Interactive Brokers reviews, ratings, pros and cons, complaints from brokerage customers

Interactive Brokers Ratings

Interactive Brokers average user rating: brokerage firms reviews

Interactive Brokers BrokerageReviews.org rating: 3-star brokerage firm rating

Interactive Brokers (IB) Review: Stocks, ETFs & Options Trading Commissions

Stocks and ETFs: $0.005 per share with $1 minimum per trade for SMART routed orders
Options: $0.70 per contract plus exchange fees
Mutual funds: $14.95 per transaction

Minimum To Open IB Online Brokerage Account

$10,000

Interactive Brokers Promotional Code/Offer/Bonus 2012

(no promotional offers at this time)

Interactive Brokers (IB) Reviews


by Julius, 11/22/2011 Pros: Cons: Customer support is very important in any kind of business and it also reflects the amount of value that the business places on its customers. If the customer service is in the trash, so i consider the business to be in the trash as well. There are other competitive brokerages out there.
by Skyhawk, 5/4/2011 Pros: commisions, fast executions, powerful platform, all order types Cons: platform learning curve, customer service Been using them for 8 years and is by far the best broker I have used in terms of commission, order entry types, executions. Yeah they nickel and dime you on commission fees and the $1 minimum commission can actually run as high as 1.66 for options and stocks! Big deal. It's 1/2 cent per share, no one else comes close. If you trade 4000 per trade, then shop around. Platform does have a high learning curve, but is powerful if you are a day trader with various enter/exit strategies. Can't recall any outages in 8 years. Customer Service, well they don't like to be bothered. But only had a couple issues over the years and they were resolved satisfactory.
by Taw x, 2/18/2011 Pros: Global markets Cons: Customer service + Global markets + Stocks, options, forex on one platform + Good margin rate - Extremely poor customer service. Trying to correct foreign currency conversions, placed multiple real orders I had to reverse - at a considerable loss. - Reps do not understand their own trading platform - Poor spreads; consistently worse than WFB on identical trades placed moments appart - Hidden fees that lead to more fees; fees can only be paid at the end of a monthly cycle, at which point the fee for the next month is assessed, but not posted
by Spearstorm, 11/30/2010 Pros: Cons: - Cheap commissions but they nickel and dime you to death in hidden fees. - Funds availability policy is larcenous, they squat on deposits at least an extra day just to steal overnight float. - Customer service is worse than an airline ! They're only available via online chat and all they do is just blast URL's of their policies, BUT THE POLICIES CONTRADICT EACHOTHER AND WHEN THE ISSUE IS RAISED THEY JUST REPLY " We'll tell the programmers to update those conflicts" and refuse to abide by their own published guidelines / that is actionable by the US SEC. - Lousy order execution and their cwappy "Trader Workstation" requires JAVA JRE and is tedious to setup and use, it SHUTS ITSELF DOWN EVERY DAY AND YOU HAVE NO CHOICE EXCEPT TO CONFIGURE THE TIME OF DAY IT SUICIDES BUT FOREX IS A 24 HOUR MARKETPLACE AND PROGRAM TRADES WON'T EXECUTE AFTER TWS EXECUTES ITS DAILY SUICIDE ! - They claim to be the "Professionals Gateway to Markets" but professionals laugh at IB and all IB does is rip off the uniniatated.
by John B, 11/26/2010 Pros: Cons: IB trades against retail customers, delays quotes by 7-10 seconds so that they may fill orders for the firm at better market prices than those shown to customer, routinely "scalp" retail customer like it is their right just for being in the business. Customer service NEVER gives an adjustment you are entitled to - tell you submit a "ticket" for review by their "committee"
by john, 11/24/2010 Pros: powerful tools to trade Cons: hidden cost in other fees (including cancellation fee) You think the cost to trade is low by looking at commission fee, but the hidden cost will bite you. No other broker charge of modifying orders, but IB does.
by Alex, 11/17/2010 Pros: Cons: More like 3.5 to give IB their due. Yes, they're haughty and arrogant and don't like simple nagging questions, however they go about their business real well. Deposits/withdrawals are processed real fast. The platform takes getting used to but allows to trade a wild variety of stocks/futures/options/CFDs/forex/etc. (although i can't trade a Korean Won or Indian Rupee or Russian Rouble, e.g.!). One can use the API as well to auto-trade. Been with them for three years and overall happy despite their arrogant service (which i tend to put back in place early in e-conversation). Oh, and one more thing. IB gives you a very impersonal feeling. Like they would side with the government or any organization or any set of rules much quicker than to take a trader's situation to heart.
by Bruno Gideon, 10/18/2010 Pros: Cons: I worked with InteractiveBrokers for several months now and never had a problem. Their customer support is extremely fast in answering questions. They have an outstanding platform like IO have never seenand execute the trades immediately. And their trading fee is the best in the business, as far as I know. I wouldn't have anything to complain - the opposite is true.
by Steve, 10/13/2010 Pros: Cons: The best of no worlds, and the worst of some. They offer support for Ninja trader, but that is only possible with a very old version of TWS, which dosn't work properly. Even the new version of TWS is completely terrible and very confusing. It even turns itself off each day, even if you are in the middle of a trade it turns it self off, potentially costing large amounts of money (eg if you run a robotic trading strategy). There tick data isn't real tick data and there system sometimes goes offline during high trading periods. They charge a commission for all Forex trades, and then they leave the cash in the foreign currency in your account at the end of the trade, they will not convert it back for you. So you have to go into the terrible TWS application and convert it back using the high spread 'Ideal' platform, with more commissions and even then it dosn't convert it all. The costs for the average trader are high. Also you find they fill you at different prices, and charge you a separate commission for each separate fill and if the fills break up to less than $25,000 each, then they put it back to the high spread 'Ideal' platform. Support is hit and miss, sometimes its barely OK, sometimes it is non existent. I don't get how the biggest companies can be so bad yet continue operating ... I thought competition was suppose to provide us with good products and service ?
by Andrea, 10/3/2010 Pros: Cons: I am trading with them for a few months, and for standard trading (no news) they have very low spreads and low commissions, so I think they would be very good, except that sometimes my stops are not filled!! So I need to close manually. There was no disaster, but that is scary. With regards to trading high vol (for ex news), I tried twice and got slippage twice: I got a slippage of 15/6 pips on a major move (70pip in 1 minute) . Slippage of 4 pips on a minor move of around (10 pips then reverse).
by Kimk, 10/1/2010 Pros: Cons: IB has one of the cheapest commissions in the industry. The execution is usually very good, the platform is powerful and reliable. The customer service is almost non-existent, but in 6 years, I needed them maybe 3-4 times. For active traders, this is probably the best choice.
by MTRIG, 7/8/2010 Pros: Cons: IB has super fast executes, extended trading, great trading platforms for BlackBerry, Web, and Desktop.
by Anon, 6/30/2010 Pros: Cons: Other Fees & poor customer service IB charges extra fees for almost any thing except execution. Here are some answers from their customer service: Thank you for contacting Interactive Brokers. 1. An order that is not modified, canceled or executed will not incur a cancellation fee. 2. Expired trades do not incur charges. 3. You could review your audit trail to see which trades have been canceled. (and hence find out cancellation charges)
by dhpar, 5/9/2010 Pros: Cons: IB has many good points (mentioned in other comments here on ET) but there are many serious problems. For instance: 1. most of small-caps and mid-caps is margined at 100% (since the last autumn)! This is outright ridiculous for margin accounts as it eats a lot of capital. 2. Standalone trading platform is changing way to often and often with bugs, i.e. not enough of UAT is performed. 3. Customer support is bad (but it is getting better recently). 4. Commissions for some equities (e.g. CAD low priced) may be high despite all this hype about the low cost trading. For instance if you do a single trade buying 10,000 stocks for CAD20K you end up paying CAD200 for a single trade. That compares with 10CAD offered by other firms - a joke! 5. Market data are slow and/or getting stuck. This is a recent phenomenon after one of multiple upgrades. I have heard IB is aware of it but did not fix it yet. The current result is that you do not know what you trade real-time. In other words, for some traders (who are not lazy to look around) there are better deals to be found. It will save you a lot of money...
by Fasti, 3/24/2010 Pros: Cons: best trading platforms but a bit too difficult for beginners
by mrwoody, 3/21/2010 Pros: Cons: IB's cancellation fee applies when you cancel or modify, for example, a stop-loss order. E.g. you place a stop loss for 4.80 then decide you want to change it to 4.70. Most other brokers do not charge a fee to cancel/modify an order, AFAIK. IB's excuse for charging a fee for cancelled/modified orders is that the exchanges charge a fee and IB's just passing it on (sort of). It's VERY highly doubtful that they charge a fee for orders that simply expire--that would be ridiculous. Don't know about any rebates, you might ask them those kinds of questions.
by LongArm, 2/19/2010 Pros: Cons: IB is cheap if you don't trade many shares or if you scale in and/or out of your trades, but the usual complaints have to do with their customer service (or lack thereof) and their trading platform.
by clockwork71, 1/2/2010 Pros: Cons: I use them presently, and have very few complaints. The charts are total crap, but that's about it as far as I can say. It's great to have access to 80+ markets too. I find the commissions are dirt cheap on just about everything. A perfect example: Most major brokers are asking "Just 9.99 a trade" or some such other crap for active traders......I pay $1. So while they are $20 in expenses - I have $2. That's the biggest thing. I do have to agree that the customer service is horrible, but sometimes you are lucky and get a decent human being. Just don't count on it.

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Interactive Brokers (IB) reviewed by BrokerageReview.org users. 18 customer reviews. Rating: 3.

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