Capital.com vs Charles Schwab — which broker is better?

Pros

• No commission on any CFD and no inactivity fee whatsoever — unusual in the CySEC/FCA CFD segment
• EUR/USD averages roughly 0.7 pips all-in, with spreads advertised from 0.6 pips
• Free deposits and free withdrawals, with a USD 20 minimum via card, Apple Pay or PayPal
• Roughly 5,585 tradeable symbols including 125 FX pairs and about 450 crypto CFDs
• Top-tier regulation through the FCA (793714) and ASIC (513393) alongside CySEC (319/17)
• Mobile app is genuinely at feature parity with the web platform, not a cut-down version
• Choice of proprietary platform, MT4, MT5 and native TradingView integration
• Investmate education and the built-in trading-bias detector are substantive, not marketing filler

Cons

• 0.7% currency conversion markup on every trade settled outside your base currency — the single largest hidden cost here
• Overnight funding adds roughly 4.05% per year over the benchmark rate, which makes multi-week leveraged holds expensive
• No exchange-traded options, futures, bonds or mutual funds — the product set is essentially CFDs only
• Real share dealing (Capital.com Invest) covers only about 1,000 stocks and is limited to selected European countries
• Not publicly listed and founded only in 2016, so there is less financial transparency than at an exchange-listed broker
• Crypto CFDs are unavailable to UK retail clients, and the broker does not accept clients in the US, Canada, Japan, Belgium or Hong Kong

Pros

• USD 0 commission on every online listed US stock and ETF order, with no share cap and no proprietary-fund restrictions
• thinkorswim desktop, web and mobile are included free — full options chains, thinkScript, backtesting and paperMoney simulation
• Options at USD 0.65 per contract, with the fee waived on buy-to-close orders at USD 0.05 or less
• Around 7,700 no-transaction-fee mutual funds in Mutual Fund OneSource, plus USD 0 new-issue Treasuries at auction
• 24/7 phone and chat support backed by close to 400 physical branches — an unusual combination for a discount broker
• SEC/FINRA-regulated with SIPC cover and an affiliated FDIC-insured bank; parent company SCHW is NYSE-listed and reports publicly
• Schwab Global Account gives online access to 12 foreign markets in local currency from the same login

Cons

• No spot cryptocurrency trading — only ETFs, futures and crypto-adjacent equities, which puts Schwab behind Fidelity and well behind Robinhood
• The default uninvested cash sweep pays close to nothing (0.01% at the time of writing); you have to manually move idle cash into a money market fund
• Transaction-fee mutual funds cost up to USD 49.95 per purchase, with a USD 74.95 ceiling for some fund families
• Margin rates sit near the top of the US market — roughly 11.8% below USD 25,000, versus mid-single digits at Robinhood
• Stock Slices fractional investing is limited to S&P 500 constituents, so it will not cover a small-cap or ADR watchlist
• Trading foreign stocks through a broker costs the greater of USD 100 or 0.75% of principal, which makes ad-hoc international orders expensive
• Currency conversion adds a percentage charge on top of the commission: 1% of principal per conversion below USD 100,000 in the Schwab Global Account, tapering to 0.2% from USD 1,000,000 — USD 100 on a USD 10,000 conversion. Except on small orders, the conversion charge is larger than the online commission. Outside the Global Account, Schwab's pricing guide allows a markup of up to 300 basis points (3%) on USD/foreign-currency conversions