8 Best Stock Trading Apps for 2026

When I think of a stock trader, I picture someone working at a desk with a computer — and maybe multiple monitors full of charts and market data. But another platform is rapidly supplanting the desktop trading battlestation for many retail investors.

The average American checked their phone 186 times per day in 2025^[0]

Brokers know this, and in recent years a growing number of them have built out mobile app platforms with advanced trading capabilities.

All of the platforms listed below offer the following features, which we consider to be the table stakes for an app for advanced traders:

• Free stock trades: Only a few of the brokers reviewed by NerdWallet still charge commissions for stock trades, and you won’t find any on this page (although Interactive Brokers gives users the option to pay very small commissions for faster order execution). Many of the brokers on this page also offer free option trades.

• Fractional shares: All of the brokers on this page allow you to buy less than 1 full share of a stock, thereby giving you more control over position sizing. Many brokers now allow investors to buy as little as $1 of a stock, although some have higher minimums.

• Strong UX: We didn’t just look at ratings to judge these brokers’ apps — we also tested them ourselves, opening accounts and placing trades on our own phones. All of the brokers here earned top or near-top scores on our mobile user experience rubric.

Beyond those criteria, the best stock trading app for you will vary based on which features you consider most important. So, we’ll start with the three apps that are all best-in-class for a particular feature. Read on to see what each one stands out for — and also where each one falls short.

Robinhood has arguably done more than any other broker to make trading via phone app popular, and it continues to be a leader and an innovator among mobile brokers.

If you’re the kind of trader who likes to use leverage (that is, borrowed money) to enhance your potential returns, and you can tolerate the risks that come with it, there’s another reason to love Robinhood: it offers the lowest average margin rates of any broker we review. Both the high end and the low end of its rates (which vary based on balance) are almost as low as you can go. There are a couple of brokers whose lowest rates are lower, but these often require very high balances, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or even higher.

Other trading features that stand out about Robinhood: Robinhood is also a standout for another kind of high-risk move that day traders often like: cryptocurrency trading. Robinhood has the widest crypto selection of any stockbroker we review, and it’s one of the few stockbrokers that offers features like staking and send/receive capabilities in its crypto offering.

Where Robinhood falls short for traders: Unlike some of its competitors, Robinhood does not have any kind of basket-trading feature. You can only buy or sell one investment per order. Also, if you like to trade bonds, you may find Robinhood lacking: They’re only available in the form of bond ETFs.

This article is oriented towards advanced traders. Interactive Brokers is oriented towards really advanced traders. Want to buy South African stocks? Malaysian agricultural futures contracts? Options on French bonds? Interactive Brokers has you covered.

It has, by far, the widest investment selection of any broker we review, thanks to its variety of asset classes (including stocks, bonds, options, ETFs, mutual funds, futures, currencies, crypto, event contracts and physical precious metals) as well as direct access to dozens of international exchanges.

Other trading features that stand out about Interactive Brokers: IBKR also has the widest research and data offerings of any broker we review, with more than 140 services available from more than 40 providers. However, not all of those are free; some require a paid subscription.

Where Interactive Brokers falls short for traders: IBKR is one of only a few brokers on this list that still charges a per-contract fee for option trades. IBKR Pro users also pay commissions of a fraction of a cent on stocks in exchange for faster and more efficient order execution, although free accounts don’t.

Several brokers reviewed by NerdWallet now offer free option trading, sans commissions or contract fees — but Public is the only one that puts a negative cost on options trading; in other words, it pays you to trade options.

Public, like most of the other brokers on this page, makes money by selling customer order data to high-frequency trading firms, which use it to inform their own trading decisions — a business model known as payment for order flow (PFOF). Unlike the other brokers on this page, however, Public shares a portion of the PFOF revenue from option trades with its customers, in the form of a rebate of between $0.06 and $0.18 per contract traded, depending on your trading volume.

Other trading features that stand out about Public: If you’re the type of trader who likes to keep some cash on the sidelines to buy dips, Public stands out for its uninvested cash management options. It offers a high-yield cash account with a 3.3% APY at the time of last update, as well as a Treasury account that automatically invests your money in T-bills, offering potentially-higher yields and exemption from state taxes.

Where Public falls short for traders: Public offers fractional shares on most assets — 75% of stocks, all Treasuries, and about 100 other bonds, to be precise — but the fact that its fractional share offering isn’t universal puts it at a disadvantage relative to its competitors. Also, it has a $5 minimum for fractional shares, which is on the high end among brokers that offer this feature.

The three apps listed above each have unique advantages for traders, but they’re not the only good stock trading apps out here. Below is a list of five other brokers that scored highly on a mix of trading- and mobile-app-related metrics in NerdWallet’s review process.