Robinhood Fees in 2026: Every Charge, Including Gold

Robinhood publishes a fee schedule, which is more than some brokers do. It is a PDF most people never open. This page walks it in the order the charges are likely to reach you.

What is genuinely free

Worth stating clearly before the caveats, because the caveats are smaller than the internet suggests.

• Stock and ETF trades. No commission, no per-share fee.
• Options contracts. No per-contract commission on stock and ETF options. This is the standout — most competitors charge here. Regulatory pass-throughs of $0.04 per contract still apply, and index options carry a contract fee ($0.35 with Gold, $0.50 without).
• Account maintenance and inactivity. Nothing, and no account-opening fee. Restricted accounts, worthless-securities processing and voluntary corporate actions are all $0 too — brokers do charge for these.
• Electronic statements, trade confirmations and Form CRS. Free.
• Debit card basics. No card fee, no in-network ATM fee, no foreign transaction fee — though Mastercard may levy a conversion fee if you choose to pay in dollars abroad, and out-of-network ATM operators charge their own fee, which Robinhood does not reimburse.
• ACH deposits and withdrawals. Free, on the standard timeline.
• Incoming wires. Free and unlimited, arriving the same day if your bank sends before 4pm ET. Your own bank will usually charge you for sending one.

The full fee table

Index options are the exception to both: they carry neither the SEC fee nor the trading activity fee, only the contract fee above. Stock and ETF options carry both regardless of order size.

Two dates matter on those pass-throughs: the SEC rate took effect 4 April 2026 and holds until 60 days after the SEC publishes a new one, and the FINRA trading activity fee changed on 1 January 2026. A third fee has gone: the Consolidated Audit Trail charge on equity and options orders ended on 1 December 2025, so any article still listing it is out of date.

A warning about the schedule itself

Robinhood's Retail Commissions and Fees Schedule is a useful document, but the copy currently published carries a December 2022 revision stamp, and several of its figures have been superseded by the help centre: it lists the regulatory fee at $22.90 per $1m against today's $20.60, the trading activity fee at $0.000145 per share against $0.000195, wire transfers at $0 against the $25 now charged on outgoing wires, and instant withdrawals at 1.5% against the current 1.75%.

Where the two disagree, the more recent help-centre article wins. Where they agree — the $100 ACATS fee, the $2 paper document charges — you can rely on both. This is the sort of thing worth checking yourself rather than trusting any article, including ours.

The published schedule notes an effective date on each revision. Check the date on the copy you read — the version linked at the foot of this page is the live one, and it supersedes anything written here.

Margin rates: the one place Robinhood is genuinely cheapest

The rate is the federal funds target upper bound plus a spread, tiered by settled margin balance:

That top tier is worth sitting with, because it is unusual. Fidelity and Schwab both charge 11.825% on balances under $25,000. Robinhood charges 5%. Robinhood's own published comparison, dated 17 December 2025, puts E*TRADE at 12.45% and Interactive Brokers Lite at 6.14% against its 5%.

Two mechanics matter alongside the rate. Interest is calculated daily on settled margin balances and charged to your investing account every 30 days at the end of the billing cycle. And if you subscribe to Gold, the first $1,000 of margin is included — you pay interest only above that. On a $3,000 borrow, Gold means interest on $2,000 rather than $3,000, which is about $0.28 a day instead of $0.42.

The rate is variable and can change at any time at Robinhood's discretion, since it tracks the Fed. Nothing about the tier structure is promotional, though, which makes it a durable advantage rather than a teaser.

Robinhood Gold: the only fee that is a decision

Everything else on the table is triggered by an action. Gold is a standing monthly charge you choose, so it deserves the arithmetic.

Gold bundles a 3.35% yield on uninvested cash (as of 11 February 2026), the first $1,000 of margin interest-free, instant deposits of up to 3× your portfolio value, a 3% IRA match against 1% without it, discounted index options contracts, and research access. There is a 30-day free trial, though it is unavailable if you subscribe alongside a Gold Card application. The question is whether the yield uplift alone covers the subscription.

The break-even

The usual framing — Gold's yield against the standard yield — does not apply here, because there is no standard yield. Without Gold, uninvested cash earns 0%. So the calculation is simply the annual cost divided by 3.35%: about $1,500 on the annual plan, or $1,800 paid monthly, is the cash balance at which the subscription pays for itself on interest alone.

Four mechanics decide whether you actually earn that:

• It compounds daily and pays monthly, on the last business day. There is no minimum and no cap — interest starts on your first dollar.
• Only settled cash earns. Sell a stock and the cash starts earning a business day later; buy one and you keep earning until settlement.
• A margin balance stops it entirely. With a debit balance there is no cash balance to pay interest on.
• Up to $10,000 stays with Robinhood as a free credit balance under the Brokerage-Held Cash Program; above that, cash is swept to program banks. The rate is the same either way, but the custody is not.

One historical note now resolved: a pattern day trader flag used to block interest entirely. Since FINRA replaced the PDT rule in June 2026, those flags are gone and previously flagged accounts became eligible.

One structural note before the caveats: the High-Yield Cash program is a Gold feature, and a margin balance means there is no cash balance earning interest at all. If you borrow, the yield side of this calculation disappears.

The cash yield is only one half of the arithmetic, and for anyone contributing to an IRA it is the smaller half. Robinhood puts the 3% match at up to $225 against the 2026 contribution maximum. Set against $60 a year paid monthly, or $50 on the annual plan, a maxed IRA contribution alone more than covers the subscription — which makes the break-even question below largely academic if you are funding a retirement account here.

Two honest caveats on that maths. It only counts the cash yield, so if you use the margin discount or the research the break-even is lower. And APYs move — a break-even calculated today can be wrong in a quarter.

If you are holding enough cash for Gold to pay off, it is also worth checking that against a high-yield savings account, which does the same job without a subscription.

Beyond stocks: crypto, futures and event contracts

Everything above concerns the brokerage account. Crypto, futures and event contracts sit in separate legal entities with their own fee schedules, and this is where "commission-free" stops being the whole story.

Crypto: it depends how your order is routed

Default routing sends crypto orders to market makers and carries no commission. But orders placed through Robinhood Legend, or through the Ladder and advanced charts, use Exchange Routing — and those are charged a maker/taker fee based on your trailing 30-day volume, regardless of which routing you set as your default.

Read the top row again: a beginner buying crypto through Legend pays 0.95% as a taker. On a $500 order that is $4.75 — not a rounding error, and considerably more than the "free" trading elsewhere in this article. Volume tiers are the standard exchange model, and beginners sit in the worst tier by definition.

Two further crypto costs: staking carries a 25% commission on your rewards, and Robinhood Connect charges 0–1.5% depending on payment method. Crypto transfers themselves are free, though you still pay the network's own gas fee.

Futures and event contracts

Futures are commission-based, and Gold changes the rate: $0.50 per contract per side with Gold, $0.75 without, plus exchange and regulatory fees. The NFA assessment is $0.02 per contract per side.

Event contracts use a formula rather than a flat fee, effective 1 June 2026: total commission = k × p × (1 − p) × c, where p is the contract price as a decimal, c is the number of contracts, and k is 10% without Gold or 5% with it. The practical effect is that commission peaks on contracts priced near 50 cents — where the outcome is most uncertain — and shrinks as a contract approaches near-certainty.

For anyone weighing the Gold subscription, futures and event contracts are a second break-even worth running alongside the cash-yield one above.

Robinhood Banking: fees that depend on your behaviour

Robinhood Banking is a separate product — checking and savings provided by Coastal Community Bank — and it is the one place where Robinhood's fees look like a traditional bank's. Two conditions gate everything: an annual Gold subscription ($50), and at least $1,000 of direct deposit per calendar month into the checking account. Access is currently invite-only.

Miss the direct deposit and your checking APY goes to zero. Drop Gold and both accounts go to zero, and a list of fees switches on.

The tiering runs off assets under custody — equities, crypto and cash held at Robinhood, less liabilities, excluding self-custodied wallets and margin balances. Above $100,000 you reach the premier tier, which adds out-of-network ATM refunds and free domestic wires.

Two mechanics that decide whether this is worth it: new accounts get a 60-day preview of benefits regardless, upgrades are assessed daily on the higher of current or 90-day average assets, and downgrades are checked monthly on the 90-day average. So a good month gets you promoted quickly, and a bad quarter demotes you slowly.

Compare the 3.5% against a high-yield savings account before subscribing. The rate is competitive, but it is conditional on a $1,000 monthly direct deposit and a $50 annual fee — an ordinary savings account asks for neither.

Payment for order flow: does it cost you?

This is the fee people assume is hiding somewhere. Robinhood routes your orders to market makers who pay for that flow, and the criticism is that the arrangement costs you a slightly worse price.

The measurable version of the question is execution quality, and brokers publish it. Rule 606 reports disclose routing and payment; Rule 605 reports cover execution statistics. Both are public, and reading them is more useful than the argument.

For a beginner buying a few shares of a liquid ETF, any price difference is far smaller than a single wire fee. For someone trading size, it is worth the reading. Neither position requires taking anyone's word for it.

Instant deposits are free — the risk is elsewhere

Instant Deposits let you trade with part of a pending deposit immediately, at no charge, and Gold raises the amount available. Your limit is based on portfolio value and is shared across your self-directed individual accounts, so using it in one reduces it in the others. A joint account gets its own limit.

The cost only appears if the deposit fails. Keep enough in your bank to cover the transfer for five business days — a reversal for insufficient funds can leave you having traded with money that never arrived, which is also one of the routes to a Reg T call.

The consequences escalate beyond any fee. Instant Deposit money from a reversed deposit is removed from your balance, repeated reversals get your bank account unlinked, and a stop payment can require documentation to avoid account closure. There is no fee for the reversal itself — the cost is the disruption, not a charge. Robinhood cannot reverse a transfer either; that has to go through your bank. Robinhood's own guidance on this is in how to ensure a successful transfer, and it is worth a read before your first large deposit. Reversals are also more likely from savings accounts with monthly transaction caps, or from accounts that do not support standard outgoing ACH.

One timing note if you are moving money in to catch a price: standard transfers submitted between 3pm and 7pm ET process at 7pm ET, after 7pm they process at 3pm the next business day, and weekends and bank holidays roll to the next business day too.

Paying for speed

Robinhood's free withdrawal takes up to five business days. The instant option arrives in about ten minutes and costs 1.75% of the amount, with a $1 floor and a $150 ceiling — the fee is deducted from what you asked for, so requesting $100 sends $98.25.

That percentage is worth pausing on. On $5,000 it is $87.50, which is a lot to pay for four days. Above roughly $8,600 the $150 cap makes it proportionally cheaper than a wire is at small amounts, but for most balances the honest answer is to plan ahead and take the free option. Instant deposits, by contrast, are free.

How much you can move at once is a separate question — see how much you can take out of Robinhood at once.

A note on the wire fee

$25 out, nothing in, is the standard shape across brokers. Two details specific to Robinhood: the fee and the wire itself both count as withdrawals, so they can reduce the balance a promotion is measured against, and outgoing wires cannot be cancelled once initiated. Managed accounts can take up to five business days, because assets may need selling first.

The fee that catches people leaving

Transferring your account out through ACATS costs $100, and that applies to a partial transfer as much as a full one. It is the largest single fee Robinhood charges a brokerage customer, and it means "free to use" and "free to leave" are different claims.

Two mechanics worth knowing before you start:

• Fractional shares cannot be transferred. On a full transfer, Robinhood sells your fractional positions and sends the cash as a residual transfer. If those fractions hold gains, that is a taxable sale you did not choose to make.
• Crypto cannot go to another brokerage either. If you do not sell it within five months of a full transfer, Robinhood Crypto liquidates it and sends the proceeds on.
• Coming the other way, they pay. Robinhood reimburses an outside broker's exit fee up to $75 on transfers of $7,500 or more, per account type and firm — so moving in is subsidised while moving out is not.

If you are considering a move, our Robinhood to Fidelity transfer guide walks the process, and closing a brokerage account for free covers the ways to avoid the fee entirely.

What this means for you

• Buying and holding, no margin, no Gold: your running cost is effectively zero, and the regulatory pass-throughs are pennies.
• Trading options regularly: Robinhood is genuinely cheap here, because the per-contract commission most competitors charge does not exist.
• Holding a large cash balance: run the Gold break-even before subscribing, and compare it against a savings account.
• Using margin: the rate matters far more than any fee on this page. See Robinhood margin explained.

Robinhood Financial LLC is a FINRA and SIPC member; you can verify that yourself on BrokerCheck.