Fidelity Investments vs Wealthsimple Trade — which broker is better?

Pros

• USD 0 online US stock and ETF commissions, and Fidelity does not accept payment for order flow on equity orders
• Zero-expense-ratio index mutual funds (the FZROX family) — no other major US broker matches this on fund cost
• Options exercise and assignment cost USD 0, and buy-to-close orders at USD 0.65 or less are free
• No outgoing account transfer fee, no domestic wire fee and no inactivity or maintenance fee
• Idle cash defaults into the SPAXX money market fund rather than a near-zero bank sweep, so uninvested balances earn a market-linked yield without manual intervention
• International trading in 25 markets with settlement in 16 currencies, at GBP 9 for the UK and EUR 19 for euro-zone markets
• Best-in-class research: roughly seven third-party report providers plus the proprietary Equity Summary Score, and consistently rated first for research and education
• Fractional share investing from USD 1 across a broad US universe, not just large-cap index constituents

Cons

• No futures, no futures options and no retail forex — a hard stop for macro and commodity traders
• No paper trading or simulator, so there is no way to rehearse a strategy inside the platform
• Crypto is limited to Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin with a spread of up to 1% built into the price, and is not SIPC-protected
• New accounts are effectively US residents only; Fidelity states it does not open accounts for customers residing outside the United States and restricts existing accounts when clients move abroad
• Charting and drawing tools in Trader+ are weaker than thinkorswim's, and there is no backtesting engine
• The FX markup on international trades settled in USD starts at a full 100 basis points below USD 100,000 — expensive for small foreign orders

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