Best ETF Brokerages 2026: Compare Fees, Features & ETF Selection

The brokerage question used to be simple: who charges the least per trade? That era is over. Commission-free ETF trading became the standard years ago, and now essentially every legitimate broker in the US charges $0 to buy and sell ETFs online. So the question has changed. The better question now is: which platform makes it easiest for you to stay invested and keep costs low over decades?

The answer starts with understanding the difference between what a brokerage charges and what your ETF charges. These are two completely separate fees that often get conflated. When a broker advertises $0 commissions, that means they are not charging you a fee to execute your buy or sell order. What they cannot change is the ETF's expense ratio — the annual fee baked into the fund itself. A 1% expense ratio on a $100,000 portfolio costs you $1,000 per year whether you hold it at Fidelity, Schwab, or anywhere else. That number compounds. Over 30 years, the gap between a 0.03% fund and a 0.75% fund can run into six figures on a meaningful portfolio. Use our ETF fee calculator to model what that looks like for your specific numbers.

Account minimums used to be a real barrier. Vanguard required $3,000 to open a mutual fund account. Some brokers charged $500 or more just to get started. That has largely changed. The brokers on this page all allow you to open an account with $0 to $100. Once your account is open, fractional shares mean you can invest any dollar amount in most ETFs, even ones priced at several hundred dollars per share. The days of "I can't afford one share of SPY" are behind us for anyone using a fractional-share-enabled broker.

What does still matter, in roughly this order: the breadth of ETF selection (especially if you want exposure to international, sector-specific, or thematic ETFs that only a few brokers carry), the quality of the research and educational tools, the mobile app experience for investors who manage their portfolios from their phone, and whether the broker supports the account types you need. A Roth IRA at the wrong broker is a much bigger headache to untangle than a taxable account, so getting the account type right before you commit matters.

For investors who want to keep things simple — buy a broad market ETF, set up automatic contributions, and leave it alone for 20 years — platform sophistication barely matters. Any of the brokers in this comparison will do the job. The more important decision is picking low-cost ETFs with expense ratios under 0.10% and staying invested through volatility. No brokerage can do that part for you. What a good brokerage does is get out of your way while you do it.

One last thing worth understanding: SIPC insurance. Every brokerage listed here is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which protects up to $500,000 in securities (including $250,000 in cash) if a brokerage firm fails. This is not insurance against investment losses — if your ETF drops in value, SIPC does not cover that. It covers the rare event that a brokerage firm itself goes under and client assets go missing. All the major brokers are also FINRA-regulated, which means they are subject to oversight and regular examination. Picking a regulated, FINRA-member broker is table stakes. Everything on this list qualifies.