Charles Schwab vs Wealthsimple Trade — which broker is better?

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

Pros

• CAD 0 commission on Canadian and US stocks and ETFs, plus USD 0 per equity and ETF options contract on every tier, including free assignment
• Futures at USD 1 per contract with free real-time futures market data — no Canadian competitor matches that combination
• CAD 0 to transfer your account out, where Questrade, Qtrade and the banks all charge CAD 150
• Best-rated broker app in Canada at 4.6 on the App Store across roughly 130,000 ratings, with real-time streaming quotes free to everyone
• 24/5 trading on eligible US stocks and ETFs and 24/7 on gold and crypto — the longest trading hours available in Canada
• Margin at prime + 0.5% on Core and prime − 0.5% on Generation, well under the big banks
• CIRO-regulated with CIPF coverage of CAD 1,000,000 per account category, backed by Power Corporation of Canada with a 52.4% stake
• Interest on chequing balances of 1.25% to 2.25% by tier, against effectively 0% on idle cash at most brokers

Cons

• The 1.5% CAD/USD conversion is the same as Questrade's. A USD account (CAD 10 a month on Core, free on Premium from CAD 100,000) removes it on the US trades themselves but not on the CAD you convert into it, which still costs 1.5% per transaction under CAD 10,000 and falls to 0% only from CAD 100,000; journalling at CAD 9.95 is the other way round it
• Crypto costs 2.0% per trade at the Core tier — a round trip is 4% — and the advertised 0.05% requires CAD 10 million of 30-day volume; staking takes 30% of rewards before validator fees
• No bonds, no GICs and no mutual funds anywhere in the self-directed account, so a fixed-income allocation has to be built entirely from ETFs
• No desktop platform, no Level 2 depth, no API and no paper-trading account; the research stack is news and basic charts rather than screeners and analyst coverage
• The crypto assets themselves sit outside CIPF protection and are held in trust instead — only the cash balance in a crypto account is covered, and the cold-storage insurance cited is USD 75 million per custodial partner, not per client
• Meaningful benefits are gated behind CAD 100,000 and CAD 500,000 balances, so the sticker price a small account actually pays is the least attractive version of the offer