Webull is one of the cheapest ways to day trade liquid US stocks, and the gap between it and other retail brokers is wider than the $0 commission headline suggests. Real-time Level 2 and options data cost $3.99 a month here; the tools (hotkeys, a price ladder, chart trading) sit closer to a trading platform than a phone app. The catch is structural, not hidden: order flow is sold, standard margin runs 8.74% no matter how big your balance is, and shorting thin names gets expensive fast.
Our rating: 4.3 / 5
Best for: cost-sensitive day traders working small accounts in liquid, listed stocks, especially anyone who wants cheap Level 2 and a serious paper trading mode.
NOT for: traders whose edge depends on picking their own routes or borrowing inventory on demand. That buyer should be shopping direct access brokers, not retail apps.
Price: the brokerage account is free with no minimum deposit. Webull Premium runs $3.99/month or $40/year and adds Nasdaq TotalView Level 2, OPRA real-time options data, reduced margin rates (5.20% down to 3.90%), and 3.35% APY on uninvested cash.
Pros
- $0 commissions on US-listed stocks, ETFs, and equity options
- Level 2 and OPRA real-time data included for $3.99 a month
Cons
- Standard margin is 8.74% at every balance tier without Premium
- Shorting low-priced stocks requires at least $5 per share maintenance
What Webull is
Webull is a commission-free retail broker built around its own software: a mobile app, a browser platform called WebTrade, and a downloadable desktop application for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Accounts are carried by Webull Financial LLC, a US broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC, with clearing through Apex.
The published fee schedule is unusually plain about the business model: revenue comes from stock loans, interest on cash balances, margin interest, and payment for order flow. That candor matters later in this review, because the revenue model is the core trade-off you accept for free trades. You can trade stocks, ETFs, equity and index options, futures, OTC stocks, bonds, and crypto, and overnight sessions are supported on all three platforms.
The data deal: Level 2 for less than lunch
Start here, because this is where Webull genuinely beats most of the retail field. Day traders need real-time depth, and depth is usually where “free” brokers claw back their margin.
Webull sells Nasdaq TotalView Level 2 standalone for $2.99 a month, first month free, and every new registrant gets a complimentary month automatically. TotalView shows the best 50 bids and asks for Nasdaq-, NYSE-, NYSE American-, and regional-listed stocks, plus the NOII auction imbalance feed for the opening and closing crosses. If you trade the open, imbalance data at this price is a legitimate edge over trading blind on Level 1.
The better deal for most active traders is Webull Premium at $3.99 a month, or $40 a year paid annually. Premium bundles TotalView Level 2 and OPRA real-time options quotes, drops margin rates from 8.74% to a tiered 5.20% down to 3.90%, pays 3.35% APY on uninvested cash in cash accounts, and discounts index options and futures contract fees to a tiered $0.50, $0.40, and $0.30 per contract by monthly volume. Run the math: TotalView alone costs $35.88 a year. The annual Premium plan costs $4.12 more and adds everything else. If you want Level 2 at all, Premium is the obvious configuration.
One billing trap, documented in Webull’s own Premium help pages: subscribing to Premium does not cancel any standalone market data subscriptions you already pay for. You have to cancel those manually through the App Store, Google Play, or PayPal, or you’ll pay twice for the same feed. Set a reminder the day you upgrade.
Desktop tools: closer to a platform than an app
Webull Desktop (version 9.0 as of this writing) is where the day trading workflow actually lives. Per the official desktop platform page, order entry comes four ways: a depth-based price ladder, the TurboTrader rapid-order panel, configurable hotkeys for keyboard-driven trading, and chart trading for placing orders directly on the chart. That is the right toolset for momentum trading; hotkeys plus a ladder is how you get filled on a stock that’s moving instead of fumbling through an order ticket.
Layouts are widget-based, drag-and-drop, with unlimited chart layouts, professional presets, and the option to load popular configurations shared by the community. The charting stack includes an indicator editor for customizing studies, a full drawing toolset, automated technical signals, and an order flow toolset that visualizes prints and volume in real time. A performance widget tracks cumulative P&L, win rate, profit factor, and trade duration for futures accounts, which is more journaling than most retail brokers build in.
Mobile and WebTrade cover stocks, ETFs, options, and overnight sessions; complex multi-leg options, OTC stocks, and IPO access run on desktop and WebTrade per the platform comparison on the same page. If you’re day trading with real intent, plan on the desktop app.
The screener, and what it can’t replace
The built-in screener, documented in Webull’s own course materials, filters the market on price, market cap, volume, turnover rate, financial ratios like P/E and ROE, and preset technical conditions such as a MACD golden cross or a bullish engulfing bar. There’s a filter for shortable and marginable stocks, and results save straight to a watchlist. For building a nightly watchlist, it does the job at a price of zero.
It is a filtering tool, though, and momentum day trading runs on a different machine: streaming alerts that fire the moment a gapper crosses relative volume thresholds or comes out of a halt. That’s the dedicated-scanner category, and the standard pairing is exactly what it sounds like: Webull executes for free while a purpose-built scanner finds the stocks in play. Our Trade Ideas review covers the tool most traders bolt on for that job.
Paper trading worth taking seriously
Webull’s paper trading simulates stocks, ETFs, options, and futures with real-time data, unlimited virtual cash, and the full charting stack (60+ indicators), on mobile, desktop, and web. The TurboTrader panel works in simulation, which means you can rehearse the same hotkey-driven entries you’d use live. Most retail paper modes are toys; this one is a usable training environment, and it’s free before you ever fund an account. If you’re new, that’s where your first hundred trades belong. Compare the field in our paper trading apps roundup.
Pricing and fees
All figures verified against webull.com’s pricing, Premium, and help center pages in June 2026.
| Cost item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Stocks and ETFs (US-listed) | $0 commission |
| Equity options | $0 per contract |
| Certain index options | $0.50 per contract ($0.50–$0.30 tiered with Premium) |
| Minimum deposit | $0 (margin features require $2,000 equity) |
| Standard margin rate | 8.74% at every balance tier |
| Premium margin rate | 5.20% under $25k, stepping down to 3.90% above $25M |
| Webull Premium | $3.99/month or $40/year |
| Nasdaq TotalView Level 2 (standalone) | $2.99/month, first month free |
| Outgoing stock transfer | $75, charged by the clearing firm |
| Equity algo order types | $0.0050 per share |
“Free” still isn’t zero on the sell side. Regulatory pass-throughs apply: the FINRA trading activity fee is $0.000195 per share sold (capped at $9.79 per trade) and the SEC fee is $0.0000206 of dollar volume on sells. Sell 1,000 shares of a $20 stock and you’ll pay roughly $0.20 in TAF and $0.41 in SEC fees: about $0.61 on a $20,000 exit. Real, but rounding error. OTC traders should read the schedule more carefully; sub-$1 stocks in size over 100,000 shares carry $0.0002 per share, and foreign-settled F-stocks cost $5.00 per buy.
Billing and cancellation
The brokerage account itself costs nothing to open or keep, so the billing surface is small: the Premium subscription and any standalone data feeds. Two protection plays, both grounded in Webull’s own help pages. First, the double-billing issue above: cancel standalone data subscriptions manually when you activate Premium. Second, data and Premium subscriptions billed through the App Store, Google Play, or PayPal are cancelled through those processors, not inside a chat with support, so know where your billing actually lives. The $75 outgoing transfer fee applies to full and partial transfers out; if you’re testing the broker, that’s the cost of changing your mind with positions on.
Margin, buying power, and the rules that just changed
A Webull margin account requires $2,000 in equity and provides up to 4x day-trade buying power and 2x overnight buying power, with a 25% maintenance requirement. Standard margin interest is 8.74% regardless of balance; Webull’s own rate table shows the discount lives entirely inside Premium. Using the formula from the official margin interest FAQ, a $10,000 average daily debit at 8.74% costs about $72.83 a month. The same balance at Premium’s 5.20% costs about $43.33. Carry more than roughly $1,350 in average margin debit and the $3.99 subscription pays for itself on interest alone. One useful mechanic for day traders: positions opened on margin and closed the same day accrue no margin interest.
Now the rules. This is the part most Webull reviews get wrong in 2026, so here it is precisely. The old Pattern Day Trader framework, with its four-trades-in-five-days trigger and $25,000 minimum equity, has been eliminated at the regulatory level. Per FINRA Regulatory Notice 26-10, the SEC approved amendments to Rule 4210 on April 14, 2026 that replace the day trading margin requirements entirely with new intraday margin standards, effective June 4, 2026. The replacement regime drops the day-trade count and the $25,000 floor; instead, your margin account must hold equity commensurate with your actual intraday exposure, with a 90-day restriction for accounts that make a practice of not covering intraday margin deficits.
Here’s the catch: FINRA gave brokers an 18-month phase-in window, until October 20, 2027, and Webull’s own day trading rules page states that its current account policies remain in place until it implements the new standard, with timing to be announced. So as of this writing, the old mechanics still operate inside Webull: under $25,000 in a margin account you get 3 day trades per rolling 5 business days, a fourth triggers the PDT flag and an Equity Maintenance call, and the broker offers a one-time-per-account PDT flag reset. Cash accounts are exempt: unlimited day trades with settled funds, with Good Faith Violations as the penalty for jumping the settlement gun. For what the new regime means once your broker adopts it, see our explainer on the intraday margin requirements, and the full story of the rule change in our PDT rule retrospective.
The practical read: if you’re under $25k on Webull today, the constraint is still real, it just has an expiration date that Webull controls within FINRA’s window. Watch their announcement, or trade a cash account in the meantime.
Short selling: what being short actually costs
Shorting is supported, with conditions spelled out in the official short selling FAQ: margin account, $2,000 minimum margin equity, and the stock has to be on the shortable list, marked by a blue downward arrow on the quote. That list comes from the clearing firm and updates daily, with each name tagged easy-to-borrow, hard-to-borrow, or non-shortable. There’s no published mechanism for requesting a locate on a name that isn’t on the list; the list is the inventory.
Two costs deserve attention. First, maintenance: short positions require the greater of the percentage requirement or $5 per share. On a $11 stock at a 30% requirement, 30% is $3.30, so the $5 floor applies, meaning you post nearly half the stock’s price per share just to hold the short. Low-priced shorts tie up disproportionate capital here. Second, borrow fees: hard-to-borrow names accrue a daily fee using Webull’s published formula. Using the numbers from its own fee documentation: a 1,000-share short of a $13 stock at a 6% annual HTB rate costs about $2.33 per day, and the fee accrues on calendar days from settlement to settlement. Short on a Thursday, cover Friday, and you still pay three days of borrow because the close settles Monday. The locates on low-float garbage get expensive fast, and the rate itself can change daily with demand.
If shorting small caps is your bread and butter, this structure is the limiting factor, not the commissions. That’s the use case where serious short sellers graduate to direct-access brokers with locate desks.
Routing and execution
Webull doesn’t bury this: per its own fee schedule, payment for order flow is one of the four revenue streams, with the details in the linked SEC Rule 606 disclosure. Your orders are the product that pays for your free commissions. For most retail-size momentum trades in liquid names, that trade-off is invisible on any given fill. It becomes visible at the edges: thin stocks, fast tape, larger size, moments when a fraction of a cent of price improvement or a faster route is the difference between your price and a worse one.
The platform gives you speed tools (hotkeys, the ladder, TurboTrader) but the routing decision isn’t yours to make the way it is at a direct-access broker. That’s not a defect in a $0-commission product; it’s the definition of one. Decide which side of that line your strategy lives on before you fund anything.
Learning curve and support
The interface is approachable by trading-platform standards, and the help center is genuinely thorough; most of the hard numbers in this review come from it, which says something about documentation quality. Education content exists in a separate Webull Learn area covering tools and basic concepts, with desktop lessons aimed at new traders.
Support is a dedicated representative team available during standard business hours, per Webull’s own materials. Premarket is where day traders break things, and standard business hours starts after the most violent part of your session. Plan on solving 4 a.m. problems from the help center, not a phone line.
Who should use Webull, and who shouldn’t
Use it if you’re trading a small account in liquid listed stocks and your costs matter: the $0 commissions, $3.99 all-in data package, real hotkeys, and a paper mode that actually mirrors live trading make it arguably the most complete budget setup in the retail tier. It’s also a sensible first broker, because the simulator and the live platform are the same software.
Skip it if you short hard-to-borrow small caps in size, need route selection, or want a phone answered before the open. Those needs are precisely what the direct-access tier charges money for, and no subscription inside a retail app substitutes for them. And whichever side you’re on, keep your expectations anchored: most day traders lose money, and a cheaper broker changes the cost line, not the odds.
Alternatives
For the closest head-to-head decision most readers face, see Webull vs Interactive Brokers: IBKR answers the routing and margin-rate objections at the cost of a steeper platform. Interactive Brokers suits traders who’ve outgrown the retail tier, and thinkorswim is the pick if you want deep desktop tooling inside a full-service brokerage. The rest of the field is in our day trading brokers hub.
Verdict
Webull earns a 4.3 out of 5 under our rating system: Core capability 3.5, Value 4.5, Ease of use 4.0, Trust & transparency 4.0, Support & education 3.0.
The value score carries the rating, and it should: nobody else in the retail tier hands you full depth-of-book, options quotes, and discounted margin for $40 a year. Core capability lands at 3.0 because execution is the one thing here you don’t control; order flow is monetized by design, shorts run off a take-it-or-leave-it daily list, and the platform’s speed tools can’t change where your order goes. Trust scores well for the same reason this review could be written almost entirely from official documents: the fee schedule names its revenue streams, the help center publishes its formulas, and the rule-change communication cites FINRA directly. Support loses points to business-hours availability in a premarket profession.
Net: a legitimately strong budget cockpit for long-side momentum trading in liquid names, and the honest ceiling is built in. Start in the simulator, run a cash account if you’re under $25k and hate the day-trade counter, and read the Webull vs Interactive Brokers comparison before you decide this is the tier you’ll stay in.
FAQ
Is Webull good for day trading?
Good and cheap for liquid, listed stocks: $0 commissions, Level 2 plus OPRA for $3.99 a month, hotkeys, and 4x intraday buying power on margin accounts. It’s the wrong tool for hard-to-borrow short selling or route-controlled execution.
Does Webull still enforce the PDT rule?
For now, yes. FINRA eliminated the PDT framework effective June 4, 2026 and replaced it with intraday margin standards, but brokers may phase in until October 2027, and Webull’s help center states its current policies (3 day trades per 5 days under $25,000 in a margin account) remain until it implements the new rules. Cash accounts have unlimited day trades with settled funds.
Can you short sell on Webull?
Yes, in a margin account with at least $2,000 in equity, on stocks the daily shortable list includes. Maintenance is the greater of the percentage requirement or $5 per share, and hard-to-borrow names accrue daily borrow fees that change with demand.
Is Webull actually free?
Commissions on US-listed stocks, ETFs, and equity options are $0. You still pay regulatory pass-throughs on sells (well under a dollar on typical retail size), $0.50 per contract on certain index options, margin interest if you borrow, borrow fees on hard-to-borrow shorts, and $75 to transfer your account out.
How do you cancel Webull Premium or a data subscription?
Subscriptions billed through the App Store, Google Play, or PayPal are cancelled in those platforms directly. Note that activating Premium does not auto-cancel standalone market data subscriptions; cancel them manually or you’ll pay for the same data twice.
Does Webull have a free trading simulator?
Yes. Paper trading covers stocks, ETFs, options, and futures with real-time data and unlimited virtual cash, on mobile, web, and desktop, including the TurboTrader rapid-order panel.