Public.com vs Wealthsimple Trade — which broker is better?

Pros

• Options Rebate Program pays USD 0.06–0.18 per stock or ETF contract, typically more than the roughly USD 0.05 per contract of regulatory fees — a net-negative transaction cost that no competitor here matches
• Cheapest margin of the three: 5.15% base (Fed Funds Target Rate + 1.15%, with FFTR at 4.00% as of 17 September 2026), tiering to 4.20% above USD 50 million
• A real bond desk — fractional corporate bonds at 0.35%–0.50% of par, Treasuries at 0.10%–0.25%, plus customisable Treasury ladders and a 6-month T-bill account from USD 100
• Genuinely multi-asset in one login: stocks, ETFs, options, bonds, Treasuries, 60+ crypto assets, IRAs, Crypto IRAs and a high-yield cash account quoted at 3.30% APY in mid-2026
• Free ACH in and out, free incoming wires and free incoming ACAT transfers, with no minimum deposit
• Transparent, well-maintained public fee schedule — the version used for this record was updated 17 September 2026 and states every line item including the awkward ones
• Index options at USD 0.35 per contract for every customer, plus the exchange fees Public passes on

Cons

• US residents only — no international entity, so European, UK or DACH investors cannot open an account
• USD 100 to transfer securities out, plus USD 115 per security for a DRS transfer; both are the highest in this comparison
• No futures, no spot forex, no mutual funds and no desktop application — active traders will find the charting and depth-of-market shallow next to Webull or moomoo
• The options rebate is funded by payment for order flow, so you are accepting a routing model in exchange for the payment; the free Wholesale route is the default, and choosing Smart Order or Lit-Exchange routing costs USD 0.003 per share
• A USD 3.99 monthly inactivity fee applies to accounts under USD 70 with no six-month activity, and there is no paper-trading environment to practise in

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