Webull is a brokerage platform focused on mobile that provides a distinctive community-driven experience. Its extremely well-designed mobile app puts user friendliness first, enabling newbies to get directly into the world of investing. However, the platform offered by Webull for learning is limited by its very weak instructional content and mediocre customer support. For more seasoned investors, though, a lack of popular asset classes may make the program less effective.
What is Webull?
Webull focuses solely on providing novice investors with a mobile brokerage software that makes trading stocks, purchasing cryptocurrencies, and trading options simple. A robust user community is built into the platform as a result. Consider it a trading education tool similar to an internal Twitter.
There is little doubt that Webull is directly vying with Robinhood for the business of novice investors in terms of platform design and marketing strategy. Furthermore, it is evident from our investigation that the Webull platform has more features than Robinhood, including IRAs, watch lists, notifications, screeners, paper trading, and sophisticated charting choices.
Webull does have some significant shortcomings, though. There is a relative lack of instructional resources compared to the top online brokers for beginners, forcing novice investors to pursue self-directed learning outside of the Webull app—although they can always resort to the Webull community. Webull does not provide trading in futures or foreign currency (forex), mutual funds, bonds, or futures. The quality of the client service is likewise lacking.
Webull has a respectable lineup of 11 cryptocurrencies and intends to add more in the future. For a platform that is user-friendly for beginners, it nevertheless charges fees on cryptocurrency trades that are rather competitive. Just be aware that there isn’t a viable method to get your money off the site, which limits its utility for someone who is serious about trading cryptocurrencies.
We believe that intermediate investors—those with some trading experience who enjoy mobile-first brokerage services but find Robinhood’s limits frustrating—might benefit most from Webull. However, the top online brokers’ cutting-edge features could be more beneficial to intermediate investors.
Webull Commissions and Fees
Webull does not impose trading commissions on equities or exchange-traded funds (ETFs), unlike the vast majority of online brokerage platforms in use today. There aren’t any monthly maintenance costs or fines for idleness either.
Webull does not impose commissions or contract costs for trading options, in contrast to the majority of other online brokerages. However, not everyone has access to this trading: You need to apply for approval to trade options, which evaluates your understanding of options, risk tolerance, financial resources, and investing experience.
Webull’s commission-free trading has a similar key limitation to many other online brokerage platforms: The company gets compensated for order flow. That implies a third-party marketmaker, who compensates Webull for the order flow, uses Webull to fill buy and sell orders.
While higher pricing or faster transactions might occasionally result from payment for order flow, these benefits are not always the case—and Webull is paid whether or not the trades are advantageous to its consumers. The $0 price tag on transactions might thus result in delayed trade execution or less favorable pricing for your requests. Similarly, the “free” trading for cryptocurrencies means that Webull will get a 1% fee on any prices that are shown.
Margin Interest Rates
The margin interest rates offered by Webull are fairly competitive. Customers of Webull pay an average margin interest rate of 6.17%. Additionally, Webull only assesses interest to margin accounts for overnight holdings of leveraged positions.
| Tiered Margin Interest Rates | |
|---|---|
| Less than $25,000 | 6.99% |
| $25,000 to 100,000 | 6.49% |
| $100,000 to $250,000 | 5.99% |
| $250.000 to $500,000 | 5.49% |
| $500,000 to $1,000,000 | 4.99% |
| $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 | 4.49% |
| More than $3,000,000 | 3.99% |
Deposit and Withdrawal Fees
You can use an ACH transfer or a domestic wire transfer to deposit money into a Webull brokerage account from a U.S. bank account. There is no charge for ACH deposits or withdrawals, however there is a daily limit of $50,000 that may be sent from your bank account to your Webull account. Greater dollar limits on wire transfers come with costs, too.
Clients from countries other than the U.S. To deposit or withdraw money from their Webull trading account, bank accounts must employ an international wire transfer. No fee-free or ACH options are available.
| Deposit and Withdrawal Fees | |
|---|---|
| Deposit via wire transfer | $8 per deposit |
| Withdraw via wire transfer | $25 per withdrawal |
| Deposit via wire transfer (international) | $12.50 per deposit |
| Withdraw via wire transfer (international) | $45 per withdrawal |
Webull Platform and Technology
The mobile app for Webull is really nicely made and simple to use. For novice investors, the abundance of charts, graphs, and data sources doesn’t feel overwhelming because to the clean, simple layout.
Webull provides a web-based platform as well as a desktop platform that can be downloaded in addition to its fantastic mobile app. On each, the user interfaces are intuitive, simple to use, and navigate.
Users can get two layers of market data from Webull. Level 1 trade data, which contains the information on the highest bid, is available to all users. The range of bid/ask prices for a particular securities may be seen in Level 2 data. Level 2 data is free for the first three months for new customers; thereafter, a monthly fee of $1.99 applies.
The Webull community is what makes this platform special. Users may publish responses to price movements as well as remark on market news or specific stocks in the community, which is structured like a private Twitter feed.
By rewarding users with Webull points for accurate predictions, Webull encourages users to make forecasts regarding the future growth or decline of specific equities. These Webull points may be used to enter paper trading competitions where participants create fictitious portfolios in an effort to win real money. Users are kept interested in the experience because to the gamification and social media integration.
Webull Range of Offerings
On its platform, Webull offers a restricted selection of tradable assets. The following asset classes are available to investors:
- Stocks
- ETFs
- Options
- Cryptocurrency (though crypto cannot be transferred off-platform)
Users of Webull have access to normal taxable investment accounts as well as traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, and rollover IRAs. They may even sell stocks short.
Users cannot earn interest on uninvested money on Webull since there is no option for a cash management account.
Webull Research and Education
Webull’s instructional resources for new investors are lacking in many ways, aside from its paper trading option. Despite the fact that the platform provides a news blog with a variety of sources, there are no educational articles, how-to videos, interactive online courses, or webinars available.
For novice investors, the Webull community could be a valuable resource for education, but it necessitates active participation in the feed and is only as good as the community members who post frequently.
Webull does encourage new investors to utilize Ticker Tocker, which links them to mentors and trading coaches all around the world, for advice, although Ticker Tocker costs anything from $10 to $1,000, depending on the user’s particular requirements.
Webull Security and Customer Service
Although Webull’s customer service is superior to that of rival Robinhood, it is nonetheless unremarkable.
On weekdays from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm ET, phone help is offered. When you can contact them, customer care agents are kind and helpful. In our tests, over half the time we phoned, we were placed on wait for more than 10 minutes before our call was finally disconnected.
The brokerage also offers email customer service, and it looks to be rather timely, with response times measured in hours rather than days. However, there isn’t a live chat feature, so you’ll have to use email if you have an issue at night or on the weekend.
Webull offers firewalls, 128-bit encryption, mobile security features, and two-factor authentication in terms of security. Additionally, they provide their clients the normal Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) insurance of $500,000, with a cash limit of up to $250,000.
Apex Clearing, Webull’s clearing house, offers extra insurance. With maximum individual customer limits of $37.5 million for securities and $900,000 for cash, Webull clients are covered for securities and cash up to a combined $150 million under Apex’s policy.
