In this Robinhood review, we look at its mobile app, pricing, options trading, and features to see if it’s still the best zero-commission broker for beginners in 2025.
Robinhood has a completely free commission system, which was the first on the market. They are a popular US broker known for charging zero commissions on US stock, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency trades.
Robinhood is a platform that boasts a user base of tens of millions, more than the popular brokerage E*TRADE; Robinhood has been a hit since its inception. They expanded into Europe in 2025. You can trade crypto, tokenized U.S. stocks, and ETFs on their European platform.
They’ve hosted over $150 billion in transactions. A Robinhood review shows the company is valued at over $5.6 billion. As a result, you can rest assured this is not a fly-by-night brokerage firm.
Robinhood Review Rating: 4.0/5
Commission-free for most trades, $0.50 per contract for options
What Is Robinhood? (2026 Review)
The Robinhood app has made a big splash and is now a key player in the ongoing broker wars. They have stepped up their game in technology, customer service, and overall performance.
They still have a long way to go to be on par with TD Ameritrade regarding customer service, but we appreciate all the effort they put into their trading app to make it simple to use for everyone.
Moving on to the desktop version, the web platform is basic and has no frills. But that’s all I need. Buy, sell, and locate the buttons fairly easily, so I don’t need to think too hard about it. Instead, you can devote that brain power to charting your stock.
If you want the best charts to go along with Robinhood, you’ve got a few choices. We like TradingView and TrendSpider.
If I had to pick, I would go with TrendSpider for charts. But if you’re strapped for cash, consider using TradingView or StockCharts.com. They are decent for free, with some light ads.
Who Is Robinhood Best For?
If limiting costs is your primary concern, Robinhood is a good broker. What’s refreshing about Robinhood is that they are free; you can trade without spending a dime on broker fees and commissions. Robinhood, however, needs a full-service trading platform – you won’t have access to the in-depth charting options and studies necessary for the active day trader.
But we gave you the choices above for that. It’s not a deal breaker, but switching between one app and another to trade sometimes stinks. If you’re able to handle that, no big deal then.
Furthermore, it doesn’t provide the in-depth research and education needed, but you can get it free from sites like Google Finance and MarketWatch. Again, they are working on improving the research feature, but it’s not a priority. I give them credit for knowing who their audience is.
Nevertheless, these drawbacks have kept investors seeking a simple, user-friendly trading platform to start their investing journey.
Pros & Cons
- Pros
- Simple and easy to use platform
- No commissions on stocks, options, and ETFs
- Good customer service
- They offer IRA matching
- Cons
- Sub-par research tools
- No mutual funds
- Customer service is average
Robinhood Pricing (2026 Fees & Costs)
- As of January 1, 2024, the TAF is $0.000166 per share (equity sells) and $0.00279 per contract (options sells). This fee is rounded to the nearest penny, which will be no greater than $8.30 per trade.
- Effective January 10, 2025, Robinhood will collect a combined $0.04 fee for each options contract
- $0.0022 per contract for options
- $0.0000265 per share for National Market System (NMS) equities
- $0.000000265 per share for over-the-counter (OTC) equities
You can visit Robinhood’s website for updated pricing here. (Updated 3/26).
Robinhood Gold
You have three different account options to choose from when signing up: the Cash Account, Standard/Instant Account, and Robinhood Gold, which are common in different brokerages. At Robinhood Standard and Robinhood Gold accounts, you are only allowed three-day weekly trades unless you have at least $25,000. With a “Gold” subscription, you can also trade after hours. You can access the market 30 minutes before opening and 2 hours after closing. If you want to avoid the PDT rule, you have some choices.
This can be profitable if big news hits the market after hours. You can quickly trade before everyone else. Most brokers let you trade in the premarket, but you must enable it.
Webull, for example, lets you trade at 4 am, has commission-free trades, too, and is a strong competitor to Robinhood.
Companies like Tencent Holding (TECHY), Burberry Group (BURBY), Heineken N.V. (HEINY), BMW, Nintendo (NTDOY), and Adidas (ADDYY) will be added in what Robinhood says is the biggest addition of new securities since the app launched five years ago. They always actively add new stocks, so stay tuned for big developments!
Robinhood Features and Trading Platform
A Robinhood review of their mobile trading platform is available on all iOS and Android devices. It has the same design, user-friendliness, and functionalities as the web trading platform. However, the stock screener and recommendations are missing.
Again, there are other tools for things they could improve at. The mobile app has awesome news functions; you can even listen to live conference calls on the Robinhood App. Good! Building a watchlist on the app is easy.
It alerts you when the stocks on your watch list are making new highs or lows. It’s handy because sometimes I need to remember to check.
To trade, click the “search” icon and type in the ticker of the stock you are interested in. You’ll see basic details about the company and recent price information.
Our Robinhood review found that while it’s great for free stock and crypto trading, serious traders may need better charting and faster executions elsewhere.
Tradable Assets
Robinhood review of the app allows trading stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency. The ability to trade options is relatively new for Robinhood. I particularly like trading on the Robinhood App options spreads. They give you a 2k extra margin with 2k cash in the account. Good. Please don’t be foolish with it, though.
They stay true to their word in giving you access to no-fee contracts. Even in a world where TD, IBKR, Fidelity, and others are beginning to offer free trading, there are still costs for option contracts.
Not Robinhood, though. Free option trading. This includes no commissions, no per-contract fee, no exercise fee, and no assignment fees.
It’s pretty tough to beat if you ask me! It’s so great when comparing your other options.
I don’t recommend day trading volatile stocks on Robinhood in this review because the execution speed is lower than that of some of the other big names. Take that into consideration. This should be fine if you are an investor or swing trader.
With this in mind, the inexperienced investor should only be trading options, as they can be risky without the proper training.
Options Trading
Regardless of what you have heard about trading options on Robinhood from random people on the internet, this budget, user-friendly broker is fairly decent for trading options. We’ve used them to swing trade options, but have not tried Robinhood Gold.
They are also good for trading stocks, especially after they’ve been around for a while (since 2014) and have since become the fastest-growing broker in history.
People in our trading community and on StockTwits were constantly talking about them in 2016. About ten people in our free Facebook group shared Robinhood referral links daily. Do you know the ones where you get a free share of Google, Apple, or Amazon?! It was everywhere you looked.
So, we gave Robinhood a shot. And we were satisfied as long as we only traded options under certain criteria. Again, we used the free version, so there were no level 2 trading or market orders.
Limit orders only! However, sometimes our fills were better than what our limit orders were set at. The key to trading this way was sticking to these rules for what we traded:
- High volume option strikes (500+ volume on the day, 1000+ was better).
- Tight bid-ask spreads, between $1-$3.
- Open interest for the strike needs to be over 1,000.
Option Trading for Swings
The safest way for Robinhood option trading, or trading options anywhere else, for that matter, is to trade credit or debit spread options. The cold, hard truth is that all those people posting and screen-capping their long option position with ridiculous gains risk a lot by trading long options without a spread.
The probability game is stacked against them by trading long options, so we swing trade spreads. We want a higher probability of profit on every swing trade we take.
Whether or not we sell options as bear call spreads or bull put spreads depends on whether we believe the trade is bearish or bullish.
Specifically, we aim to keep the premium from selling the short call or short put. We like Robinhood to sell options because there are no fees (truly free options trading), and the user interface makes it incredibly simple to sell a spread.
However, selling options can still be quite risky. However, since 80% of options expire worthless, the seller is the one who benefits.
Order Execution and Payment for Order Flow
We did this because we found Robinhood executions for day trading options fairly slow. The less liquid the options, the worse it got. To avoid that, we suggest you stick to the rules above if you go day trading options on Robinhood.
When we looked at Robinhood for day trading options since TDA and Fidelity started offering commission-free trades, it got slower. We don’t know why that is.
Because the broker wars are hotter than ever due to commission-free trading being offered almost everywhere you look, that performance has been slipping. It’s not just Robinhood; it’s brokers that have been around for a while.
Robinhood Alternatives
Robinhood alternatives include Firstrade, M1 Finance, WeBull, AllyInvest, and TD Ameritrade. All these brokerage companies provide low-cost trading plus many benefits that Robinhood doesn’t offer. Indirectly, Robinhood is competing with Robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront.
Firstrade
As Robinhood competitors go, the biggest is Firstrade, without a doubt. Firstrade has the lowest commissions on all investment products in the industry.
And unlike Robinhood, Firstrade offers mutual funds. With a pricing of $0 for stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds and no account maintenance or inactivity fees, they are one of the best free brokerage firms.
M1 Finance
If you’re looking for a unique way to invest in stocks and ETFs, look no further. M1 Finance is a new hybrid Robo/self-directed brokerage shaking up the investing world.
Customers can create “pies” or baskets of stock and ETFs to trade as one unit. Moreover, there are no account maintenance or inactivity fees, and you can open an account with $0 down.
$0 down is a huge draw for Robinhood competitors.
Webull
Robinhood competitors like Webull are the least known. Webull clients get to trade equities and exchange-traded funds.
Only penny stocks priced above $1 and trading on major exchanges are available, at least for now. You’re out of luck for those wanting to trade options or mutual funds.
Like Robinhood, you pay no commission on U.S. stocks, options, and ETFs; there are no account fees or fees to open an account.
Ally Invest
Zero-dollar commissions. That’s right – with Ally Invest Self-Directed Trading, you can trade commission-free. What’s more, there is no account minimum to get started.
As of writing this, you can earn up to $3,500 in bonus cash when you open an Ally Invest Self-Directed account.
And if you’re worried about account transfer fees – some brokerages charge up to $150, Ally Invest has you covered. When you move your account over, they’ll credit you up to $150.
TD Ameritrade
Like Robinhood, TD Ameritrade offers free stock, ETF trades, and access to a large selection of mutual funds. Over 4,200 of them carry no transaction fees – they are commission-free.
What sets TD Ameritrade apart is that it offers a broad range of financial services that Robinhood doesn’t. Moreover, you can also access their free trading software, ThinkorSwim.
Without a doubt, ThinkorSwim is one of our favorite platforms for charting. TD Ameritrade’s mobile platform far exceeds Robinhood’s simple app, which offers almost nothing except trading.
Robinhood Customer Reviews
Robinhood has approximately 4,264 customer reviews on Trustpilot with a 1.2 TrustScore (Bad as of March 2026).
Bottom Line: Is Robinhood Worth It?
To sum it up, Robinhood is a great way to get your feet wet with investing with no fees. If you’re a beginner, they are a good platform. While it needs to be more powerful to be your only investment platform, it does work well for your brokerage account.
Because trades are free, you may be tempted to dive into the world of day trading, which can be risky if you aren’t armed with the proper tools and education. Robinhood’s fees being zero make it a great app to practice trading on, one share or one contract, while you learn the ropes. This will teach you how to control the emotions of trading.
Our Robinhood review concludes that it’s a solid beginner-friendly broker with free stock, ETF, and crypto trades, but active traders will eventually need more advanced tools, faster executions, and deeper research options.
Frequently Asked Questions
Robinhood is an easy-to-use website and mobile trading app that appeals to the do-it-yourself investor. Robinhood is geared towards millennial investors who want a smartphone-based trading platform without the bells and whistles. It has been a smartphone-first broker. The Android and iPhone apps are the primary methods to log into your account and place trades. However, they now have a fully functional web version available to all users.
Robinhood earns its money through the Robinhood Gold subscription fees and the interest on cash balances of users' accounts. They also provide liquidity to major markets. Robinhood is looking to add 250 notable foreign stocks available for trading on its commission-free platform. This will, therefore, be useful for those who like to trade stocks outside the US.
The good news is that Robinhood options trading is available now. There was a time when you couldn't trade options on Robinhood. Options are a fantastic way to grow a small account. As a result, Robinhood got on board and made it possible to trade them.
- Robinhood fees don't exist
- Free Trades - $0 US stock, ETF, option, and cryptocurrency trades
- High trading fees for non-US stocks, where the TradeStation broker is much better at this
- Some features are charged a $5 subscription fee
- No minimum deposit; open it with your couch change
- Great for investors and swing traders who are penny stock traders
- Easy to use, perfect for the technologically challenged
- Can listen to conference calls and get great notifications from the app
- Ally
- Webull
- TD Ameritrade
- Charles Schwab
- Firstrade
- M1 Finance
- TradeStation
