Cobra Trading is the direct access broker to beat if you short hard-to-borrow stocks, and as of the June 2026 PDT repeal it takes $10,000 to get in the door, not the $25,000 to $30,000 most reviews still quote. The trade-offs are real: an 8% margin rate, Windows-only desktop software, and a fee schedule that rewards volume you may not have yet.
Our rating: 4.4 / 5
Best for: short-biased and momentum day traders pushing 100,000+ shares a month who need locates, direct routing, and a human on the desk.
NOT for: buy-and-hold investors, casual traders below the $10,000 minimum, anyone who wants futures or forex in the same account, or Mac-only traders.
Price: equities from $0.003/share (down to $0.0015 at 10M+ shares/month); options from $0.50/contract; DAS Trader Pro $125/month or Sterling Trader Pro $150/month, both waived at 200,000 shares/month; market data from $20/month; $10,000 to open, $9,000 maintained.
Pros
- Locate desk on live chat; upfront locate fees never multiply overnight
- $10,000 minimum after the PDT repeal; CenterPoint held at $30,000
Cons
- 8% margin rate against CenterPoint’s 5.31% for overnight holds
- Windows only; the official FAQ says Mac isn’t supported
What is Cobra Trading
Cobra Trading is a direct access brokerage founded in 2004 by Chadd Hessing and headquartered in Carrollton, Texas. It’s registered with FINRA and the NFA in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, and it’s a SIPC member. Client accounts clear through Wedbush Securities or Curvature Securities; Wedbush-cleared accounts carry excess coverage from Lloyd’s of London up to $25 million per client on top of standard SIPC protection.
The pitch has never been zero commissions or a slick phone app. It’s execution infrastructure for active traders: professional desktop platforms, a long menu of order routes, a locate desk that answers in chat, and per-share pricing that drops as your volume climbs. Futures and forex aren’t offered in a Cobra account; the separate Venom by Cobra Trading brand handles those, along with smaller accounts starting at $3,000.
If you’re still deciding whether this category of broker fits how you trade, start with direct access versus retail brokers, then come back. The rest of our direct access broker coverage sits one level up.
The $10,000 minimum and the new margin rules
This is the part most reviews you’ll find have wrong. FINRA’s pattern day trader rule, with its $25,000 minimum equity requirement, was eliminated on June 4, 2026 and replaced by intraday margin standards under Rule 4210, per FINRA Regulatory Notice 26-10. Cobra Trading updated its requirements for the new regime: $10,000 to open a day-trading account, $9,000 maintained, for US and non-US residents alike. Below that, the Venom brand takes deposits from $3,000.
Under the new framework, Cobra’s own PDT page states qualified day-trading accounts get 4:1 intraday and 2:1 overnight buying power on liquid stocks, with unlimited intraday margin trades instead of the old three-round-trips-in-five-days cap. The regulatory floor for any margin account is still $2,000, and Cobra says it intends to offer a product built around that minimum. Margin calls and liquidations still exist; the repeal removed a gate, not the risk.
Two things are worth saying plainly. First, $10,000 is a deliberate choice, not the regulatory floor, and it buys you into a service model built for active traders. Second, the contrast with the closest peer is stark: CenterPoint Securities publicly committed to keeping its $30,000 minimum after the rule change. Cobra is now the accessible door into serious direct access. For the full rules picture, see the intraday margin requirements explained.
Platforms: DAS, Sterling, and a TradingView route
Cobra resells the two desktop platforms that dominate direct access trading rather than building its own.
DAS Trader Pro ($125/month) is the default for most day traders here: direct access order routing, multiple stop types, hotkeys, multi-monitor layouts, 30+ technical studies, a real-time market scanner, and real-time news, per the official platform page. Web and mobile access (DAS Active Web, iDAS for iPhone, DAS Android) is included with the software fee. We cover the software itself, including its limits, in our DAS Trader review; the short version is that DAS executes brilliantly and scans adequately, which is why many Cobra clients pair it with a dedicated scanner.
Sterling Trader Pro ($150/month) is the heavier equities-and-options workstation, fully customizable, with web and mobile available as a $25 add-on or $50 standalone. The choice between DAS and Sterling is mostly muscle memory; both route directly and both carry the in-platform locate monitor.
Cobra TradingView integration lets you trade through the TradingView interface if charts are your home base. And both core software fees disappear at 200,000 shares a month, which an active trader doing 10,000 shares a day clears comfortably.
One hard limit, straight from the official FAQ: the trading software isn’t supported on macOS. A Windows PC is required for the desktop platforms. The web versions run in a browser, but if your whole setup is a MacBook, this isn’t your broker.
Commissions and fees
All numbers below come from the official pricing page, verified June 2026. Routing and regulatory fees apply on top of commissions, and your starting tier stays in effect until you request a change.
| Equities (per share) | Monthly volume |
|---|---|
| $0.003 | 0–100K shares |
| $0.00275 | 100K–500K |
| $0.0025 | 500K–1M |
| $0.002 | 1M–5M |
| $0.00175 | 5M–10M |
| $0.0015 | 10M–20M |
| Options (per contract) | Monthly volume |
|---|---|
| $0.50 | 0–2,000 contracts |
| $0.40 | 2,001–10,000 |
| $0.30 | 10,000+ |
| Platform and key account fees | Cost |
|---|---|
| DAS Trader Pro | $125/month, waived at 200K shares/month, web and mobile included |
| Sterling Trader Pro | $150/month, waived at 200K shares/month; web/mobile $25 add-on |
| DAS Basic market data (non-pro) | $20/month |
| DAS Advanced data, non-pro (adds OTC Level 1 and 2) | $70/month |
| Margin rate | 8% flat, on balances from $1 to $1M |
| Broker-assisted trades | Free |
| Quarterly inactivity fee | $15 |
| Outgoing ACAT | $95 |
| Outgoing wire | $20 domestic, $25 international |
Here’s what the maker-taker structure means in dollars. A 1,000-share round trip that removes liquidity both ways on the NSDQ route costs $6.00 in commission plus $7.00 in remove-liquidity charges plus about $0.15 in regulatory fees: call it $13. The same round trip posting limit orders that add liquidity on NSDQ earns a $3.00 rebate, netting roughly $3. On thin names you won’t always have the luxury of waiting on the bid, but the routing menu is where Cobra accounts get cheap or expensive, and it’s under your control.
Monthly cost of ownership, worked: a trader doing 5,000 shares a day across 20 sessions (100,000 shares) pays about $300 in commissions at $0.003, plus $125 for DAS and $20 for basic data, roughly $445 before routing fees. Double the volume to 200,000 shares and the software fee vanishes: about $600 in commissions plus $20 data, with no platform bill, and you qualify for Cobra PRIME (next section). The fee structure isn’t hiding anything; it’s just built for people who trade a lot.
Billing terms worth knowing before you commit: software fees bill the month after volumes are calculated, and if you cancel a platform, the current and next month’s charges still apply, per the pricing page. That’s a one-time cost of timing, not a trap, but plan the cancellation a billing cycle ahead and get written confirmation from the desk. The quarterly $15 inactivity fee, for context, sits well below CenterPoint’s $25 per month, so dormant accounts bleed slower here than at the closest peer. Pricing-page fine print also discloses that Cobra receives payment for order flow on certain routes and reserves the right to mark up routing fees; since you choose your routes on a direct access platform, you can route around the PFOF venues if that matters to you, and the disclosure itself is more candor than this category usually offers.
Routing and execution
A common objection runs: why pay Cobra’s fees when Lightspeed or Interactive Brokers also offer direct access? The honest answer is that DAS and Sterling are broker-neutral software; the execution engine is largely the same wherever you license it. What actually differs between direct access brokers is the route list, the fee schedule attached to each route, the locate inventory behind the short button, and what happens when you call the desk mid-trade.
On those axes, Cobra’s published route tables list roughly two dozen equity routes per platform, including rebate-eligible ECN routes, free routes like LAMP and IEX-equivalents, and dark-pool and algo routes (VWAP, TWAP variants). Rebates can’t take a trade’s commission below zero, and sub-$1 stocks aren’t rebate-eligible. Broker-assisted trades are free, which matters exactly once: the day your platform freezes while you’re holding size. Most brokers charge $20 or more for that phone call; CenterPoint bills $0.0095 per share with a $20 minimum.
Short locates: the reason this broker exists
Shorting low-float runners is Cobra’s home turf. Easy-to-borrow status shows directly on the Level 2 window (an S flag on DAS, ETB on Sterling), and for everything else there are two paths: the in-platform Locate Monitor with multiple locate sources, or the live chat desk, where reps will hunt inventory for you. Per the official locate guide, the desk can often find non-easy-to-borrow shares with no upfront cost, and when a fee applies, you pay it once: there’s no overnight multiplier if you hold the short past the close.
That single policy is worth real money to swing shorts. CenterPoint, by comparison, charges locate fees daily and applies an overnight borrow rate set at settlement. Cobra also runs two primary clearing firms, Wedbush and Curvature, which in practice means two pools of borrow inventory behind one account relationship. If locates are new territory, short locates explained covers the mechanics; for how Cobra stacks against the other locate-first brokers, see the best brokers for short selling.
Locate prices themselves float with market borrow supply and demand, so nobody can promise you cheap borrows on the day’s hottest ticker. Start your locate search early; per the official guide, earlier requests have better odds of free or cheap inventory.
Cobra PRIME: free software for volume traders
Cobra PRIME is the most underreported thing about this broker. Clients who trade an average of 200,000 equity shares a month and keep at least $25,000 in the account get a points allowance that covers third-party trading software outright, on top of the platform-fee waiver, at no cost. The partner list on the official PRIME page includes Trade Ideas Standard (17 points) and Premium (29 points), TradingView Essential through Premium, TrendSpider Elite, Benzinga Pro, Dilution Tracker, TraderVue, TraderSync, and more. New clients become eligible after two months of trading; fall below the volume average and the subscriptions cancel or convert to a discounted rate. Market data fees aren’t included.
Run the math on what that’s worth. A Trade Ideas Premium subscription is a four-figure annual expense for the traders most likely to want it, and it’s the single most common pairing with DAS-based brokers: DAS executes, the scanner finds the trades. Getting it bundled into volume you were doing anyway changes the total cost of the stack. The details, including what the qualification actually requires, are in our guide to getting Trade Ideas free through your broker.
Learning curve and support
Don’t expect retail-app hand-holding. DAS and Sterling are professional tools: hotkeys, route selection, and locate workflows all have to be learned, and the à la carte market data menu takes a sitting to decode. Cobra offers demos of the platforms on request, which is the right way to spend a weekend before funding. If you’ve only ever traded on a phone app, budget weeks, not days, to get fluent, and paper trade the hotkeys before they’re attached to real money.
Support is the counterweight, and it’s the thing the firm builds its identity around. The desk runs phone and live chat from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm ET Monday through Thursday (to 5:00 pm Friday), the brokers listed on the official about page hold real securities licenses (Series 7, 24, 57, 63 among them), and locate requests get handled by humans in chat during the trading day. Broker-assisted trades being free is itself a support policy. Pre-market and post-market access runs 4:00 am–8:00 pm ET. What you won’t find is a deep education library or a structured course program; the blog covers trading basics, but this is a broker for people who already know what they’re doing.
Who should open an account, and who shouldn’t
Open an account if you’re a momentum or short-biased day trader doing six figures of share volume a month, you need borrows on names your retail broker flags as unshortable, and you want a desk that picks up. The $10,000 entry point makes that profile reachable earlier in a trading career than it used to be.
Skip it if you’re below the minimum, trade a handful of times a week, or hold positions for months: $145+/month in fixed costs and an 8% margin rate are a poor fit for low-frequency trading, and a quality retail broker costs you nothing in software. Skip it too if you need futures and equities in one account, since futures live at Venom, or if you’re committed to macOS. And keep the base rate in view regardless of broker: most day traders lose money, and no fee schedule changes that.
Alternatives
The serious alternative is CenterPoint Securities: same category, same platform-and-locates DNA, with a 5.31% margin rate and cheaper top-tier commissions ($0.001 at 10M–20M shares versus Cobra’s $0.0015) but a $30,000 minimum and daily locate fees. Our CenterPoint Securities review covers it fully, and the head-to-head lives at Cobra Trading vs CenterPoint. If you’re not committed to the direct access model at all, the broker rankings lay out the retail options that cost nothing monthly and cover the other 90% of traders.
Verdict
Cobra Trading rates 4.3 overall under our rating methodology, and the sub-scores tell you exactly where it wins and where it costs you.
| Criterion | Score |
|---|---|
| Core capability (execution, routing, locates) | 4.5 |
| Value | 4.0 |
| Ease of use | 3.5 |
| Trust and transparency | 4.5 |
| Support and education | 4.5 |
| Overall (weighted) | 4.4 |
Core capability is the headline: direct routing on the two best platforms in the category, dual clearing firms behind the borrow inventory, and a once-only locate fee policy that beats the daily-fee norm. Trust scores high because the entire fee schedule, route markups and payment for order flow included, is published rather than buried. Value lands at 4.0 for the intended user: the waivers and PRIME make the stack cheap at volume, while the 8% margin rate against CenterPoint’s 5.31% is the one number that’s verifiably above a direct peer. Ease of use carries the honest 3.5 of every professional platform with à la carte everything.
If the short-selling case is what brought you here, the next read is Cobra Trading vs CenterPoint, where the $20,000 gap in minimums and the margin-rate spread get settled by how you actually trade. And if you’ll be clearing 200,000 shares a month anyway, see how the PRIME program covers Trade Ideas before you pay for a scanner out of pocket.
FAQ
What is the minimum to open a Cobra Trading account?
$10,000 to open a day-trading account, with a $9,000 maintained balance, for both US and non-US residents, per the official FAQ as of June 2026. Smaller accounts from $3,000 go through the Venom by Cobra Trading brand.
Is Cobra Trading legit and insured?
Yes. Cobra Trading is FINRA and NFA registered in all 50 states and Puerto Rico and is a SIPC member. Accounts clearing through Wedbush Securities carry additional Lloyd’s of London coverage up to $25 million per client; Curvature-cleared accounts carry standard SIPC protection.
Is Cobra Trading good for short selling?
It’s one of the strongest brokers in the category for it. Easy-to-borrow status displays on the Level 2 window, locates run through an in-platform monitor or the live chat desk, and upfront locate fees are paid once with no overnight multiplier.
Does Cobra Trading work on Mac?
No. The official FAQ states the desktop trading software isn’t supported on macOS and recommends a Windows PC. Browser-based web platforms and the iOS and Android apps still work, but the full desktop experience requires Windows.
Is there a free trial?
There’s no self-serve trial, but platform demos are available on request through the demo page, and that’s the right move before committing to $125–$150 a month in software.
How do I cancel the platform software?
Contact the desk by phone, chat, or email. Note the published billing term: when software is canceled, the current and next month’s charges still apply, so time the cancellation a cycle ahead and keep written confirmation.