Public.com 2026 Review: What Stands Out & What Falls Short
Public will appeal to traders looking for low-cost options brokers and access to many types of assets. But customer support is limited, and the broker nickel-and-dimes non-Premium members for certain types of trades.The investing information provided on this page is for educational purposes only. NerdWallet, Inc. does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend or advise investors to buy or sell particular stocks, securities or other investments.
Our take: Public provides free stock and ETF trades, pays you to trade options, and gives traders access to crypto and bonds, as well as a high-yield cash account. It doesn't offer mutual funds or custodial accounts.
Public provides free stock and ETF trades, pays you to trade options, and gives traders access to crypto and bonds, as well as a high-yield cash account. The platform will appeal to traders looking for a low-cost options broker and access to many types of assets.
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How do we review brokers?
All NerdWallet reviews and lists of the best investing products are created by our editorial team of full-time writers and editors, independent of any business relationships. In this case, our investing team's comprehensive review process evaluates and ranks the largest U.S. brokers by assets under management, along with emerging industry players. Our aim is to provide an independent, balanced assessment of brokerages to help arm you with information to make sound, informed judgments on which ones will best meet your needs. Our highest priority is maintaining editorial integrity.
We collect data directly from brokerages through detailed questionnaires, and conduct first-hand testing and observation through demonstrations. The questionnaire answers, combined with demonstrations, interviews of personnel at the brokerages and our specialists’ hands-on research, fuel our proprietary assessment process that scores each broker's performance across more than 20 factors. The final output produces star ratings from poor (one star) to excellent (five stars).
For more details about the categories considered when rating brokers and our process, read our full methodology.
Where Public shines
Get paid to trade options: Public offers free options trading (besides regulatory fees), which isn't totally unique among online brokers — but they're almost certainly the only broker that will pay you to trade options. Public offers a revenue-sharing program that pays options traders a rebate of $0.06 to $0.18 per options transaction, which is up to half of the company's payment-for-order-flow (PFOF) revenue per trade.
Investment plans & generated assets: Public allows investors to create their own customized baskets of stocks, ETFs or other assets, set up recurring purchases of those baskets of investments, and buy or sell multiple investments at a time. The company calls these multi-asset trades "investment plans," and they could be handy for investors who are looking to use dollar-cost averaging to build a diversified portfolio over time.
In early 2025, Public also launched "generated assets." These are basically custom-made index ETFs focused on any investment theme that an investor wants, and can be created by an AI research assistant using a LLM-style text prompt. For example, an investor can type "companies that are historically sensitive to falling interest rates" into the generated assets prompt box and then get a basket of such companies that they can invest in.
These features also pair well with Public's newly offered individual retirement account (IRA), which comes with a 1% match on all rollovers and contributions. Investment plan trades incur fees for non-Premium users, though, and generated assets have a 0.49% annual management fee.
IPOs and fractional shares: Public has made a point to offer investors access to a wide variety of asset classes — in addition to stocks, bonds, ETFs and crypto, Public offers fractional shares and IPO access.
Where Public falls short
No mutual funds: The lack of mutual funds may be a difficult adjustment for some investors, although Public offers plenty of ETFs. If you specifically want mutual funds, you might find a better fit at these brokers:
 Fidelity |  Charles Schwab |  Interactive Brokers IBKR Lite |
Learn moreon Fidelity's website | Learn moreon Charles Schwab's website | Learn moreon Interactive Brokers's website |
No international accounts or custodial accounts: Public is a relative newcomer to the brokerage industry and doesn't quite have the same diversity of account types as some of its competitors, such as international accounts or custodial accounts, which are often used to open accounts for minors. If you're interested in these accounts, try these brokers instead:
| Interactive Brokers IBKR Lite | Charles Schwab |  E*TRADE |
Learn moreon Interactive Brokers's website | Learn moreon Charles Schwab's website | Learn moreon E*TRADE's website |
What type of investor should choose Public?
Options traders: There are few other brokers that charge zero commissions or per-contract fees to trade options ... and there are no other brokers that pay users to trade options.
Mobile investors: Public, much like Robinhood and Webull, has a clear "mobile-first" philosophy, and its app runs smoothly and is easy to use.
What the Nerds think
"Public's app offers a similar streamlined trading experience to Robinhood or Webull; it took me about 1 minute after opening the app to sell some old Bitcoin and queue up a fractional SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) buy order. But Public has added some aesthetic touches to its app that feel a little more elegant than the aforementioned, such as an easy-on-the-eyes dark mode and a Times New Roman-esque font for numbers. The portfolio tab, news tab and top movers lists are all easy to navigate.
Public does not take payment for order flow for equities, but when buying SPY, I had to uncheck a box asking me to "contribute" 10 cents to their transparent, PFOF-free trading experience. That opt-out may annoy some thrifty users."
Public at a glance
Account minimum | $0. |
Stock trading costs | $0 ($2.99 per trade for after-hours trades or OTC stocks, for non-Premium members.) |
Options trades | $0. Public pays options traders a rebate of $0.06 to $0.18 per options transaction, as a share of their payment-for-order-flow revenue, depending on volume |
Account fees (annual, transfer, closing, inactivity) | $75 ACAT outgoing transfer fee (partial or full). No annual fee for non-Premium members — Public Premium costs $10 a month or $96 a year. $3.99 monthly inactivity fee for accounts with no activity for six months and balances below $70. Instant withdrawals cost 3.5% of the amount withdrawn, with a minimum of $1. |
Interest rate on uninvested cash | New users can opt into a high-yield cash account with yield of over 4% by checking a box at sign-up. |
Number of no-transaction-fee mutual funds | Not rated. |
Tradable securities | Stocks, ETFs, options, cryptocurrency, American Depositary Receipts, fractional shares and bonds. |
Trading platform | Public's mobile and web platforms offer a smooth sign-up, funding and trading experience, but are fairly basic when it comes to tools like charts and screeners. |
Mobile app | Public's iOS and Android apps are both well-liked by users and offer virtually the same features as the web trading platform. |
Research and data | Research from Morningstar, TradingView and S&P Global. Public offers earnings call playback, as well as bespoke company metrics like subscriber numbers. |
Customer support options (includes how easy it is to find key details on the website) | Email and chat support available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday. Responses prioritized for Premium members. Website is fairly easy to navigate. |
IRA match | 1% match on all rollovers and contributions. |
How to sign up for a Public account
Public has clearly put a lot of thought into creating a smooth sign-up experience, particularly for new investors. The broker guides new users through an easy account creation process that collects your personal information, contact details, Social Security number and means of funding your account in just a few minutes.
Once your account has been approved and funded (which may take a day or so), you'll be able to buy stocks through Public.
What to know about Public's fees
As we've mentioned, Public is the only broker we review whose options trading fees are negative — meaning they pay you. The broker also offers free trades of exchange-listed stocks during market hours to all users. After-hours trades and OTC stocks cost $2.99 for free users, and multi-asset investment plan trades cost between $0.49 and $1.99 for free users, depending on the number of assets involved.
Generated assets have a 0.49% annual management fee, similar to an ETF with a mid-range expense ratio. Direct index investments (more on those below) have a 0.19% annual management fee.
There's no account maintenance fee for free users, although accounts with six months or more of inactivity and balances below $70 may incur a $3.99 per month inactivity fee. Public Premium costs $10 monthly or $96 yearly. It eliminates many of the fees non-Premium users incur for nonstandard trades, such as OTC stocks, after-hours trades and investment plans.
One of the biggest fees Public charges is the $100 outgoing ACAT transfer fee — but that cost is pretty average within the industry. (An ACAT transfer is when you want to transfer your investments to another broker; there's no fee for selling your investments and having the money transferred via ACH to your bank.)
Public's trading platforms and apps
Public's streamlined trading interface resembles that of other upstart brokers such as Robinhood, but a bit... classier. The broker has clearly put a lot of thought into its app's aesthetics in the last year. Little touches, like the tasteful dark gray of the background, the font your balance is displayed in, and the hand-drawn-looking icons in the in-app menus, all give the Public app a more refined user experience than many of its competitors.
And when it comes to function, rather than form, the app and website both make it easy to buy or sell stocks or ETFs in seconds. Public now also offers an application programming interface (API) that allows investors to automate their trading. Trades made via the Public API have the same fee schedule as trades made using the app or website, including rebates for options trades.
We only found two significant drawbacks to Public's trading platform. First, the broker is a bit lax on security — there's no passcode system like Robinhood or Webull, and our tester found that they were still logged into the app and ready to trade, even after a long period of inactivity.
How we nerd out testing trading platforms
Our reviewers — who are writers and editors on NerdWallet’s content team — hands-on test every online broker platform in our analysis. That way, we’re able to report on every aspect of the user experience, from funding a new account to actually placing trades.
We score each broker against a set of criteria that factor in both the capabilities offered and the actual user experience of trading with those capabilities. This includes how easy it was to sign up for and fund a new account. Note that a broker may score very highly for the platforms it offers but low for the experience of actually using that platform. These are scored separately in our analysis, and they are weighted evenly when factored into the broker’s overall score. This means a broker can offer an advanced trading platform, but if it is clunky to use or the process of opening an account is unnecessarily arduous, that will be reflected in their score.
Second, advanced traders may find Public's charting and screening tools to be somewhat entry-level compared to the tools from some other brokers. However, Public has made strides in this arena in recent years with the launch of new, more customizable charting features and an API for automated trading.
Public's investment selection
Public offers a fairly impressive array of investment choices for traders — stocks (including fractional shares), corporate and government bonds, options, ETFs, major cryptocurrencies and select American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). But Public doesn't offer futures or commodities — and its lack of mutual funds puts it at a disadvantage relative to many other brokers.
Public's margin rates rank as some of the lowest among the brokers we review, starting at 5.5% for accounts with the highest margin balances ($250,000 or more) and topping out at 9.5% for balances under $10,000.
In addition to individual bonds, Public offers a "bond account" that invests in corporate bonds (which, we should note, can be riskier than Treasury bonds) and currently advertises a 5.5% yield.
Crypto offering: Through a partnership with Zero Hash, Public allows users to purchase cryptocurrencies right in their brokerage account. It offers access to more than 40 coins at the time of last update.
Investors who are used to pure-play crypto brokerages might get a shock from another aspect of Public's crypto offering — Public charges fees on crypto trades, and fairly hefty ones at that. They start at $0.49 for orders less than $10, gradually rise to $6.49 for orders between $250 and $500, and then equal 1.25% of the order amount for orders over $500. These fees still apply for Premium members.
Other key Public features
Research and data
The research selection at Public is not quite as robust as at some of its competitors. Premium users get access to earnings call playback and a set of company metrics from Public itself, such as subscriber numbers. Research from Morningstar and S&P Global, and TradingView charts, are available as well.
Customer support
Public offers email and chat support on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Premium users get priority over non-Premium users in the support queue. Public's AI educational assistant may also be able to answer some basic questions. This is better than nothing, but it pales in comparison to the customer support offerings from many other brokers, which frequently offer phone support and night and weekend hours.
However, the broker deserves some credit for offering decent educational support to beginner investors, particularly in the domain of options trading. Public offers an "education mode" which serves users visual and written tutorials as they use the app, and hosts a collection of educational articles and user forums.
Direct indexing
In fall 2025, Public started to offer direct indexing — a type of investment strategy for index-fund investors that can generate tax savings. Rather than investing in an actual index fund, direct indexers can automatically buy individual fractional shares of every company or asset in that index. In many years, some companies in an index will end the year with positive returns, and others will end it with negative returns. Public's direct indexing feature makes it easier to harvest tax losses (that is, sell negative-performing investments and deduct the losses from your taxable income) by automatically scanning direct index investments for negative-return assets. Direct index investments have a minimum investment of $1,000 and come with a 0.19% annual management fee.
IRA account
Public offers an IRA account with a 1% match on contributions and several unique features, including the ability to trade options within the IRA (with Public's standard rebate structure). The broker also offers a useful feature called "Investment Plans," which allow investors to build custom IRA portfolios. New contributions are then invested according to that portfolio allocation.
Public provides free stock and ETF trades, pays you to trade options, and gives traders access to crypto and bonds, as well as a high-yield cash account. The platform will appeal to traders looking for a low-cost options broker and access to many types of assets.
High-yield cash account and Treasury account
Public lets users opt in to a high-yield cash account with an APY of over 4% for uninvested cash. That yield has decreased slightly in recent months, as the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates, but the same is true for the uninvested cash yield of other brokers we review.
Public is unique among brokers for offering several different types of high-yield accounts. In addition to a conventional cash account, Public allows users to open a Treasury account through a partnership with Jiko Securities. It allows users to buy six-month Treasury bills for as little as $1,000. Interest on Treasury bills is exempt from state and local income tax. Public also offers a corporate bond account, also with a $1,000 minimum, that boasts a higher yield, although it doesn't have the state tax exemption.
Partnership with Clear
Clear, a biometric screening company that allows members to skip part of the security lines for certain stadiums and airports, launched a partnership with Public in 2024. Public says Clear members can "open an account on Public in a minute or less," as Clear's biometric identification process will speed up Public's account-opening process for Clear members.
As part of the partnership, Clear Plus members who sign up for a Public account, deposit at least $250 within 30 days, and keep it in the account for at least 5 business days, will receive a $100 credit in their Public account.
Public Premium
For $10 per month or $96 per year, Public Premium members get prioritized customer service responses, Morningstar research, and Premium-only market news and analysis content from Public's team. Premium members are also exempted from fees on OTC trades, after-hours trades and investment plan trades, although they still pay fees for crypto trades.
Unlike the premium offerings at some other brokers, Public Premium does not come with a higher level of FDIC insurance than unpaid accounts, nor special margin rates.
Good to know about Public
Public Premium pushiness
Like other brokers with premium account types, Public tries in various ways to get non-Premium members to sign up for Premium, such as with email and in-app offers of free trials.
The reason we mention this is because we accidentally enrolled in a Premium trial in 2024 while testing the platform out, as a result of a misclick.
Due to a system bug that has since been addressed, we did not receive any notification emails about the free trial, and only found out about it when the trial ended (and our test bank account was unexpectedly charged $96 for a year of Premium). Public's support team sorted out the issue promptly and refunded the charge, but those Premium offers are something to watch out for, if you aren't interested.
Subpar execution quality
Public doesn't accept PFOF revenue for stock trades. It does accept PFOF for options trades, but it's currently sharing 50% of its PFOF revenue per trade with its options-trading customers.
Some regulators believe that the PFOF business model is a conflict of interest because it involves market-making firms paying brokers to route customer orders through them. PFOF's effects are negligible for most investors, but it's possible that PFOF brokers could execute orders slightly slower or at slightly worse prices than non-PFOF brokers. Public says its order execution quality is 94%, which is a few points below the average among brokers we review.
The average execution quality of all brokers we review was 97.51% as of Oct. 15, 2025. That means 97.51% of orders sold for at a price that was at or better than the National Best Bid and Offer. Executing at or above the NBBO means you may receive a price improvement or a better share price than you were originally quoted.
Is Public safe?
No investment is completely safe from the risk of loss, but Public carries several types of insurance that protect customer funds from broker or bank insolvency.
Public's high-yield cash accounts work with a network of 20 partner banks, and are thus insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for up to $5 million — 20 times the typical FDIC coverage limit for bank accounts.
Public's brokerage and bond accounts are insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) for up to $500,000 per account, with a cash sublimit of $250,000. Public also allows users to add up to $100 million in supplemental SIPC coverage.
Public has room for improvement when it comes to the security of its app; the lack of a passcode or automatic logout system could make users vulnerable to theft of funds if their phone is stolen or compromised. But otherwise, Public takes cybersecurity quite seriously, employing "bank grade" security measures including AES 256-bit encryption and TLS 1.2 (or newer).
Is Public right for you?
Public earns high marks for ease-of-use, and for its investment selection — and options traders will likely get excited about their PFOF rebate program. However, Public is not quite as well-established as some of the other brokers we review, and it still lacks certain features, like phone support, offered by its competitors. It also lacks custodial accounts, and the fees can add up for non-Premium users. But on the whole, Public offers an impressive brokerage experience for new investors or traders who are looking to up their options game.
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- 1.Congressional Research Service. Payment for Order Flow: The SEC Proposes Reforms. Accessed Oct 12, 2023.
Methodology
How do we review brokers?
All NerdWallet reviews and lists of the best investing products are created by our editorial team of full-time writers and editors, independent of any business relationships. In this case, our investing team's comprehensive review process evaluates and ranks the largest U.S. brokers by assets under management, along with emerging industry players. Our aim is to provide an independent, balanced assessment of brokerages to help arm you with information to make sound, informed judgments on which ones will best meet your needs. Our highest priority is maintaining editorial integrity.
We collect data directly from brokerages through detailed questionnaires, and conduct first-hand testing and observation through demonstrations. The questionnaire answers, combined with demonstrations, interviews of personnel at the brokerages and our specialists’ hands-on research, fuel our proprietary assessment process that scores each broker's performance across more than 20 factors. The final output produces star ratings from poor (one star) to excellent (five stars).
For more details about the categories considered when rating brokers and our process, read our full methodology.