadridge Financial reports in its most recent study of 40 million U.S. retail investors.

More investors than ever are using self-directed brokerage accounts, data shows. That’s due to the widespread availability and accessibility of online brokerage accounts, the report notes. Also, trading fees for stocks are virtually a thing of the past, and online sites and mobile apps are easier to use.

Broadridge data shows 32% of retail investors now have a relationship with an online discount brokerage firm, up from 21% five years ago. During the same period, the percentage of investors who have a relationship with a full-service firm has declined to 79% from 88%.

Investors Want Both Advice And DIY Tools

Full-service remains the dominant path, Broadridge says, but investors increasingly use online brokers to build their own portfolios. Asset share of this channel reached 23.3%, its highest level yet. “Increasingly, we’re finding that the current investor psyche around full-service and DIY channels does not see the relationship as an either/or choice. Today’s investors want both.”

top reasons investors use online brokers, chart

Why both? The top reason advised investors gave in the Broadridge survey for maintaining a self-directed account was simply that they enjoyed investing. Other key drivers were diversification, the ability to place low- or no-cost trades, and the desire to keep a “play” account to take more risk.

These changes can create a whole new set of problems for brokers. “One of the challenges the industry has is the lines between investing and gambling have blurred like never before,” said James Martielli, head of investment product, personal investor, at Vanguard. “Some platforms are more entertainment than investing. You can say brokerages are self-directed and people can make their own choice. But when you can invest your IRA in zero days options, illiquid OTC securities, single-stock leveraged ETFs or prediction markets and sports contracts (or betting), you just won’t find them on our platform. We make it easy to invest but hard to gamble.”

Best Online Brokers: Customers Defy Stereotypes

Technology is only part of the challenges facing today’s online brokers and their clients. Broadridge says discount brokerages defy demographic stereotypes. It’s not just the younger generations of investors who embrace trading apps and platforms. Self-directed investors are, on average, only four years younger (53) than clients who use financial advisors (57). “Self-directed popularity cuts across all generations,” the Broadridge survey says.

In IBD’s Best Online Brokers survey, we ask respondents to tell us which service attributes they think are important. This year, they prioritized three new attributes to include on the final list of 20, showing the scope of both tech and demographic changes. Those were cryptocurrency access and trading, fractional share investing and retirement planning tools.

Compared to previous years, survey respondents were less concerned about trade ideas for a down market and broker services related to premarket and after-hours trading. Read more about the results of last year’s Best Online Brokers survey.

Read more about some of the 10 best brokers, including Interactive Brokers, JPMorgan Self-Directed Investing and Merrill Edge

Mobile Moves Fuel Online Broker Growth

The global e-brokerage market size was valued at $14.1 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.4% between 2025 and 2034, according to an industry analysis from Global Market Insights. “Increased internet and smartphone penetration is significantly driving the growth of the e-brokerage market by enabling broader access to online trading platforms, especially in emerging markets.”

The growing demand for DIY investing and roboadvisory services is driving the expansion of the online broker, or e-brokerage, market, says GMI. “Investors are increasingly seeking cost-effective, autonomous investment solutions that offer control and personalization. Roboadvisors provide algorithm-driven portfolio management, enabling efficient asset allocation without human intervention.”

GMI also notes that the biggest risks the industry — and its customers — face are cybersecurity and data privacy concerns. That’s also reflected in IBD’s current survey. Website security, or how well a broker protects clients’ assets and personal data and has technologies and procedures to prevent unauthorized account access, moved to the top of the attribute list in importance this year.

“The security of our clients’ accounts and information is a critical and foundational part of maintaining trust,” said Jonathan Craig, head of retail investing at Schwab. Survey respondents ranked Schwab very highly on the attribute of website security.

“Our websites utilize encryption and risk-based security technologies which, combined with automated alerts, an identity verification process, and rigorous monitoring, help defend against unauthorized account access. Additionally, all employees who handle sensitive information are trained in privacy and security, and whether a client calls, visits a branch or goes online, we take care to verify their identity before discussing any sensitive information,” he said.

“Schwab facilitates more trades than any other publicly traded firm – more than 8 million trades per day as of our last public figures,” Craig said. Schwab is “always evolving and enhancing our platforms based on client feedback. Our priority is to deliver advanced and fully featured trading and investing platforms that are also easy and intuitive to use.”

IBD’s 10 Best Online Brokers For 2026

Check the list below to see how your online broker compares with others in the areas that matter to you. If it doesn’t stack up, consider whether another broker in the study would better meet your needs.

Broker	Strongest attributes
JPMorgan	Trade Execution/Speed/Price, Investment Research, Wealth Management
Fidelity	Website Security, Trade Execution/Speed/Price, Customer Service
Vanguard	Customer Service, Research Tools, Retirement Planning Tools
Interactive Brokers	Investment Research, Mobile Trading Platforms/Apps, Research Tools
Merrill Edge	Website Security, Trade Execution/Speed/Price, Wealth Management
Zacks Trade	Portfolio Analysis & Reports, Research Tools, Site Performance
SoFi	Website Security, Mobile Trading Platforms/Apps, Cryptocurrency Access & Trading
Tastytrade	Investment Research, Customer Service, Portfolio Analysis & Reports
Schwab	Website Security, Trade Execution/Speed/Price, Customer Service
E-Trade	Website Security, Trade Execution/Speed/Price, Customer Service

IBD’s Best Online Brokers list for 2026 is objective and the results are based solely on the data from our extensive customer survey. This independent special report is produced by the IBD editorial team. There is no sponsored content, nor are there any commission links.

Results are based on a single quantitative online survey with a sample size of 4,000 investors, conducted by Investor’s Business Daily and Magid. The study was conducted Nov. 4 through Nov. 17, 2025.

Licensing & Reprints: The 2026 Best Online Brokers logo and accolades are available for licensing through IBD’s partner, The YGS Group, at IBDlicensing@theYGSgroup.com or 800-290-5460.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

This Broker Will Pay You A $10,000 Bonus Just To Move Your Account

Best Online Brokers 2026: How The Best Make The Grade

Fidelity’s Online Brokerage Wins For Reliable, Consistent Service

Vanguard Harnesses Low Costs, Large Scale To Stand Out

1/24/2026 Among the best stocks in earnings performance, Broadcom boasts a 98 EPS Rating, one of the highest in the chip…

Today’s Spotlight

Get Over 70% Off IBD DigitalNavigate volatility and stay on top of your trades—try 2 months of IBD Digital for $20.Try the IBD Stock Screener!IBD Digital members: try the IBD Stock Screener and start finding better stocks today!Join SwingTrader, Save $350Take advantage of short-term price swings with 1 year of SwingTrader for $349.

More News

View this Investor’s Business Daily article CLICK HERE

Markets by

Leave a comment Cancel reply