Zacks Trade Review 2024: Pros, Cons and How It Compares

Where Zacks Trade shines

Trading platforms and research: Zacks is an introducing broker to Interactive Brokers, which means the company’s trading platforms and research mirror that of Interactive Brokers — they are powerful and professional-level.

Free access to a human broker: If you’re inclined to place phone trades, those are completely free at Zacks, a rare offering among brokers.

Access for international investors and to foreign stock exchanges. Because of the broker's relationship with Interactive Brokers, Zacks is available in 218 countries and territories; customers can trade on more than 90 international exchanges.

Where Zacks Trade falls short

What type of investor should choose Zacks Trade?

High-net-worth investors: Zacks Trade has very low fees, as long as you have at least $25,000 or at least $15 in commissions per month to waive the inactivity fee. Plus, some wealthier investors may appreciate the free broker-assisted trades.

Low-tech investors: If navigating webpages, mobile apps or trading software isn't your strong suit, Zacks Trade may appeal to you. In addition to offering old-fashioned phone trades with a human broker for no additional cost, Zacks offers a simplified version of the Interactive Brokers trading platform that comes with less bells and whistles, and may be easier to use for some.

Bond investors: Zacks Trade offers access to Treasuries, corporate bonds and municipal bonds with lean fees, as well as bond ETFs for no additional cost. If you're trading large volumes of corporate or municipal bonds, it's one of the cheapest brokers we review.

What the Nerds think 🤓

Zacks Trade at a glance

How to sign up for a Zacks Trade account

To open a Zacks Trade account, you'll need to head to their website and apply for an account, which involves setting up a login and providing some basic information, such as a Social Security number. Once your account is approved, which may take a few days, you'll need to fund it, which may take a few days more.

Once your funds have settled, you'll be ready to start trading.

What to know about Zacks Trade's fees

These days, most brokers require no minimum to open an account. (Of course, you must fund the account in order to purchase investments.) Zacks Trade is one of the few brokers we review that has held on to its account minimum. However, in late 2024, the company dropped that minimum from $2,500 to $250.

Zacks has also held onto stock trading commissions. Again, most brokers have completely dropped their trading commission to $0 on U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs, which makes Zacks Trade stand out for its comparatively higher fee — 1 cent per share, with a minimum of $1 per trade.

There’s no base commission for options trades, which earns Zacks Trade some marks, but the per-contract fee is on the higher side at $.75 (and $1 for the first contract). Many brokers charge no base commission and set their contract fee at a lower $.65 to $.50, and there are several brokers that no longer charge contract fees at all.

Zacks Trade earns points here for charging few account fees — the broker does not charge a fee to transfer out assets via ACAT as other brokers do. Users also get one free withdrawal per month; subsequent withdrawals cost $1 for an ACH transfer, $4 for a check and $10 for a wire transfer.

There is an inactivity fee of $15 per month, which can be waived by generating at least $15 in trading commissions per month, or by maintaining a balance above $25,000.

Zacks Trade's trading platforms and apps

Zacks offers four trading platforms, all of which are free and available to all customers. Zacks Trade's fledgeling new mobile app is available for iOS and Android, but does not yet have enough user reviews for us to give it a star rating. However, when we took it for a test drive, we found a streamlined version of the Interactive Brokers' platform that felt less cluttered and easier to use.

If you like all the customization opportunities that Interactive Brokers offers, you might miss them with Zacks Trade — but otherwise, Zacks may offer a smoother trading experience.

Among other features, the downloadable Zacks Trade Pro lets you customize the layout to suit your needs, offers custom charting, more than 120 technical indicators and an Options Strategy Lab to help you assess how profitable an options trade might be.

The web-based Zacks Trade is the lower-calorie version of the Pro platform, offering interactive charts, streaming market data and other tools.

All of these tools are created by Interactive Brokers, another discount broker, and Zacks Trade simply rebrands them for its own customers. Zacks also offers Client Portal, which provides access to account documents and balances and can facilitate simple trades. Zacks Trade also offers extended trading hours — 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday.

Like Interactive Brokers, Zacks Trade does not accept payment for order flow (PFOF).

Zacks Trade's investment selection

Zacks Trade offers stocks (U.S. and foreign), mutual funds, ETFs and options, as well as fractional shares of stocks, an increasingly popular offering that allows investors to purchase small pieces of a stock, rather than a full share.

Zacks Trade does not offer IPO access, but it does offer access to over-the-counter (OTC) stocks for no additional cost.

Treasury bonds, corporate bonds and municipal bonds are available, although they're subject to additional fees. For corporate bonds that's $3 per bond, plus 0.1% of face value up to $10,000, and then 0.025% of face value thereafter. For Treasurys, it's $3 per bond, plus 0.025% of face value up to $1 million, after which it's 0.005% of face value. Bond investors who aren't looking to pay those fees can also find bond funds on Zacks Trade.

But as noted above, the company is not a good fit for mutual-fund investors — not only are no transaction-fee-free funds offered, but the company has no mutual funds with minimums below $100. Zacks Trade was also unable to provide data on how many funds it offers with expense ratios below 0.50%.

Like Interactive Brokers, Zacks Trade offers competitive margin rates (although they're not quite as low as Interactive Brokers). Rates top out at 8.83% for accounts with balances below $100,000.

Other key Zacks Trade features

Research and data

In 2024, Zacks launched the Zacks Rank Trading Tool, which offers investors Zacks Investment Research insights right in their brokerage account. Investors can use the tool to screen for stocks that have received a #1 ranking from Zacks across sectors, themes and industries, and then place trades from the tool.

The broker also offers a double-digit number of third-party research, data and news providers, including Bloomberg TV, Trading Central, Illio, Acuity, Estimize, Market Structure Edge, ORATS Backtester, Reuters, Benzinga, Seeking Alpha and Dow Jones Global.

Customer support

While Zacks' phone and chat lines are staffed only during regular business hours (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday), the company offers a rare service: access to a broker, for free. Unlike pretty much every other broker out there, Zacks doesn't charge an extra fee for making trades over the phone, so if you often find yourself without internet service, or just wanting a little extra help, Zacks could be a good solution for you.

However, Zacks loses some marks in this category due to its nonexistent educational resources, and due to its slightly-confusing-to-navigate website.

IRA account

Zacks Trade offers individual retirement accounts (IRAs), and charges no additional fees for IRA investors. However, it offers no retirement planning tools, services or educational content.

Paper trading account

Zacks Trade also offers users access to a paper trading account, where they can hone their investing skills with pretend money. This lets new investors get to know Zacks Trade's platform without risking any actual capital.

Good to know about Zacks Trade

Unknown execution quality

Typically, brokers share their execution quality (the percentage of trades that are executed at an equal or better price than the National Best Bid and Offer) with us as part of this review process. However, Zacks Trade declined to disclose their execution quality to us. We've factored that lack of transparency into their score.

Low interest rate on uninvested cash

When it comes to interest on uninvested cash, Zacks Trade has improved in recent years — it once paid no interest, but as of this writing the broker pays 2.83%. This is better than the 0.01% APY some brokers offer, but it's not as high as it could be — several brokers pay 4% or more.

Is Zacks Trade safe?

All investing comes with a risk of loss, but Zacks Trade accounts are insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) for up to $500,000 — or $250,000 in cash — against broker insolvency.

Zacks Trade takes cybersecurity very seriously. It prompts users to set up a multifactor login system upon signup, logs out users from all of its platforms after a period of inactivity, and uses 128-bit SSL encryption to secure the connection between user devices and its servers.

The broker is also regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Is Zacks Trade right for you?

Zacks basically offers a streamlined version of the Interactive Brokers platform — but at a slightly higher price in exchange for advanced customer service offerings, including free broker-assisted trades.