E*TRADE Review

Our Take

E*TRADE is known as one of the world’s largest online brokers, and for good reason. It offers an expansive range of investment choices and trading tools that are accessible through the website, desktop platform, and two mobile apps.

While E*TRADE is strong across all platforms, it truly shines with its mobile apps. By having two available apps for mobile trading, E*TRADE can cater to investors looking for a simple, straightforward experience as well as to serious investors and day traders. Despite their robust capabilities, the E*TRADE mobile apps are still easy to navigate and do not feel cluttered. Thanks to this combination, E*TRADE is rated as our best online broker for Mobile Investing and Trading.

Introduction

E*TRADE has been a leading broker in the industry since its founding in 1982, continuously embracing innovation to drive change across the industry.1 In the early 1990s, E*TRADE was among the first to capitalize on the evolution and widespread adoption of the internet to build and enhance its online platform, thereby bolstering its reputation as a dynamic and powerful trading service.2 In 2020, Morgan Stanley acquired E*TRADE for $13 billion.3 

E*TRADE appeals to new traders and sophisticated investors by providing an extensive range of trading features while remaining intuitive and easy to use. Following the 2020 acquisition, its deep research menu has become even more robust, as analysis information from Morgan Stanley is now available on all E*TRADE versions.

Platform users have access to a broad range of tools that help with all types of trading, including stock, options, futures, and more. Passive investors will enjoy various pre-built portfolios and automated portfolio-building tools to support their investment strategy. Notably, however, direct crypto exposure and international exchange trading are absent from the platform.4 

E*TRADE’s educational content has also seen an upgrade, with developments that give even more firepower to knowledgeable traders while also letting new users move quickly from research to investing.5 Investors can access E*TRADE through their preferred experience as the system is available on the website, desktop, and two mobile apps. The desktop and website platforms provide comprehensive trading options, while the two mobile apps cater to investors of different experience levels and trading styles.

Overall, E*TRADE provides a sleek, easy-to-use design paired with a wide range of trading features that appeal to all types of investors.

Pros & Cons

Pros Explained 

• Industry-best mobile apps for investors and traders: E*TRADE's two available mobile apps offer a powerful combination that has earned this platform our best for mobile investing and trading award. The Power E*TRADE app, designed primarily for traders, integrates sophisticated options tools, including charts, trade analysis, and paper trading. The standard E*TRADE mobile app is user-friendly, allowing investors to manage their brokerage accounts with ease from anywhere.
  
• Pre-built and automated portfolio options: Pre-built and automated portfolio builder options offer a streamlined investment solution for both passive investors and beginners. E*TRADE built automated investment management into its brokerage platform through its Core Portfolios robo-advisors.
• Strong educational content: E*TRADE's educational content library covers a wide range of trading topics, investing best practices, and market commentary. It divides its educational content between key life stages like retirement and family finances.
• Excellent range of tools and resources: E*TRADE offers a comprehensive range of trading tools, research materials, and investment options that enable investors of all types to execute their desired investment strategy. 
  

Cons Explained 

• No international exchange trading: E*TRADE does not offer exposure to international stock or forex markets.
• Low interest rate for uninvested cash: While E*TRADE pays interest on uninvested cash through its cash sweep program, the rate is uncompetitive. Most users earn so little that the rate is practically zero. For example, accounts with balances of $1 million or more will earn only 0.15% APY, whereas accounts with balances below $250,000 will earn only 0.01%.6
• No direct crypto investing: While E*TRADE offers crypto ETFs such as the new spot Bitcoin or Ethereum ETF, direct crypto investing is not available. Crypto investors will need to explore other platforms.
• Fractional shares only available through a robo-advisor portfolio or dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP): This may lead to suboptimal portfolio allocations for self-directed traders.78

Usability

E*TRADE is a user-friendly and customizable online brokerage across the website, desktop, and two mobile apps, filled with helpful features and tools.

The broker offers two web-based platforms, Power E*TRADE and E*TRADE web, each with corresponding mobile apps that replicate the functionality and features of their respective desktop options. Such integration enables a seamless workflow across devices.

Beginner and passive investors will appreciate the E*TRADE web version, which offers intuitive access to portfolio analysis, quotes, and educational content to help build portfolios. Basic screening tools let investors filter for assets like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or ETFs that fit their investment philosophy. The E*TRADE mobile app is top-notch and mimics the web version’s features, with the added convenience of watchlist integration across both devices.

Power E*TRADE is an advanced platform designed for more experienced traders. Users can access extensive screening capabilities, technical analysis, and drawing tools. There is no minimum balance requirement to use Power E*TRADE, and it is available to all investors, even those with small portfolios.

The mobile version of the Power E*TRADE platform also carries over all the robust features of the web experience. In an era where brokerage apps often add features and tools just for the sake of it, E*TRADE has determined that less is more. Our online demonstration with the company revealed that it has removed less-used tools from the app to make it cleaner and more intuitive.

Trade Experience

E*TRADE has made trade experience and feature enhancements a top priority to ensure traders of all experience levels can leverage the necessary tools to support their preferred trading strategies.

Orders can be entered and executed seamlessly by simply selecting the asset you’d like to trade, choosing an order type, and entering the desired amount. After reviewing the order to ensure the trade is queued correctly, you can easily monitor the execution status and position details. 

The platform has customizable features that include the ability to curate watchlists. You can quickly trade securities on your watchlist by clicking the trade button that corresponds to the security, allowing you to enter the market quickly and efficiently.

Order tickets for options trading are similarly easy to use. Options traders can select from one of several options strategies from a drop-down menu before sending the order to market. The platform also gives investors tools to help choose a strategy based on their risk tolerance and market factors, a feature beneficial to new options traders.9 

The Power E*TRADE platform has easy-to-use tools for stocks, options, and futures trading. Investors can quickly find what they’re looking for by taking advantage of a consolidated page that lists a trader’s favorite tools, which can be customized to their liking. E*TRADE understands how important social media can be in driving investor behavior and launched a social sentiment tool that scans positive and negative social media buzz metrics to uncover trade ideas.10

Charting tools are automatically populated with technical analysis, market research, and education prompts that help investors understand the potential scope and impact of their trade. Power E*TRADE’s trade ticket is also more detailed than the standard web platform ticket, containing projections of maximum profit and loss associated with your order.

Market data may arrive in real-time, or it may arrive with a 15-minute delay. Traders can transact directly from charts and have the ability to choose tax lots for their order, either from the ticket itself or from their portfolio. Order types such as conditional orders, trailing stops, stop-limit, and more are available on the E*TRADE platform of your choosing.11 

Mobile Trade Experience

Both the E*TRADE Mobile and Power E*TRADE Mobile apps are highly customizable and can be tailored to a user’s specific trading strategy. They each have an intuitive flow, making them simple to navigate for new users. 

The E*TRADE mobile app caters to new investors by focusing on features that matter most to them—watchlists, market research, quotes, portfolio and position management, and more. E*TRADE provides an abundant amount of both proprietary and third-party research through its apps. Following one of the recent updates, the app also allows users to view open or saved orders directly from the Trade screen.

Designed for more advanced traders, the Power E*TRADE app contains even more robust charting, analysis, and screening capabilities so you can enter trades and monitor positions with ease. E*TRADE continues to bring in features from the web version to the mobile app. For example, it added the Market Depth view, showing bid and ask prices, as well as Level II visualization for stocks, options, and ETFs. The app also added a Quote Detail screen called Similar Companies - a peer comparison tool to quickly analyze the company’s key metrics against those of its main competitors.12

Options strategies can also be executed directly from the app using an options chain. You can use several different criteria for the options chain, making it highly customizable. Each respective mobile app provides the same feature parity as the corresponding web and desktop versions. This includes access to third-party investment research, streaming, and market news. Watchlists are also shared across each parallel platform, allowing you to switch quickly between desktop, web, and mobile. If you have more than one E*TRADE account, you can smoothly toggle between the two using your mobile device.

Neither app lets you trade directly from the chart. You also can’t draw directly on mobile, but you can carry over this functionality from other platforms. Nonetheless, an extensively customizable app settings section will cover just about any investor's trading preferences you can think of.

Range of Offerings

E*TRADE investors can access a robust array of assets, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, futures, and commodities. These assets are available on all E*TRADE platforms. However, forex trading and direct cryptocurrency exposure are not offered, which is a limiting factor (although you can trade crypto indirectly through the new crypto ETFs).13

Below is a complete list of assets that E*TRADE offers:

• Stocks, long and short
• OTCBB 
• Mutual funds
• Bonds (corporate, municipal, Treasury, CD, etc.) 
• Futures/Commodities
• Futures options
• Single-leg and multi-leg options contracts
• Bitcoin and Ethereum futures
• Robo-advisor offering

Order Types

E*TRADE has a wide array of order types available across desktop, web, and mobile versions. Investors can enter contingent, bracketed, one-triggers-the-other (OTO), one-cancels-the-other (OCO), and one-triggers-a-one-cancels-the-other (OTOCO) orders. However, the mobile app only supports contingent and OTO orders.

Support for more sophisticated order types (like OCO) is important, as they help traders navigate risk, quickly enter and exit positions, and capture gains. All these factors leave more time for traders to analyze the market without having to watch trades as closely.

E*TRADE also supports more standard order types, such as market orders, market on close, limit, stop limit, stop on quote, and trailing stop orders. Tax lots can be chosen when closing out a trade, either from the order ticket or from the portfolio, allowing for tax efficiency optimization.16

Trading Technology

Determining how and where orders are sent affects trade execution quality. E*TRADE collaborates with numerous market centers to ensure quality control and facilitate optimal trade execution quality and speed.

E*TRADE leverages an advanced smart order routing system designed to complete investor trades while limiting market impact. E*TRADE’s execution quality performance covers market order sizes ranging from 100 to 9,999 shares. The average time between sending an order to execute and when a fill report is sent back to E*TRADE is approximately 0.10 seconds for S&P 500 and 0.11 seconds for non-S&P 500 performance.17

E*TRADE offers traders several options to backtest their investment strategies. A paper-based demo account is available so you can explore how trading strategies would have performed in historical market environments. The Options Income Backtester tool allows users to explore historical returns for income-focused options strategies. Power E*TRADE users can use the Live Action Scanner to look for potential investment opportunities in real-time. Automated portfolio-building tools are available through E*TRADE, but ongoing portfolio management falls to the user.

Costs 

Like many online brokers, E*TRADE has worked to keep fees competitive since the race to zero fees ensued. While access to the E*TRADE platforms is free there are costs that users should be aware of.

E*TRADE costs are as follows:18

• E*TRADE charges $0 commissions on online stock, ETF, and mutual fund trades. There is no limit on the number of shares that can be traded at this base commission rate.
• Options contracts are priced at $0.65 per contract if fewer than 30 trades per quarter and $0.50 per contract if more than 30 trades per quarter.
• It costs $6.95 to trade OTC stocks, including OTC, OTCBB, grey market, and OTC-traded foreign securities. The cost is reduced to $4.95 if the investor executes at least 30 stock, ETF, and options trades per quarter. 
• E*TRADE has eliminated its mutual fund commissions.
• Margin interest rates vary from 12.70% for a balance less than $10,000 to 10.70% on balances of $250,000 or more as of November 14, 2025.
• Bond transaction fees are $1 per bond, with a minimum of $10 and a maximum of $250. 
• Futures transactions cost $1.50 per contract per side plus fees, and $2.50 per cryptocurrency futures contract per side plus fees.
• There is no fee to close an account (besides an ACAT fee), no maintenance fee or charge for inactivity, and no minimum balance or number of trades to avoid inactivity. 
• When transferring accounts out of E*TRADE, a $25 fee applies to partial transfers and a $75 fee to full transfers. 
• A live broker is available at $25. This fee is waived for extended hours and overnight session trades placed between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. ET.
• There is no domestic wire fee for incoming wire transfers; however, a $25 fee applies to outgoing wire transfers.
• E*TRADE charges $0 for check requests.

How This Broker Makes Money From You and For You

Since the brokerage industry’s aggressive pivot to lower many trading fees to zero, the methods by which brokers make money from and for investors aren’t always easy to understand. Fees and commissions still account for some of the revenue, but other sources exist as well.

• Payment for order flow: E*TRADE receives payment for order flow (PFOF). This fairly common practice means that the broker is paid by various market makers to direct orders to them. We found E*TRADE's PFOF to be modest, at $0.0014 per share for equities and $0.39 for options. However, some competing brokers do not accept payment for order flow on equities.
• Stock loan programs: These programs generate revenue for brokers who are providing loaned shares to traders and hedge funds shorting the stock. Investors can offer shares held long to E*TRADE’s stock loan program, but they won’t be able to choose which stocks to loan. Nonetheless, E*TRADE will share the revenue generated from these activities with them.
• Margin interest: E*TRADE offers margin trading to investors. The interest charged on the borrowed funds is a source of income for E*TRADE. Interest rates start at 12.70% for balances under $10,000. They go down to 10.70% for balances of $250,000 and up as of November 14, 2025.19

Account and Research Amenities

E*TRADE offers a great variety of tools, screening functionality, and research capabilities that allow traders to pursue a wide range of investment strategies. Stock, mutual fund, ETF, and options screeners have many different filtering settings. Research, charting, and educational tools are continually improved, and new tools like the Earnings Move Analyzer are making the already tight competition between E*TRADE and some of its closest competitors grow even tighter.

Stock Screener

E*TRADE’s Stock Screener is customizable across multiple criteria, including price/volume, market segment, technicals, fundamental metrics, analyst opinions, and earnings/dividends. Morningstar ratings are included in the stock screener, offering even more ways to evaluate potential trade ideas.

The Live Action scanner is included as part of the Power E*TRADE app and contains more than 100 pre-defined screens. Active investors can use this feature to scan the market in real-time to assist their trading strategy, helping to uncover oversold or overbought stocks, for example.

ETF and Mutual Fund Screener

E*TRADE’s ETF and Mutual Fund screener includes several predefined strategies geared toward helping beginner traders get up and running. The ETF scanning capabilities can be used to filter for various categories, including expense ratio, risk, performance, and more. The ETF screener also works to filter the newly launched crypto ETFs. The mutual fund screener is similar and can be used to implement predefined or customized strategies.

E*TRADE expanded its screener tools to cover the more than 5,000 mutual funds offered through Morgan Stanley. E*TRADE also compiled a shorter list of its recommended “All-Star” funds.20

Options Screener

The Power E*TRADE platform offers a range of standard to advanced options screeners and tools. The Live Action tool can be used to identify unusual options and volatility activity in the market. Spectral Analysis helps visualize the potential trade, helping recognize the maximum profit or loss in an options strategy. Traders have numerous options at their disposal to research and implement their preferred trading approach.

Fixed Income Screener

E*TRADE offers several fixed-income screening capabilities that let you filter by fixed income type, yield, price, credit rating, and more. The screener is paired with educational and research tools that let investors quickly zero in on fixed-income options that align with their desired investment strategy. The Bond Ladder Builder tool is especially helpful in designing and building a strategy that can help manage interest rate risk across all environments.21

Tools and Calculators

E*TRADE offers helpful calculators and tools, such as those for retirement planning, through its web platform. More advanced planning capabilities, such as a Roth IRA conversion and taxable equivalent yield calculator, help simplify complex tax and planning strategies.5 

Power E*TRADE contains many options-related tools, such as risk/reward probability charts and the StrategySEEK Tool, designed to help identify user-inputted criteria like target price, outlook, timeframe, and investment amount.

Charting

Every E*TRADE platform includes advanced charting features powered by Markit Digital and Chart IQ. Many types of charts are supported, including line, bar, candle, open-high-low-close (OHLC), and more. If you use the mobile app, you can turn charts horizontally for a better view.

Power E*TRADE boasts a vast repository of charting capabilities, featuring over 100 chart studies, drawing tools, and several indicators. Investors can save and initiate trading strategies directly from the chart, providing a powerful way to implement their desired trading approach.

Trading Idea Generators

E*TRADE offers trading ideas, market news, charts, and independent research from reputable sources, including TipRanks and Reuters.22

News

The Power E*TRADE experience provides real-time streaming news alongside news articles, market commentary, videos, and research reports. Daily stock and bond market reports are offered, too. Monthly market commentaries, daily active trader analysis, and weekly investing articles are available as well. You can stream Bloomberg TV in real-time, and users will appreciate the detachable feature, allowing them to continue watching even if they leave the app.23

Third-Party Research

E*TRADE users receive unfettered access to research from Morgan Stanley. This includes its equity and industry research reports as well as coverage of several stocks worldwide. E*TRADE also offers third-party research from TipRanks, SmartConsensus, Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv (consensus), Argus Fundamental, Argus Quantitative, Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv (fundamental), MarketEdge (technical), Argus Options, and MorningStar (funds).

Cash Management

Investors can only earn 0.01% to 0.15% interest on cash balances, with cash automatically swept into money market funds if clients are utilizing a managed account. These rates are very low compared to top investment platforms for uninvested cash.

Fractional Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP)

E*TRADE has a dividend reinvestment program (DRIP) through which investors can purchase fractional shares. This program provides one of two ways investors can access fractional shares (the other being through the Core Portfolios robo-advisor platform).

SRI/ESG Research Amenities

Traders can screen for an array of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria and socially responsible investing (SRI) factors through E*TRADE. The platform also provides thematic screening functionality to look for companies that engage in clean technology or social issues, for example. This gives investors the power and flexibility to design portfolios and trading strategies that are unique to their interests.

Portfolio Analysis

Whether you're a new or experienced trader, use an active or passive philosophy, or prefer options chains or ETFs, E*TRADE has tools that help power your strategy in the market. Reports and analyses are provided in real-time and are tailored to your specific interests.

E*TRADE eliminates the distorting performance effects of money flowing into and out of portfolios by using a time-weighted measure of gains and losses. As a result, the impact of cash flows is eliminated. While this is helpful, the platform does not support internal rate of return calculations.

E*Trade offers tax documents like any other broker. Reports may be compatible with many common tax software options. Downloadable capital gains tax returns, calculations on the impact of future trades, or viewing unrealized gain/loss reports further round out the tools available for investor use.

Education

E*TRADE has been hard at work upgrading and enhancing the strong educational content on its platform. E*TRADE organizes its educational content by life stage, including education, family finances, and retirement.

E*TRADE’s Knowledge Center lives up to its name by offering tremendous resources, spanning a huge range of topics and available in a number of formats. This content library includes long-form articles, videos, classes, guidance pieces, and expert market commentary. Also available are tax planning guides, portfolio-building insights, and a more advanced curriculum for sophisticated traders seeking to elevate their approach to options or futures trading.24

A demo account option allows traders to test investment strategies and experience the platform without risking real money in the market. This tool helps beginner investors ease into the market and allows advanced traders to fine-tune their strategy before implementing it in the real world.25

Customer Service

• E*TRADE offers phone line access to brokers, as well as retirement specialists, financial consultants, active trader consultants, and product specialists.
• E*TRADE customers can chat with a live customer service representative 24/7, send an email, access FAQs, or use a comprehensive language search engine to find information on the website. The chat service is available through the website as well as mobile apps.26

Security and Reliability

E*TRADE's security is up to industry standards:

• Two-factor authentication is available on all E*TRADE platforms.
• If using a mobile device, E*TRADE offers both fingerprint and face scan log-in functionality.
• E*TRADE clients are covered under the Morgan Stanley excess of Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) supplemental insurance policy, which has an aggregate limit of $1 billion. This amount is above and beyond what is offered by SIPC.27

Transparency

E*TRADE’s pricing structure and fees are clear and transparent. The broker has a clean and extensive webpage dedicated to rates and pricing, highlighting costs associated with trading costs, margin rates, miscellaneous fees, and more.

Available Account Types

E*TRADE has an extensive offering when it comes to account types. E*TRADE customers can open all of the popular accounts:

• Individual brokerage accounts
• Custodial accounts
• Coverdell education savings accounts (ESAs)
• Traditional individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
• Roth IRAs
• Rollover IRAs
• Beneficiary IRAs
• IRAs for minors
• SIMPLE IRAs
• Simplified employee pension (SEP) IRAs
• Traditional and Roth 401(k)

Choosing the right account depends on the purpose of the portfolio. Retirement savers can choose from several available types of IRA accounts. Investors looking to grow their savings but who would like access to funds at any time before retiring would be well served with a brokerage or joint account. E*TRADE also offers a Max-Rate Checking account and a high-yield savings account.

The Bottom Line 

E*TRADE rightly has a decades-old reputation as one of the best online brokers. Despite its historic success, E*TRADE continues to improve its investment experience. E*TRADE has done an especially good job with its two mobile apps by eliminating underutilized functions to create a simpler, more intuitive design, yet keeping all key trading capabilities, analysis tools, and research features.

No investment platform is perfect. E*TRADE does have a few minor flaws. It hardly pays any interest on uninvested cash. It also does not offer forex or direct crypto exposure. Investors seeking these investments will need to look elsewhere. But besides these few issues, E*TRADE shines as a phenomenal platform for investors of all kinds.

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