FinanzaX Investing apps › Robinhood vs Webull
Robinhood vs Webull: which zero-commission app actually fits you
Fees, margin rates and account data verified against each platform's official pricing page and public SEC filings · by FinanzaX Decide
Robinhood and Webull both advertise $0 commission on US stocks, ETFs and standard options, so a fee comparison alone will not tell you much. The real differences sit one layer down: what the optional subscription actually buys you, how much it really costs to borrow on margin, which account types each one supports, and where each company actually comes from.
This is not financial advice. It is a comparison of published fees, verified SEC filings and account features. See our full disclaimer.
Pricing structure: two free plans, two paid upgrades
Both platforms charge nothing to open an account and nothing per trade on US stocks, ETFs and standard options. Where they differ is what their optional monthly subscription includes.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robinhood Standard | $0 | — | $0 commission on US stocks, ETFs and standard options |
| Robinhood Gold | $5 | $50 | Preferred margin rate structure, 3.35% APY on eligible cash, first $1,000 of margin borrowed interest free, a 3% IRA match, discounted index options pricing |
| Webull Standard | $0 | — | $0 commission on US stocks, ETFs and standard options |
| Webull Premium | $3.99 | $40 | Higher cash APY, an IRA match, and a lower tiered margin rate in place of the flat standard rate |
Robinhood Gold costs $5 a month, or $50 a year paid annually, close to $4.17 a month. Webull Premium costs $3.99 a month, or $40 a year, cheaper than Gold on the subscription price alone. What each one is actually worth to you depends heavily on how much you carry on margin, which is where the two plans stop looking similar.
The real difference is margin, not commissions
Neither platform charges a trading commission, so if that were the only variable, this comparison would end here. It does not. Both platforms publish a full margin interest rate schedule, and the two are not close.
| Settled margin balance | Robinhood (all accounts) | Webull Standard | Webull Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | 5.00% | 8.74% | 5.20% |
| $50,000 | 5.00% | 8.74% | 5.00% |
| $250,000 | 4.50% | 8.74% | 4.45% |
| $2,000,000 | 4.25% | 8.74% | 4.20% |
Robinhood's margin rate is not gated behind Gold: the tiered schedule above applies to every Robinhood Financial account, cash or margin, subscribed or not. Gold's specific margin perk is narrower and stacks on top of that schedule: the first $1,000 of margin borrowed is interest free. Webull's structure works the opposite way. The 8.74% Standard rate is flat at every balance shown, and the entire discount lives behind the $3.99/month Premium subscription.
Put the two schedules side by side and a specific pattern shows up: at every balance checked above, Robinhood's free-tier rate and Webull's paid Premium rate land within a quarter point of each other, while Webull's own free Standard tier costs close to double either one. A margin balance carried on Webull without Premium costs meaningfully more than the same balance on Robinhood; on Premium, the two platforms price margin almost identically.
Account types: Webull adds entity and crypto accounts, Robinhood adds trusts
Both support the basics: an individual taxable brokerage account and a traditional or Roth IRA. Past that, the two diverge.
| Account type | Robinhood | Webull |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | Yes | Yes |
| Joint | Yes | Yes |
| IRA (Traditional / Roth) | Yes | Yes |
| Custodial (for a minor) | Yes | Yes |
| Trust | Yes | No |
| Professionally managed | Yes, via Robinhood Strategies | No |
| Entity | No | Yes |
| Dedicated crypto account | No | Yes |
Robinhood is the only one of the two with a trust account and a professionally managed option through Robinhood Strategies. Webull is the only one with a dedicated entity account and its own crypto account type; Robinhood offers crypto trading too, but not as a separate account category.
Company history: Webull's origin in China, and what changed in 2022
This question comes up often enough that it deserves an answer sourced to Webull's own SEC filing, not a repost of a years-old article. Webull Corporation's Form 20-F, filed with the SEC for fiscal year 2025, lays out the timeline in its own words.
Webull's operations began in February 2016 under Hunan Fumi Information Technology Co., Ltd., a company incorporated in China. Webull Financial LLC, the US broker-dealer, was incorporated in Delaware in May 2017 and began offering brokerage services in the US in May 2018. In September 2019, Webull Corporation was incorporated in the Cayman Islands as the group's holding company, and in April 2021 a subsidiary entered into variable interest entity agreements with Hunan Fumi, under which Hunan Fumi held the group's primary business operations, including Webull Financial.
That changed in August 2022. Webull terminated those variable interest entity arrangements and restructured so that Webull Corporation holds direct equity ownership over its operations worldwide. In the company's own words, from the same filing: "Hunan Fumi no longer has any affiliation with us."
So the claim that Webull is currently owned by a Chinese company is not accurate as of this writing; it describes a structure the company itself says it ended in 2022. What is still true and documented: Webull's public SEC ownership filings show minority shareholders based in China, disclosed the way US securities law requires, and the company's origin as a China-founded product is real, sourced history, not a rumor. Neither of those is the same claim as present-day Chinese ownership. See Webull's Form 20-F and its beneficial ownership filings on SEC EDGAR directly.
Who each one is actually for
Robinhood
Zero account minimum, fractional shares from $1, and real $0 commission on stocks, ETFs and standard options, plus the highest excess SIPC coverage among the platforms compared on this site. The honest limitation: a heavy regulatory history, with 66 total disclosure events on FINRA BrokerCheck for Robinhood Financial, including $65 million from the SEC and $57 million from FINRA, both centered on a lack of transparency around the "free" model funded by payment for order flow (see our full SIPC and FINRA comparison for the complete, consistently measured record).
Webull
Zero deposit minimum, real $0 commission, and more advanced trading tools than Robinhood's standard app, built for someone with prior experience. The honest limitation: a $3 million FINRA fine in 2023 for an automated system that improperly approved thousands of accounts to trade options without meeting the requirements, plus a possible $5/month inactivity fee that, as of this writing, is corroborated by a cached copy of Webull's official page but not yet confirmed by a direct render of it, so treat it as a real but unverified risk rather than a settled fact.
Neither platform pays us today
Neither Robinhood nor Webull is an active affiliate partner of ours as of the date verified above (see our full affiliate disclosure). The quiz scoring logic on this site does not weigh commission in any way, and this comparison was not shown to either company before publication.