Fidelity vs. Schwab: 2026 Comparison

Fidelity and Charles Schwab often rise above the competition in our analysis of online brokers. Both offer something for every investor: educational resources for beginners, powerful trading platforms, and a large selection of investments, including thousands of no-transaction-fee mutual funds for retirement or passive investors.

Fidelity edges out Schwab with a high interest rate on uninvested cash — and the broker also offers several index funds that charge no expense ratio, which is rare in the industry. Schwab, on the other hand, has a slightly larger investment selection, including more no-transaction-fee mutual funds and the ability to trade futures.

Use the tool below to compare how Fidelity and Schwab stack up on the features that matter most to you — then read our editors' take for more personalized insights.

AT A GLANCE

There are a few non-negotiables that matter to our editors when evaluating brokers. We ask: Are there account minimums? ($0 is best.) How much will you pay in fees to the broker to buy or trade a stock online? ($0 is also standard.) What annual maintenance fees am I on the hook for? (None is best.) Will I get help when I need it — and quickly? (We love to see 24/7 customer service.)

Fidelity and Schwab are neck-and-neck on a lot of these basics. Here's what else they do exceptionally well:

• Annual, transfer, and inactivity fees: Neither broker charges these fees.

• Online trading costs: Neither Schwab nor Fidelity charges a commission for online stock and ETF trading — a pretty standard practice across most brokers. If you want to trade options, that will cost you $0.65 per contract at either company. OTC trading, however, is $0 at Fidelity and $6.95 for U.S. equities at Schwab, giving Fidelity a pretty large lead in this category.

• No-transaction-fee (NTF) mutual funds: We ask all brokers we review how many NTF mutual funds they offer, because for retirement-focused investors who want to diversify their mutual fund holdings, fees on these funds can add up

  Let's say you are a Schwab customer but want access to a Vanguard mutual fund to diversify your holdings, being able to buy a third-party fund without any additional transaction fees can help you save on costs.

  . Charles Schwab's collection of NTF funds is more than double that of Fidelity's (7,774 vs. 3,220) — making Schwab the clear winner in this category. As for mutual funds that do charge fees, Fidelity's are typically $49.95, and Schwab's are either $49.95 or $74.95.

• No-expense-ratio index funds: Index funds are a popular choice for gaining exposure to stock indexes like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq. Fidelity offers something rare here: a small collection of proprietary index funds with $0 expense ratios (the fees paid to a fund for management). The one downside is that if you leave Fidelity, you can't transfer them to another broker. Even so, it's an attractive offering for long-term investors, as expense ratios can eat into your earnings over time.

• Interest rate on uninvested cash: Most brokerages "sweep" deposited cash that hasn't yet been invested into one of their partner banks so that you can collect interest on it while you figure out where that money should go. Fidelity offers a competitive interest rate, while Schwab's is routinely among the lowest on our list of brokerages. While you could manually transfer those idle dollars to a Schwab money market fund to access a higher rate, in our opinion, it requires more effort and ongoing supervision, which isn't ideal.

Both brokers provide access to the basics you'd expect: stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, bonds, options, Treasurys and IPOs. Things start to diverge when complexity comes into play.

Schwab offers securities that advanced or active traders may appreciate — futures, futures options and forex. Fidelity doesn't, or offers some in a limited capacity. Schwab also has a deeper library of no-transaction-fee (NTF) mutual funds than Fidelity.

On the other hand, Fidelity offers cheaper access to OTC trading, as well as access to precious metals and cryptocurrency, whereas Schwab only offers access to crypto indirectly through ETFs, stocks, and exchange-traded products (ETPs) — though it appears the broker is soon rolling out a direct crypto offering^[0]

Another feature of note: our team of writers and editors indexes highly on fractional shares because they allow investors who can't afford or don't want to buy an entire share of a security the ability to purchase smaller dollar amounts, making it easier and more affordable to create a diversified portfolio

Just a few weeks ago, Fidelity might have been the clear winner in this subcategory, but Schwab has since rolled out fractional shares for most stocks and ETFs with a $1 minimum, making its offering in line with Fidelity's^[0]

Schwab offers two platforms: Schwab.com and Schwab Mobile, which are the standard accounts most customers use for trading and analysis. It also has a more advanced platform, thinkorswim, acquired through a 2020 merger with TD Ameritrade, which is available for free to all Schwab customers online, on mobile and as a desktop download.

Schwab's standard platform lets you do most of the things you'd expect from a brokerage: place trades, conduct research, access data and reports, perform analysis and review educational materials.

As we'll mention in the user experience section below, it's not the flashiest of interfaces, but it certainly does what it's meant to do. Thinkorswim, on the other hand, is a high-octane trading experience that provides advanced and active investors with all the tools they need: tons of customization options, screeners, what-if scenarios and advanced charting. While powerful, it can also be overwhelming for a beginner to navigate.

Fidelity offers two platforms as well: Fidelity.com and the Fidelity Investments app for everyday investing, and Fidelity Trader+. The latter is its more advanced offering, which is available in browser, via mobile app and on desktop.

Fidelity's main platform and app have all the components a basic trader would expect, but it also offers more. As the king of retirement investing, Fidelity stands out to us because its platforms offer tools like calculators and a portfolio analyzer that are unique and valuable to have on hand while investing. If you also use Fidelity for other accounts, like a 401(k), having all that information in one place can be a big bonus.

While Fidelity Trader+ has some notable features, like a multi-trade ticket that can store orders for later and place up to 50 orders at a time, as well as intuitive shortcuts and charts, we find that its functionality lags behind the powerhouse that is thinkorswim.

Nifty features such as charts, research and a wide range of investment options mean little if they're difficult or cumbersome to use. Here's what two of our editors had to say about the experience of using Schwab and Fidelity's online and mobile platforms.

The ability to practice investing before putting real money on the line can be valuable — especially if you're aspiring to graduate from retirement-style "set-it-and-forget-it" investing to a more active approach of picking your own stocks (or maybe even dipping your toes into things like options, futures or forex). Using an investing simulator or paper trading is a safe way to get some reps in.

It'd be easy to say Charles Schwab wins this category by default, since Fidelity doesn't offer paper trading, but it would be remiss of us not to mention that Schwab's paperMoney is also just plain good. It's true you may get a fancier or more seamless virtual trading experience with a newer broker like Webull or Interactive Brokers, but if you want $100,000 worth of play money, access to a powerful platform, loads of educational content, and to stay in network with a legacy broker like Schwab, paperMoney ticks all the boxes.