Our Verdict
When it comes to simplicity and utility, Fidelity clearly outshines Interactive Brokers. Here’s why:
- Fidelity offers a simple, user-friendly platform, whether you’re a new or seasoned investor.
- Offers top-notch customer support.
- Provides a wide range of investment options.
Interactive Brokers, on the other hand, offer low-cost trading and advanced tools with which you can go about investing. The platform is an excellent choice if you’re an active trader looking for sophisticated tools. You might find the platform quite overwhelming if you’re not familiar with complex trading strategies.
In a nutshell: You’ll love Fidelity Investments if you’re looking for a simple, supportive, and diverse investment experience.
Why Choose Interactive Brokers
Who Interactive Brokers is Best For
Choose Interactive Brokers if you:
- Want access to sophisticated trading tools, perfect for executing complex strategies.
- Desire a platform that offers some of the lowest trading fees in the industry.
- Want access to a global market, trading on over 150 markets in 34 countries, and 27 currencies, so you can diversify your portfolio.
- Seek to benefit from competitive margin rates that are lower than what you find among many brokers.
- Enjoy the flexibility to choose from different account types that align with your investment needs.
- Desire to build your investment knowledge by leveraging its wealth of research and analysis tools.
- Love a customizable interface where you can tailor the trading to suit your goals and strategies, helping you to manage your investments properly.
- Seek a platform that offers free trading tools with 90+ order types.
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Who Interactive Brokers isn’t Right For
Interactive Brokers may not be the trading or investment platform you seek if you:
- Are a beginner trader who seeks a simple, less complex platform that doesn’t require a steep learning curve.
- Requires higher-than-the-minimum deposits than other brokers.
- Makes you struggle with the user interface due to its less intuitive design.
Why Choose the Fidelity Investments
Who Fidelity Investments is Best For
You might find Fidelity the perfect place for you to invest if you:
- Are new into trading, and want to begin with a simple and friendly interface.
- Seek access to a wide range of investment products and extensive research tools.
- Prefer to have someone manage your account, or use robo-advisory services.
- Want to enjoy zero commissions on trades like stocks, ETFs, and options.
- Have the plans to save for retirement by leveraging Fidelity’s various retirement accounts, such as IRAs, or 401(k).
- Want to diversify your portfolio and invest for a long time in assets like mutual funds, ETFs, or bonds.
Who Fidelity Investments isn’t Right For
Look for other better options if you:
- Seek a platform that comes with a simple and mobile-first design.
- Don’t stay within the United States or any of Fidelity’s service areas.
- Desire a minimalistic, straightforward interface that simplifies things for you.
- Want a platform that offers free trading on some of the best assets.
- Are a cryptocurrency trader who wants to invest heavily in it.
Interactive Brokers vs Fidelity Investments: The Main Difference
| Interactive Brokers | Fidelity Investments |
Ideal For | ● Advanced traders. ● Traders who desire low trading fees. ● Traders who want access to the global market. | ● Long-term investors ● Beginner traders ● Active traders
|
Pricing | ● Free trial: Yes. ● Charges $06 commissions with no added spreads, ticket charges, platform fees, or account minimums. ● Offers a lower-than-the-industry margin rate of up to 49%. ● Offers IBKR BestXTM to maximize price improvement. ● Lets you earn high interest rates of up to USD 4.83%.
| $0 charges for trading on US stocks, ETFs, and option trades. $0 expense ratio index funds. Charges $0.65 per contract on options. You’ll pay $1 per bond or CD in secondary trading. You can find more details about Fidelity’s pricing on: |
Account Integration | ● Banks ● Tradeware ● InfoReach ● Evare ● BasisCode ● RealTick, and more.
| ● Banks ● Mint ● TuroTax ● Plaid ● eMoney Advisor ● Quicken, and more.
|
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Interactive Brokers vs Fidelity Investments: Product Offerings
Interactive Brokers
Interactive Brokers offers powerful platforms that help you succeed in your trading journey by offering a variety of services. They include:
- IBKR Global Analyst
- Portfolio Analyst
- Bonds Marketplace
- Mutual Funds Marketplace
- No Transaction Fee ETFs
- Investors’ Marketplace
- Short Securities Availability
- Cash Management
- Third-Party Integration
- Interactive Advisors
- APIs
- Margin
Reportin
Fidelity Investments
If you’re seeking to tap into various assets and product offerings, Fidelity Investments has quite a collection. Find below what the platform offers:
- Retirement and IRAs
- Spending & Savings
- Investing & Trading
- Mutual Funds
- Crypto
- Direct Indexing
- Fixed Income, Bonds & CDs
- ETFs
- Options
- Sustainable Investing
- Managed Accounts
- 529 College Savings
- Health Savings Accounts
- Annuities
- Life Insurance
Interactive Brokers vs Fidelity Investments: Standout Features
Interactive Brokers
Choosing Interactive Brokers means you’re opting for a powerful, versatile trading platform that comes with some standout features.
- Grants you access to a global market where you can trade on over 150 assets, allowing you to spread your money across different portfolios.
- Has some of the lowest trading fees in the industry.
- Offers highly competitive margin rates where you have greater leverage and lower borrowing costs.
- Gives you the flexibility to choose from a variety of account types, even if you’re an individual investor or a group.
- Prioritizes your account security with advanced protection measures, helping you to trade with confidence.
Fidelity Investment
Fidelity Investments has several features that make it an attractive option with several standout features. Some of the reasons are that the platform:
- Offers zero commissions on online U.S. stock, ETFs, and option trades.
- Delivers an easy-to-use interface where you can trade seamlessly on either its web platform or mobile app.
- Allows you to invest in Fidelity ZERO Index Funds with no expense ratio.
- Gives you exceptional customer service via phone, live chat, and in-person, for 24/7.
- Automates your investment using Fidelity’s robo-advisory service.
- Has a wide array of tools, such as third-party reports, market analysis, and advanced stock screeners, with which you can carry out research.
- Helps you plan for retirement by offering different options that include traditional and Roth IRAs, 401(k) plans, and annuities.
- Allows you trade fractional shares of stocks and ETFs, so you can invest in high-priced assets without needing a large sum of money.
Pros and Cons of Interactive Brokers
- Pros
- Has a wide array of assets you can trade with.
- Provides trading of stocks, options, and ETFs without requiring a commission.
- Comes with strong research tools.
- Grants you high-order execution quality.
- Offers more than 19,000 mutual funds with no transaction fees.
- Cons
- Has a high minimum requirement to earn interest on uninvested cash.
- Comes with a difficult user interface.
Pros and Cons of Fidelity Investments
- Pros
- Allows you to trade index funds without requiring an expense ratio.
- Offers a mobile app that’s highly rated in the industry.
- Charges no commission when you trade stocks, options, and ETFs.
- Maintains a strong customer support system.
- Gives you competitive interest rates on cash you didn’t invest.
- Offers different tools for research.
- Cons
- Restricts international investors.
- Has somewhat high fees for broker-assisted trades.
Interactive Brokers vs Fidelity Investments: Customer Reviews
On both platforms, some customers highlight the experiences they had. However, it is important you know that—in this section—Fidelity Investment outshines Interactive Brokers.
On Investopedia, you’ll notice that Interactive Brokers scores 4.7 out of 5 stars rating while scoring 3.3 out of 5-star rating on Trustpilot based on 2k plus customer reviews. On NerdWallet and Bankrate, however, Interactive Brokers has a score of 5.0 out of 5.0-star rating.
Notice the distinction with Fidelity where on Bankrate, Fidelity has a perfect score of 5.0 out of 5.0 stars in a review James Royal Ph.D conducted. Similarly, you’ll also observe that the platform has a flawless score on NerdWallet with a 5.0 out of 5.0-star rating. On Investopedia, Fidelity garnered an impressive 4.8 out of 5 stars, while having an outstanding score of 4.4 out of stars on Forbes. This goes on to show you how well customers approach the Fidelity platform.
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Interactive Brokers vs Fidelity Investments Competitors
When considering competitors for both Interactive Brokers and Fidelity Investment, keep in mind that these competitors cater to different types of investors with various features and benefits. All you need to do is identify what platform works best for you and ride with it.
Webull: Webull is a great choice if you’re searching for a trading platform that accommodates both beginners and veteran traders. While on the platform, you’ll find tools and features—both easy and advanced—allowing you to trade on different asset classes. The platform, just like many other platforms, doesn’t charge you a commission for trading on stocks, and ETFs.
With Webull, you have the advantage of trading during pre-market and after-hours, thereby, extending your time of trading beyond the regular market periods. You’ll pay $0.55 fee for every contract when you trade certain index options. You’re also required to pay regulatory and exchange fees. Speak with a representative to know the current fees you’re to pay, considering the fluctuating market conditions.
Robinhood: Choose Robinhood if you want more ways to diversify your investment portfolio considering its wide range of asset classes. Recently, Robinhood added crypto trading to its offerings. Also, you want a simplified trading platform that charges $0 commissions for stock, ETF, and option trades.
Robinhood doesn’t charge you any fees for opening or maintaining an account. In other words, you can open an account and manage it without worrying about paying any charges.
While there are a couple of fee-free offerings here are there on Robinhood, you’ll need to cover three regulatory charges while using the platform. You have regulatory fees such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) fees, fees you’re paying to the issuing bank, and the Options Clearing Corporation fees.
It would be wise if you check in with Robinhood’s customer support to see if there are any updates to some of these fees before making decisions.
TD Ameritrade (Now Acquired by Charles Schwab): You should know that TD Ameritrade is built for advanced traders. If you’re choosing TD Ameritrade, you’re somewhat saying you’re cool trading with a sophisticated platform packed with advanced research tools. If so, then, you’ll enjoy using its powerful desktop interface, advanced tools, and features, while trading futures and options.
Similar to what you can find on most trading platforms, TD Ameritrade charges $0 commissions for trading stocks and ETFs. You’ll have access to an extensive market full of different asset classes, along with top-notch educational materials.
Be aware, though, that you’re paying a $0.65 fee per options contract. You’ll also appreciate TD Ameritrade for being transparent with its fees. That also means that there are no hidden fees or charges for account or trade minimums you should worry about.
Pro Tips
- Spend time to build your expertise in trading before making any serious financial commitment. That way, you know exactly what you’re investing in and minimize your risk of losing your money.
- Set up price alerts and notifications so that you can stay informed whenever stocks or other assets you’re interested in show up.
- Take full advantage of the research tools the platform offers to analyze the market, screen stocks, and get reports from third-party tools. This helps you to make informed trading decisions.
- Configure your dashboard to fit your style of trading. Do this by removing widgets, adjusting the layout, and setting up tailored views to monitor the data that are most crucial to you.
- Protect your funds and minimize potential losses by leveraging the stop-loss orders when they reach a given price limit.
- Take some time to familiarize yourself with a demo account so you can stay comfortable with the platform and develop your trading strategies.
- Secure your account with every security measure available. Use strong passwords, and enable two-factor authentication. From time to time, update your security settings to protect your account from unauthorized access.
Recap
Your choice between Interactive Brokers and Fidelity Investment boils down to a couple of factors. Firstly, what are your investment goals? Secondly, what’s your trading experience? Are you a beginner or an advanced trader? Lastly, what charges are you not willing to pay?
When you properly define the above metrics, you’ll have a better understanding of what platform to choose.
Remember, though, that Interactive Brokers comes with advanced trading tools, and offers low-cost trading. You’d appreciate the platform if you’re an active trader who wants to trade with sophisticated tools and complex trading strategies.
However, Fidelity might be your preferred choice if you need a simple, straightforward user interface. You’ll love the fact that the platform has a good reputation for providing excellent customer support. And, you’ll have access to a wide range of investment options. Fidelity is an excellent choice if you plan on investing in the long run.
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