Is your broker helping you be a better investor? That was the key question we sought to answer as we rolled out our annual online broker survey.

After all, fees don't matter much anymore. They're low everywhere. So, what's left? Service.

Does your broker provide the tools you need to help you keep track of your financial life and goals? In big and little ways, is it guiding you toward smarter investment decisions? Did you learn anything new about investing from your broker over the past year? Can you get investment advice if you want it?

Can you graduate from an automated adviser to a dedicated financial adviser as you get older to get help with estate planning or Social Security? All told, we engineer our broker rankings to reward the firms that offer the most to the broadest group of investors.

How we chose the best online brokers and trading platforms

To start, we limit the field to brokers that offer stock, mutual fund, exchange-traded fund and individual bond trading. That's one reason you don't see the likes of Robinhood or SoFi here – you can't buy individual bonds on their platforms.

We surveyed nine firms in all: Ally Invest, Charles Schwab, E*Trade from Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, Firstrade, Interactive Brokers, J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing, Merrill Edge, and WellsTrade. T. Rowe Price, Vanguard and Citi Self Invest declined to participate.

The biggest, best-known firms score better overall, you'll notice. But each firm shines in one category or another, and no firm aced every one.

Best online broker overall

Drum roll, please. Fidelity landed on top this year by offering a solid mix of investment products, as well as tools and calculators for retirement planning and college savings, among other things.

The firm's fees are far from the lowest, especially if you want to buy shares in a mutual fund for which you must pay a transaction fee. But it was a competitive finisher in primary categories – investment choices, tools and education, and mobile app. And it won major points for its full range of advisory services, which pushed it to the top spot.

Interactive Brokers finished second for the second year in a row. The firm ranked first or second in the most important categories – investment choices, mobile app, and tools and education – and that helped lock in its position in the rankings.

We evaluated its "Lite" pricing plan and its website-based platform, Client Portal. But many of the firm's customers are active traders – defined by the firm as investors who make more than 120 trades per year – and they usually opt for the firm's "Pro" pricing plan and download its desktop trading platform, not considered here.

What's more, Interactive is known for its access to international markets – more than 160 developed and emerging markets – and 71% of its account holders live outside of the U.S. They're mostly interested in trading in the U.S. as well as their local markets, the firm says.

Bear in mind that our survey results combine objective and subjective criteria. We rely on the information that each firm provides, vetting the data as best we can. The scoring boils down to the weighting we assign to each data point and to each category.

Although we base our weightings on what we hear from investors and the industry about what brokerage customers currently value, not everyone will agree with what we chose to play up – or down.

Below, we walk you through the highlights and lowlights of how the brokers performed in each of our categories, listed in order of significance to the final score.

Online brokers with the best investment choices

More is more in this category: The broader the range of investment offerings, from corporate bonds to mutual funds, ETFs and even cryptocurrencies, the better the broker ranked in this category, which makes up 20% of the final score.

Fidelity and Interactive Brokers came out on top. In addition to a robust roster of the usual securities available, both firms also offer better yields than peers on cash that's sitting idle in brokerage accounts (the so-called sweep account).

You can also buy a fraction of nearly every publicly traded U.S. stock or ETF. So instead of shelling out more than $1,000 for a single share of Netflix (NFLX) stock, for instance, you can buy a $1 slice (roughly 0.001% of one share). And you can set up a recurring purchase of shares in ETFs and stocks.

Plus, though it didn't count for much in this category score, Fidelity and Interactive Brokers were the only firms in the survey to offer cryptocurrency trading of select digital coins – the actual currency, not crypto futures or ETFs that track cryptocurrency prices. (Schwab says it expects to offer direct access to crypto in 2026.)

For the record, fractional-share trading is available at other firms, too, but to varying degrees. At Firstrade, customers can buy slices of nearly every publicly traded stock and more than 1,200 ETFs.

Schwab customers can only buy slices of S&P 500 stocks; at J.P. Morgan Self-Directed, fractional purchases are limited to S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 stocks and all ETFs; and E*Trade investors can buy fractions of 221 ETFs for a $25 minimum investment.

Of course, not every investor wants or even needs access to every investable security. Mutual fund investors will find abundant choices at Charles Schwab, Fidelity and Interactive Brokers, for instance. And buyers of individual corporate bonds will find the greatest number of choices at E*Trade. Municipal bond investors should go to Interactive Brokers or E*Trade.

Want to invest in foreign stocks? You're out of luck at most of the firms we surveyed; only Schwab, Fidelity and Interactive offer access to foreign markets.

Ally Invest, E*Trade and Merrill Edge suffered because they don't offer fractional-share trading of stocks. WellsTrade does, it's worth noting. But Wells and Merrill also slipped, in part, because each of their platforms offers a below-average number of mutual funds and corporate and municipal bonds, relative to other survey respondents.

Online brokers with the best tools and education

How helpful is your broker at keeping you on track with your investment plan and the rest of your financial life?

In this category, which accounts for 20% of the final score, we asked each firm whether they offered certain tools or calculators that assist in a variety of financial goals: How much should I save for college tuition? How am I doing so far on retirement savings? Can I get help building a bond ladder, figuring out how much to withdraw each year from my IRA, and reviewing the asset allocation of my entire investment portfolio?

Calculators, portfolio analyzers, screens for stocks, ETFs and mutual funds, and the like can help investors put their money to work. We scrutinized the array of educational videos, webinars, podcasts and live events, too.

Schwab and Interactive Brokers triumphed in this category. Of the nearly 40 tools and functions we queried each firm about, Schwab offers 33, including savings, tax and retirement calculators and other useful tools, such as a bond-laddering tool and a trade ticket that can be filled out and saved for later. (E*Trade offers a saved trade ticket function, too.) Interactive Brokers finished with 30.

Many are embedded in the firm's retirement-planning tool (such as budgeting and debt management) and portfolio analyst tool (such as getting an aggregate view of asset allocation and risk in your portfolio).

Both firms also got a lift from good scores on the education front. We asked the firms about educational articles and videos available on their websites, as well as how many podcasts and videos were posted in 2024. Schwab and Interactive both scored well, which helped them win the top spots in this category.

But it's worth noting that Fidelity and E*Trade were nearly as strong on education, too. E*Trade, in particular, offers a daily podcast of five minutes or less from Morgan Stanley that covers commentary on the market and other investing topics. Recent podcast headlines: "Trump's AI Action Plan"; "Will the Entertainment Business Stay Human?"; and "Asia's $46 Trillion Question."

The laggards in the tools category were Ally Invest, Firstrade and WellsTrade. They trailed the pack in the overall number of tools offered – Ally with just 11; Firstrade with 16; and Wells with 17.

Ally Invest, for instance, doesn't offer a mutual fund screener, a spending-tracker tool or a "How am I doing?" retirement-savings calculator. WellsTrade offers more than Ally in the way of tools, but you can't export statements to Excel, for instance, and it doesn't include some tools, such as one that would help investors as they start to withdraw cash for retirement.

But Wells and Ally also missed on the education side. Unlike the other firms surveyed, for instance, WellsTrade doesn't provide any educational articles on investing and trading strategies, podcasts, or educational videos.

Ally Invest fared a bit better than Wells because it does provide educational articles, but it lacks the podcasts, videos and other events that the bigger players offer their customers.

Online brokers with the best mobile app

Most brokerage customers log in to their accounts in the mobile app more often than they do on a computer, according to some of the firms we surveyed this year.

They may be just checking their portfolio balance in the middle of the day. Even so, as apps improve, we expect that investors will want to perform more and more investing tasks on their phones over time. So in this category, which makes up 20% of the final score, we explored the breadth of functionality of each firm's mobile app.

The ability to trade stocks, ETFs and mutual funds is a given; every firm's mobile app allows you to do that. And access to stock research reports in the app is pretty much de rigueur.

But can you buy stakes in bonds and crypto in the app? Does it offer stock and ETF screening, for instance, as well as a shortlist of prescreened investments to consider? Can you select specific shares you own in a stock by tax lot before you sell? Can you access a similar variety of savings, retirement, budgeting and portfolio analysis tools that are available on the broker's website? Can you deposit checks electronically into your brokerage account?

Interactive Brokers answered yes to more of our nearly 60 queries than any other firm. It won this category by a clear margin, thanks to a robust array of retirement calculators, tools for tracking spending and college savings, and a bond screener on its app.

E*Trade's offering was similarly robust; it was the only other firm to offer a bond screener on its mobile app, for one thing. It came in second, followed by J.P. Morgan Self-Directed in third place and Fidelity in fourth.

Some of the firms' apps are strong in other ways. All but three of the firms allow you to measure your portfolio's performance against a benchmark, for instance (Ally Invest, Firstrade and WellsTrade are the holdouts).

We'd be content with just three benchmarks – one for U.S. stocks, another for U.S. bonds, say, and a foreign stock market bogey. But at Interactive, you can choose among 340 in the mobile app; Merrill Edge, 35; and J.P. Morgan Self-Directed, 12. Compare that with the five indexes available in Schwab's app and three in Fidelity's and E*Trade's mobile apps.

Meanwhile, for investors in search of investing ideas, only J.P. Morgan and E*Trade offer curated lists for stocks, ETFs and mutual funds on the app.

Fidelity, for instance, has select lists available in its app for mutual funds and ETFs, but not stocks. J.P. Morgan shines again for screeners. It's the only firm, along with Interactive Brokers, to offer screeners for stocks, ETFs, mutual funds and bonds in its mobile app.

Online brokers with the best advisory services

Many investors these days want help with their investments. Brokerage firms tend to offer tiers of service. These range from an all-digital, or automated, service (call it a robo service) to a blend of digital and a little human advice – what we call a hybrid offering – to a more full-service type of account that in some cases offers customized portfolios and a dedicated investment adviser.

We scrutinized the full gamut of offerings at each firm by dividing the overall advisory category into three parts – digital, hybrid and full service. The overall category accounts for 12.5% of the final score; digital service makes up just over half of the category score, and hybrid and full services account for the rest of the category score.

The range of advice varies at each firm. Firstrade doesn't offer any investment advice at all. And most firms offer only two of the three tiers of advice. J.P. Morgan Self-Directed, for instance, doesn't have a robo, but it offers a hybrid service as well as full-service-type plans through J.P. Morgan Wealth Management.

Merrill Edge has a robo (Merrill Guided Investing) and a hybrid (Merrill Guided Investing with Advisor). But it doesn't offer full-service advice – though that is available at a different Merrill business.

Similarly, Wells Fargo's WellsTrade has Intuitive Investor, its all-digital advisory, but no full-service advice. That's available through a different Wells business, so it wasn't included in the survey.

The only two firms to offer all three tiers of advisory services – again, digital, hybrid and full service – ran away with the medal in this category: Fidelity and Schwab. Indeed, Fidelity seems to have an advisory service to suit every kind of investor and account size. The breadth of offerings helped Fidelity come out ahead in this category. But in truth, both Fidelity and Schwab stood out in each tier, winning the top spots across the board.

Bear in mind that our scoring system weighed the nuts and bolts of the services at each firm – investment minimums, variety of portfolios, fees, expense ratios of fund holdings and access to estate-planning experts, among other things – not the portfolio returns.

Let's start with digital and hybrid services. Fidelity offers two kinds of automated advice: Fidelity Go and Fidelity Managed FidFolios. But Fidelity Go steals the show. For as little as $10, customers can get access to 16 different kinds of portfolios filled with funds that charge 0% expense ratios. What's more, accounts with less than $25,000 pay no advisory fee.

Managed FidFolios is a more sophisticated introductory offering – a team of experts manage an all-stock portfolio for you – and requires $5,000 to start. Choose among three actively managed strategies (which charge 0.70% each in annual advisory fees) and five direct indexing portfolios (0.40%), a strategy that involves owning the individual securities that make up a benchmark, instead of owning a mutual fund or ETF, which allows for active tax-loss harvesting (selling losers to offset gains elsewhere).

Fidelity's hybrid service is part of its Fidelity Go offering and kicks in when balances top $25,000. The fee jumps to 0.35% of assets per year, but that gets you unlimited one-on-one "financial coaching to help achieve retirement or other investing goals," according to the firm. Many of those coaches are certified financial planners.

By contrast, in its favor, Schwab's robo, Intelligent Portfolios, charges no annual advisory fee, and investors can choose among 81 diversified portfolios filled with cheap ETFs. Schwab's next step up in service, like Fidelity's, requires a $25,000 minimum. Intelligent Portfolios Premium, as it's called, requires a one-time $300 planning fee on top of a $30 monthly advisory charge. You get the same 81 diversified ETF portfolios as in the robo-advisory service, but the big plus is you have access to a team of financial planners.

At most firms, you must fork over more money to get a dedicated human adviser. That minimum varies from $100,000 at Ally Invest and J.P. Morgan Self-Directed to $500,000 at E*Trade, Fidelity and Schwab. (Firstrade, Interactive, Merrill and Wells don't offer these services.)

At the full-service level, Schwab offered most of the features we were looking for: A dedicated adviser, one-on-one access to specialists for bond and options trading as well as an estate-planning expert, and low advisory fees. For an account with a $750,000 balance, Schwab charges just 0.80% a year.

E*Trade and J.P. Morgan each had competitive offerings at the full-service level. J.P. Morgan has a lower minimum going for it – typically $100,000 for a dedicated adviser – plus access to experts on estate planning and bond and options trading, and a customized portfolio. And investors can choose among advisers at Chase bank branches and at different divisions of J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. Some charge annual advisory fees as low as 0.50% for a $750,000 balance; others cost more (as much as 1.45% a year).

E*Trade's full-service offering from Morgan Stanley Wealth Management stacked up nicely, too, with multiple experts at the ready to help you. Its 2% annual advisory fee for an account with a $750,000 balance was high, however. E*Trade says Morgan Stanley financial adviser rates vary, so it chose the highest rate by default. Of course, in exchange, you get access to Morgan Stanley's full breadth of products and services.

Online brokers with the best research

What some investors consider useful research may be gobbledygook to others. Some may put greater emphasis on technical analysis, for example – the practice of identifying trends or patterns in price charts to spot investing risks and opportunities.

Others may favor fundamental analysis, examining a company's financial statements and industry trends, say, to evaluate it as a potential investment. And then there are those who might find that news alerts and stories can be useful for pinpointing investing prospects, too.

To that end, in this category (12.5% of the final score), we asked the brokers to list the research sources they offer their customers for specific single stocks – Apple (AAPL), Goldman Sachs (GS), Honeywell International (HON), Alibaba Group Holdings (BABA) and WD-40 (WDFC) – as well as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and the Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX).

We also asked about how many stock and bond market outlook reports were available to do-it-yourself brokerage customers, as well as any ongoing market commentary or analysis. We gave extra credit to firms that provide access to in-depth fundamental research (because that's the kind of research we favor).

That last question helped boost the scores of some firms, including E*Trade, Merrill Edge, Schwab and J.P. Morgan Self-Directed.

Merrill Edge offers access to proprietary analysis of single stocks from BofA Global Research, but only to customers who meet a $100,000 balance threshold. BofA market outlook and commentary reports, however, are available to all customers. We knocked the firm (only by a bit) for this balance requirement, but it was enough to push the firm from a first-place tie with E*Trade to a second-place finish.

Schwab finished a nose behind for third. Schwab offers brokerage customers solid bond and stock market outlooks and commentary from its asset management division, but we discounted Schwab's proprietary stock reports a little because the stock ratings are based on quantitative, not qualitative, measures.

Interactive Brokers blows away the competition with the stratospheric number of research resources it offers its retail customers: 57 reports on Apple and 38 for Goldman Sachs, for example, and a whopping 1,452 for reports on the outlook for the bond market.

By contrast, among all of the firms we surveyed, the median number of reports was three each for the single companies and two for bond market outlooks. But Interactive missed getting extra credit for in-depth fundamental stock analysis, and that's why it finished behind E*Trade, Merrill and Schwab.

Online brokers with the best customer service and security

In our digitized world, customer service takes many shapes. There's chat and email. You can pick up the phone. In some cases, you can even talk face-to-face with a human being at a local branch. No matter the method, one thing's for sure: When you have an investing-related question that you can't answer on your own, you want a prompt answer. Period.

That's why this category, which amounts to 10% of the final score, included questions such as the average telephone hold time for a customer service representative and average email and chat response time.

We also asked about the percentage of time that a customer was able to get an answer to their question at the first point of contact with a live representative, among other questions.

Charles Schwab won for customer service thanks to its 400 branches, a phone line with 24/7 live service, a 33-second average hold time on the phone (below the average 65-second hold time for the firms we surveyed), and a less-than-12-hour response time for email queries (below the average 33-hour response period). Thousands of clients walk into Schwab's retail branches a day, the firm says, and over the first half of 2025, it fielded more than 14 million calls.

Merrill Edge came in second. On top of a 24/7 live representative customer-service line, the firm says that it has a 90% success rate in answering customers' questions at the first point of live contact. It was the best response rate of the group, just ahead of Ally Invest (89%).

To be fair, we should note that some firms didn't disclose this figure, including Fidelity, Firstrade and J.P. Morgan Self-Directed.

J.P. Morgan Self-Directed was hot on Merrill's heels, boosted in large part by a robust training program for its representatives. Depending on the representative's role, the firm says, some training programs last for two-plus years. A below-average phone-line hold time of less than 30 seconds and a roughly 12-hour average response time to email queries helped, too.

Firstrade, Ally Invest and WellsTrade faltered in this category for different reasons. Each of the firms reported shorter training periods for representatives than the other brokers, for a start. Ally and Wells also reported above-average wait times for representatives on the phone.

Security accounts for one-tenth of this category's score, but it's a growing concern as scammers and hackers get better at what they do. We gave extra credit to firms that make two-factor authentication mandatory, namely Ally Invest, E*Trade, In-teractive Brokers and J.P. Morgan Self-Directed. The extra step can be annoying, but it is becoming increasingly necessary.

To be clear, the other firms in the survey offer two-factor authentication as well; you just have to opt in and set it up.

Online brokers with the best commissions and fees

A little over a decade ago, this category accounted for 25% of the final score. This year, commissions and fees make up just 5%. Everyday investing transactions – buying and selling stocks, shares in ETFs or mutual funds, and bonds – are free, or nearly so. And the tasks that do incur a levy – wiring money, say, or having a representative place a bond or options trade for you over the phone – are likely to be infrequent.

And yet, there are some hidden trading costs. Embedded in the price of an individual bond you buy, for instance, may be a transaction cost, such as a markup (the difference between the price a broker-dealer paid to buy a bond and sell it to an investor) or a selling concession (a fee paid to the seller or distributor of the bond you're buying).

Similarly, the brokerage firm may receive a small payment to route trades to certain securities dealers, which can cost you in the form of slightly less favorable prices. These levies are small, but they can add up, and what you don't outlay in fees you can put to work toward your investing goals. So we asked the firms about these hidden transaction costs, among other charges, as well as what they charge for margin interest rates and options contracts.

As expected, the contest was tight. J.P. Morgan Self-Directed skated past the others, largely because it charges middle-of-the-road fees – rarely the highest or lowest on any query. FirstTrade, on the other hand, though it ranks seventh in the pack on fees, boasts the lowest charge for broker-assisted stock and ETF trades ($19.95) and options contracts ($0).

WellsTrade brought up the rear in this category. Its margin rates are above average and bond purchases include a markup, among other things.

Best online brokers for your specific needs

Best for index fund lovers. Fidelity and E*Trade both have suites of zero-fee index funds, but only individual investors with brokerage accounts at those firms can buy them.

Fidelity has four zero-fee index funds – a total market index fund, an in­ternational stock fund, a small-company stock fund and a large-company stock fund.

E*Trade has five no-fee index funds available exclusively to self-directed E*Trade investors. If you start working with a Morgan Stanley adviser, you can take them with you (E*Trade has been a Morgan Stanley-owned company since 2020). The five funds include strategies that track the performance of international markets, U.S. bonds, municipal bonds, large-company shares and the total stock market.

Best for individual bond buyers. Of all the firms in our survey, Interactive Brokers offers the greatest number of municipal bonds. But buyers of corporate debt should consider E*Trade. What's more, both firms charge no markup on corporate or muni bond transactions. At E*Trade, Treasuries trade for no fee.

Best robo advisory. Fidelity prevails with its digital offering, Fidelity Go, which charges no annual advisory fee for balances under $25,000 and includes 16 different portfolios (from conservative to aggressive allocations). The kicker: The portfolios hold only no-fee mutual funds, so you're not shelling out anything in annual expense ratios.

Fidelity gets another nod, too, because its most aggressive Fidelity Go portfolios hold 100% of assets in stocks (other firms have a 94% to 96% allocation to stocks).

But Schwab Intelligent Portfolios merits an honorable mention. There's no annual fee, though it takes $5,000 to open an account. And the 81 available portfolios hold low-fee exchange-traded funds that charge annual expense ratios between 0.04% and 0.16%.

Best all-in-one bank and broker. Several firms offer benefits to customers who bank and broker with them. But Merrill Edge and its parent, Bank of America, through its Preferred Rewards program, offer the best benefits.

We like, for instance, that the bonuses start when you have a three-month combined average daily balance of just $20,000 – at the bank and in any Merrill investment account. The pluses include a bump in cash rewards on Bank of America credit cards, priority on customer service phone lines, and interest rate discounts on auto loans and home equity lines of credit.

As your balance grows, the perks improve and expand. When your average daily balance hits $100,000 or more, on top of bigger interest rate breaks on loans and bonuses on credit card rewards, you can get a discount on robo-advisory fees at Merrill Edge, a boost in the interest rate on a Bank of America Advantage Savings account and a waiver on ATM fees at non-BofA banks in the U.S. and anywhere else in the world.

Best for options traders. Active options investors should favor Firstrade, which doesn't charge a contract fee like the others. Most of the other firms we surveyed charge a 0.65-cent fee per contract. Ally Invest is one exception; it charges a 0.50-cent contract fee.

Best for cash hoarders. Fidelity gets kudos for paying the highest yield on idle cash sitting in brokerage accounts. In late May, the firm's so-called sweep accounts – the account that your broker automatically "sweeps" any cash into – paid a 3.94% yield. Some of the other firms, by contrast, offered a 0.01% yield. Interactive Brokers stood out, too, with a 2.83% yield on its sweep account.

Best for investors just getting started. None of the firms we surveyed require a minimum to open an account, but we favor Fidelity for investors with small balances for a couple of reasons.

For starters, for as little as $1, you can buy slices of more than 7,000 stocks and exchange-traded funds. No other firm except Interactive Brokers can match that. The other plus: The firm's digital advisory service, Fidelity Go, has the lowest minimum – just $10 – to get started. In addition, there's no annual advisory fee if your balance is below $25,000, and the funds in the portfolios don't charge annual expenses.

Best for mutual fund investors. Interactive Brokers and Schwab offer the biggest roster of mutual funds for no load and no transaction fee. But we want to give Ally Invest, E*Trade, Firstrade and J.P. Morgan Self-Directed a shout-out, too.

All the funds on each of these platforms – albeit a shorter list of funds than Schwab or Interactive offer – trade for no fee.

Best for margin traders. If you're big into trading on margin – a strategy that allows an investor to borrow money from a brokerage firm to purchase securities – Interactive Brokers' Lite tier charges just 6.83% for a margin balance of less than $100,000, a little over half the going rate at the other firms for the same balance.

Best for investors with foreign addresses. Americans living abroad sometimes have problems opening brokerage accounts at U.S. financial firms. But at Interactive Brokers, citizens and residents of nearly every country can open accounts.

And the firm offers overnight trading of stocks and ETFs from 8 pm to 3:50 am Eastern Standard Time, Sunday through Friday, which makes it more convenient for overseas customers in faraway time zones to buy and sell shares.

Best for ETF investors. Stick with Fidelity, Interactive Brokers and J.P. Morgan Self-Directed, which allow you to buy and sell fractional shares of thousands of ETFs. (Firstrade and E*Trade allow you to buy slices of ETF shares, too, but fewer funds are available.)

Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.

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If you're an investor looking for a deal, it's hard to go wrong with an online brokerage these days. Virtually all of firms in our brokerage rankings offer free trades on stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), along with ample research and tools to help investors make educated financial decisions.

With so many reasonably priced offerings, however, investors might gravitate toward firms that offer a few additional features and freebies to sweeten the pot.

Here, we look at some of the most-overlooked broker promotions and perks.

For investors who can't afford sky-high share prices, Charles Schwab, Fidelity and Interactive Brokers have joined smaller, app-based brokers such as Robinhood and Stash in offering partial shares of stock to investors.

Schwab's feature allows investors to buy "slices" of stocks in the S&P 500 for as little $5 apiece.

Fidelity and Interactive Brokers let customers trade partial shares of virtually any stock for as little as $1.

Dividend-paying firms typically disburse cash every three months. If you invest for income, you might have a diverse portfolio of stocks – but if many of them pay out on the same schedule, you might find yourself going through long spells with little cash flowing in.

Four brokers – E*Trade, Interactive Brokers, Merrill Edge and TD Ameritrade – have income estimator tools that can help you keep on top of future payments. Each tool uses recent payout data to project the value and timing of your portfolio's dividend payments over the next 12 months.

TD's tool shows dividends from stocks, mutual funds and ETFs only. E*Trade, Interactive Brokers and Merrill Edge factor in income from bonds as well.

Fidelity brokerage customers have access to four mutual funds with no minimum investment and 0% expense ratios:

• Fidelity Zero Total Market Index (FZROX), which tracks the U.S. stock market
• Fidelity Zero Large Cap Index (FNILX), which tracks large-company U.S. stocks
• Fidelity Zero Extended Market Index (FZIPX), which tracks small- and midsize company stocks
• Fidelity Zero International Index (FZILX), which tracks foreign stocks

To avoid paying licensing fees to index makers such as Standard & Poor's, Fidelity's funds track indexes assembled in-house. That means the funds might outrun or lag ETFs that track traditional indexes. Still, it's easy to see the benefits of free funds with no investment minimum, especially when the savings are compounded over a lifetime of investing.

Including the four funds above, Fidelity offers 28 funds that have no investment minimum.

Nearly every brokerage tries to entice investors to open new accounts or add substantial sums to existing accounts by offering free trades or cash bonuses. Broker promotions come and go among the firms; here are some recent offers:

• Firstrade will reimburse up to $200 in transfer fees when you transfer money from another firm's account. You'll also get a free share of stock (chosen by an algorithm) if you refer a friend who opens an account – your friend gets a share as well.
• Interactive Brokers will give you a bonus of up to $200 if you refer a friend that opens an account and maintains a balance of at least $10,000 for one year.
• Schwab is running a referral promotion, too. However, the reward – between $100 and $500 – goes to the friend you refer, not to you.
• Merrill Edge will give you a bonus of up to $600 when you open a new self-directed investing account.
• TD Ameritrade will give you between $350 and $2,500 when you open a new account with a balance of at least $250,000.
• Depending on how much you deposit, new account holders at E*Trade can earn from $25 up to $2,500.
• Customers who sign up at Ally can earn from $50 to $3,500.
• New accountholders at TradeStation can get a cash bonus between $50 and $5,000.

Opening a credit account linked to your brokerage can help you earn cash back to beef up your investments. Here's a look at some current broker promotions tied to credit card rewards:

The Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature card comes with no annual fee, and all purchases earn 2% cash back, which can be divided and deposited into up to five Fidelity accounts whether they're your accounts or not.

All purchases on the TD Ameritrade Client Rewards Visa come with 1.5% cash back. Deposit your rewards into your TD Ameritrade brokerage account and you'll receive a 10% bonus on the cash-back.

The Schwab Investor Card from American Express offers a $100 credit if you spend $1,000 in the first three months. After that, you'll get 1.5% cash back automatically deposited into your Schwab account.

Merrill Edge customers who sign up for Bank of America's Preferred Rewards program receive a 25%, 50% or 75% boost on the cash-back reward from eligible Bank of America credit cards, depending on the combined assets in your accounts (the 25% level requires $20,000). Say you hold a Bank of America credit card, which offers 3% on a particular purchase. A $100 purchase would earn $3.75, $4.50 or $5.25, rather than $3. Similarly, a purchase that earns the buyer 100 points would actually earn 125, 150 or 175 points.

Whether you set up a cash-management account or just take out a debit card linked to the cash balances in your brokerage account, several brokers will reimburse your fees when you withdraw cash at any ATM.

Fidelity and TD Ameritrade will reimburse ATM fees nationwide. Schwab does that too, plus waives the 3% foreign transaction fee most debit issuers charge to make purchases abroad.

E*Trade and Ally offer more traditional banking services, such as checking and savings accounts. Ally accountholders can use more than 43,000 Allpoint ATMs for free, and the bank will reimburse up to $10 in ATM fees each statement cycle. E*Trade's Max Rate Checking Account comes with unlimited ATM reimbursements on charges that other financial institutions levy (though you may be subject to charges from the owner/operator of the ATM).

Merrill Edge investors who have $50,000 in assets (combined at Merrill Edge, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America) and who have joined the Preferred Rewards program can get 12 ATM-fee reimbursements per year at non-Bank of America ATMs in the U.S. (Bank of America ATMs are free).

Investors increasingly want to do brokerage business on the go. In response, all of the brokers in our survey offer mobile apps that you can use to do just about anything you could do on your desktop, such as trading stocks, accessing research, paying bills and transferring funds.

But tech-savvy investors will be pleased to know that some brokers' platforms extend beyond websites and mobile apps.

Investors can interact with their Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, Schwab and TD Ameritrade accounts by chatting with Alexa, Amazon's digital assistant. Schwab users, for instance, can ask Alexa for market information, stock quotes and updates on personalized watch lists.

TD Ameritrade customers can ask questions or even execute a trade through direct messages on Twitter, on Facebook Messenger or through the iPhone Messages app as well. If TD's computer-generated responses don't satisfy you, you'll be automatically connected with a live representative. TD Ameritrade customers can access broker information in their car through Apple Car Play, Android Auto and Echo Auto.

Interactive Brokers and TradeStation customers might be able to earn a little extra cash by authorizing that firm to lend stocks you hold to traders interested in paying you interest to borrow your shares and sell them short.

Each brokerage will pay cash they earn from lending your shares directly into your account. You'll earn more money on long positions in thinly traded stocks than you will holding widely available names. Each firm will give you half of whatever income they earn on your stocks.

You'll need $25,000 or one year of trading experience to get into the program at TradeStation. At Interactive Brokers, you'll need approval for a margin account or $50,000 to enroll.

When Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes in 1973, securing his place in racing history as a Triple Crown champion, he beat the competition by a whopping 31 lengths, or about 248 feet. The results of this year’s online broker survey aren’t as clear-cut. In a photo finish, TD Ameritrade beat Charles Schwab by less than a nose, with Fidelity and then E*Trade fast on their heels.

As the world of online brokers continues to evolve, it has become increasingly difficult for firms to stand apart from one another. Their fees and commissions are generally low, their online tools are plentiful, they provide generous access to low-cost investments, and the firms’ websites and mobile apps are crammed with research reports, charts and videos. Overall, the contest for best online broker is a neck-and-neck horse race.

But zoom in, and you’ll find that each firm has something different to offer—a niche that lets it shine in one way or another. This year, we surveyed eight firms: Ally Invest, Charles Schwab, E*Trade, Fidelity, Firstrade, Merrill Edge, TD Ameritrade and WellsTrade. With commissions about $7 or less at most firms this year, that category carries less weight. Because the firms we surveyed told us that investors increasingly interact with them on smartphones or tablets, we assigned more importance to mobile apps. The biggest, best-known firms, you’ll notice, score better overall in our survey. But almost all of the firms let you trade stocks, exchange-traded funds, mutual funds and individual bonds online, as well as offer some online advisory services.

There are a couple of exceptions: Firstrade’s online robo adviser may launch later this year. And although WellsTrade offers individual bond investing, which we factored into its ranking, trades must be made over the phone. Finally, we approached T. Rowe Price and Vanguard, but both firms declined to participate in our survey this year. Read on to find out which brokers did best­—and why—in each category.

Commissions & fees

Plenty of brokerages offer reasonable fees and commissions, thanks to the decades-long brokerage price wars. The latest salvo from Fidelity eliminated all account fees, including fees to wire money domestically, among others. The final scores in this category, which are based mostly on fees to trade stocks, mutual funds, bonds and options, fall within a narrow range. Five firms earn three stars out of five, but E*Trade, Firstrade and Merrill Edge top the others by super-slim margins. In the end, the best low-cost firm for you may depend on what you invest in, how actively you trade, and in some cases, how much money you have in your account.

Consider stock and ETF commissions, for example. Firstrade leads the way among firms that charge a fixed rate, at $2.95 per trade, followed by Fidelity and Schwab ($4.95) and TD Ameritrade ($6.95). The rest of the firms employ variable pricing that depends on how often you trade or on the size of your average monthly balance. E*Trade’s standard $6.95 commission drops to $4.95 for clients who make 30 or more trades per quarter. Ally Invest shaves a dollar off its fee, to $3.95, for investors with a daily balance of $100,000 or more or who trade at least 30 times per quarter.

At WellsTrade, which is affiliated with Wells Fargo, and Merrill Edge, which is the brokerage arm of Bank of America, you can get a break on stock and ETF commissions if you have money in a checking or savings account at the associated bank. For instance, WellsTrade customers who link their brokerage account with a Portfolio by Wells Fargo checking account can get their stock commissions knocked down to $2.95 from the typical $5.95 charge. At Merrill Edge, the deal is even better: The firm’s standard $6.95 commission falls to $0 for up to 30 stock and ETF trades per month for investors who have $50,000 in combined assets at Merrill and parent company Bank of America and who join the bank’s Preferred Rewards program. Nearly half of all Merrill Edge customers have snagged that bonus, and as a result, “about 80% of trades on our platform are commission-free,” says Merrill Edge’s David Poole.

Fees to trade bonds have become more transparent in recent years. Most of the firms in our survey charge $1 per security to buy and sell corporate and municipal bonds. So if you, say, buy 10 General Electric bonds, you’ll pay a $10 commission at those firms, with a maximum fee of $250. The exceptions are WellsTrade, which charges a flat $50 for bond trades, and Firstrade, which trades bonds on a “net yield” basis. That means the price of the bond includes a mark-up that represents the dealer’s profit. This pricing model is generally more expensive and is certainly less transparent.

Investment choices

Every broker in our survey gives investors access to thousands of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and ETFs. To top the list in this category, firms had to offer not only a wide variety of investments but also deep rosters of ETFs that trade commission-free and no-load or load-waived mutual funds that trade with no transaction fees.

When it comes to the breadth of investment options, Firstrade reigns supreme. That doesn’t mean it offers more of everything compared with other firms in the survey, however. Firstrade’s lineup of no-transaction-fee mutual funds falls several hundred funds short of Schwab, TD Ameritrade and Fidelity, all of which surpass 4,000. But Firstrade wins on the ETF front. It offers 703 ETFs commission-free. The number of ETFs offered with no sales charge at Fidelity, E*Trade, Schwab and TD Ameritrade ranges from 265 to 313. (It’s worth noting that Vanguard now charges nothing to buy and sell 1,800 ETFs on its platform.) Firstrade also offers access to more corporate and municipal bonds than any broker in our survey, with E*Trade close behind.

Fidelity is the best choice for investors who want access to initial public offerings. Over the past two calendar years, Fidelity has made 397 IPOs available to customers, compared with 64 for E*Trade and 48 for TD Ameritrade. In each case, gaining access to shares comes with eligibility requirements. TD Ameritrade customers, for instance, must have $250,000 in assets in their account, place 30 trades per quarter, or be a customer of the firm’s private client services.

Mobile apps

Investors increasingly want to manage their brokerage business on the go. In response, brokers have rolled out mobile apps for smartphones and tablets that allow clients to make trades, read analyst reports on stocks, pay bills, transfer money to outside accounts, and even check on how they are doing with regard to their retirement savings with the touch of a button (or in some cases, after a facial recognition scan).

Fidelity’s mobile app wins the highest marks for checking all the essential boxes. You can buy or sell stocks, ETFs, mutual funds and bonds on Fidelity’s app. No other firm in our survey can say the same. But Fidelity also excels in this category because its app offers virtually all of the other conveniences that brokerage clients now expect, such as mobile bill pay and check deposit, as well as the ability to set up watch lists and view educational videos.

Schwab, TD Ameritrade and E*Trade score well in this category, too. Active traders may appreciate the stock charts available on the mobile apps of E*Trade and TD Ameritrade. The charts can be customized with dozens of indicators used in technical analysis—for example, those based on price momentum. The apps of both E*Trade and TD also allow investors to scan product barcodes and instantly receive stock information on their smartphone about the product’s manufacturer (assuming the company has a publicly traded stock). But TD Ameritrade, unlike Schwab and E*Trade, doesn’t allow mobile users to pay bills from brokerage accounts.

Finally, Merrill Edge’s app is worth a mention. Its intuitive interface, particularly when it comes to stock research, makes it one of the most engaging apps on our list. The app lost a few points, however, because it doesn’t offer bond trading or let you transfer money electronically between other banks. (Transfers between Bank of America and Merrill Edge, however, are instantaneous.)

On the whole, most of the apps we checked out allow investors to easily trade, deposit money and transfer funds. Ally Invest and Firstrade, the laggards in the mobile app category, fell behind because their apps don’t offer mutual fund or bond trading, mobile check deposits, or bill pay. Firstrade’s mobile users can’t make electronic fund transfers in the app, either.

User experience

To evaluate our only truly subjective category, three Kiplinger investing staffers test-drove the brokers’ websites and mobile apps in search of the most in­tuitive and user-friendly platforms for all types of investors. Wells­Trade was unable to provide us with a test account. But among the others, two firms stand out: Merrill Edge and TD Ameritrade.

Merrill’s platform transforms the sometimes-daunting work of analyzing your portfolio and researching stocks into an engaging experience. In “Portfolio Story” mode, the site poses eight questions that investors should ask about their portfolio, from “How is my portfolio performing?” to “What could I potentially earn?” It even examines how your investments rank on certain environmental, social and corporate governance measures. “We wanted Portfolio Story to feel like sitting down with an expert, with users learning what questions they should ask about their portfolio,” says Merrill Edge’s Steve Lucas.

As you work through each step, you’re presented with colorful graphics and digestible data that you can act on. If the tool tells you that a particular stock makes up an outsize portion of your portfolio, for instance, you can sell some shares with just a few clicks. Merrill’s platform uses the same approach for stock research with “Stock Story,” a similarly engaging tool that investors can use to work through four essential questions of stock analysis.

TD Ameritrade scores points for meeting clients where they spend their time—texting on their smartphones or browsing Twitter or Facebook on a computer, tablet or smartphone. Anyone can contact TD through direct messages on Twitter, on Facebook Messenger, through the iPhone Messages app or by talking to their Amazon Alexa–equipped device. “We want the brokerage experience to be part of the existing tapestry of your life,” says TD’s Sunayna Tuteja. For example, you might use Facebook’s messaging feature to ask a broad investing question, get a stock quote, or even buy or sell shares—all without leaving the Facebook app. TD uses artificial intelligence to generate automated responses to your query; if that doesn’t satisfy you, TD will automatically connect you with a live representative.

Most of the firms score well for their easy-to-navigate platforms. Both E*Trade and Fidelity lose points for their sprawling and sometimes lumbering websites. We found inconsistencies, for example, in the way the trade window pops up on different pages on Fidelity’s site and the way graphics show up (or don’t) on E*Trade’s site.

Ally Invest’s platform is almost too basic, with what seems like acres of white space that makes the site feel sparse. And although Firstrade’s website is zippy when it comes to loading pages, its retirement-and-planning section isn’t as robust as others. And the site offers limited research on stocks, funds and bonds.

Tools

Are you on track to retire when you want? Are you getting the steady payments you need from your income portfolio? Ideally, brokerages should make it easy to find promising investments, but they should also provide you with the tools to help with life’s other financial issues.

TD Ameritrade distinguishes itself with its commitment to investor education. The website’s education center is a treasure trove of short explanatory videos on everything from the basics of money market accounts to the ins and outs of cryptocurrency. Longer and more detailed online courses are also available, with titles such as “Trading Options” and “Fundamental Analysis.” The firm held nearly 6,000 webinars on online-trading education in 2017 alone. TD is one of two brokers, along with Fidelity, to offer some form of virtual trading. Fidelity allows users to see how a hypothetical trade might affect their portfolio’s asset allocation, among other things. TD’s version is available on its downloadable trading software and lets investors practice trading with virtual money on the platform before diving in with the real thing.

Other standouts at TD include a tool that breaks down the fees you pay in your 401(k) account and another that charts your portfolio’s expected dividends for the next 12 months. Merrill Edge and E*Trade offer tools that track future dividend payouts, too.

Kudos go to Merrill Edge and Schwab in this category for an abundance of offerings. Calculators abound in Merrill’s toolbox. Retirement planners, for example, can get help figuring out annuity payouts, 401(k) contributions, Roth IRA conversions and estimated required minimum distributions in retirement. Schwab stands out for its robust collection of investing screens for stocks, options, ETFs and mutual funds. Users can search for investments based on their own criteria, select from the firm’s list of predefined strategies, or pick stocks from rosters from CFRA and S&P Capital IQ, including CFRA’s recommended “Five-Star” stocks and those screened for exceptional earnings growth.

Research

These days, investors don’t have to look very hard to find basic information about stocks and mutual funds online. Brokers that score well in this category go the extra mile to keep their clients informed, offering investment information that goes beyond summaries and snapshots.

With the exception of Firstrade, every broker on our list provides some form of bond market commentary or analysis. But research on individual stocks, mutual funds and ETFs varies from broker to broker. Fidelity earns high marks for the range of research available on its site. The firm boasts more independent sources of investment research than any other broker in our survey, and indeed, its stock pages are packed with reports from the likes of Thomson Reuters and Zacks Investment Research. But much of Fidelity’s research is quantitatively focused and lacks in-depth analysis of individual stocks, mutual funds or ETFs. Fidelity lost points for that, but the sheer number of sources it offers, combined with the mix of broad stock and bond market commentary, lifted it to the top in this category.

TD Ameritrade and Merrill Edge end up in a virtual tie with Fidelity for research, with Schwab posting strong results, too. Each provides individual stock reports from investment research firm CFRA. TD Ameritrade and Merrill also offer breakdowns of individual funds and ETFs by Morningstar analysts. All three include input from analysts at major financial institutions. Merrill Edge provides reports from Bank of America Merrill Lynch; TD Ameritrade and Schwab (as well as E*Trade and WellsTrade) feature individual stock reports from analysts at investment bank Credit Suisse. Fidelity, Firstrade and Ally Invest lack research from a big bank.

Advisory services

All of the brokers in our survey except Firstrade offer clients some level of financial guidance, from computer-generated robo advice to access to ded­icated financial planners. Depending on the size of your account, you can get help with calibrating your investment mix, creating a retirement plan or even doing some estate planning.

Schwab’s advisory service stands out for the breadth, quality and price of its offerings. Schwab’s robo adviser, Intelligent Portfolios, does not charge an asset-management fee, which sets it apart from others. You need $5,000 to open an account at Intelligent Portfolios, which is on the high end of minimums (but not the highest). Clients can start investing with just $10 at Fidelity’s “Fidelity Go” digital adviser, for instance. But once funded, Schwab’s Intelligent Portfolios use low-cost ETFs to tailor dozens of portfolios. One caveat: Schwab’s most aggressive Intelligent Portfolio holds 7% in cash. Such a large cash position could hamper returns. But according to The Robo Report, which tracks the performance of digital advisory portfolios, Schwab’s portfolios don’t disappoint. Over the past two years, a moderate-risk portfolio at Schwab that held 62% of assets in stocks, 23% in bonds, 10% in cash and 5% in other assets returned 13.6% annualized through June 30. That beat the nearly 10% return of a hypothetical portfolio of broad-market indexes held in similar proportions over the same period.

TD Ameritrade and Fidelity also post high scores thanks to their digital advisory services. Each keeps investor expenses to a minimum: TD charges 0.30% of assets, and Fidelity charges 0.35%. At Fidelity, that includes the expenses of the portfolios’ underlying investments. Among firms dinged in our survey for high-cost robos: Merrill Edge, which charges a management fee of 0.45% of assets, and WellsTrade, which levies a 0.50% fee (although that is lowered to 0.40% for clients who link a Portfolio by Wells Fargo checking account). But the biggest knock on WellsTrade’s digital offering, Intuitive Investor, is its $10,000 minimum to open an account.

Schwab and TD Ameritrade both offer a hybrid service that combines algorithm-based advice with help from a human adviser for clients with more than $25,000 in assets. Fees on such an account will run you 0.28% of assets at Schwab, and they range from 1.25% to 0.75% at TD Ameritrade. Investors looking for professionally managed accounts will find the most-robust services at Schwab, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade and WellsTrade. Each offers access to specialists in trading, options and estate planning.

Finally, a word about Ally Invest. Its digital advisory service, Advisors Managed Portfolios, charges a 0.30% management fee and requires just $2,500 to get started. But the firm suffers in this category ranking because it doesn’t offer as hearty an array of planning advice (estate planning specialists, for example) as other firms.

Find the right broker for you

All types of investors can find standouts in a niche they care about.

Best for exchange-traded fund investors. Firstrade slays the competition in our survey with its roster of 703 commission-free exchange-traded funds. It includes 15 of the Kiplinger ETF 20, our favorite ETFs, including iShares Core S&P 500 (symbol IVV), Vanguard Dividend Appreciation (VIG) and Pimco Active Bond (BOND). Vanguard, which opted not to participate in our survey, charges nothing to buy or sell 1,800 ETFs on its platform.

Best for mutual fund investors. Fidelity, Schwab and TD Ameritrade all offer customers access to more than 4,000 no-fee mutual funds on their no-transaction-fee networks. That means you pay no sales load and no fee to trade. Schwab, as it has in past years, topped the list, with 4,121 no-fee funds. It’s worth noting that Fidelity has debuted the first index funds with a 0% expense ratio.

Best for bond investors. Firstrade wins by a nose, followed by E*Trade. These firms offer their clients access to tens of thousands of corporate and municipal bonds, leading their peers in both categories.

Best robo adviser services. Schwab’s Intelligent Portfolios wins. The service is free, and it offers more portfolios than any other firm. There are 43 in all, tailored to your goals, tolerance for risk and stage in life. Intelligent Portfolios has a couple of downsides: It requires $5,000 or more to start, and its most aggressive portfolio currently holds a hefty 7% cash position, a potential drag on returns. But according to The Robo Report, which tracks the performance of digital advisory portfolios, Schwab has achieved good results over time.

Best for active traders with high balances. Customers with deep pockets can pay $0 in commissions at Merrill Edge. If you have an active Bank of America checking account and a three-month average balance of $50,000 at Bank of America, Merrill Edge or Merrill Lynch investment accounts (singly or in combination), you can join a rewards program and qualify for no commissions on up to 30 stock and ETF trades per month. Investors with a $100,000 average balance can get 100 free trades every month.

Best for students of investing. E*Trade and TD Ameritrade have made it a priority to teach and inform customers about investing, each in its own way. “Our goal is to make investing easier for people,” says E*Trade’s Rich Messina. E*Trade caters to beginner investors with “All Star” lists of recommended ETFs, stocks and mutual funds, plus ready-to-go ETF portfolios. TD Ameritrade’s website is chock full of short videos and longer online courses for investors of all experience levels. The firm also does a good job of defining and explaining key investing terms on its site, from “earnings per share” to “annual dividend yield.”

Update: Since our story went to press, Firstrade announced it would offer free online trading for stocks, ETFs, options and mutual funds (down from $2.95 per trade). Also, Ally Invest announced it would offer more than 100 exchange-traded funds commission-free (in other words, there is no sales charge to buy or sell shares) to customers on its online trading platform. (Previously, all ETFs purchased on the Ally Invest platform incurred a $4.95 commission; $3.95 for active traders or customers with high balance.)

With additional reporting by Kyle Woodley

The end of summer, when job and school routines kick back in, is a great time to kick your financial life into gear, too.

We’ve made it easy with our roster of quick financial tips designed to save you money, get you on track to reach a goal or simplify your life. The suggestions run the gamut from automating investments to setting up a budget to thwarting identity thieves. Each tip will take only 15 or 30 or — max — 60 minutes.

After years of bull-market gains, you might have more of your assets in stocks than you should. Find out by visiting Personal Capital (www.personalcapital.com), an online advisory firm that will manage your portfolio for a fee but also provides free tools for do-it-yourselfers. Link your investment, bank and credit accounts and the site will give you a broad view of your finances. Under the Planning tab, click on “Investment Checkup.” After you answer some simple questions about your investing goals, the site will suggest a target allocation, which you can compare with what you currently have.

Once you’ve linked your accounts on Personal Capital, go back to the Investment Checkup tool and click “Costs.” You’ll see what you pay in fund fees as a percentage of assets, broken down by investment account (at any firm) or for your entire portfolio. For comparison, the average expense ratio for a typical diversified U.S. stock ETF is 0.38%, and it’s 1.10% for the typical actively managed diversified U.S. stock fund.

Dividend-paying companies often disburse payments every three months—which can lead to dry spells for income investors when different stocks pay out on the same schedule. Some brokerages, including E-Trade, Merrill Edge and Schwab, have a tool that maps out your next 12 months of dividends. Otherwise, go to www.nasdaq.com and enter your stock holdings. If you want to add stocks that pay out in months that look sparse, see 7 Top Monthly Dividend Stocks and Funds to Buy. You can check payout dates for most U.S. stocks at www.nasdaq.com/dividend-stocks/dividend-calendar.aspx.

Investing app Acorns helps you reach your financial goals using the money you would otherwise toss in your coin jar. Link a credit or debit account, and every time you make a purchase on that card, Acorns will round your purchase up to the next dollar and invest the difference in a portfolio of ETFs consistent with your investing style and needs. You can also make automatic contributions from linked bank accounts. A typical user invests $50 to $60 per month, including rounded-up and automatic investments, says CEO Noah Kerner. Acorns charges $1 per month but waives the fee for students who set up an account with an “edu” e-mail address.

Keep up with the day’s stock market moves at Finviz. You’ll see a heat map of stocks in Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, arranged by sector. Green stocks are up, red are down, with the ticker symbol and percentage change displayed. You can also choose to view world stock markets or exchange-traded funds. Click on “News” to see the latest business news and selected blogs, too.

With the bull market in its 10th year, the market is rife with attractive stocks—if only their shares were a bit cheaper. But investors looking to “buy the dip” needn’t eye the market constantly. Most major brokerages will allow you to create watch lists and set alerts for your favorite stocks. Fidelity investors, for instance, can receive alerts via e-mail or text when a stock on their watch list moves up or down by a certain percentage or advances above or falls below a certain price. If you’re looking to lighten up rather than buy, take some profits when a stock hits your target price.

Even if you can spare only a small amount of cash each month, having regular, automatic transfers from your checking account to your investment account will put you on the path to achieving your goals. Plus, you’ll hardly miss the money if you pay yourself first—that is, shave it from the top of your paycheck. Log in to your brokerage firm’s website and look for instructions on setting up transfers; you’ll need to enter your bank’s routing number, your checking account number, and the amount and frequency of each transfer. (You can also go to your checking account to set up the transfer—but watch out for fees the bank may charge for external transfers.)

You should hold on to your tax returns indefinitely, but you can shred W-2 and 1099 forms plus canceled checks and receipts for charitable contributions after three years. If you’re self-employed, you can shred receipts for business income and expenses after six years. Keep home purchase documents for three years after you’ve sold your home. To convert paper documents to electronic files, use a scanner; the IRS accepts digital copies. And while you’re getting organized, track down documents you may need later, such as Form 5498 from your financial institution, which shows nondeductible contributions to your IRA. Otherwise, you could end up paying taxes on those contributions when you take withdrawals.

Thanks to the new tax law, the amount of money your employer withholds from your paycheck may no longer line up with how much you owe the IRS. You could be paying more than you should now, or you could be paying too little and end up with an unexpected tax bill next spring. Gather your most recent pay stub and your 2017 tax return and run your numbers through the withholding calculator at www.irs.gov. If you need to make adjustments to your withholding, file a new W-4 form with your employer.

Couples can budget as a team using You Need a Budget ($84 per year). Start by syncing your bank and credit accounts (or entering the balances manually) and deciding how to allocate your dollars over the course of the month using YNAB’s categories or your own. YNAB aims to distribute all of your income between monthly expenses and longer-term goals (including savings), so you can handle large, unexpected expenses more easily. Or link all your financial accounts to Mint (free) to track both your budget and upcoming bills. Your bank or credit union may also offer free budgeting tools.

To ensure that you have enough in the bank to cover your monthly bills—and to avoid cluttering your calendar with multiple due dates—call each biller and ask whether you can change the due date to best align with your cash flow.

Whether you want assistance with a specific task or a full-fledged strategy for your money, a financial planner can help you get on track. At www.napfa.org, you can search for fee-only advisers in your area and filter by specialty, such as high-net-worth clients or tax planning. If you want a one-time checkup, look for fee-only certified financial planners at www.garrettplanningnetwork.com, whose members charge by the hour. Choose three or four planners and make appointments with each so you find the best fit.

Loading your payment cards onto a digital wallet will lighten your leather one—or provide a handy backup if you accidentally leave your plastic cards at home. Tap and pay at the store with apps such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. With Apple Pay or Google Pay, the payment terminal must have near field communication (NFC) technology, but Samsung Pay works with most magnetic-stripe readers as well as NFC terminals. You can also use Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Apple’s Wallet apps to store and use loyalty cards, or try a separate app such as Stocard or Key Ring.

At MissingMoney.com, see whether assets such as old bank accounts, stocks and bonds, utility deposits, or insurance policies have been turned over to the state. (If your state does not participate with MissingMoney.com, go to www.unclaimed.org for a link to your state’s web page for unclaimed property.) Search in states where you’ve previously resided and under former surnames, too, as well as for the names and states of your family members.

Recheck the beneficiaries on your retirement, savings and investing accounts, life insurance policies, and health savings accounts to make sure your assets go where you want them to. With most accounts, you can accomplish this online: Log in to your account provider’s website and poke around to find the beneficiaries tab (most likely in the account settings or profile section). For your brokerage account, you may need to search for a “transfer on death” form to print and sign. If your spouse isn’t your retirement account beneficiary, he or she may need to sign a consent waiver. If you’re updating beneficiaries for a pension or group life insurance policy, ask the human resources department if this info can be updated online.

A living will lets your medical providers—and your loved ones—know your wishes at the end of your life, and a health care proxy designates the family member or friend who can make decisions in a medical emergency if you aren’t able to. These two documents go hand in hand. The American Bar Association has resources to help with a health care proxy, and so does www.caringinfo.org, which has state-specific forms. Sign the health care proxy and living will and give the documents to your health care providers.

Ask all of the banks you do business with whether they will redeem your savings bonds; many banks require you to be a customer for at least six months. Or you can mail them to the Treasury Retail Securities Site, P.O. Box 214, Minneapolis, MN 55480 (see the factsheet at TreasuryDirect.gov for information about the procedures). To make the process easier in the future, convert your savings bonds to electronic bonds. That way you can redeem them online when you’re ready.

Head off haggling over who owes what after dinners out with friends. With Splitwise (free online or as an app for Apple and Android phones), you can split expenses, track IOUs and balances, and settle up anytime using PayPal or Venmo (you can also record cash payments). Create a group, enter a bill and select the people involved; Splitwise will do the math. It keeps a running total, so you can pay what you owe in one big payment instead of several small ones.

If your bank covers a checking-account overdraft, you could pay a fee of $35 or more. Instead, set up an automatic transfer from a linked savings account to your checking account in case you overdraw. If you must pay a transfer fee, it’ll likely be $5 to $15. And rather than pay up to $3 to transfer money from your account to an account outside the bank, sign up for a free peer-to-peer payment app. With Zelle, for example, you can send money from your bank account to recipients at other banks in minutes. (At least one member of the transaction must have an account with a bank or credit union that is a Zelle participant.)

If you have a high-deductible health insurance policy, you can likely tap the triple tax benefits of a health savings account: Your contributions are tax-deductible (or pretax if made through your employer), the money grows tax-deferred, and it can be used tax-free for out-of-pocket medical expenses—now or in the future. If your policy has a deductible of at least $1,350 for self-only coverage or $2,700 for family coverage, you can contribute up to $3,450 a year to an HSA for individual coverage or $6,900 for family coverage in 2018, plus an extra $1,000 if you’re 55 or older. You can’t contribute after you’re on Medicare, but you can use the HSA money tax-free to pay Medicare Part B, Part D and Medicare Advantage premiums after age 65, in addition to other medical expenses. If your employer doesn’t offer a plan, check HSASearch.com for a list of HSA administrators. Look for a plan that has low fees and lets you invest HSA money in mutual funds for the long run, which will give you the biggest tax benefits.

Your credit card issuer may provide a free credit score (see 10 Little-Known Perks). Or you can use a free online tool such as CreditKarma.com or FreeCreditScore.com. To help nudge that number upward, reduce your credit utilization ratio—the amount you owe on your credit cards compared with the total limit. Ask your credit card issuer to raise your limit (either by phone or by filling out a request form on the issuer’s website). You may need to supply your income and other details, such as your occupation or your monthly housing payment. Most decisions are instantaneous.

Retrieve your credit reports from the three major credit agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) free once per year at www.annualcreditreport.com. Review each report for errors or signs of identity theft, such as a loan you never opened. Then sign up for services that regularly scan your credit reports for changes that may indicate identity theft and that send you alerts of those changes through a mobile app or e-mail. Among free services, Credit Karma monitors your Equifax and Trans­Union reports, and Experian’s tool at www.freecreditscore.com keeps tabs on your Experian report. For paid services that offer more-robust monitoring, see These Services Alert You to Identity Theft. Are They Worth It?

Rather than accept a late-payment penalty or fee, call your credit card issuer and ask for forgiveness. A 2018 poll from CreditCards.com found that 84% of those surveyed who asked for a break had a late fee waived, 70% had an annual fee waived or lowered, and 56% received a lower interest rate when they asked their issuer. Point out your consistent payment history, frequent use of the card or anything else that may help your case.

You could be missing out on lucrative rewards and initial bonuses. A couple of our favorites: Citi Double Cash offers 2% cash back on all purchases (1% when you buy and 1% when you pay the bill), and Chase Sapphire Preferred ($95 annual fee, waived the first year) pays back two points per dollar spent on travel and dining and one point on everything else, with flexible options to redeem points for travel and other Purchases. (For more top picks, go to The Best Rewards Credit Cards, 2018.)

Log in to your online credit card account to turn on payment reminders via text or e-mail so you don’t miss your due date. While you’re at it, look for other alerts that may be useful to track your activity and curb overspending, such as notifications when your balance exceeds a certain amount or a purchase goes through.

Run a checkup on your home wireless network to keep hackers at bay; consult the router’s manual or go to the manufacturer’s website to get instructions. Turn on network encryption and the firewall, and change the router’s default network name and password. If you use a smart device—say, an Amazon Echo or Google Home speaker or a Wi-Fi-connected home-security system—create a second network for it that’s separate from the one you use for your PCs and laptops. If snoops crack into the device on the second network, they’ll have a harder time seeing activity on your computers.

Review the settings and security pages for each of your social media accounts to limit how widely you share your information with friends, the public and advertisers. On Facebook, you can use options on the settings menu to share information only with specific people, exclude your profile from search engine results outside of Facebook, opt out of facial recognition and put the kibosh on ads served up based on your online activity. For more on how to protect your Facebook data, see Take Steps to Protect Your Facebook Data.

On the AwardWallet app or at www.awardwallet.com, enter your log-in information for each account, including credit cards, retail stores, hotels, airlines and other travel carriers. (With Delta Air Lines, United Airlines or Southwest Airlines, you can only have e-mail statements from the programs automatically forwarded to AwardWallet.) You can view your points or miles balance for each program at a glance on the Accounts screen. AwardWallet alerts you when rewards are about to expire or when balances change.

A credit freeze, which blocks new lenders from viewing your credit reports, is the most effective way to prevent thieves from opening new credit accounts in your name. And by September 21, the credit agencies must allow you to place and lift a freeze free. You have to contact each agency to set up a freeze; for step-by-step instructions, see Freeze Your Credit in 3 Steps.

Now that its merger with Time Warner is complete, AT&T is offering unlimited wireless plans that include free access to more than 30 channels of live TV, including CNN, TBS and AMC, as well as 15,000 shows and movies on demand. Customers with other wireless plans can pay for the service, called WatchTV, for $15 a month, which makes it the cheapest streaming service available.

If web pages load at a crawl and videos keep buffering, measure your internet connection’s download and upload speeds at www.speedtest.net. If you aren’t getting the speed you pay for, contact your service provider to troubleshoot the connection. While you’re on the line, ask whether you qualify for any promotional deals.

End the frustrating cycle of resetting forgotten passwords—and foil ID thieves—by setting up a password manager, such as LastPass. The service will help you create strong, unique passwords for each account, then store them behind a single, ultra-secure master password. When you’re browsing the web, LastPass will automatically fill in your credentials. The service’s free version works across multiple devices, but the premium offering ($24 a year) adds multifactor authentication and 1 gigabyte of encrypted storage.

Sign into accounts that you no longer use (check old e-mail messages to jog your memory), then visit AccountKiller.com and Backgroundchecks.org for instructions on how to remove accounts from popular sites, including AOL, Facebook, HotMail and MySpace.

To protect your photos and videos from hackers, a virus, a technical glitch or other mishap, redundancy is key. Keep photos on your phone or PC if you’d like, but store backup copies on an external hard drive or “gold” quality CDs—as well as in the cloud with a service such as Google Drive or iCloud Drive. If you use your smartphone to snap pictures that you don’t want to lose, check your phone’s settings to make sure you’ve scheduled automatic cloud backups that include your images.

Instead of spending $10 to $15 a month to rent an all-in-one modem and router from your internet service provider, buy your own setup. You’ll generally spend $100 to $200 and recoup the cost in one to two years. Look for a combination modem and router that’s on your provider’s list of approved devices (usually on its website). After setting up your new device, contact your internet provider and ask how to return the modem and router you rented.

Start by checking the property record card at your assessor’s office, which may be available online. If you find an obvious error, such as the wrong number of bathrooms, your assessor may agree to reduce your assessment—and your tax bill—immediately. If there isn’t an obvious error but you still believe your assessed value is too high, you can appeal. The process typically takes a couple of months, and you’ll need evidence to back up your case, such as data on comparable properties. But a lower assessment is worth the effort, especially if you live in an area with high property taxes.

Try an online home energy audit, such as the Home Energy Saver, developed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Provide your zip code and answer questions about your home—its features, heating and cooling system, appliances, and lighting—and current energy costs. You’ll receive recommendations for making home energy upgrades that are ranked by payback time.

Use your smartphone to photograph every room in your home, as well as the contents of closets and drawers, then upload the photos for safekeeping with the free UPHelp Home Inventory App, developed by consumer advocate United Policyholders. You’ll have a visual record of your belongings to jog your memory if you have to itemize possessions for an insurance claim. You can also add detailed information, such as receipts, appraisals and serial numbers.

Plug your address into the Solar Calculator at www.energysage.com and it will use a satellite view of your roof and property to estimate your potential savings and break-even point for installing a solar power system. (The actual results will vary with your roof’s characteristics and the hardware and financing that you choose.) You can also get competing, apples-to-apples estimates from participating local solar installers.

Visit SavingforCollege.com and use the World’s Simplest College Cost Calculator to estimate the future cost of a private or public college or a specific school. Enter your child’s age, the type of college, your income and your current savings. The calculator estimates the grants and scholarships your future student will receive and shows the gap between the cost of attendance and your current savings. Revise your monthly savings goal to see how saving more will help close the gap.

If your state offers a tax deduction for 529 contributions, it generally makes sense to invest in your state’s plan. But if your state doesn’t offer a tax break—or you live in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Montana or Pennsylvania, which offer a tax break no matter where you invest—look for a plan with no or low annual maintenance fees and an array of investment choices with low expenses, such as New York’s 529 College Savings Program. Contributions will grow tax-free, and the earnings escape tax completely if you use the withdrawals for qualified education expenses.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is the ticket to financial aid for college, and filing season begins October 1 for the 2019–20 academic year. To apply, go to FAFSA.gov. You’ll need your 2017 tax return and other financial information.

To pick a federal student-loan repayment plan that fits your budget, visit Studentloans.gov and click on “Use the Repayment Estimator.” Enter the balance and interest rates of each of your federal loans and your income information to see what your monthly payments would be for each repayment plan. The longer the repayment period, the more you will pay in interest, so you’ll usually want to pick the plan with the highest payment you can afford.

Even if you’re years from retirement, registering yourself with Social Security will prevent identity thieves from creating a fraudulent account and applying for benefits in your name. In addition, you can make sure your earnings record, which is used to calculate your benefits, is accurate.

If you’ve put a credit freeze on your credit records, you’ll need to lift the freeze before you apply online, because Social Security uses your credit reports to confirm your identity. Or you can apply in person at a Social Security office.

You contribute after-tax money, which grows tax-free, and withdrawals in retirement are tax-free, too. A Roth is a great idea for young workers and kids with part-time or summer jobs because the longer investments in the account grow, the bigger the tax advantage. You can contribute up to the amount of your earnings from work, or a maximum of $5,500 for 2018 (or $6,500 if you’re 50 or older), as long as your modified adjusted gross income is less than $135,000 for singles or $199,000 for married joint filers. Fidelity and TD Ameritrade offer Roth accounts with no minimum investment or maintenance fees. (For a minor child, you’ll need to open a custodial Roth account.) Charles Schwab has a $100 minimum investment for a custodial IRA but no maintenance fees.

You can put in up to $18,500 in 2018 ($24,500 if you’re 50 or older), plus as much as 20% of your net self-employment income, up to a total of $55,000 (or $61,000 if you are 50 or older)—or the amount of freelance income for the year, whichever is less. Your contributions are tax-deductible, and they grow tax-deferred until you take withdrawals in retirement. Fidelity, Schwab and several other financial institutions offer low-cost solo 401(k)s.

Run your numbers at www.immediateannuities.com. The site can calculate the income you’d receive from a lump sum or what you’d have to invest to get the income you need.

You can get a breakdown of the fees you pay by using Ameritrade’s free 401(k) Fee Analyzer. You’ll need to type in your fund information or provide your 401(k) account login credentials to allow read-only access to your account.

It’s a good idea to reshop your coverage every few years, especially if you are adding teen drivers or have major life changes, such as retirement. Ask your insurer or agent for a list of discounts, and make sure you’re getting all the breaks you deserve. See if you can reduce your rate some more by bundling auto with home or renters insurance, signing up for a data-tracking program or taking a defensive-driving course. Raising your deductible to $500 or $1,000 will trim your premiums and deter you from filing small claims that could lead to a rate hike.

See whether the coverage in your policy has kept up with the cost of labor and materials so you’ll be able to rebuild your home and replace your possessions should disaster strike. The insurer should calculate the rebuilding cost based on the square footage of your home and the current, local per-square-foot cost to rebuild. Mention any home improvements that might boost the replacement cost. Ask about gaps in coverage you could fill—such as by adding an inexpensive sewage backup rider or getting special coverage for valuables.

However you invest, it’s a great time to shop for an online broker. Firms have been trimming commissions, expanding their online tools, offering more transaction-free mutual funds and enhancing their mobile apps. Eager to win your business, brokers are also offering signing bonuses, such as a $1,000 bounty from TD Ameritrade, and up to 500 free trades for two years at Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab.

To help you choose the best broker, we surveyed seven major firms: Ally Invest (which acquired TradeKing last year), E*Trade Financial, Fidelity, Merrill Edge, Schwab, TD Ameritrade and Vanguard. Why this lineup? To be included in our survey, brokers had to offer online trading of stocks, exchange-traded funds, mutual funds and individual bonds, as well as provide some retirement-planning tools and advisory services. We excluded brokers that primarily focus on active traders—those catering to day traders, for instance. T. Rowe Price declined to participate. Scottrade wasn’t included because TD Ameritrade recently purchased the firm (and is in the process of absorbing Scottrade’s clients).

And the winners are…

In a tight contest, Fidelity and Merrill Edge tie for first place, squeaking past Schwab. All three firms rank high in key categories, such as commissions and fees, tools, and customer service. But we found some important differences. For example, Merrill ranks best for research, but Fidelity and Schwab offer many more mutual funds that can be bought without transaction fees, along with a larger selection of corporate and municipal bonds. Fidelity and Schwab also rack up points for their wide range of advisory and financial-planning services.

Of course, the right broker for you may not be one of our top-ranked firms. If you like to trade stocks, particularly on a mobile device, E*Trade may be your best bet, thanks to excellent screening tools and charts, as well as comprehensive information about individual stocks, all available on its app. TD Ameritrade ranks high for its research offerings and ample lineup of no-transaction-fee (NTF) mutual funds and ETFs, many of which can be purchased without trading commissions. Ally may appeal to young investors who want a low-cost, no-frills broker joined to an online bank with competitive interest rates on certificates of deposit and savings accounts.

Vanguard falls behind the leaders in almost every category, losing points for its bare-bones website, its basic mobile app and its lack of stock research. But these drawbacks don’t make the fund giant a bad choice for investors who buy and hold for the long term. Vanguard brokerage customers don’t pay a penny in commissions to access the firm’s low-cost mutual funds and ETFs, many of which can save you money over the long run compared with funds that have higher ongoing fees.

For a deeper dive, check out the results in each category below. To find the best broker for you, see the box on the facing page, where we name the winners for several types of investors.

Commissions and fees

Fidelity launched a price war early this year when it cut its stock commissions to $4.95 per trade. The move prompted Schwab to match Fidelity’s rate, and it led other brokers, such as E*Trade and TD Ameritrade, to lower commissions, too. The upshot: You shouldn’t pay more than a few bucks to trade stocks or ETFs, and you can get lower prices and even free trades at some brokers. E*Trade, for instance, trims its commission from $6.95 to $4.95 for clients who make at least 30 trades a quarter.

Merrill’s base rate of $6.95 for stock trades looks pricey at first glance. But customers who have at least $50,000 in combined balances at the brokerage firm and Bank of America (Merrill’s parent) qualify for up to 30 free trades a month, and they also receive such perks as a cash-back bonus on credit cards and discounted rates on auto loans. Stash at least $100,000 with Merrill and BofA (combined) and you’ll earn up to 100 free trades per month and higher levels of “preferred rewards.” “Most of our clients aren’t paying for stock trades,” says David Poole, head of Merrill Edge Advisory & Client Services.

At Schwab, customers with a gripe can get a refund on all fees, if they ask. The firm recently expanded its “satisfaction guarantee” to cover all commissions, advisory fees and other charges. “If a client does any business with us and isn’t satisfied, we’ll refund the fees, no questions asked,” says Terri Kallsen, head of Schwab Investor Services.

Ally’s base rate of $4.95 lands it on the leader board for stock trades, and the firm trims that rate to $3.95 for clients who make at least 30 trades a quarter. Ally also charges a relatively low $9.95 to buy or sell mutual funds. Those fees are much less than what Schwab levies for trading funds outside its NTF network ($76 to buy but no charge to sell). Fidelity and TD Ameritrade both charge about $50 to buy mutual funds outside their NTF networks (no charge to sell at Fidelity), while E*Trade, Merrill and Vanguard levy $20 per transaction. But Ally doesn’t offer any NTF mutual funds or ETFs—a big drawback that could cost you quite a bit in fees if you buy and sell a lot of funds. “No-fee funds are something we’re starting to look at,” says Rich Hagen, president of Ally Invest.

Unlike the other brokers, Vanguard’s commission structure doesn’t encourage trading. The firm charges $7 for the first 25 stock trades per calendar year and a steep $20 after that. Transaction-fee funds also cost $20 per trade. But customers can load up on all Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs without having to pay sales charges—a good deal if you invest mainly in low-cost index funds. One small nuisance: Customers must hold at least $10,000 in Vanguard mutual funds or ETFs or sign up for electronic statements to avoid a $20 annual account “service” fee.

Investment choices

Aside from Ally, every broker surveyed here offers thousands of funds without a transaction fee. Schwab tops the list with 3,976 no-transaction-fee funds, all with minimum investments below $50,000 (our cutoff to be included in this category). Schwab also offers 231 commission-free ETFs, the most of any broker in our survey. The lineup includes many low-fee index funds sponsored by Schwab, along with ETFs from such firms as Guggenheim, PowerShares, State Street and Wisdom­Tree. Schwab’s vast number of no-fee mutual funds and ETFs vaulted it to first place in this category.

E*Trade also scores high for its substantial roster of no-fee funds (3,887), as does TD Ameritrade (3,749). Both firms also offer more than 100 commission-free ETFs. But TD’s lineup includes more low-cost funds from sponsors such as iShares and Vanguard; E*Trade emphasizes higher-fee ETFs in niche investment areas, such as Global X S&P 500 Catholic Values (CATH)and WisdomTree Managed Futures Strategy (WDTI).

Fidelity ranks competitively, too, with 3,532 NTF mutual funds and 85 commission-free ETFs, including dozens of iShares ETFs with low-to-minuscule expense ratios. Investors at Merrill have fewer choices in NTF funds (2,251). Vanguard also looks weak in this arena, with just 2,531 NTF mutual funds, although that includes all of the firm’s proprietary funds (whose expense ratios undercut those of most of its rivals). The firm also offers its 70 Vanguard ETFs without commissions.

Beyond funds and ETFs, each broker sells individual bonds, including Treasuries, municipal and corporate issues, and high-yield “junk” bonds. TD’s lineup of more than 28,000 corporate IOUs exceeds the others’ offerings. But if you want bonds issued by giants such as AT&T or General Electric, you can find them anywhere.

One note: Bonds don’t trade on an open market, and prices tend to be opaque. Most brokerage firms charge commissions of $1 per bond with a $1,000 face value, passing on the same prices that they get when they acquire the bonds from other dealers (which include the dealer’s markup). Merrill and TD, however, sell bonds on a “net yield” basis, with the broker’s profit built into the prices. Some studies have found that customers tend to pay more for these net-yield bonds than they would with a flat-rate commission.

Research

With commissions at rock bottom these days, a big distinguishing feature among brokers is the breadth and quality of research they furnish. Every firm provides snapshot reports on stocks, including basic data such as revenues and earnings. Most brokers also offer reports on bonds from ratings agencies, such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. But a few firms go further, supplying in-depth market analysis and research on companies, along with all sorts of investing ideas.

Scoring best in this category, largely for its stock research, is Merrill Edge. Customers can see detailed research on more than 1,300 companies covered by Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts, including missives on giants such as Microsoft and Wal-Mart Stores, as well as a slew of smaller companies, real estate investment trusts and master limited partnerships. Merrill also includes more than a dozen lists of recommended stocks, including “Warren Buffett Stocks” and “Earnings Turnarounds.” And the firm produces pieces on big themes, such as a recent report titled “Uberfication: Global Sharing Economy Primer Picks.”

Schwab, E*Trade and TD Ameritrade earn high scores, too, supplying stock research from well-established firms such as Credit Suisse and CFRA. Schwab throws in 1,600 Morningstar stock reports, along with its own ratings, which gives its score in this category a slight bump.

For avid stock traders, though, E*Trade may be best. The firm jams its site with analyst recommendations, charts, data and investing ideas, including dozens of stock screens. Customers at TD Ameritrade and Schwab can find plenty of investing ideas, too, such as Credit Suisse’s U.S. stock “focus list,” available on both sites. If you want in-depth mutual fund research, though, you won’t find it on any broker’s site.

The other three outfits—Ally, Fidelity and Vanguard—don’t score well in this area. At Ally, CFRA provides the only in-depth stock research. Fidelity lists more than a dozen research reports for big companies, such as Apple. But most of them are just technical analysis—evaluating stocks based on trading patterns or other data—and lack detail about corporate business developments and industry trends.

Tools

Online calculators and tools can help you track your portfolio’s performance, screen for funds, plan for retirement and generally keep tabs on your financial life. Some sites get an edge in this category by supplying handier and more comprehensive tools than others.

Merrill earns the highest score, with Fidelity coming in a close second. Along with top-notch screeners for funds and stocks, Merrill provides Morningstar’s powerful Portfolio X-Ray, a tool that can dig into your fund holdings and individual stocks and, among other things, analyze areas of overlap and market factors influencing your returns. Most of these tools are easy to find, too, by using the drop-down menus on Merrill’s home page.

Finding tools on Fidelity’s site takes more poking around. But Fidelity’s portfolio-analysis tools are robust and easy to use, and you can configure them in multiple ways (to track your performance against not just traditional indexes but also blended market benchmarks, for example). Fidelity also provides top-notch budgeting and retirement-planning tools. And you can see a comprehensive picture of all your finances, including accounts held at other firms, your mortgage balance and your home’s market value.

As you might expect, E*Trade excels with tools for stocks, ETFs and options. TD Ameritrade offers a “Premier List” of top-rated mutual funds selected by Morningstar (all available without transaction fees). Schwab makes it easy to find tools, too. We especially like the firm’s preferred-stock screener, which includes credit ratings from Moody’s and S&P Capital IQ, as well as key data points, such as dividend yields and upcoming “call” dates, when issuers may redeem the securities.

Vanguard’s tools focus on nuts-and-bolts planning—things such as setting up an investment mix and creating a retirement plan. Customers won’t find targeted stock screens, though, and can only import outside account data if they’re customers of Vanguard’s advisory service. Ally furnishes a few stock screeners but doesn’t offer retirement-planning tools. Ally says it plans to roll out more screeners and tools over the next year.

Ease of use

Finding what you want on a broker’s site can feel like wandering through a maze of charts, data and jargon-filled reports.

Overall, Fidelity’s relatively intuitive site helps you avoid information overload. The firm recently redesigned its ETF research center, added voice recognition at its call centers to identify customers without a passcode, and enhanced its “quick quote bar” to facilitate trading. Fidelity also wins points for its 2% cash-back Visa card—with direct deposit of cash rebates into brokerage accounts—along with services such as FidSafe, a free online vault where customers can store valuable documents. (Merrill is the only other firm that offers a similar safe-like service.)

With access to Bank of America offices, Merrill provides the most branches (4,600) for its clients to meet with a financial adviser. Customers can easily transfer money to Bank of America with one-click convenience, and they can see all of their savings, checking and investment accounts at both the bank’s and the brokerage’s websites. Schwab also blends brokerage and banking services well, pro­viding high-yield checking and other bank services, as well as mortgages through Quicken Loans. One drawback: Schwab’s American Express cash-back card rebates just 1.5% of the amount of your purchases, and fewer merchants accept Amex.

Also competitive in this category is TD Ameritrade. The firm is ex­panding its branch network from about 100 locations to more than 400 (including Scottrade’s shops). New features on TD’s site include a revamped ETF research center and an upgraded “dock” with news from Yahoo Finance. E*Trade’s site, packed with technical tools, news and data, may not be as easy to navigate for novices. Cust­omers can do some banking through E*Trade, but the firm doesn’t provide a cash-back card or services such as a digital vault.

Because they are purely online brokers, Ally and Vanguard aren’t as convenient, losing points for their lack of physical branches. Ally’s cash-back Visa card, which rebates a base rate of 1%, isn’t as competitive as cards from Fidelity or Schwab. Also, Ally’s cash rewards aren’t automatically deposited into a brokerage account, and customers can’t import account data from other firms. Vanguard doesn’t offer a cash-back card or many banking services. Its site lacks real-time streaming quotes and other user-friendly tools to trade stocks and ETFs.

Mobile apps

Brokers’ apps are be­coming handy enough to allow customers to conduct almost all of their business via a mobile device, whether it’s buying stocks, trading options or depositing checks. E*Trade’s app scores best. It includes a full suite of trading features, as well as stock research reports, lists of “all-star” funds and multiple ways to screen for stocks, ETFs and funds.

Merrill’s app includes several calculators and tools for college savings and retirement planning, along with research from CFRA and Morningstar. Cust­omers can’t screen for stocks or funds, though. Fidelity and Schwab both win points for their apps’ user-friendliness: Trading, transferring money and depositing checks all work seamlessly. Fidelity customers can screen for ETFs, too, and Schwab supplies useful stock ratings, along with an “Idea Hub” for trading options.

Apps from Ally and TD fall short in one big area: They lack the ability to trade mutual funds. Vanguard’s app doesn’t let you buy and sell non-Vanguard funds—also a drawback. Customers can deposit checks, but they can’t transfer money on Vanguard’s app, limiting its usefulness.

Investment advice

Brokers are so keen to handle your money that most will set up a financial plan and review your portfolio at no charge. They can also manage your investments, for a fee, or help with things such as estate plans and insurance.

Taking the lead in this category are Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard. Fidelity and Schwab score well for a wide array of planning services and managed accounts, such as a Fidelity portfolio dedicated to indi­vidual municipal bonds and one at Schwab focused on dividend-growth stocks. At Fidelity, fees for separately managed accounts start at 1.20% annually but are reduced by “credits” for some of the costs in the portfolios’ fund holdings. For clients with at least $25,000, Schwab offers tailored portfolios of ETFs, with an annual advisory fee of 0.28% (capped at $900 per quarter for high-value accounts).

Vanguard customers can get into a managed account with a $50,000 minimum investment. Annual fees are 0.30%, no matter what investing strategy you choose. These accounts hold Vanguard ETFs and the Admiral share class of its mutual funds, which charge some of the lowest expense ratios in the industry.

E*Trade, Merrill and TD offer managed portfolios, starting at 0.75% annually at TD, 0.85% at Merrill and 0.90% at E*Trade. All three firms provide plenty of choices, though, such as a “supplemental income” portfolio at TD and an aggressive-growth package at E*Trade.

If you don’t have much to invest, you could opt for a “robo” service, which should cost less and may be just as effective as brokers’ higher-fee accounts. These portfolios of ETFs and mutual funds are automatically adjusted to maintain a fixed mix of stocks and bonds. Investment minimums are as low as $2,500 at Ally but typically start at $5,000, with annual management fees of 0.30% at Ally, E*Trade and TD. Fidelity charges a bit more, 0.35% to 0.40%. But its fees include underlying fund expenses. Vanguard doesn’t offer a robo, but its Personal Advisor service is essentially the same thing. Plus, Vanguard will tailor the investment mix to your specific situation, following a consultation with a Vanguard adviser. (For more on automated investing services, see Robo Advisers Get the Human Touch.)

Schwab offers a similar service, charging a management fee of 0.28% for a personalized portfolio of ETFs, constructed with the help of a client’s dedicated financial adviser. Customers can also opt for Schwab’s Intelligent Portfolios—baskets of ETFs that the firm selects and rebalances without charging a separate management fee. The downside of these portfolios is that even the most aggressive ones—with hefty amounts of stock—hold 6.9% in cash (and much more in conservative portfolios). Maintaining that much cash can drag down returns in a strong market.

At the opposite end of the cost spectrum is Merrill, which charges a 0.45% management fee for its robo service. Merrill says that the accounts aren’t just based on algorithms, however, and that customers “have access to a human being whenever they need help.”

A Broker for Every Investor

Best for mutual fund investors: Schwab. Offering 3,976 funds with no loads, no transaction fees and investment minimums of less than $50,000, Schwab edges the competition. Need some help? Pick from Schwab’s “select list” of 168 no-transaction-fee mutual funds, a roster that includes many solid performers with reasonable expense ratios.

Best for ETF investors: Schwab. The firm’s 231 commission-free exchange-traded funds put it on top in this category. Many of these ETFs have wafer-thin expense ratios, enabling investors to build a low-cost portfolio without paying a penny in trading commissions.

Best for active stock traders: Merrill Edge. Investors can qualify for 30 free trades per month by having at least $50,000 in combined balances at Merrill and parent Bank of America. Maintain at least a $100,000 balance and you get 100 free trades per month. Runner-up: Ally Invest. The firm trims commissions from $4.95 to $3.95 for investors who make at least 30 trades a quarter, with no investment minimums.

Best for investors on the go: E*Trade. Packed with handy features, E*Trade’s app lets you buy or sell stocks, mutual funds and options, as well as run screens, deposit checks and pay bills. Stock research is also available, something most brokers exclude from their apps.

Best for managing cash: Fidelity. Customers can easily pay bills and see a complete picture of their financial life on Fidelity’s site, including mortgages and balances in non-Fidelity accounts. Fidelity’s Visa Rewards card, which pays back 2% on all purchases, beats the cash rebates from cards of most other brokers.

Best for retirees: Vanguard. Low fees throughout its lineup of mutual funds and ETFs make Vanguard a top choice for retirees (or anyone trying to save a few bucks). The firm charges 0.30% a year to manage accounts, one of the lowest fees in the business.

It often makes sense for job switchers and retirees to roll over their 401(k) to a traditional or Roth IRA (see Pros and Cons of Rolling Your 401(k) Into an IRA). A handful of discount brokerages, including five of our top-ranked online brokers, compete for your retirement dollars that you’ve saved with another company by offering cash incentives that range from $100 to $2,500, depending on how much you invest. Consider:

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E*Trade. Open a new IRA with $25,000 rolled over from an employer retirement account, and E*Trade will kick in a $200 bonus. For a rollover of $1 million or more, you’ll get $2,500.

Fidelity. Score a $100 bonus when you fund a new IRA with at least $25,000. Or roll over at least $50,000 from a 401(k) or IRA and Fidelity will award you a $200 bonus. You’ll earn a bonus of $2,500 if you roll over $1 million or more.

Merrill Edge. A rollover IRA funded with as a little as $20,000 will earn you a $100 bonus. For accounts funded with $200,000 or more, Merrill offers a $600 bonus.

Scottrade. Funding a new IRA with $25,000 from your old 401(k) will earn you a $100 bonus. You’ll earn a $2,500 bonus if you roll over $1 million or more to a new IRA.

TD Ameritrade. Roll over $25,000 or more to a new TD Ameritrade IRA and you’ll receive a $100 bonus. Rollovers of $1 million or more earn a $2,500 bonus.

Charles Schwab and Vanguard do not offer rollover incentives or bonuses.

Don’t let a signing bonus sway you completely. Low commissions to trade stocks or exchange-traded funds or low fees on your investments can save you money in the long run. And finding a firm that suits your needs is far more valuable than a bonus. To see how leading online brokers stack up, see our guide to the Best Online Brokers.

Investors can pocket a few hundred bucks just by opening an account with an online broker these days. But don’t let a signing bonus sway you. Low commissions to trade stocks or exchange-traded funds can save you more money in the long run. Whether you’re a stock jockey, a saver or a retiree, finding a firm that suits your needs is far more valuable than even a $600 bonus (Merrill Edge’s current inducement if you open an account with at least $200,000). So what makes for a first-rate broker? It depends on what you value. Low fees may be critical for active traders, but buy-and-hold types may want an array of no-transaction-fee mutual funds. Brokers with unbeatable prices may lack the retirement-planning tools or advisory services you need.

Research

On all sites, basic facts about stocks, bonds and funds abound. But only a few firms supplement the standard data with more information from major Wall Street investment banks. Schwab and TD Ameritrade provide comprehensive stock research from Credit Suisse to all brokerage clients. E*Trade customers can access Credit Suisse reports, too, but only if they maintain at least $100,000 in assets with the company. Fidelity doesn’t supply any comparable stock research, although it does offer reports from some small research firms, along with S&P Capital IQ. Scottrade and Vanguard provide minimal stock and fund research.

That leaves Merrill as the runaway winner in this category. Customers can see Bank of America Merrill Lynch stock reports on more than 1,400 companies, along with stock research from Morningstar and S&P Capital IQ. Merrill’s big economic reports and thematic pieces, such as

a recent report on stock picks for an aging global population, are also available. And customers get access to Merrill’s lists of recommended stocks.

If you want bond research, though, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Ratings reports on individual companies aren’t accessible on Merrill’s site. By contrast, E*Trade, Schwab, Scottrade and TD Ameritrade furnish company reports from credit-ratings agency Moody’s. One hot new tidbit: social-media signals. E*Trade shows bloggers’ sentiments on individual stocks. On Fidelity and TD, customers can see how a stock is trending on sites such as Twitter.

Ease of use

Brokers aim to make their sites user-friendly. But some are so convoluted—packed with news, charts and data—that they can strain your eyes. For overall ease of use, Fidelity racks up the highest marks. A horizontal task bar at the bottom of the site’s accounts page lets you place a trade with a few clicks, streamlining the process compared with other sites. Paying bills, researching funds and analyzing a portfolio are all relatively simple on Fidelity’s site. Investors can also personalize the site in a number of ways, such as tracking their portfolio’s performance against a custom set of market benchmarks (something Schwab doesn’t allow).

Fidelity does trail the competition in some areas. Merrill Edge customers can use Morningstar’s X-Ray tool to compare their portfolio’s asset mix against more market benchmarks than Fidelity’s analytical tool allows. Merrill customers can also see how closely stocks, bonds and funds in their portfolio move in sync with one another, and they can track their portfolio’s hypothetical growth against a wide variety of market benchmarks—features that Fidelity doesn’t offer.

One useful tool on E*Trade is a roundup of Wall Street analysts’ opinions and price targets for individual stocks, showing how the analysts’ recommendations rank (a feature unavailable on other sites). E*Trade also shows more details about stocks, such as how many shares are being purchased or sold by company insiders. Vanguard’s site looks sparse in comparison, with fewer trading and research tools. For its part, Scottrade packs scads of charts and data on its site, but it doesn’t offer as many planning tools or screeners.

One other element that’s part of this score: customer service and branch availability. Schwab and Merrill both report hold times for phone service averaging 31 seconds or less, beating Scottrade (42), Fidelity (58) and Vanguard (60). Scottrade scores well with 495 offices, more than every firm except Merrill, which provides brokerage services through 2,000 Bank of America branches. (Vanguard doesn’t have any branches.)

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Mobile apps

The brokers in our survey all offer apps to allow customers to trade and conduct other business on a mobile device. All except Vanguard let you log in with a fingerprint. And the apps can be handy for banking: Investors can pay bills, transfer funds and scan checks for deposit (though Vanguard enables mobile check deposit only for clients who hold exclusively Vanguard funds or ETFs).

E*Trade’s smartphone app scores best in this category. Along with standard trading and account tools, it’s the only one with a screening feature for stocks, funds and ETFs. The app also shows E*Trade’s “all star” roster of funds. And investors can scan a product barcode to pull up stock information (a feature TD provides, too).

Of course, smartphone apps can’t handle everything. None shows a detailed analysis of your portfolio or lets you trade bonds. Stock and fund research remains sparse on phone apps, too, although E*Trade and Merrill make some stock reports available.

Investment advice

The larger your account, the more customized and personal investing advice you’ll get. But aside from Scottrade, which doesn’t offer advice, every broker will help you figure out an investment mix, set up a retirement plan and steer you to a professionally managed account (functions that Scottrade farms out to external advisers). Fees for managed accounts typically start at 1% of assets annually, though they may be negotiable. Without prompting, a phone rep from E*Trade offered to knock 0.1 percentage point off the firm’s standard 1.25% fee for managed accounts when we called to inquire about them.

Fidelity and Vanguard earn the top spots in this category, trailed closely by Schwab. Fidelity racks up points for its menu of managed accounts, including one that focuses on muni bonds and another on income-oriented ETFs. Minimum investments start at $200,000 for most types of accounts, and management fees range from 1.7% to less than 0.6% for diversified portfolios with higher balances. Fidelity is also rolling out an automated (or “robo”) managed-account service that invests in ETFs; it requires a minimum investment of $5,000 and charges annual fees of 0.35% to 0.39%, including underlying fund fees. E*Trade and Schwab offer robo services, too. But E*Trade’s isn’t priced as competitively, and Schwab requires clients to hold sizable cash balances, which can drag down long-term returns.

At Schwab, customers need just $25,000 to get into a managed port­folio of mutual funds or ETFs—one of the lowest bars in the business. Schwab also offers robo ETF accounts, free of charge, with only a $5,000 minimum. Merrill and TD lack robo services and steer clients into managed accounts that charge at least 1% annually, depending on portfolio size (plus the fees of underlying funds in fund-based accounts).

For its part, Vanguard doesn’t provide a robo service or managed accounts holding individual stocks or bonds. But customers with at least $50,000 in assets can tap into the firm’s Personal Advisor Services, which let you slide into a managed account that charges just 0.3% in annual fees. The accounts hold only Vanguard funds that mainly track market indexes. But that’s not a bad thing; clients can get Admiral share class funds, with expense ratios of less than 0.07% for U.S. stock and bond funds. With most active managers failing to beat their benchmarks, sticking with broad-market index funds can be a good way to pocket more money in the long run.

Investors can pocket a few hundred bucks just by opening an account with an online broker these days. But don’t let a signing bonus sway you.

Low commissions to trade stocks or exchange-traded funds can save you more money in the long run. Whether you’re a stock jockey, a saver or a retiree, finding a firm that suits your needs is far more valuable than even a $600 bonus (Merrill Edge’s current inducement if you open an account with at least $200,000).

What makes for a first-rate broker? It depends on what you value. Low fees may be critical for active traders, but buy-and-hold types may want an array of no-transaction-fee mutual funds. Brokers with unbeatable prices may lack the retirement-planning tools or advisory services you need. We weighted the categories based on what our readers consider vital: commissions and fees, 15%; investment choices, 15%, tools, 15%; research 20%; 15% mobile; advisory, 10%.

Take a look at our reviews of seven of the biggest brokers in the industry to see which is the best fit for you.

To be included, firms had to offer online trading of stocks, ETFs, funds and individual bonds. Capital One, T. Rowe Price and USAA all declined to participate. We also excluded some brokers that focus primarily on active traders and lack a full suite of investment choices and services.

• OVERALL: Total Commissions: Invest. choices: Tools: Research: Ease of use: Mobile: Advisory:
  

  BEST FOR: Managing cash

Fidelity offers the best overall mix of investment products, retirement-planning tools and services. Fidelity’s commissions aren’t the lowest, especially if you want a mutual fund for which you must pay a transaction fee. But its prices are close enough in other areas to be competitive with lower-cost brokers. Furthermore, Fidelity wins points for its full range of retirement and advisory services, along with top-notch investing tools and customer service.

If your priority is investing in mutual funds, you’ll do well with Fidelity. It offers more than 3,700 no-transaction-fee, no-load funds, almost all of which have minimum investment levels under $50,000.

Fidelity also shines for helping clients manage their cash. Customers can pay bills and track spending on all of their external accounts. Plus, sign up for a Visa Rewards card and you'll get 2% back on all purchases, cash that goes right into your brokerage or savings account (so you'll invest it, right?).

Evaluate Fidelity for Yourself>>

• OVERALL: Costs: Invest. choices: Tools: Research: Ease of use: Mobile: Advisory:
  

  BEST FOR: Active stock traders

If you like to trade stocks, Merrill is your best bet. It’s the runway winner in this category, charging $6.95 per stock trade, the lowest flat rate per transaction. Investors with a bank account at Bank of America, Merrill’s parent company, may qualify for up to 100 free trades per month, depending on their combined balances. Merrill also charges the lowest rate, $19.95, to buy or sell mutual funds outside its no-transaction-fee fund network.

Merrill is also a standout for research on which stocks to buy. Customers can see Bank of America Merrill Lynch stock reports on more than 1,400 companies, along with stock research from Morningstar and S&P Capital IQ. Merrill’s big economic reports and thematic pieces, such as a recent report on stock picks for an aging global population, are also available. And customers get access to Merrill’s lists of recommended stocks.

If you want bond research, though, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Ratings reports on individual companies aren’t accessible on Merrill’s site. By contrast, E*Trade, Schwab, Scottrade and TD Ameritrade furnish company reports from credit-ratings agency Moody’s.

Evaluate Merrill Edge for Yourself>>

• OVERALL: Costs: Invest. choices: Tools: Research: Ease of use: Mobile: Advisory:
  

  BEST FOR: ETF investors

We gave both Merrill Edge and Charles Schwab four stars, but in the underlying scoring, Merrill ranked ahead by a whisker. Where Schwab stands out – both against Merrill and all other contenders – is its wide range of commission–free exchange-traded funds offerings. You can choose from 226, including funds from iShares, PowerShares, State Street and WisdomTree. No other broker has nearly as many commission-free ETFs; E*Trade (118), TD Ameritrade (101) and Fidelity (85) take the next three spots.

Schwab also offers help picking those funds; you need just $25,000 to get into a managed portfolio of mutual funds or ETFs – one of the lowest bars in the business. Schwab also offers robo ETF accounts, free of charge, with only a $5,000 minimum (see slide 9 to learn more about “robo” services).

Evaluate Charles Schwab for Yourself>>

• OVERALL: Costs: Invest. choices: Tools: Research: Ease of use: Mobile: Advisory:
  

  BEST FOR: Investors on the go

All brokers we surveyed let customers trade and conduct other business on a mobile device. All except Vanguard let you log in with a fingerprint. And the apps can be handy for banking: Investors can pay bills, transfer funds and more.

E*Trade’s smartphone app scores best in this category. Along with standard trading and account tools, it’s the only one with a screening feature for stocks, funds and ETFs. The app also shows E*Trade’s “all star” roster of funds. And investors can scan a product barcode to pull up stock information (a feature TD provides, too).

Of course, smartphone apps can’t handle everything. None shows a detailed analysis of your portfolio or lets you trade bonds. Stock and fund research remains sparse on phone apps, too, although E*Trade and Merrill make some stock reports available.

Another example of how E*Trade justifies the E in its name decades after its launch: you can track social media sentiment – what bloggers have to say — on individual stocks.

Evaluate E*Trade for Yourself>>

• OVERALL: Costs: Invest. choices: Tools: Research: Ease of use: Mobile: Advisory:

TD Ameritrade offers a healthy range of no-fee mutual funds (3,587) and commission-free ETFs (101) to choose from. Helping you pick is TD’s handy fund screener, which lets you see how ETFs, mutual funds and closed-end funds with similar holdings stack up against one another. Another cutting-edge feature (that it shares with Fidelity) – you can use the site to see how a stock is trending on Twitter and similar social-media sites.

Evaluate TD Ameritrade for Yourself>>

• OVERALL: Costs: Invest. choices: Tools: Research: Ease of use: Mobile: Advisory:

If being able to visit a bricks-and-mortar location and interacting with a real, live human matters to you, consider Scottrade. With 495 offices, it scores well for availability, second only to Merrill (which gets to piggyback on the 2,000 Bank of America branches its corporate parent has nationwide).

Evaluate Scottrade for Yourself>>

• OVERALL: Costs: Invest. choices: Tools: Research: Web site: Mobile: Advisory services:
  

  BEST FOR: Retirees

  At Kiplinger's, we’re big fans of many of Vanguard’s low-fee funds. But for those who want to invest in stocks, bonds and mutual funds outside the Vanguard family, the brokerage site it runs doesn’t measure up.

However, retirees are a group who can do right by Vanguard. Customers with at least $50,000 in assets can tap into the firm’s Personal Advisor Services, which lets you slide into a managed account that charges just 0.3% in annual fees. That low rate, coupled with Vanguard’s ultra-cheap index funds, is a great recipe for pocketing more money in the long run.

Evaluate Vanguard for Yourself>>

E*trade and Fidelity are now rolling out “robo” services, joining Schwab in selling managed ETF accounts that are automatically adjusted to maintain a steady asset mix. Which one is best?

On the surface, Schwab’s Intelligent Portfolios look unbeatable for one big reason: The firm doesn’t charge a management fee. Customers pay only the low fees of the underlying ETFs. But Schwab doesn’t let customers stay fully invested in stock and bond funds, requiring at least 6% in cash for aggressive investors—climbing to 29.4% for the most conservative portfolios. Held at Schwab Bank, that cash earns just 0.08% in interest, and it can weaken long-term returns.

E*Trade says cash in its new Adaptive Portfolios won’t top 1%. But all-in annual costs are 0.50% for ETF portfolios and 0.75% for accounts with both ETFs and mutual funds. Conversely, Betterment (one of the first robo advisers) charges a management fee of 0.25% a year for portfolios between $10,000 and $100,000 and 0.15% above that. Betterment holds only low-cost Vanguard and iShares ETFs, while E*Trade includes some pricier mutual funds and ETFs.

Fidelity was slated to launch its robo service, Fidelity Go, in July. The firm says all-in fees will be 0.35% to 0.39%, which would beat E*Trade’s. And Fidelity says Go portfolios will hold 0.5% in cash, much less than Schwab. That could give Fidelity portfolios a performance edge over the long term.

Ultimately, though, your results will depend on whether the robots do a better job of managing your money than a human.

1. Fidelity

2. Charles Schwab

3. Merrill Edge

4. E*Trade

5. TD Ameritrade

6. Scottrade

7. TradeStation

8. TradeKing

9. Firstrade

Kiplinger updates many of its best rankings regularly. Above is our 2014 ranking of best online brokers. Keep in mind that ranking methodologies can change from year to year based on what data was available at the time of publishing, changes to how the data was gathered, switches to new data providers and tweaks to the formulas used to narrow the pool of candidates.

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1. E*Trade

2. Fidelity

3. Scottrade

4. TD Ameritrade

5. TradeStation

6. Firstrade

7. Charles Schwab

8. Merrill Edge

9. Just2Trade

10. ShareBuilder

Kiplinger updates many of its best rankings regularly. Above is our 2012 ranking of best online brokers. Keep in mind that ranking methodologies can change from year to year based on what data was available at the time of publishing, changes to how the data was gathered, switches to new data providers and tweaks to the formulas used to narrow the pool of candidates.

TOOL: Compare Leading Online Brokers