Webull is the cheaper, simpler broker for a stock-and-options day trader who wants zero commissions and one clean app. Interactive Brokers is the more capable one: lower margin rates, real routing control, a searchable short-locate inventory, and a desktop platform built for execution. Choose based on what you actually trade and how much of it.
Choose Webull if: you day trade US stocks and equity options in moderate size, you want $0 commissions with no per-share math, and you’d rather pay $40 a year for Webull Premium than decode a tiered fee schedule. Our rating: 3.7/5.
Choose Interactive Brokers if: you trade enough volume that execution quality and borrowing costs matter more than commission stickers, you short sell, or you want professional order types and routing. Our rating: 4.5/5.
Ratings follow our review methodology. Both brokers get full write-ups in our Webull review and our Interactive Brokers review, and both sit in our broker rankings.
Side by side
| Webull | Interactive Brokers | |
|---|---|---|
| Stock/ETF commissions | $0 on US-listed | $0 (IBKR Lite); $0.005/share fixed or tiered from $0.0035/share (IBKR Pro) |
| Equity options | $0 per contract | $0.65 per contract, $1.00 order minimum (standard tier) |
| Margin rate (USD, first $100k) | 8.74% standard; 5.20% and below with Premium ($3.99/mo or $40/yr) | 6.12% (Lite); 5.12% (Pro, blended lower above $100k) |
| Account minimum | $0 to open; $2,000 equity for margin/shorting | $0 to open; $2,000 Reg T minimum for margin/shorting |
| Platforms | Webull Desktop, WebTrade, mobile (full and Lite modes) | TWS, IBKR Desktop, Client Portal, IBKR Mobile, GlobalTrader |
| Short selling | Shortable list flagged in-app, daily HTB fees, $5/share minimum maintenance | SLB search tool: 19,395 shortable US stocks with live and historical borrow rates |
| Paper trading | Yes | Yes ($1,000,000 simulated, real market data) |
| Outgoing transfer (ACAT) | $75 per stock transfer | $0 |
| Markets | US-listed stocks, ETFs, options, OTC, futures, fixed income | 170+ global markets across stocks, options, futures, forex, bonds, funds |
| Our rating | 3.7/5 | 4.5/5 |
Pricing verified against Webull’s fee schedule, IBKR’s stock commissions page, and IBKR’s options commissions page in June 2026.
Commissions and fees: Webull wins the sticker
Webull charges nothing to trade US-listed stocks, ETFs, and equity options. No per-share rates, no order minimums, no monthly tiers to track. The fee schedule lists a $0.50 per-contract fee for certain index options and the usual regulatory pass-throughs on sells, and that’s about it. Webull is equally plain about how it gets paid: stock loans, interest on cash, margin interest, and payment for order flow, all spelled out on its own pricing page.
Interactive Brokers makes you pick a lane. IBKR Lite gives US residents $0 commissions on US exchange-listed stocks and ETFs. IBKR Pro charges $0.005 per share fixed (minimum $1.00, capped at 1% of trade value) or tiered pricing starting at $0.0035 per share. Equity options run $0.65 per contract with a $1.00 order minimum on the standard tier, dropping with volume and on low-premium contracts.
Run the numbers on a typical active account. A trader doing one 1,000-share round trip per day pays $0 at Webull and roughly $10 a day on IBKR Pro fixed, call it $2,500 over a trading year. An options trader moving 10 contracts a day pays $0 at Webull and about $6.50 a day at IBKR, roughly $1,600 a year. That’s real money, and it’s the entire case for Webull.
Now the fine print that bites momentum traders specifically. IBKR Lite’s free trades come with conditions stated in its own commission schedule: trades in sub-dollar stocks, OTC names, and orders outside regular trading hours stop being free once they exceed 10% of your monthly volume. If your bread and butter is premarket gappers and low-priced movers, Lite quietly becomes a paid account. IBKR also reserves the right to reject Lite orders that show non-retail trading behavior and resubmit them at fixed pricing, per the IBKR Lite terms. Day traders fit that profile more often than buy-and-hold investors do.
One more line item: moving out costs $75 per outgoing stock transfer at Webull, while IBKR charges nothing for full or partial transfers. A $75 exit fee is normal for app brokers; IBKR’s $0 is the outlier worth knowing about before you commit.
Section winner: Webull, with the caveat that the gap is widest for options traders and narrowest for anyone IBKR Lite’s fine print would catch.
Margin rates: Interactive Brokers, and it isn’t close at the standard tier
Webull’s standard margin rate is 8.74% on every balance tier. IBKR Pro charges 5.12% on the first $100,000 (benchmark plus 1.5%) and blends lower above that; IBKR Lite charges a flat 6.12%. Rates verified against IBKR’s margin rates page and Webull Premium’s rate table in June 2026; all of them float with the benchmark.
Here’s what that costs you. Carry a $20,000 margin loan for a year:
- Webull standard at 8.74%: $1,748
- IBKR Lite at 6.12%: $1,224
- IBKR Pro at 5.12%: $1,024
- Webull Premium at 5.20%, plus the $40 annual subscription: $1,080
So Webull Premium ($3.99 a month or $40 a year, per Webull’s subscription FAQ) nearly closes the gap, and it throws in real-time Nasdaq TotalView Level 2 and OPRA options data at no extra charge. If you use margin at Webull and aren’t on Premium, you’re donating roughly $700 a year per $20,000 borrowed for no reason. One quirk works in Webull’s favor: positions opened on margin and closed the same day accrue no margin interest at all, per its margin interest FAQ, which matters if you flatten everything by the close.
Section winner: Interactive Brokers. Webull Premium makes it respectable; Webull standard is the most expensive number on this page.
Platforms and execution: Interactive Brokers
This is where the two brokers stop being comparable products. IBKR’s Trader Workstation offers more than 100 order types, algorithmic orders (VWAP, TWAP, percent-of-volume, adaptive), keyboard-driven execution workflows, market depth, real-time margin and P&L monitoring, and built-in scanners, across 170+ markets. IBKR Pro accounts get IB SmartRouting, which searches exchanges and dark pools for the best available price, and directed orders are supported for traders who want to pick their own venue. IBKR Lite, by contrast, routes to select market makers in exchange for payment for order flow; routing control is a Pro feature, and IBKR says so plainly. Anyone who finds TWS overwhelming can use IBKR Desktop, the streamlined platform launched as the modern alternative.
Webull’s stack is Webull Desktop, browser-based WebTrade, and the mobile app, with a simplified Lite mode for people who just want a clean ticket. The desktop platform supports customizable charting, paper trading, overnight trading, and futures tools like tick charts and TurboTrader. It’s a genuinely good retail platform, and the experience is consistent across devices. What Webull’s own pages don’t advertise is venue selection: its execution model is built on payment for order flow, which it discloses openly as a core revenue line.
The practical difference: IBKR documents venue choice as a product, from SmartRouting to directed orders to staged algos. Webull’s documentation centers on speed and simplicity, with its routing economics disclosed through the PFOF model. For 100 shares of AAPL that distinction is academic. For 5,000 shares of a thin low-float name at 9:32, the spread and the fill quality are your real commission, and “free” can get expensive.
Neither broker’s built-in scanning is the reason day traders pick them; either account pairs well with a dedicated scanner like the one we cover in our Trade Ideas review.
Section winner: Interactive Brokers, decisively, for anyone whose edge depends on execution.
Short selling: Interactive Brokers
IBKR runs a fully electronic Securities Loan Borrow search: at the June 2026 check, 19,395 US stocks were shortable out of 23,588 listed for trading, with quantity available, lender count, and current and historical indicative borrow rates visible before you commit, per IBKR’s short securities availability page. IBKR also pays interest on short sale proceeds.
Webull supports shorting in margin accounts with at least $2,000 in equity. Shortable names carry a flag on the stock page, hard-to-borrow names carry an HTB icon, and the shortable list comes from the clearing firm and updates daily, per Webull’s short selling FAQ. HTB borrow fees accrue daily, including non-trading days, and short positions carry a minimum maintenance requirement of $5 per share, which raises the effective margin on cheap stocks: on an $11 stock, the $5 floor beats the percentage calculation, so you post more per share than the headline rate implies. Webull also states it doesn’t support short sales in OTC securities.
For an occasional short in a liquid large cap, Webull is fine. If shorting low-float movers is your strategy, locates, borrow-rate visibility, and inventory depth are the product, and that’s IBKR’s category to lose. Traders who live on the short side usually end up comparing direct-access brokers anyway; our explainer on direct access versus retail brokers covers when that jump makes sense.
Section winner: Interactive Brokers.
Day trading rules in 2026: read this before you fund either account
The pattern day trader rule is gone at the regulatory level. The SEC approved FINRA’s amendment to Rule 4210 on April 14, 2026, replacing the PDT framework, including the $25,000 minimum equity requirement and the day-trade count, with new intraday margin standards effective June 4, 2026, per FINRA Regulatory Notice 26-10. Under the new regime, your account must hold equity commensurate with your intraday exposure; deficits must be satisfied promptly, and a pattern of failures can trigger a 90-day restriction.
Here’s the part most coverage misses: FINRA gave brokers until October 20, 2027 to phase in the new standards, and as of June 2026 neither of these two has fully flipped the switch.
Webull’s day trading rules page still documents the legacy regime as current account policy: margin accounts under $25,000 are limited to 3 day trades in a rolling 5-business-day window, a fourth triggers a PDT flag and an equity maintenance call, and a one-time PDT reset is available per account. Webull says it will announce when it implements the new rules.
Interactive Brokers’ guidance, updated June 3, 2026, confirms the $25,000 minimum is being removed and describes the new intraday margin deficit framework, ideally satisfied within 3 business days, with a 90-day restriction after repeated failures. It also states plainly that accounts may still be subject to existing PDT rules during the transition period, per IBKR’s pattern day trader notice. The Reg T $2,000 minimum for margin and short sales survives at both brokers.
Practical takeaway: don’t fund a $5,000 margin account at either broker this month assuming unlimited day trades. Check the broker’s current policy on the day you apply, and read what replaced the PDT rule plus our history of the pattern day trader rule’s elimination so you know which regime your account is actually under. Cash accounts were never subject to day-trade counts at either broker; settled funds are the constraint there.
Section winner: none. Both brokers are mid-transition, and both document it honestly.
Ease of use and who each broker fits: Webull
Webull was built as an app first, and it shows. One account, one design language across phone, browser, and desktop, a Lite mode that strips the interface to essentials, and education sized for its audience. You can be funded and practicing in paper trading the same afternoon without reading documentation.
IBKR is a brokerage with five platforms, two pricing plans, a global product catalog, and a fee schedule with footnotes that have footnotes. IBKR Desktop and the Client Portal have genuinely lowered the barrier, and IBKR Campus is a deeper education library than Webull Learn. But nobody describes the first week on TWS as intuitive, and IBKR doesn’t pretend otherwise; the streamlined desktop platform exists precisely because the flagship one has a learning curve.
Section winner: Webull. The honest framing: Webull’s simplicity is a feature until you outgrow it; IBKR’s complexity is a tax until you need what it buys.
Verdict: pick by volume and style, not by brand
There’s no universal winner here because the two brokers aren’t competing for the same trader.
Webull is the right call for a stock-and-options day trader working moderate size in liquid names who wants $0 tickets, a clean modern platform, and one subscription ($40 a year for Premium) that fixes the margin rate and adds Level 2. The intended user gets excellent value; the standard margin rate without Premium is the trap to avoid.
Interactive Brokers is the right call the moment execution becomes part of your edge: heavy share volume, thin or hard-to-borrow names, short-biased strategies, or any setup where routing, locates, and borrowing costs decide whether the trade was worth taking. IBKR Pro costs money per trade and time to learn, and it buys you documented control over where and how your orders execute.
If you’re starting with a small account, neither margin regime is the place to learn; our guide to the best brokers for small accounts covers the cash-account route that sidesteps the transition rules entirely. And whatever you pick, go in with clear eyes: most day traders lose money, and no broker choice changes that math by itself.
FAQ
Is Webull or Interactive Brokers better for day trading?
Interactive Brokers is the stronger day trading broker on capability: lower margin rates, smart and directed routing on Pro accounts, 100+ order types, and a searchable short-borrow inventory. Webull is better for cost-sensitive traders in liquid stocks and options who value $0 commissions and a simpler platform over execution control.
Does the pattern day trader rule still apply at Webull and Interactive Brokers?
FINRA’s intraday margin standards replaced the PDT framework effective June 4, 2026, but brokers may phase in the change until October 2027. As of June 2026, Webull’s help center still documents the PDT flag and the $25,000 threshold as account policy, and IBKR states accounts may remain subject to legacy PDT rules during the transition. Confirm the current policy with the broker before assuming unlimited day trades in a small margin account.
Which has lower margin rates, Webull or IBKR?
IBKR Pro charges 5.12% on the first $100,000 borrowed and less above that; IBKR Lite charges 6.12%. Webull’s standard rate is 8.74% at every tier, but Webull Premium subscribers ($3.99/month or $40/year) pay 5.20% or less. Without Premium, Webull is the most expensive borrowing option of the group.
Can you short sell on both Webull and Interactive Brokers?
Yes, in a margin account with at least $2,000 in equity at either broker. IBKR offers far deeper short inventory, roughly 19,400 shortable US stocks with live and historical borrow rates visible through its SLB search. Webull flags shortable and hard-to-borrow names in the app, charges daily HTB fees, applies a $5 per-share minimum maintenance requirement on shorts, and doesn’t support shorting OTC securities.
Should a day trader pick IBKR Lite or IBKR Pro?
Pro. Lite’s free trades route to market makers for payment for order flow, exclude SmartRouting, and stop being free when sub-dollar, OTC, or outside-hours trades exceed 10% of monthly volume. IBKR can also move accounts showing non-retail behavior to fixed pricing. Active traders are exactly who those terms target, and Pro’s tiered pricing plus routing control is what they’re paying for.