Most people who use margin don't think of it as borrowing. They think of it as leverage, or buying power, or just "the number next to my cash balance." The broker's documentation reinforces this framing — margin is presented as a feature, not a loan product. But it is a loan. It accrues interest. And in 2026, the difference between the cheapest and most expensive margin loan in US retail brokerage is so large it deserves a line item in your investment process.
The April 2026 margin rate landscape
Here's the current state of base margin rates across the fifteen brokers we track. "Base rate" means the rate applied at the lowest balance tier — the rate most retail customers actually pay. Large-balance tiers get discounts, which we'll cover separately.
| Broker | Base Margin Rate | Tier / Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1: Under 6% — Genuinely Cheap | ||
| Public.com | 4.90% | Flat across all balances |
| Robinhood Gold | 5.75% | Requires $5/month Gold subscription |
| Webull Premium | 5.75% | Requires Premium subscription |
| Interactive Brokers Pro | 5.83% | $1M+ balance; tiered rates apply |
| Tier 2: 6–10% — Middle of the Pack | ||
| Moomoo | 6.80% | Flat |
| Tier 3: 10%+ — Expensive | ||
| Charles Schwab | 10.00% | Base rate, discounts at $250K+ |
| E*TRADE | 10.45% | Base rate, tiered |
| Tastytrade | ~10.50% | Base rate |
| Fidelity | 10.575% | Base rate, tiered |
| Merrill Edge | ~11.13% | Base rate, tiered |
| TradeStation | ~11.50% | Base rate |
| Ally Invest | ~11.75% | Base rate |
| Firstrade | ~12.00% | Base rate |
Rates verified April 2026. Base rates apply to the smallest balance tier; larger balances typically receive discounts, sometimes meaningful ones. Always confirm rates on the broker's current disclosure page before opening margin positions.
Read the top and bottom of that table side by side. Public.com charges 4.90%. Firstrade charges roughly 12.00%. Same underlying collateral — your own stock portfolio. Same regulatory framework. Same Federal Reserve funds rate environment. The broker is the only variable, and the cost of that variable is 710 basis points.
What that spread actually costs
Here's the calculation that makes this real. Assume you carry a $10,000 margin balance for a full year — not aggressive, not unusual, just a moderately active retail trader who keeps some leverage in place.
Annual interest on a $10,000 margin balance
$710 a year. On a $10,000 balance. For the same loan backed by the same stock.
Now multiply the scenario. $50,000 margin balance over a year: the gap is $3,550. $100,000: the gap is $7,100. These are numbers that rival or exceed the "bonus" most brokers offer to win your business — which is exactly the kind of math broker marketing departments hope you won't run.
A rule of thumb
If you carry margin balances above $5,000 with any frequency, the broker's margin rate is almost certainly more important to your long-run returns than the signup bonus, the $0 commissions, or the app's UX. It's the most persistent line-item cost in retail brokerage.
Why the spread is this wide
The high-rate brokers are not confused about what they're doing. Fidelity and Schwab aren't charging 10%+ because they don't understand the competitive landscape. They're charging 10%+ because their margin books are enormously profitable, and their customer base is mostly not rate-shopping.
The big custodians built their businesses on mutual fund fees, advisory relationships, and cash-sweep spreads. Margin interest is a large, high-margin business that sits quietly next to those other revenue streams. The typical Fidelity customer is not calling the wholesale desk to negotiate their margin rate. They're using margin occasionally, paying the posted rate, and not comparing.
The low-rate brokers, by contrast, compete on margin as a marketing hook. Public.com explicitly advertises the 4.9% rate on their homepage because that number is the thing that converts a certain kind of user. Interactive Brokers has built an entire quantitative/active-trader brand on tiered margin pricing, with the largest accounts paying under 5% for dollar-for-dollar the same leverage Fidelity sells at 10.575%.
What about cash-sweep yields? (The quiet mirror of margin rates)
There's a matching asymmetry on the other side of the balance sheet. Brokers that charge high margin rates tend to pay very low interest on your uninvested cash. This is not a coincidence — it's the same spread trade running in both directions.
Schwab, at the time of writing, pays well under 1% on default cash sweep balances for most customers. Fidelity defaults to its FDIC Insured Deposit Sweep, which also yields well below money market rates. Meanwhile, Public.com and Robinhood Gold pay APY rates in the 3%+ range on cash, and Moomoo runs promotional APY rates as high as 8.1% for limited periods on new deposits.
A customer holding $20,000 in uninvested cash at Schwab's default sweep rate versus $20,000 at Robinhood Gold's 3.25% rate is giving up roughly $500 per year in foregone interest. Combined with a higher margin rate on the other side, the total cost of being "at the wrong broker" for a mixed-use retail account can easily run past $1,000 annually on fairly modest balances.
Where the tiered structures actually help
Not all high-headline margin rates are what they appear. Schwab, Fidelity, E*TRADE, Merrill Edge, and Interactive Brokers all publish tiered margin schedules. Rates drop at certain balance thresholds — typically $25K, $50K, $100K, $250K, $500K, and $1M. The higher your balance, the lower the rate.
Interactive Brokers is the most aggressive at this. IBKR Pro's rate at $1M+ drops under 6%. At $10M+, it drops again to around 5%. This is why the firm has captured a disproportionate share of high-net-worth and institutional-adjacent retail accounts — the published base rate is not the real rate for the accounts that matter to IBKR.
Schwab's tiered structure is less aggressive but still meaningful: base rates start around 10% but can drop by 50–100 basis points in the $250K+ range, and negotiated institutional pricing exists for larger accounts. Fidelity's structure is similar.
The trap in tiered rates
A broker can advertise "lower margin rates for large accounts" while keeping the base rate — the rate paid by the actual median retail customer — materially above competitors. If your balance is under $100K, tiered schedules usually don't help you. The first tier is the rate you pay, and at most large custodians that first tier is 10%+.
How to actually use this information
1. If you use margin regularly, rate-shop.
The one broker attribute most worth switching for, if you use margin at all, is a low base margin rate. Public.com, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood Gold, and Webull Premium are the four realistic options under 6% at retail-account sizes. Each has trade-offs — Public.com's platform is consumer-grade, IBKR's TWS has a steep learning curve, Robinhood and Webull require paid subscriptions to unlock the rate.
2. If you don't use margin, the headline rate barely matters.
If your margin usage is zero or effectively zero, picking a broker by margin rate is like picking a car by its redline RPM. It's a spec that does not affect your life. Focus instead on execution quality, platform, research, and customer service.
3. Read the broker's actual margin disclosure page, not a review summary.
Margin rate pages on broker sites have full tiered schedules, effective dates, and the base benchmark (usually the broker's own "base lending rate," which tracks the Fed funds rate plus a spread). A review site summarizing these numbers will always be partially out of date — base rates move with the Fed funds rate, and 2026's rate environment has already produced multiple adjustments.
4. Check the cash side at the same time.
The broker paying you 3.25% on uninvested cash is almost certainly not the same broker charging you 10.575% on margin. Running both sides of the calculation at once usually clarifies the right move.
See the full broker comparison
Margin rates, stock commissions, options pricing, cash yields — all fifteen brokers side by side.
Compare brokers now →A note on where these rates came from
The rates in this article were sourced from each broker's public margin disclosure page as of April 2026. Margin rates change — Federal Reserve rate actions, broker-specific spread adjustments, and promotional campaigns all move these numbers, sometimes by 25–50 basis points in a single week. The relative ordering in the table has been stable for years (Public.com and IBKR at the cheap end, the large custodians at the expensive end), but the absolute numbers deserve verification before making any decision that depends on them.
If any broker in this table adjusts rates materially after publication, we update the comparison page on the main site rather than republishing this post. The main broker comparison always reflects the current disclosed rates.