What Your Day Trading App Costs You Per Year

For an active day trader making 20 round trips a day, the yearly bill runs from roughly $1,000 at a zero-commission app to over $12,000 at Interactive Brokers’ per-share Pro plan, before any margin interest. Carry $75,000 of margin overnight at a published rate near 10.6% and interest alone adds about $8,000 a year, which can swamp the commission gap.

Every fee below was checked on the broker’s or regulator’s own page in October 2026. Fees move, and with your own volume and margin balance plugged in, the ranking can flip.

The trader behind the numbers

The trader in this comparison is invented. They make 20 stock round trips a day, a buy and a sell, for 250 trading days, which is 5,000 round trips a year. The average order is 200 shares of a $50 stock, so each sale is about $10,000. They also trade options, opening 30 contracts and closing 30 a week for 50 weeks, which is 1,500 opened and 1,500 closed, or 3,000 contracts, and they usually carry about $75,000 of margin debt overnight.

Commissions, broker by broker

Interactive Brokers’ stock commission page lists IBKR Pro Fixed at $0.005 a share with a $1 minimum per order. Two hundred shares times half a cent is exactly $1, so each side costs $1 and each round trip $2. Over 5,000 round trips that’s $10,000. Pro Tiered charges $0.0035 a share up to 300,000 shares a month with a $0.35 minimum, so 200 shares cost $0.70 a side, or $7,000 a year, but Tiered passes exchange and clearing fees through on top. On options, IBKR Pro charges $0.65 a contract at this volume (premium of $0.10 or more), so 3,000 contracts add $1,950.

IBKR Lite is $0 on U.S. stocks and $0.65 a contract on options, so the same trader pays $1,950. Lite is open to U.S. residents only.

tastytrade’s pricing page shows it charges nothing on stock and ETF trades. Equity options cost $1 a contract to open, capped at $10 a leg, and $0 to close. With 1,500 contracts opened, that’s $1,500. The pricing page adds that exchange, clearing and regulatory fees still apply to opening and closing trades, so the real number lands a bit higher.

Webull’s fee schedule says it doesn’t charge commissions on stocks, ETFs or options listed on U.S. exchanges, apart from a $0.50 per contract fee on certain index options. moomoo also advertises $0 commission for U.S. residents, with index option contract fees and exchange fees possible. Our trader pays $0 in commissions at either one.

Schwab and Fidelity are $0 online for stocks plus $0.65 a contract for options, or $1,950 here. At Fidelity, a buy-to-close order on an option priced at $0.65 or less carries no contract fee. E*TRADE lists $0.65 a contract, dropping to $0.50 for customers who make 30 or more trades a quarter. This trader clears that bar before lunch on the first day of the quarter, so options cost $1,500.

How do the totals compare?

Outside IBKR Pro, the spread between the cheapest and priciest app is under $2,000 a year for this trader.

Regulatory fees every app passes on

No broker can waive these. The SEC’s Section 31 fee is charged on the dollar value of sales, and the SEC’s fiscal 2026 fee rate advisory set it at $20.60 per million dollars for sales on or after April 4, 2026. Before that date the rate was $0.00. The new rate stays until 60 days after Congress passes the SEC’s fiscal 2027 funding. On a $10,000 sale, $20.60 per million works out to about 21 cents. Twenty-one cents is nothing on one trade. This trader sells 5,000 times a year, though, and 5,000 times $0.206 is $1,030. That’s a real line item at the “free” apps, where it can be the largest single cost on the stock side.

FINRA’s Trading Activity Fee is normally a fraction of a cent per share sold with a cap per trade. In September 2026 FINRA filed, for immediate effect, a rule change pausing the TAF for transactions from October 1 through December 31, 2026, with the fee coming back on January 1, 2027. Webull’s and IBKR’s fee pages show it at $0 right now. If you’re comparing confirmations from November with ones from last spring, that’s why the line disappeared.

Margin interest is the bigger bill

Every percentage point of margin rate costs $750 a year on a $75,000 balance. Fidelity’s margin rate table is a good example of how tiered pricing works. Its base rate has been 10.825% since September 18, 2026. Debit balances from $50,000 to $99,999 pay base minus 0.20%, or 10.625%, while balances under $25,000 pay 12.075%. At 10.625%, $75,000 costs $7,968.75 a year, about $664 a month.

Interactive Brokers prices margin as a benchmark rate plus a spread and blends the tiers, so the first $100,000 is charged at one rate and the next slice at a lower one. Its posted table loads in a calculator on the margin rates page, so run your own balance through it. On $75,000, a broker charging three points less than Fidelity would save $2,250 a year, which by itself outweighs most of the options fee differences in the table above. Look up the rate for your actual balance on each firm’s page the week you decide, since benchmark rates move with the Fed.

Margin also carries risk beyond the interest. Losses on borrowed money can exceed your deposit, and a broker can sell positions without asking if equity drops too far. Interest is generally charged on debit balances you carry past the close, so a trader who’s flat every night pays little or none of it.

The $25,000 rule is going away

For years, day trading in a margin account meant the pattern day trader rule and its $25,000 minimum. FINRA replaced it with intraday margin requirements effective June 4, 2026. Per FINRA’s investor explainer, there’s no more trade-count label and no $25,000 floor; you need $2,000 of equity for margin trading, and if your equity doesn’t cover your positions during the day you have to fix the deficit promptly or risk a restriction of up to 90 days. The phase-in muddies this. Firms that need more time can keep the old setup until October 20, 2027, so your broker may still be counting day trades. Check its current policy before you assume the $25,000 hurdle is gone for you.

If you’re not a day trader

Most of the costs above don’t touch a buy-and-hold investor. Someone who buys index funds a few times a year pays $0 in commissions almost everywhere, never borrows on margin, and sells rarely enough that Section 31 fees are pennies. For that person the fee that matters is the fund’s expense ratio. On $50,000, a 0.03% fund costs $15 a year and a 0.50% fund costs $250, every year, whichever app holds it. An options trader sits in between. Contract fees are the line to compare, and at 3,000 contracts a year the gap between $0.65 and $0.50 is $450.

Fees aren’t the only cost

A free trade filled a penny worse on 200 shares costs $2, the same as an IBKR Pro round trip. Execution quality is measurable. The SEC’s amended Rule 605 expands monthly execution-quality reports to more broker-dealers and adds a summary report, with compliance due August 1, 2026, and brokers already publish where they route orders and what they’re paid for it in quarterly Rule 606 reports. Reading both for the two brokers you’re choosing between tells you more than a fee table.

What to do with your own numbers

Pull last year’s trade count, average share size and average overnight margin balance from your statements. Multiply out commissions for each plan, add Section 31 at $20.60 per million of sales, and multiply your margin balance by each broker’s tiered rate for that balance. If switching saves a few thousand a year and you’re comfortable with the other platform, an ACATS transfer moves the account; ask the old broker about its transfer-out fee first. On this trader’s numbers IBKR Lite beats Pro by about $10,000 a year in commissions, so Pro makes sense mainly for traders who need its routing or its lower tiered rates at much higher volume.

Related reading

• Is Day Trading Worth It? What the Data Says
• Can You Make $1,000 a Month Stock Trading? Running the Math
• Do Trading Apps Report Your Trades to the IRS?

Commissions and margin rates here were read off each broker’s pricing page in October 2026, and margin rates follow the Fed, so recheck the page for your own balance before you move an account. Trading on margin can lose more than you deposit.