Benzinga's Online Brokerage Review Methodology

We aim to provide comprehensive and unbiased reviews on Benzinga to help users understand and learn about brokerage platforms. Below you'll find a detailed methodology for how we rank brokers in our content.

Meet the Reviewers

Sarah Horvath

Sarah Horvath is a financial writer located in New York City, New York. She focuses on the topics of insurance and investing for retirement. Horvath has written for numerous websites and publications, and her work regularly appears on websites like Robinhood’s news feed and Benzinga.

Dan Schmidt

Dan began writing for Benzinga in 2018 covering topics like stocks, brokers, and retirement savings. He received a journalism degree from Penn State in 2008 and has spent most of his life in the Philadelphia area (Go Birds). His favorite books about investing are Dark Pools, Random Walk Down Wall Street, and Beat The Dealer.

Luke Jacobi

Luke Jacobi, expert trader and CFO at Benzinga, hosts multiple trading and investing shows and has been a Benzinga team member since 2013. Luke’s writing has appeared on Benzinga’s news and Money sites along with Yahoo! Finance, Morningstar, MSN and many others. He has led Benzinga to a top 1,000 most visited US website, the largest distributor of news to US brokerages and 4 consecutive years of 50%+ revenue growth. Luke attended the University of Michigan and in his spare time, he reads and makes snacks.

Our Methodology Scores

Review Process

For brokerage reviews, Benzinga created a weighted scale based on the following criteria: usability, services offered, customer service, education, research, mobile app, account minimums and fees. Reviewers meticulously researched each category and rate based on the following metrics.

Usability Criteria

Our usability score accounts for 10% of the overall rating. We looked at factors such as onboarding time, an easily navigable site and the ability to make a trade with minimal effort and previous experience.

Services Offered Criteria

For this section, we looked at the number of asset classes that are available to traders and investors. It accounts for 15% of the overall rating. An example of a 5 star platform in this section has 7 asset classes and international securities.

Customer Service Criteria

This section accounts for 15% of the overall rating and we looked at the options available to contact customer service, if there were any special services for disabled users and how quickly a customer could contact customer service.

Education Criteria

The education section accounts for 10% of the overall rating. An example of an online broker that has 5 stars has a full repository of educational materials such as blogs and tutorials, is well organized, connected to both mobile and desktop and offers retirement guidance.

Research, News and Data Criteria

For a platform to earn 5 stars in the research category they require customization capability for assets, a fixed income screener, market commentary, options research and access to analyst research. Most importantly considered in the rankings is access to news within the platform that is provided either internally or externally from trustworthy publishers. This accounts for 25% of the overall rating.

Mobile App Criteria

For a platform to earn 5 stars in the mobile app category they require the same experience on desktop, ability to integrate between mobile and desktop, available on iOS and Android and is deemed easy to use. This accounts for 10% of the overall rating.

Account Mininmum Criteria

For a platform to earn 5 stars in the account minimum category they require a $0 account minimum. This accounts for 10% of the overall rating.

Fees Criteria

For a platform to earn 5 stars in the fees category they require free stock trading and $2 or less for options trades. This accounts for 5% of the overall rating.

Specialties Ratings

For online brokers that focus specifically on one asset class, we created a separate methodology to apply to our rankings.

Benzinga Fintech Awards

Benzinga's Fintech Awards is the centralized hub for finding access to the best and brightest in the fintech space. As Benzinga evaluates companies to participate in the awards we look for innovative standouts and the value-driven impact these companies are creating for their users. We bring in guest judges that span multiple different business verticals that can see the long-term potential that these companies bring to their space.

We apply the listmakers and award winners to our content to further give credence to the value these platforms bring to our users.