Commissions & Fees
| Feature | Price |
|---|---|
| Real-Time Market Data (Trading User) | $4.99/month |
| Real-Time Market Data (Only App User) | $9.99/month |
| Stocks | $0.00 |
| Minimum Balance | $0.00 |
| Account Fee | $0.00 |
| Online Mutual Funds | N/A |
| Options | N/A |
The Webull commissions and fees structure is highly competitive. When compared with Robinhood, which doesn’t charge commissions for trades, Webull offers slightly more value for advanced traders.
Namely, Webull supports short selling as well as margin buying power with 4x leverage without any additional monthly subscriptions. Of course, you’ll have to pay for the margin you use, but this is still quite advantageous.
Unfortunately, Webull does charge for real-time market data, which currently is $4.99 per month if you have a trading account opened and funded.
Customer Service
Customer service with Webull is surprisingly pretty decent. Typically, online brokers that offer commission-free trading like Robinhood, Jellifin, etc, sacrifice customer service over the phone (because it’s too expensive to staff licensed brokerage representatives) and thus only offer email support.
Webull breaks this mold by offering phone-line support with short wait times. The three times I called in, I spoke with someone in under five minutes each time.
Representatives were friendly, knowledgable, and helpful.
h2>Trading Tools
In the Apple App Store, Webull currently has an impressive 4.4 star rating, and it’s not hard to see why. Everything about the Webull app is well designed and highly usable.
Navigating from real-time charting to news stories to account management is pretty seamless.
Our only gripe with the way Webull is structured is having to pay for market-data. Having said that, once you pay for and activate real-time data, charting is robust with plenty of technical analysis studies to choose from.
Moreover, the “Explore” tab on the app is incredible. You can screen for stocks, view upcoming IPOs, practice paper trading, and view complex metrics like earnings market surprises.
We like what Webull has done with their app. It’s fast, powerful, full of useful features, and very easy to use.
Overall Ease of Use
Besides the account opening process, which can take several days and require uploading a picture of your ID or passport (which we are not fans of doing), Webull is fairly straightforward and easy to use.
If you’ve never invested before, you likely won’t find yourself confused with Webull’s interface. From a developing standpoint, it’s not easy to build an investing app that satisfies the needs of agressive traders who demand leverage and short selling, while simultaneously making the app very beginner-friendly.
Webull vs Competitors
When we compare Firstrade to some popular online brokers, there are a few shortcomings that are quite noticeable. Namely, the lack of tradeable instruments (no penny stocks, futures, aggressive short selling or options strategies), as well as the lack of 24/7 customer service and feature-rich trading platforms.
No minnimum
$0 per stock
None
–
No minnimum
$4.95 per stock
$4.95 + $0.65 per option
No minnimum
$5 per stock
$1.00 per option
Current Offers
There are currently no promotional offers for Webull.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, we Robinhood still has more users than Webull when it comes to commission free-trading, partially because Robinhood is better funded and able to constantly roll out new trading technology.
However, we really like the fact that short selling is permitted on Webull, and we love the face that there is 4x leverage. These two factors alone make Webull better than Robinhood for those focused on day trading and betting against individual stocks.
However, the fact that Webull doesn’t support any options, ETF, or mutual fund trading is a massive drawback for us. Although after market trading is available, we still would like to see options trading supported to deploy income generating strategies like covered calls.
It is important to remember that Webull actually started out as a way to watch and research the market. Now that Webull is a full-fledged broker dealer, there is certainly room for improvement, but if your heart is set on the “commission-free trading” route, Webull demonstrably offers more value than Robinhood or Jellifin. Although, an average investor can still get the most value by taking advantage of any number of the free trade promotions from the most popular US stock brokers, where trades are free for typically 3 to 6 months and there are no restrictions on trading strategies or asset classes.
