Compare the Best Day Trading Platforms, Apps & Software

Platforms for Day Traders—Our Top Picks

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Best Day Trading Platforms

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1. Discount Trading (Low-Cost Futures Trading Platform)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Active traders specializing in trading futures and options
• Platforms: Desktop app (Windows), web, and mobile app (iOS and Android)

Discount Trading is a futures and options broker offering multiple trading platforms with very competitive rates and commissions. The company prides itself in being a value leader, offering low day trading margins and providing powerful trading technology for its users.

The company offers five different routing solutions to provide advanced traders with the redundancy they seek when placing their trades. The service allows you to trade all CME, CBOT, COMEX, GLOBEX, NYMEX, and select EUREX products. Further, you can use the Discount Trading platform to trade popular markets including crude, e-mini, gold, grains, currency futures and more.

One major advantage Discount Trading provides is a very low margin requirement of $300 per contract on select markets, such as for e-mini S&P, crude oil, and gold futures. Additionally, the platform offers free live streaming quotes and won’t penalize you for having an inactive account with a monthly maintenance fee. (Many firms charge a monthly fee on inactive accounts.) For advanced traders, the platform offers co-location servers and API solutions.

To learn more, consider visiting the Discount Trading site.

 

2. Cobra Trading (Best for Customer Service and Stock and Options Trading Costs)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Professional day traders seeking low commissions and excellent customer service
• Platforms: Desktop app (Windows), web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Cobra Trading is a direct access broker that offers a host of sophisticated trading tools day traders leverage to execute trades fast and efficiently. Armed with a proactive and responsive Customer Support Team, Cobra Trading caters toward the needs of institutional and retail traders seeking low trading commissions and Locate Costs.

The trading platform is specifically designed to cater toward professional traders with comprehensive trading needs. And not just any professional trader, but ones that focus on volatility in the markets to capture returns. Namely, that means traders who day trade, short, trade options (the platform only supports stocks, ETFs, and options at present—if you’d like to trade futures, you can access Cobra Trading’s companion service, Venom Trading). 

While the tradable assets are fairly narrow in scope compared to other trading platforms, in addition to highly responsive Customer Service, where it excels is having impressive short locates. The platform offers one of the most impressive inventories of short opportunities in the market. And if you’re a swing trader who carries long and short positions in your Cobra account, you won’t pay overnight locate multiplier fees that many brokerages charge. Further, the firm’s direct access allows for better execution on position entries and exits at better pricing, bringing down the cost of trading for active traders.  

Cobra Trading also offers a Cobra PRIME package, a curated suite of deeply discounted trading solutions and cutting-edge tools and resources. To qualify, you’ll need to be among Cobra Trading’s most active traders and trade at least 200,000 shares per month and maintain that average going forward. (If you trade more, you’ll move into a higher Cobra PRIME tier, enabling you to select more choices.) If you don’t qualify, you can still purchase the software of your choosing at Cobra’s discounted rate.

Cobra offers three trading platforms (software fees waived if trade 200,000+ shares/mo.): 

• DAS Trader Pro ($125/mo.): Platform includes advanced order types, basket trading, charting, and multi-account management in real-time
• Sterling Trader Pro ($150/mo.): Direct-access trading platform for trading equities and options
• Cobra TraderPro ($100/mo.): Integrates Cobra Trading with TradingView, allowing you to trade on the charting platform.

One trade-off for opening an account with Cobra Trading are the high account minimums: U.S. and non-U.S. residents need $30,000 to open a day-trading account with a $25,000 minimum daily balance required (SEC requirement). If you’re not day trading, the minimum is less and starting deposits can be as low as $3,000.

In short, this platform isn’t meant for aspiring traders—only serious traders will have interest in using Cobra Trading to handle their equity and option trades (users can trade futures through their companion Venom Trading service or stocks, options, futures and forex on the same interface through their clearing firm agreement with InteractiveBrokers). But if you meet the above minimum requirements, prize exceptional customer service, speed and savings, Cobra Trading might be worth exploring for your active trading needs.

 

3. NinjaTrader (Best for Day Trading Futures + Free Paper Trading for Beginners)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Active traders specializing in day trading futures and forex (and other assets through third party brokers)
• Platforms: Desktop app (Windows), web, and mobile app (iOS and Android)

NinjaTrader is one of the oldest and best known trading platforms on the market. 

Specializing in technical analysis tools, real-time analysis, and a clean, fully customizable charting experience, NinjaTrader allows you to employ a fully automated trading strategy through its own brokerage service for futures, options on futures, and forex trading. And while that might seem like a limited set of assets (especially for being mentioned as a stock trading app and platform), NinjaTrader’s other core strengths are its ability to integrate with other brokers like IBKR, Schwab (TDAmeritrade), and others for an add-on fee and its NinjaTrader Ecosystem.

This community of vendors and plugins enrich the NinjaTrader experience through offering education-rich content for free and, among other things, allows you to attach NinjaTrader to several supporting brokerages to give traders access to other markets, including options on futures, contracts-for-differences (CFDs), and equities.

NinjaTrader’s platform offers advanced charting with more than 100 technical indicators, advanced order types, automated trading, order flow analysis, streaming historical market replay, the SuperDOM (depth of market) tool, and more. The NinjaTrader desktop app is the most customizable of the platform’s versions, offering access to “thousands of trading apps and add-ons,” you can still enjoy most of NinjaTrader’s functions via its web and mobile apps.

Unfamiliar with futures trading? Anyone with an account can use NinjaTrader’s free futures trading simulator, which includes a backtesting engine that lets you use historical market data to simulate automated trading strategies and see how they would have performed. 

You can download and use NinjaTrader’s platform for free, but you can reduce your commissions by subscribing to a monthly or lifetime account. Additional data does carry additional costs, however. For instance, for CME Level I top of book data (CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX), it’s $12 per month and Level II costs $41 per month for non-professional users. Professional users pay $135 per month per exchange. ICE Market data also costs $140 per month per exchange for all users.

NinjaTrader’s robust community and suite of tools have established it as a leading charting software—be it for stocks, futures, forex, or other assets. The burgeoning educational guides, video library and free ongoing webinars provide ample access to the understanding traders need to hone their craft. Plus, the platform offers an easy (and free) way to learn what the platform can offer through its SIM trading environment. Consider signing up for a NinjaTrader account and taking the service for a test-drive.

 

4. E*Trade (Best for Intermediate Investors + Traders)

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• Available: Click “Open Account” below
• Best for: Intermediate investors
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

E*Trade has long been seen as a leading stock investment app for retail investors. E*Trade provides investors access to educational resources that assist you with conducting investment research and analysis and diversifying your portfolio.

E*Trade, like most of the best stock investing apps, offers zero-commission stock, ETF, and options trading. It also has a leg up on some platforms by offering $0 commissions on mutual fund, Treasury, and new-issue bond trading. Investors also have access to futures, micro futures, and futures options, among other investment types.

Like with many zero-commission options trading platforms, though, options still have contract fees. Equity and index options are 65¢ regularly, though they’re reduced to 50¢ if you place more than 30 stock, ETF, or options trades per quarter. (E*Trade also has an options program called the “Dime Buyback Program.” If you close an equity option priced at 10¢ or less, E*Trade won’t charge you a per-contract fee.) A couple other fees worth noting are futures ($1.50 per contract) and secondary bond market trades ($1 each).

Day traders will enjoy features including advanced order types, direct market routing (at a 0.5-cent-per-share fee), and its Options Income Backtester. E*Trade also has Level 2 equity and equity options quotes for $24 per month.

E*Trade has two platforms, both of which are free, and both of which have web and mobile versions:

Power E*Trade

Power E*Trade is a trading platform designated for more intermediate-to-advanced traders. Features include:

• Advanced charting that includes intraday and historical options; more than 100 studies; over 100 drawing tools; and the ability to automatically identify technical patterns
• Snapshot Analysis, which lays out risk-reward probabilities in your options trading
• Powerful stock and trade scanner; use preset filters or customize as you wish
• Paper trading to test out strategies without putting your money at risk
• Price ladder
• Ability to design exit strategies

Like with the Power E*Trade web platform, the Power E*Trade app is a more powerful version of its basic counterpart. This app allows you to use preset scans, work with interactive charts, place complex options trades, and more.

E*Trade

The “basic” E*Trade web platform might be more suitable for beginning-to-intermediate traders and investors, but in our opinion, that doesn’t mean it’s short on features.

E*Trade’s main web platform includes everything you need to keep up to date on your portfolio, including real-time quotes, charts, market commentary, and stock news. The latter includes free access to research tools and reports from companies like Thomson Reuters and TipRanks research. Meanwhile, you’ll have ample tools at your disposal, including stock, mutual fund, bond, and ETF screeners; trade optimizers; backtesters; and more.

Other considerations

Like with a couple other trading apps on this list, E*Trade also allows you to earn additional income by allowing the firm to borrow your fully paid-for holdings. E*Trade also offers retirement planning to clients as well as some in-person informational sessions.

Visit E*Trade and sign up by clicking “Open Account” below.

 

5. Robinhood (Best Simple Stock Trading App for Beginners)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Beginner traders
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Robinhood has become a mainstay for younger investors and traders alike, and it has enough features to make it an acceptable offering for budding day traders.

Over the years, Robinhood has added a boatload of features for new and experienced investors alike. Advanced Charts, for instance, provides simple and customizable charts with a variety of technical features. Robinhood’s Options Strategy Builder simplifies the options-trading process by helping you build a strategy based on what you expect your target stock or ETF will do in the future. Robinhood also offers 24/7 commission-free cryptocurrency trading with Robinhood Crypto (though you’ll still have to pay a spread), allows extended-hours trading, and lets users earn interest through stock lending.

Robinhood does offer a paid subscription service—Robinhood Gold—with several more features mostly geared toward advanced traders. Benefits include Level 2 market data provided by Nasdaq, a lower charged rate on margin investing than regular accounts, higher interest on uninvested brokerage cash via the cash sweep program, and bigger Instant Deposits.

Even at the Gold level, Robinhood doesn’t offer some advanced trading features, such as a price ladder, direct market routing, advanced orders, and backtesting. But it’s still one of the best choices for aspiring traders looking to get their feet wet.

Sign up for a Robinhood brokerage account today.

 

6. eToro (Best Day Trading Platform for CopyTrading)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Intermediate traders
• Platforms: Desktop app (Windows, macOS), web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Most trading apps keep you in one place: Your account. But eToro wants to change that.

eToro has made investing social by giving you the chance to engage with other traders, creating a social trading network designed to share ideas on the publicly traded markets. You can trade stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and options commission-free, and you can also get exposure to cryptocurrencies.

eToro is known for its CopyTrader service—a novel product that allows you to copy the trades of experienced investors automatically. No more guesswork on making trades yourself; you simply follow the leader and let the app handle the legwork for you. While this might not interest advanced traders, it’s an appealing feature for moderately experienced traders looking to replicate the performance of popular traders on the platform. (Editor’s Note: Even though this can make for a fun trading experience, you should still be fully aware of the risks entailed through this feature—namely, the potential for losses.)

More experienced day traders might bemoan the lack of several important features, including Level 2 quotes, backtesting, price ladder, and direct market routing, and you can only use advanced orders through crypto trading. (Popular traders who allow themselves to be copied by others on the platform can earn income, rewards and perks from eToro through participating in the CopyTrader program.)

Of course, you don’t have to copy anyone—you can trade on your own ideas. This intuitive investing app began with a strong crypto focus, but you can now make self-directed trades across a host of other assets.

The trading app offers access to dozens of cryptocurrencies, hundreds of ETFs, and thousands of stocks. When you trade crypto with the platform, you’ll encounter what we’ve found to be an industry-standard spread of 1%. Of particular interest to options traders, eToro charges no options contract fees in the U.S. (but it does levy a $0.65 fee per option contract in the U.K.). Investors can also use the app to understand environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores through their user-friendly “traffic light” color scheme: green means the company is a leader in its sector, yellow indicates average, and red means the company scores poorly relative to sector competitors.

Lastly, if you’d like to invest based on a specific theme or strategy, eToro offers Smart Portfolios. These are fully allocated, balanced portfolios, investing in various market segments, that are backed by professional research and various risk management rules. You only need $500 to participate in Smart Portfolios, and you pay no management fees.

And for people interested in testing the waters without opening their wallet at the start, eToro offers a free demo account that comes with $100,000 in virtual money to test your trade ideas.

Opening an account is quick and simple to do. Simply visit eToro’s website to open and fund an account.

 

7. Moomoo (Advanced Stock Trading App With Low Margin Rates)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Advanced traders
• Platforms: Desktop app (Windows, Mac), web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Moomoo is a commission-free trading platform for stocks, ETFs, and options. While Moomoo is best for advanced traders, offering powerful tools to empower your trading insights and strategies, it takes a different approach from other similarly targeted platforms, favoring simple interfaces and high ease of use. The desktop platform is highly customizable, while the mobile app is straightforward, allowing you to search for stocks and trade with minimal hassle.

Still, Moomoo has more than enough under the hood for advanced traders to get the job done. Its charting system, for instance, includes 62 technical analysis indicators and 22 drawing tools. You can set up alerts based on changes in price, bids, turnover ratio, and more. Free Level 2 market data helps you get a greater understanding of a stock’s value, determine how liquid a stock truly really is, and better time your trades. You can even enjoy 24/7 financial news handpicked by Moomoo’s editorial team. The trading platform provides these features to empower investors to make better investing decisions.

One Moomoo feature worth noting is its mobile charting, which allows traders to take advantage of more than 60 investing indicators and 38 drawing tools. And any drawings or annotations you make are saved and synced with your profile so you can view them from either the app or your desktop.

While Moomoo isn’t as suitable to beginner traders, the trading platform does include some useful educational tools. For instance, paper trading functionality with real-time data simulates the investment experience without committing any of your real money. (This feature is also helpful to advanced traders, allowing them to test out strategies and hone their skills.)

Moomoo also boasts relatively low rates for trading on margin. The annualized interest rate on financing, as of this writing, is 6.8%—one of the most competitive rates among its peers.

The app pays you for giving it a spin by offering free stocks when you make a qualifying deposit after signing up. Specifically, you can get free stocks if you sign up for a Moomoo account and make a qualifying deposit.

If you want a professional-grade system for research and trading, but with a simpler user experience, Moomoo is among the best trading platforms to consider.

 

8. Webull (Ideal for Intermediate Investors + Traders)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Self-directed investors and intermediate traders
• Platforms: Desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux), web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Webull first hit the investing world in 2018 and made a splash by offering free stock trading, as well as commission-free trading of ETFs and options. And since then, it has become one of the best stock apps for intermediate traders and investors, though many of its features are helpful to beginners as well.

For one, Webull remains friendly to wallet-conscious traders today. It costs nothing to open a Webull account. Stocks, ETFs, and options still trade without transaction fees. Many options have $0 contract fees. And Webull has no deposit minimums. On top of that, it offers fractional shares, which allows investors to start buying for as little as $1. So beginners working with small dollar amounts can still easily diversify across numerous investments.

Newer investors can also learn trading skills through the courses in Webull’s education center, and even practice their skills via Webull’s paper trading service. (I’ve personally used this service and will admit practicing my trades here has saved my family and I many thousands of dollars by virtue of having the losses only exist virtually. My wife never needs to know the fictitious fortunes I’ve managed to lose for us time and time again.)

And if you wondered whether you could access Webull on your personal devices, Webull is available across just about every platform, allowing you to research, trade, and track your stocks on your smartphone, tablet, or desktop.

Why choose Webull to trade stocks?

Webull provides investors with several useful features and tools, including:

• Customizable screeners for both stocks and ETFs
• Preset lists–including Top Gainers, Top Losers, Most Active, and Best-Performing Industries—investors can use to identify opportunities
• Voice commands: Simply speak to buy, sell, or look up information about a ticker
• “Big Button Mode”: Populates giant buttons on your screen that allow you to quickly make trades with just a push.
• Charting tools
• Free real-time stock quotes and stock alerts

If you want to step up your trading game, Webull offers one month of free Level 2 quotes from Nasdaq TotalView, followed by a cheap subscription cost of just $1.99 per month. Webull also has advanced orders and a price ladder, though it lacks backtesting and direct market routing.

We’ll point out that while Webull allows for many types of commission-free trades, other costs will still apply to a few transactions. For instance, a 55-cent contract fee applies to certain options trades. And Webull doesn’t directly charge fees for trading cryptocurrencies; however, it does build a 1-percentage-point markup into the price of cryptocurrency when you buy or sell crypto—a benchmark we’ve found many brokers charge for the asset class.

One particularly noteworthy shortcoming for investors is that you can’t buy mutual funds on Webull. Yes, ETFs offer a wide array of diversified strategies, but the mutual fund world offers some cheap index funds and many successful actively managed strategies.

Regardless, Webull remains one of the best, and most cost-friendly, trading platforms you can come across. And on top of all the free features mentioned above, Webull also runs frequent promotions that allow investors to collect free stocks.

If you’re interested, sign up at Webull today.

 

9. Schwab/TDAmeritrade’s Thinkorswim (Great for All Experience Levels)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: All levels of trading experience
• Platforms: Desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux), web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Schwab is among the best stock trading apps for intermediate and beginner traders. Charles Schwab announced in 2019 that it would acquire TD Ameritrade, and it closed on the deal in 2020. Schwab recently folded the TD Ameritrade system into its own platform by announcing it would migrate existing TD accounts over to Schwab effective in 2023.

One thing that will stick around is TD’s popular Thinkorswim—an advanced trading platform also available across desktop, web, and mobile. The service boasts 400,000 economic data points, more than 400 technical studies, an earnings tool that explains their effect on options prices, even a programming language so you can build your own trading algorithms. And the Thinkorswim mobile app is more dynamic than even many full-featured desktop and web platforms. Schwab’s equivalent is StreetSmart Edge, which simultaneously isn’t as powerful but is more streamlined and user-friendly.

TD and Schwab’s primary offerings have a lot of similarities, especially on pricing. Both have zero commissions for stock and ETF trades. Both charge 65 cents per contract on options trades, and $2.25 per contract on futures trades. Both offer desktop apps, mobile apps, and web interfaces. Schwab and TD both offer robo-advisory products. They both have 24/7 customer support. They even share a similar drawback: neither directly offers cryptocurrency, just Bitcoin futures.

I also learned, through a conversation with Schwab’s (extremely helpful) account manager for this article, that TD day traders will have nothing to fear from the move, either. Schwab currently doesn’t have backtesting but will, through Thinkorswim. And Schwab already offers the same trading-focused options that TD does, including Level 2 quotes, advanced orders, direct routing, and price ladder.

TD Ameritrade users might feel the switch is a downgrade. But they’ll get a couple of upgrades, too, including a larger selection of no-load, no-fee mutual funds (more than 20,000 at Schwab vs. more than 3,600 at TD), and more initial access to international exchanges. And for advanced traders, Schwab does feature higher-than-average margin rates, but that’s still better than TD, which typically had some of the highest margin rates among popular brokerages.

To access Thinkorswim and the overall Schwab interface, you’ll need to create an account with Schwab. Once you click the link, simply click the “Visit Site” button on the landing page to be directed to Schwab’s main site to sign up.

 

FAQs About the Best Day Trading Platform Options

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What Is day trading?

First, a quick primer for the uninitiated:

Day trading involves making intraday trades to try to profit off short-term movements in stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), options, currencies, and other assets. Day traders employ a number of trading strategies; a few examples include:

• Momentum: Chasing stocks making big price moves
• Pullback: Trading stocks that are in a longer-term uptrend but have temporarily pulled back in price
• News: Trading based on news events, such as earnings announcements or product reveals

Technically, if you even make one trade where you buy and then sell (or sell and then buy) the same security within a trading day, you’ve been engaging in day trading. But there’s also an important day trading designation—a “pattern day trader” (PDT)—that many brokerages use to identify riskier traders. From the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA):

“You’re considered a pattern day trader if you execute four or more ‘day trades’ within five business days—provided that the number of day trades represents more than 6 percent of your total trades in the margin account for that same five business day period.”

Pattern day traders must hold at least $25,000 in their margin accounts (or more depending on a brokerage firm’s own requirements), and face other regulatory limitations, too.

Just go into it with your eyes wide open: More often than not, day traders lose money. Ritholtz Wealth Management’s Ben Carlson provided some disheartening statistics on the dangers of day trading in a post on his A Wealth of Common Sense blog. Among them:

“Research on individual day traders in Taiwan over a 15-year period from 1992 to 2006 showed even the most experienced day traders lose money, and surprisingly even those traders who lose consistently continue to trade despite their losses. … Another study of eToro day-traders found nearly 80% of them lost money over a 12-month period with a median loss of 36%.”

But if you’re still up for day trading, and you’re well aware of (and capable of handling) the risks, the best thing you can do is arm yourself with the technology you need.

What is a pattern day trader?

As we mentioned above, FINRA defines a pattern day trader (PDT) as someone who has executed four or more day trades within five business days, as long as that number represented more than 6% of total trades from their margin account over the period.

Does the SEC have special rules to trade stocks intraday?

FINRA, not the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), established the rules on day trading. FINRA requires pattern day traders to have at least $25,000 of equity (cash and eligible securities) in their margin accounts to participate in day trading. If the equity in a margin account falls below that, the trader must stop day trading until the equity returns above that threshold. PDTs also can’t trade in excess of their day-trading buying power (usually up to four times the maintenance margin excess).

Why do you need $25,000 to day trade?

The $25,000 requirement acts as a cushion for your brokerage firm. While trades might appear closed in your brokerage account, they might take more time to actually settle. The $25,000 buffer protects the brokerage firm from any deficiencies in your account that might occur as these day trades settle.

Can you day trade without $25,000 in your account?

If you are a pattern day trader, no, you cannot. If you are not a pattern day trader, you can execute day trades without $25,000 in your account as long as you don’t hit the threshold for being labeled a pattern day trader.

Can you start day trading with $1,000?

Yes. Day trading is only defined by buying then selling (or selling then buying) a security within the same trading day. In some cases, just a few dollars is enough to complete a day trade.

Is day trading still profitable?

Day trading can absolutely be profitable, but the odds are not in your favor. Numerous studies have shown that the majority of day traders lose money, and that those losses can be significant. Your best bet: Find a top online broker for day trading so you at least have the tools you’ll need to succeed.