Questrade

The headline is now as simple as it gets. Stocks and ETFs cost CAD 0 to buy and CAD 0 to sell, on every Canadian and US listing, placed online. There is no free-ETF list to check, no commission-to-sell asymmetry, and no ECN fee on Canadian orders. ECN charges only appear on US orders if you deliberately direct-route rather than smart-route, on US OTC names, and on fills in the 20:00–02:00 ET overnight session.

Options are almost as clean. US-listed equity options carry no contract fee at all and assignment is free. Canadian-listed equity and index options cost CAD 0.99 per contract, and US index options move to a flat USD 0.99 per contract from 28 September 2026. Exercise costs CAD 24.95.

Where Questrade makes its money is currency, and everything that is not a listed North American security:

• CAD/USD conversion: 1.5%, built into the exchange rate rather than shown as a line item
• Mutual funds: CAD 9.95 to buy and CAD 9.95 to sell
• Bonds: CAD 24.95 headline, with a CAD 5,000 minimum and Questrade's markup inside the price
• International equities: 1% of trade value, minimum USD 195 per side — effectively a wall, not a price
• Transfer out: CAD 150, whether full or partial
• Journalling shares: CAD 9.95 per request

The 1.5% conversion is the number to internalise. Buying CAD 20,000 of a US stock costs CAD 300 in conversion — many times the commission a bank would have charged for the trade itself. Questrade's answer is dual-currency accounts (you can hold USD inside a TFSA or RRSP), Norbert's Gambit journalling, or the Questrade Plus subscription at CAD 19.99 a month, which bundles unlimited free journalling, the CAD 9.95 expanded market-data package, a 1% RRSP deposit match and CAD 0.05 cashback per US equity options contract. For anyone regularly moving between currencies, Plus pays for itself; for a buy-and-hold TFSA investor it is dead weight.

Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer, a member of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF). CIRO is Canada's national self-regulatory organisation for investment dealers, operating under the oversight of the provincial securities commissions, and it sits firmly in the top tier alongside the FCA, BaFin and the SEC.

CIPF coverage is generous by international standards and is structured by account category rather than per client. An individual gets CAD 1,000,000 for all general accounts combined (cash, margin, TFSA and FHSA), plus a separate CAD 1,000,000 for all registered retirement accounts combined (RRSP, RRIF, LIF), plus a separate CAD 1,000,000 for RESPs where they are the subscriber. In practice that means up to CAD 3,000,000 of protection for a household with a full set of accounts — far above the EUR 20,000 that most EEA investors receive. CIPF pays out only if the dealer becomes insolvent and client assets are missing; it does not compensate for investments that fall in value.

Two structural caveats are worth stating plainly. First, Questrade Financial Group is privately held, so there is no listed share price, no quarterly filing and no public balance sheet to inspect. Independent sources put assets under administration at roughly CAD 30 billion as of late 2024. That is a large, long-established business — founded on 1 October 1999 and operating ever since — but it does not offer the transparency of a listed broker. Second, the group does not hold a banking licence, despite an application filed in 2019, so uninvested cash is client money held at a broker rather than a CDIC-insured deposit.

The corporate structure matters if you use the managed product. Questrade, Inc. holds the CIRO and CIPF membership and performs custody, execution and reporting. Questwealth Portfolios is run by Questrade Wealth Management Inc., a registered portfolio manager that is explicitly not a CIRO or CIPF member in its own right — the underlying assets still sit at the dealer, but the advisory entity is separately regulated.

Questrade now ships two distinct experiences and gives both away.

Questrade Pro is the reason serious traders stay. It is free to every client, with no volume test and no monthly charge, and it carries the feature set you would normally expect to pay for: Level 2 market depth, time and sales, chart trading with orders placed directly from the chart, one-second candles, automatic support and resistance detection that draws levels as they form, hot keys and hot buttons for one-press execution, a multi-leg options strategy builder that previews and places spreads from a single ticket, and an Options Radar screener that filters strategies by risk, sentiment and probability of profit. A performance dashboard tracks win rate and trade-by-trade results, which is unusual outside dedicated journalling software.

Two features have no real Canadian equivalent. Agentic Finance lets you write conditional rules in natural language — buy the dip, sweep idle cash — that execute while you are logged off. And Questrade MCP exposes your portfolio to external AI assistants over the Model Context Protocol, so you can analyse holdings inside the model you already use. Whether that is a genuine edge or a novelty depends entirely on your discipline, but no bank-owned broker offers it.

The standard web platform and mobile app are the mainstream surface: fractional shares, tailored news, watchlists, account administration and straightforward order entry. The mobile app is rated 4.7 on the Canadian App Store across roughly 19,000 ratings, genuinely strong for a full-service broker, and the separate Questrade Edge app sits at 4.5 across roughly 4,900.

The weakness is fragmentation. Questrade, Questrade Pro and the legacy Questrade Edge platforms coexist, direct order routing is configured only in Edge, and it is not always obvious which surface does what. MoneySense flagged exactly this in its 2026 Canadian broker ranking, where Questrade placed second overall.

Questrade covers the Canadian and US markets thoroughly and everything else thinly.

Listed equities and ETFs span the TSX, TSX Venture, CSE and Cboe Canada on the domestic side, and the NYSE, Nasdaq and US OTC market on the other, all commission-free. Fractional shares are supported, which matters for anyone building positions in four-figure US names. Options cover US and Canadian equity and index contracts across four approval levels, from long calls and puts up to uncovered writing and complex spreads.

Beyond listed equities the shelf is unusually broad for a discount broker:

• Bonds and GICs, both with a CAD 5,000 minimum and dealer markup inside the price
• Mutual funds at CAD 9.95 per trade, including low-MER series
• IPOs and new issues commission-free with a CAD 5,000 minimum
• Pre-IPO shares in private companies, and a private credit allocation
• Precious metals — Quest Metals at 0.25% per transaction with no storage fee, or trade-desk metals at USD 19.95 per trade with 0.60% to 1.50% annual storage
• FX and CFDs in a separate account: 110+ currency pairs with target spreads from 0.8 pips, USD/CAD at 2.5 and EUR/USD at 1.9, plus index, commodity and share CFDs

Two gaps are real. There is no spot crypto — exposure is limited to Canadian-listed crypto ETFs, which at least trade commission-free inside a TFSA — and no exchange-traded futures, so an ES or CL trader needs a second account. And international equities outside the US cost 1% of trade value with a USD 195 minimum per side, which is not a price so much as a discouragement. If you want to hold a London or Frankfurt listing directly, Questrade is the wrong account.

Opening is fast and genuinely frictionless. The application is fully digital, Questrade states that every account is free to open with no minimum balance, and most applicants are trading within a business day or two once funding clears. Identity verification is electronic for the large majority of Canadian residents. The current new-client incentive of CAD 50 cash back requires a CAD 250 funding, but that is a promotion condition rather than an account minimum.

Funding is deliberately narrow. Electronic funds transfer is free up to CAD 50,000 and USD 25,000 per transfer and takes one to three business days. Wires cost CAD 20 domestic, USD 30 to the US and CAD 40 internationally. Cheques, certified cheques and stop payments all carry fees — CAD 50, CAD 75 and CAD 25 respectively. There are no cards, no PayPal and no instant-funding rail. That is a defensible choice for a broker, but it means you cannot chase a Monday-morning move with money that is still sitting at your bank.

The currency mechanics deserve attention before your first deposit. Questrade supports dual-currency registered accounts, so you can hold USD inside a TFSA, RRSP or FHSA and avoid conversion on every US dividend, sale and repurchase. Setting this up on day one is the single highest-value administrative decision a Questrade client makes. Skip it and every US trade round-trips through a 1.5% conversion.

Leaving is where Questrade is least gracious. Transferring an account to another institution costs CAD 150, and that applies to partial transfers as well as full ones. Full RRSP or LIRA de-registration costs CAD 100 and partial de-registration CAD 50. Estate settlement is CAD 200. None of this is unusual in Canada, but it is worth pricing in if you think you might move.

Questrade's research is capable rather than distinguished, and its market-data policy is better than most Canadian competitors.

Real-time snap quotes and Level 1 streaming data are free to every client on every exchange. That is not universal — several Canadian brokers still charge for streaming quotes or serve delayed prices by default. Two paid tiers sit above it: an expanded package at CAD 9.95 a month adding direct streaming from every major US exchange plus live US options (OPRA) data, which is included free with Questrade Plus; and an advanced package at USD 44.95 a month adding Level 2 order-book depth on US and Canadian markets plus S&P index data. For an active options trader, the CAD 19.99 Plus subscription is effectively cheaper than the CAD 9.95 data package alone once the contract cashback is counted.

On the analysis side, Questrade leans on personalised news and screening rather than licensed analyst research. The platform surfaces real-time news filtered to the assets and accounts you actually hold, and Options Radar filters strategies by risk profile, directional view and probability of profit. What is missing, compared with Qtrade, is a bundled Morningstar-style analyst rating and target price on every name — Questrade does not put a third-party equity research house in front of you.

Education runs through the Questrade Learning hub: platform tutorials, investment-concept explainers, retirement and goal-planning content, webinars and an FAQ library. The material is competent and well organised for beginners working out what a TFSA is or how an options approval level works. It is thinner for the intermediate trader who wants to understand volatility surfaces or order-routing mechanics.

The honest gap is practice. Questrade does not advertise a paper-trading or practice account for self-directed clients, so there is no risk-free environment in which to learn Questrade Pro's hot keys and multi-leg tickets. Qtrade's 30-day trial account is a clear advantage here.

Support draws the most criticism of anything at Questrade, and the score reflects the gap between coverage and consistency.

The coverage itself is above the Canadian average. Self-directed clients get phone, live chat and email, staffed Monday to Friday from 07:30 to 20:00 ET and — unusually — Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 16:00 ET. The toll-free line is 1.888.783.7866 within Canada, with separate US and international numbers. A dedicated trade desk covers 04:00 to 20:00 ET on weekdays for order help, and the FX & CFD desk runs its own line and hours. Service is available in English and French. Questrade is also one of very few Canadian brokers with a physical walk-in location — the Questrade Centre at 5700 Yonge Street in North York, open weekdays 09:00 to 17:00.

In practice the experience is uneven. Chat sits behind a login, first-line agents work from scripts, and complex problems — transfers in progress, corporate actions, registered-account paperwork, contribution-room disputes — routinely require repeat contacts. This is the dominant theme in public complaints about Questrade, and it stands in stark contrast to the App Store rating, where the software itself scores 4.7. People like the product and get frustrated by the process around it.

The practical advice is the same as at most large discount brokers: use chat for anything transactional, use the phone for anything involving money movement or registered-account rules, and put the specifics in writing so the ticket carries context between agents. If white-glove service is what you are optimising for, Qtrade has consistently outscored Questrade in independent Canadian service rankings and is worth the trade-off in platform depth.