Day trading is a skill and day traders choose their primary tool, a trading platform, based on its ability to enhance their strategies and minimize their costs. The best day trading platforms provide excellent apps for analyzing indicators and executing trades on stocks, cryptocurrency, options, forex, futures, and more.
After hundreds of hours of comprehensive research, data analysis, and live broker platform demos, Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is our best overall online brokerage for day trading because of how it optimizes its pricing, user experience, and content to suit the needs of highly-active day traders. IBKR is just one of 26 online brokers that we evaluated based on 89 criteria, including available assets, account services, user experience, and additional features.
Best Day Trading Platforms of 2024
- Best Overall: Interactive Brokers
- Best Broker for Advanced Day Traders: Interactive Brokers
- Best Charting Platform for Day Traders: Interactive Brokers
- Best Low-Cost Day Trading App: Webull
- Best Mobile Day Trading App: E*TRADE
- Best Day Trading Platform for Options: tastytrade
Best Overall: Interactive Brokers
- Account Minimum: $0.00
- Fees:$0.00 commissions for equities/ETFs available on IBKR’s TWS Lite, or low costs scaled by volume for active traders that want access to advanced functionality such as order routing.$0.65 per contract for options on TWS Lite; that is also the base rate for TWS Pro users, with scaled rates based on volume. $0.85 per contract for futures.
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Why We Chose It
Best Overall
Interactive Brokers meets the needs of a wide variety of traders and the multitude of strategies they trade. Whether trading on strategies designed for account balances under $1,000 or greater than $1 million, IBKR’s pricing and platforms offer something for anyone looking to increase their skill at day trading.
Best Broker for Advanced Day Traders
Advanced day traders can use the high-powered tools in the IBKR Traders Workstation (TWS) platform to enhance their skill at selecting and executing trades. They can also select the IBKR PRO pricing plan to help reduce costs on their specific strategies and improve execution quality.
Best Charting Platform for Day Traders
The extensive list of options for customizing charts, layouts, and user-customized buttons makes it possible to generate as many unique charting setups as there are traders. But even with all that power and flexibility, IBKR’s platform is still easy enough for new users to learn quickly.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Highly customizable
Powerful customization features for day trading strategies
Low cost fixed or tiered pricing structure
Excellent screeners, charting, and analysis tools
Strong education, news, and API resources
Cons
Each platform is different
Learning curve for advanced TWS platform
API is dated and complicates tool integration
Overview
Since its founding in 1977, IBKR has focused on providing excellent execution and low trading costs. The formula has worked well, as the firm now holds over $14 billion in equity capital and employs nearly 3,000 team members headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, with additional offices in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Day trading success can often boil down to execution performance, and a broker that shows no skill in this area creates insurmountable costs for users.Interactive Brokers often generates superior execution performance compared to the payment for order flow (PFOF) execution style most brokers use nowadays.
Like most brokers, IBKR offers trading with no commissions. It does this through its IBKR Lite version of the platform. The alternative, IBKR Pro, exposes users’ orders to IBKR’s high-speed, best execution order routing system, SmartRouter. It costs $10 per month, but also enables traders to receive optimized pricing and transaction speed.
Although IBKR Pro has upfront costs, it will likely be the choice of most day traders looking for fine control over order execution. Whether Lite or Pro, Interactive Brokers also gives traders access to the industry’s lowest margin rates to leverage up and amplify returns on positions.
Advanced day traders are likely to be familiar with the company’s Trader Workstation (TWS) platform. This platform is loaded with tools, including many features for customizing execution screens. That means a day trader with a highly personalized strategy could set up a screen layout with just the right charts, watchlists, and streaming price data and be able to place an order with one click or one hotkey combination.
This is an important feature that gets combined with access to a wide selection of assets, competitive tiered or fixed pricing, rapid order flow, education, news, and sophisticated automation capabilities. Traders will find many of the same capabilities on the mobile app as the web-based and desktop platforms, particularly as it relates to setting up watchlists and placing orders. Charting capabilities are more robust on the desktop TWS platform, but they are far from minimalist on the mobile app or web interface.
Best Low-Cost Day Trading App: Webull
- Account Minimum: $0
- Fees: $0 commissions for stock, ETF, and options
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Why We Chose It
Day traders who prefer to trade on a mobile app will find Webull an excellent low-cost offering for stock shares, even with its payment for order flow (PFOF) structure. No account minimum, no commissions, and fractional share capability make this platform an excellent choice for the beginning day trader with a smaller account size.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Easy setup
Simple and intuitive interface
No account minimums
Fractional shares available
Updated mobile interface includes stronger educational resources
Cons
PFOF diminishes execution performance for options
Mobile app doesn’t access the stock screener
No access to bonds
Overview
When COVID-19 pandemic conditions generated a wave of interest in mobile-based day trading, Webull was ready to ride it. The popular broker-dealer has seen strong growth ever since its initial launch in the U.S. in 2018, and now operates in 10 major markets and 15 regions globally.
The mobile-first approach for the company reflects its most important target market: millennials. Webull has positioned itself to serve younger active traders drawn to a platform offering a broad range of services for free. The platform has no account minimums and offers commission-free trading of stocks/ETFs and options.
Webull caters to the self-directed investor and keeps its feature set simpler, and more purposeful. That means Webull customers get great value, helpful education, tools, and features, as well as good margin rates.
Webull is positioned for investors who want to get into financial markets with no minimum account sizes, fractional share trading, and commission-free trading, but day traders find the platform attractive for similar reasons. While Webull is not a full-service broker, that doesn’t really matter since most day traders have less need for comprehensive portfolio management tools.
Webull customers skew younger than at other brokerage companies. The broker's no-cost model will also appeal to active traders of various types. For example, Webull's free options trading captures the attention of active options traders, and futures traders can take advantage of simplified futures trading right on the mobile app.
Best Mobile Day Trading App: E*TRADE
- Account Minimum: $0
- Fees: No commission for stock, ETF, and mutual fund trades. Options are $0.50-$0.65 per contract, depending on trading volume.
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Why We Chose It
The E*TRADE mobile apps are highly customizable and can be tailored to a user’s specific trading strategy. What sets them apart is their optimized content and intuitive flow, making them ideal for all types of traders who want to conduct research and execute trades quickly and efficiently.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Easy-to-learn, easy-to-use interface
Highly customizable
Two versions of the mobile app to meet different trader needs
Excellent news and educational material
Level II information also available
Cons
Low interest rate for uninvested cash
No cryptocurrency purchases
No fractional share purchases
Overview
E*TRADE has been a leading broker in the industry since its founding in Palo Alto, California, in 1982, and has remained true to a reputation for constantly embracing innovation and driving change across the industry. It was among the first to ride the wave of internet adoption and build itself into a powerful trading service. By 2020, Morgan Stanley agreed to acquire E*TRADE for $13 billion.
E*TRADE appeals to new traders and sophisticated investors alike by providing an extensive range of trading features while remaining intuitive and easy to use. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the implementation of the E*TRADE mobile platform.
The E*TRADE mobile app caters to new investors by focusing on the features that matter most to them—watchlists, market research, quotes, portfolio management, and more. E*TRADE provides an abundant amount of both proprietary and third-party research through its apps.
The broker works to reach as many users as possible with two different mobile apps. The second one, the Power E*TRADE app, is designed for more advanced traders. It contains more robust charting, analysis, and screening capabilities. Options strategies can also be executed directly from the app using an options chain that is highly customizable.
Best Day Trading Platform for Options: tastytrade
- Account Minimum: $0
- Fees & Commissions: $0 stock trades, $1 to open options trades (capped at $10 per leg), $0 to close
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Why We Chose It
No platform does options as well as tastytrade, so for the day trader who frequently uses options in their strategies, this broker is worth considering. Cost and functionality alone make it a great pick, but there is more here to delight a day trader than just cheap options trading.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Excellent options tools for both trading and analysis
Great execution with frequent price improvement
Strong and current options education
Fractional share trading available
Industry-leading options-based content
Cons
Learning curve for the interface
Education favors advanced option spreads
Fee structure favors positions larger than 10 contracts
Overview
Launched in 2017, tastytrade is one of the fastest-growing online brokerage firms in the world. It was designed by the founders of thinkorswim with sophisticated functionality for robust trading in options and futures. Though it has a do-it-yourself vibe and provides the technology, education, and support a trader needs to succeed, it brings industrial-level tools and execution to a retail crowd.
Tastytrade is a technology-driven broker, which brings many advantages to trading through its platform. Like many brokers today, tastytrade uses a proprietary order routing system. The platform’s algorithms focus on order fill quality and price improvement. The electronic system will route orders to the market maker which will yield favorable execution for the customer. Customers have even mentioned the fill performance on Trustpilot reviews.
Another advantage is that tastytrade offers fractional share trading, which makes higher-priced stocks accessible even for smaller account sizes. If your favorite stock is trading for $1,000 per share, but your account only has $500 of buying power available, you could enter an order for 0.5 shares (or less) and get a fill. The fee for doing so is 10 cents per trade.
No matter what the size of a trader’s account is, they are likely to find the strongest feature of this platform, by far, is its sophisticated analytics. The wide variety of ways to research and analyze an options trade or trading strategy leaves all other competitors behind.
The Bottom Line
Day traders are the most active subset of all trading and investing customers for any broker and therefore each company must choose how they will respond to the needs of this group. A commitment to these highly active market participants has to be a strategic choice. If done right, this choice allows brokers to benefit from the high frequency of trades generated by these traders. If done poorly, then money and resources are quickly wasted. That’s why day trader loyalty must be earned through a pattern of consistently-excellent offerings.
Our extensive research has revealed that Interactive Brokers offers the best overall day trading experience, when considering the many key features that are so critical to this specialized group of traders. Traders looking for a low-cost platform that still delivers impressive charting and research capabilities will find what they need in Webull. When it comes to a mobile trading experience that is free from clutter but replete with sophisticated tools and top-tier research, E*TRADE is an established force to consider. Finally, for options traders seeking excellent execution, optimized pricing, and actionable content from some of the industry's best talent, tastytrade is the place to be.
Compare the Best Day Trading Platforms
| Company | Fees | Account Minimum | Mobile App |
| E*TRADE | No commission for stock, ETF, and mutual fund trades. Options are $0.50-$0.65 per contract, depending on trading volume. | $0 | Android, iOS |
| Interactive Brokers | Maximum $0.005per share for Pro platform up to 1% of trade value, $0 for IBKR Lite | $0 | Android, iOS |
| Webull | $0 commissions for stock, ETF, and options | $0 | Android, iOS |
| tastytrade | $1 per contract opened with a $10 cap, plus a $0.10 clearing fee per contract | $0 | Android, iOS |
Everything You Need to Know About Brokerage Accounts
How to Start Day Trading
Day trading might be one of the easiest activities to get started with but among the hardest to master, so beginning day traders shouldn’t expect to become highly profitable in only a matter of days or weeks. Here are four basic steps every day trader should follow when getting started.
- Research: Day traders should first study trading styles and techniques successful day traders use, and the assets these techniques are used with. There are many great resources available to do this; however, too many beginners just dive right in. Some activities are best practiced in simulation mode first. Trading is one of those, so plan to do careful research before jumping into your first live-money trades.
- Open an account: Once you are ready, you can open an account and begin to practice trading. The best accounts for a beginner are those that offer high-fidelity paper trading features, but even live money can be like practice if the trading positions are small enough. Practice trading should be done with very small quantities, as small as possible.
- Track trades: Beginning traders should keep careful track of how they planned the trade before they got into it. That means they should record their planned entry, planned stop loss, and planned profit target. They should keep track of both the planned and actual trades so they can compare their actual to theoretical performance.
- Manage risk: Every successful trader knows exactly how much money they are risking on each trade, and how much money they could possibly gain by comparison. Traders who don’t lose all their money typically know how to risk less than 1% per trade while still making trades that can grow their accounts quickly.
What Is the Best Day Trading Platform?
The best day trading platform for each trader is the one that fits that trader’s trading style best. Based on this review, that is more likely to be IBKR than any other, but not every trader is the same and another broker could have benefits that outweigh all other considerations.
What Is Day Trading?
Day trading consists of trades intended to last only a few days, hours, minutes, or even seconds. The concept is that a successful day trading methodology benefits from increased frequency. Day traders therefore look for strategies and techniques that can be used in rapid succession to make several trades in less than a week.
The trader seeks comparatively small profits for most trades with large windfall profits made on rare occasions. These profits come from frequent trading activities designed to put the trader in the right place at the right time.
Is Day Trading Worth It?
A 2013 study claims that less than 1% of day traders are able to consistently earn unusually high returns in day trading. Yet those who do would certainly contend that it is worthwhile.
Traders who don’t do well at day trading take on too much risk in their trades and lose money faster than expected. This causes them to quit trading before they gain sufficient skill at it. This kind of trading is not worthwhile, but neither is any endeavor that is poorly attempted. Whether day trading is worth it has a lot to do with how well the trader prepares and whether they take the time and effort needed to gain the requisite skill.
What is Pattern Day Trading?
Pattern day trading (PDT) is a FINRA term that designates traders who trade more frequently than four times per week. These traders are considered to be following something other than the fundamental value of an asset. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and other regulatory agencies expect these traders to make decisions based on price patterns or other similar data, hence the name.
How We Picked the Best Online Brokers and Trading Platforms
Providing readers with unbiased, comprehensive reviews of online brokers and trading platforms is a top priority for Investopedia. We combined our industry research, subject matter expertise, and investor survey data to guide the research and weightings for our 2024 online broker awards. To collect the data, we sent a digital survey with 110 questions to each of the 26 companies we included in our rubric. Additionally, our team of researchers verified the survey responses and collected any missing data points through online research and conversations with each company directly. The data collection process spanned from Feb. 19 to March 19, 2024.
We then developed a proprietary model that scored each company to rate its performance across 11 major categories and 89 criteria to find the best online brokers and trading platforms. The score for each company’s overall star rating is a weighted average of the criteria in the following categories:
Additionally, during our 2024 research, many of the companies we reviewed gave us live demonstrations of their platforms and services via video conferencing methods and also granted our team of expert writers and editors access to live accounts so they could perform hands-on testing.
Through this all-encompassing data collection and review process, Investopedia has provided you with an unbiased and thorough review of the top online brokers and trading platforms.
Learn more abouthow we review online brokers.
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