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At The Motley Fool, we take our mission to make the world smarter, happier, and richer very seriously. That includes making sure the brokerages we feature on The Ascent are heavily vetted by our team of experts, so you can feel confident the picks on our site are fantastic choices for most people.
When rating brokerages, we consider the most important features for the average user. We tend to favor brokerages with low fees and minimums, top-tier tools and interfaces, and many investment options. Our core objectives for our recommended selections are:
Robin Hartill, CFP® is The Ascent’s Head of Product Ratings and has worked for The Motley Fool since 2020. Her work has appeared in various national publications, including Yahoo! Finance, NerdWallet, Investopedia, CNN Underscored, MSNBC, USA Today, and CNET Money. She previously wrote The Penny Hoarder’s syndicated “Dear Penny” personal finance advice column. She is based in St. Petersburg, Florida.
We evaluate all brokerages across four main criteria: user experience, cost efficiency, product variety, and support and security. These criteria are tailored to common features found in brokers. Brokerages are assigned a point value for each score, out of 3, then adjusted to a 5-star scale, rounded to the nearest half point. We may apply a grading curve to our scoring, depending on the brokerage category (e.g., a grading curve for robo-advisors may be different than that of traditional brokerages).
Our scores are weighted as:
At The Motley Fool Ascent, brokerages are rated on a scale of one to five stars. We primarily focus on fees, available assets, and user experience; however, we also take into account features like research, security, tax-loss harvesting, and customer service. Our highest-rated brokerages generally include low fees, a diverse range of assets and account types, and useful platform features.
We combine the factors outlined above with an evaluation of brand reputation and customer satisfaction to ensure you're getting the best brokerage recommendations on each of our pages. Our aim is to maintain balanced best-of lists featuring top-scoring brokerages from reputable brands.
Ordering within our lists is influenced by advertiser compensation, including featured placements at the top of a given list, but our product recommendations are NEVER influenced by advertisers. Our Ratings team operates totally independently of our Partnership team.
We're firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent, a Motley Fool service, does not cover all offers on the market. The Ascent has a dedicated team of editors and analysts focused on personal finance, and they follow the same set of publishing standards and editorial integrity while maintaining professional separation from the analysts and editors on other Motley Fool brands.