Interactive Brokers review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of Interactive Brokers, scored 7.1 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews. Interactive Brokers is not one company but a group of separately licensed brokers trading under the same brand: Interactive Brokers LLC out of Greenwich, Connecticut runs the US business, and separate affiliates hold their own licences in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Singapore. Which entity actually holds a client’s account, and which regulator and compensation scheme stand behind it, depends on where that client lives.

Overview Table

Facts List

• The NFA register shows Interactive Brokers LLC as NFA ID 0258600, “NFA Member Approved” since 12/02/1994, currently registered with the CFTC as a Futures Commission Merchant.
• The FCA register lists Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited under FRN 208159, status Authorised, effective 06/02/2002.
• The Central Bank of Ireland register lists Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited under reference C423427, as an Investment Firm under MiFID and on the Register of Crypto-Asset Service Providers under MiCAR.
• The ASIC register shows Interactive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd holding AFS licence 453554 since 28/07/2016.
• The Hong Kong SFC public register shows Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited (CE ref ADI249) licensed for Types 1, 2 and 3 activities, and also records two public disciplinary actions against it dated 28 April 2025, a public reprimand and a fine.
• The SEBI register lists Interactive Brokers (India) Private Limited under registration INZ000217730, active since 21 September 2007 with no end date.
• We searched 934 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and FSC Mauritius, and Interactive Brokers appears on none of them.
• The firm’s own fee page states IBKR charges no custody fees, that margin loans on IBKR Pro start at USD 4.13%, and that interest on uninvested cash runs up to USD 3.13%.
• The firm’s own accounts page states its parent, Interactive Brokers Group, Inc., is Nasdaq-listed under ticker IBKR and an S&P 500 member.
• Our earlier review reported that Interactive Brokers LLC agreed in July 2025 to pay OFAC roughly USD 11.8 million to settle sanctions-screening violations it had self-disclosed.

How Interactive Brokers Is Actually Structured

A reader dealing with “Interactive Brokers” is dealing with whichever local affiliate serves their country, not a single global entity. The Central Bank of Ireland register, the FCA register, the ASIC register, the Hong Kong SFC register, the SEBI register, the CIRO directory, the MAS Financial Institutions Directory and the Kanto Local Finance Bureau list each confirm a separate, standalone Interactive Brokers entity, each carrying its own licence and its own compensation arrangement. That matters in practice: our earlier review reported that Interactive Brokers Ireland’s clients fall under the Irish Investor Compensation Scheme, capped at 90% of a loss up to EUR 20,000, a different figure from the US SIPC scheme, and that UK clients are told directly that FSCS cover applies only in limited circumstances because assets are largely held with the US affiliate. Whichever entity opens a client’s account is the one whose register entry, and whose compensation scheme, actually governs them.

What Interactive Brokers Charges

The firm’s own fee schedule sets IBKR Lite at $0 commissions on US-listed stocks and ETFs, with a USD 0 account minimum and no account maintenance fee, while IBKR Pro charges USD 0.005 per share and adds access to IB SmartRouting. The same schedule prices options at USD 0.15 to 0.65 per contract, futures at USD 0.25 to 0.85 per contract, and spot currencies at 0.08 to 0.20 basis points of trade value. Margin loan rates on IBKR Pro start at “Benchmark plus 1.5%” (quoted as USD 4.13% at the first tier), against “Benchmark plus 2.5%” (USD 6.13%) for IBKR Lite, and interest paid on idle cash runs a full percentage point lower on Lite than on Pro. The fee page also carries a footnote worth flagging: if a Lite client’s combined monthly volume of on-close, on-open, outside-hours or sub-USD-1.00 orders exceeds 10% of their monthly US stock volume, IBKR charges a per-share commission on top of the advertised $0 rate, and the firm states it can reject any Lite order it judges to show “non-retail trading behavior” and push the client onto Fixed pricing instead.

Where the Score Moved

Our previous review of Interactive Brokers scored it 7.4 out of 10; this review scores it 7.1. The move is our assessment on this pass, not a claim that the firm got better or worse, and it rests on the current evidence rather than a side-by-side of old and new criteria. The regulation score (7.6) reflects nine confirmed register entries running from the NFA to the MAS directory and a clean sweep of the 934 mirrored warning-list entries. The fees score (9) reflects a fee page with no account minimum, no maintenance fee and no custody charge on either plan. Its cheapest EURUSD round turn, USD 5.65 on IBKR Pro, compared with USD 6.00 at Pepperstone through cTrader, which we also review, is part of why fees sit at 9. The lower marks on support (6.5) and reviews (6) sit against evidence such as the firm’s own contact page stating that login and security-device issues can only be resolved by phone with identity verification, not by email, and against an earlier review’s finding that the FCA register separately carries entries for unauthorised clone firms trading on the Interactive Brokers name, a fraud-risk detail relevant to anyone trying to verify they are dealing with the real firm.

Key Takeaways

Interactive Brokers scores 7.1/10 in this pass, down from our previous 7.4/10. Our fees assessment moved up to 9 on the strength of what the firm’s own pricing pages show, while platform, support and reviews pull the total down; the shift is our assessment being rebuilt against current evidence, not a change at the firm.

Regulation: spread across a real network of licensed entities

• We checked eight of Interactive Brokers’ national entities against their home regulators directly, not against the firm’s own claims. The NFA BASIC register confirms Interactive Brokers LLC as NFA ID 0258600, member approved since 12/02/1994, currently registered with the CFTC as a Futures Commission Merchant. The FCA register confirms FRN 208159 for Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited, authorised, effective 06/02/2002. The Central Bank of Ireland register confirms reference C423427 for Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited as an Investment Firm under MiFID, also on the Register of Crypto-Asset Service Providers. ASIC confirms AFS licence 453554 for Interactive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd.
• The Hong Kong SFC public register confirms CE reference ADI249 for Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited, active across Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 activities (dealing in securities, dealing in futures contracts, leveraged foreign exchange trading). That same register also carries two public disciplinary actions against the entity, both dated Apr 28, 2025: a Public Reprimand and a Fine, plus five licensing conditions attached to the licence.
• SEBI’s register confirms Interactive Brokers (India) Private Limited under INZ000217730, and the MAS Financial Institutions Directory confirms Interactive Brokers Singapore Pte Ltd as a Capital Markets Services Licensee, though MAS’s directory does not publish licence numbers, so the firm’s quoted CMS100917 isn’t independently verified by that source. The CIRO directory confirms Interactive Brokers Canada Inc. as a registered Investment Dealer and CIRO Participant.
• Our warning-list search covered 934 entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and FSC Mauritius, and Interactive Brokers appears on none of them.

Fees: the headline numbers hold up against the firm’s own fee pages

• Interactive Brokers’ own fee page gives $0 commissions on US exchange-listed stocks and ETFs under IBKR Lite, and $0.005 per share under IBKR Pro with a minimum of $1.00 and a maximum of 1% of trade value per order. The same page states $0 account minimums and $0 account maintenance fees for both plans.
• Margin loan rates on the firm’s pricing page start at USD 4.13% under IBKR Pro (Benchmark plus 1.5%, falling further on larger balances) versus a flat 6.13% under IBKR Lite (Benchmark plus 2.5%). Interest paid on idle cash runs up to USD 3.13% under Pro against up to USD 2.13% under Lite, with $0 paid at all on the first USD 10,000 of any balance per the firm’s fee schedule.
• The firm states it charges no custody fees, though it notes custody fees may be charged by third parties. Options run USD 0.15 to 0.65 per contract tiered or a flat USD 0.65 fixed; futures run USD 0.25 to 0.85 tiered or USD 0.85 fixed, per the fee page.

Where Interactive Brokers’ own terms bind the client

• The firm’s market data pricing notes state that clients without enough cash to cover data subscription fees will have positions liquidated to cover them, and clients without enough remaining equity will have the account closed after the equity is applied to the fees.
• The same page states partial-month data subscriptions are billed at the full month’s rate, with no pro-rating for a mid-month subscription or cancellation.
• Interactive Brokers’ funding disclosure states it charges a 1% handling fee (minimum USD 50) on any physical currency deposit that does get through, since accepting cash is against the firm’s policy. Third-party deposits are addressed too: the firm states it “strongly discourages and, generally, rejects” them.
• On interest rates, the firm’s disclosures state it “may change these rates at any time, in its sole discretion,” and that clients introduced through another broker “may receive a different amount of interest (or no interest) at the election of the client’s introducing broker.”

Platform and support: broad tools, narrow contact channels

• The firm’s own pages list Client Portal, IBKR Desktop, IBKR Mobile, Trader Workstation (TWS), IBKR GlobalTrader, IBKR APIs and Risk Navigator among its platform offerings, alongside a stated AI integration letting clients connect Claude, ChatGPT, Grok or other MCP-compatible tools to analyze portfolios and generate trade instructions.
• Support is where the model thins out. Interactive Brokers’ own contact page states inbound commercial email is not supported due to security and spam concerns, and that formal inquiries must go through the Message Center, generally answered within 24 hours. The same page states password, security-device and login issues “can only be addressed by telephoning Client Services,” with identity verification, and explicitly warns against submitting security requests by email.

What the register history flags

• The Hong Kong SFC register’s two disciplinary entries against Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited, both dated Apr 28, 2025, sit alongside the five licensing conditions attached to that same licence, worth reading in full before treating the HK licence as a clean pass.
• Our register check separately turned up an NFA BASIC entry for ForecastEx LLC, an Interactive Brokers affiliate, showing “Not an NFA Member” status with no current CFTC registration category on record, a contrast worth noting against the core Interactive Brokers LLC entity’s active NFA and CFTC standing.

Licenses & Regulation

Interactive Brokers operates as a group of separately licensed entities rather than a single regulated firm, and the register checks line up with what the group’s own pages claim entity by entity.

What the registers show for each Interactive Brokers entity

In the United States, Interactive Brokers LLC sits on the NFA BASIC register under NFA ID 0258600, showing “NFA Member Approved” status since 12/02/1994 and a current CFTC registration as a Futures Commission Merchant. In the United Kingdom, the FCA register lists FRN 208159 as held by Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited, status Authorised, effective 06/02/2002, with Companies House number 03958476. In Ireland, the Central Bank of Ireland register carries Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited under reference C423427, listed as an Investment Firm under MiFID and separately on the Register of Crypto-Asset Service Providers under MiCAR. In Australia, ASIC’s register shows AFS licence 453554 held by Interactive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd (ABN 98 166 929 568) since 28/07/2016.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission’s public register shows Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited under CE reference ADI249, licensed for Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 activities (dealing in securities, dealing in futures contracts, and leveraged foreign exchange trading), each marked active. That same register also records two public disciplinary actions against the entity: a public reprimand on 28 April 2025 and a fine on the same date, plus five licensing conditions attached to the licence. In India, the SEBI register of recognised intermediaries lists Interactive Brokers (India) Private Limited under registration numbers INZ000217730 and INE011288033, valid from 21 September 2007 with no end date, covering currency, equity and interest rate derivative segments via NSE Clearing, ICCL, BSE and NSE. In Japan, the Kanto Local Finance Bureau’s list of registered Financial Instruments Business Operators carries Interactive Brokers Securities Japan Inc. under registration No. 187, matched via corporate number 4010001100892 since the list itself is published in Japanese only. In Singapore, the MAS Financial Institutions Directory shows Interactive Brokers Singapore Pte. Ltd. as a Capital Markets Services Licensee, though the directory does not publish licence numbers, so the firm’s own quoted Licence No. CMS100917 could not be checked against it directly. In Canada, the CIRO directory of Dealers We Regulate lists Interactive Brokers Canada Inc. as an Investment Dealer and Participant, also authorised to offer trading in event contracts; CIRO’s directory does not publish a membership number, so no number could be verified there either.

What a positive control and the company registries add

Before treating any of the above as confirmed, a known-listed firm was searched on each of the 56 registers checked to confirm the search method itself returns real results rather than false negatives. On top of the licence checks, the underlying companies were also matched against company registries: Companies House (England & Wales) confirms Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited as company 03958476, incorporated 28 March 2000, status Active; the Irish Companies Registration Office confirms Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited as company 657406, status Normal; the Australian Business Register confirms Interactive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd under ACN 166 929 568 / ABN 98 166 929 568, status registered; and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, India confirms Interactive Brokers (India) Private Limited under CIN U67120MH2007FTC170004, status Active. These are company registries, not financial regulators, so they confirm the corporate entity exists and is active, not that it holds any licence. A depository participant number the firm quotes for its Indian entity, IN-DP-602-2021 with NSDL, could not be checked at all: no register entry exists in our directory for NSDL, which is a gap in what we hold, not a finding about the firm.

One contradiction worth flagging: ForecastEx

Interactive Brokers LLC’s own pages describe ForecastEx LLC as an affiliate and clearing member operating prediction and forecast markets, and elsewhere state it is a CFTC-registered Designated Contract Market and Derivatives Clearing Organization. Checked directly against the NFA BASIC register, ForecastEx LLC appears under NFA ID 0565360 with membership status “Not an NFA Member,” and the register shows no current CFTC registration category for it. Neither a current NFA membership nor a current CFTC registration was found there, so the register does not support a present-tense claim that this affiliate is NFA regulated, whatever its other registrations may be.

Warning-list search

The firm was searched against 934 warning-list entries mirrored from the CYSEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius blacklists, and it appears on none of them. That is a real result worth stating, though it only covers the three regulators mirrored here and cannot speak for warning lists maintained elsewhere.

Score movement

The previous score for this review was 7.4/10; this review scores 7.1/10, with the regulation criterion itself set at 7.6. The overall figure reflects lower current scores on platform (6.6), support (6.5) and reviews (6) sitting alongside the strong fees score (9) and the regulation score, rather than any register finding pointing to a weaker regulatory footing than the fixed 7.6 already provides for. This move is our assessment under the current criteria and evidence, not a claim that Interactive Brokers’ regulatory standing has changed.

How to Trade

The firm’s own product pages list stocks, ETFs, options, futures and futures options, spot currencies, US spot gold, bonds, mutual funds, prediction markets and hedge fund access, and the parent’s about page footnotes that “stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, gold, crypto* and funds worldwide” are on offer, with cryptocurrency execution and custody carved out to Paxos Trust Company and ZeroHash for eligible clients of Interactive Brokers LLC. Where CFDs do appear in the material we hold, it is as a substitute rather than a headline product: our earlier review reported that EEA and UK residents cannot trade US-domiciled ETFs because US issuers do not produce the Key Information Document those regimes require, and that CFDs on those ETFs are offered in their place. Restated in our own words because that fact reached us second-hand, not fetched from IBKR’s own pages.

How an order actually gets filled

IBKR Pro clients can route through IB SmartRouting, which the firm’s own account pages list as a IBKR Pro feature not available on IBKR Lite. Fixed and Tiered commission schedules run in parallel across products: options run TIERED USD 0.15-0.65 per contract or FIXED USD 0.65 per contract, futures run TIERED USD 0.25-0.85 per contract or FIXED USD 0.85 per contract, spot currencies price at 0.08-0.20 basis points times trade value with spreads the fee page puts as narrow as a tenth of a pip, bonds run at 10 basis points times face value, and mutual funds run at 3% of trade value capped at USD 14.95, with No Fee Funds priced at USD 0 per transaction, all per the firm’s fee page. IBKR Pro’s Fixed schedule carries its own floor and ceiling: a minimum of USD 1.00 per order and a maximum of 1% of trade value, while the Tiered schedule has a low minimum per order of USD 0.35.

The Lite order that turns into a paid one

The commission-free pitch on IBKR Lite is qualified by a footnote most readers of the headline price will not see. The fee page states that at the end of each month IBKR reviews an account’s total monthly trading volume of US listed stock orders, and if the combined volume of OnClose, OnOpen, Outside Regular Trading Hours (“Outside RTH”) or sub-USD 1.00 NMS orders exceeds 10% of that account’s monthly US stock trading volume, a commission of the lesser of USD 0.005 per share or 1% of trade value will be charged. The same footnote gives IBKR the right to reject any Lite order it judges to show “non-retail trading behavior,” at which point the client is automatically offered the chance to resubmit the same order on a Fixed commission basis instead. Read together, “commission-free” on Lite is conditional on trading in a pattern IBKR classes as retail, not a flat guarantee.

What binds a position once it’s open

The firm’s margin and CFD-adjacent risk language does not promise negative-balance protection as a blanket feature. The fee and account pages state plainly that trading on margin “is only for experienced investors with high risk tolerance” and that a client “may lose more than your initial investment,” and the same warning is repeated for security futures. Cash accounts carry their own constraints reported in the earlier review: a client must hold enough settled cash to cover a purchase plus commissions, cannot short, and proceeds from a stock sale are unavailable for three business days after the trade date; market, relative and VWAP order types additionally require a 5% cash cushion. That earlier review also reported that a cash account can be upgraded to margin but that a margin account cannot be downgraded back to cash, making the switch one-directional. On liquidation, the same source reported that IBKR states it does not give a borrower days to correct a margin deficiency the way some regulation would otherwise allow; positions are liquidated automatically and in real time rather than through a margin call with a grace period.

Currency and market restrictions that sit inside the contract

Some instruments are switched off entirely rather than priced differently. The fee page states that all IBKR clients, regardless of entity, cannot open or close positions on the Moscow Stock Exchange because of sanctions imposed by multiple governments, and separately that long or short RUB balances in an account are auto-converted to USD or EUR depending on which IBKR entity holds the account, without an individual client instruction triggering it. The same fee-disclosure page states that for balances held in CHF, JPY or RUB, IBKR may apply an effective negative rate to long balances, applied at the same rate regardless of account size, meaning the currency a position or cash balance sits in can itself carry a cost separate from any spread or commission. Forecast contracts on US election results are restricted to eligible US residents, per the firm’s own account pages, and clients based in India or Japan are limited to INR or JPY as the account base currency, respectively, per the earlier review.

Data and platform access that trading rests on

Order execution runs through Trader Workstation, IBKR Desktop, IBKR Mobile, IBKR GlobalTrader or the Client Portal browser platform, with IBKR APIs (REST, Python, FIX or native) available for automated strategies, per the firm’s own platform pages. Live pricing is not bundled free of charge beyond a small allowance: the market-data disclosures on IBKR’s own fee page set a snapshot quote fee of USD 0.01 per request for US-listed equities and ETFs and USD 0.03 for everything else, with a USD 1.00 monthly waiver applied to every account, and Quote Booster packs priced at USD 30.00 per pack per month for 100 additional Level I quotes and one extra Level 2/Depth of Book quote, capped at 10 packs per account. The same page states that an account without enough cash to cover market data fees will have positions liquidated to cover them, and an account without enough remaining equity will have that equity applied to the fees before the account is closed, which ties a subscription cost directly to open positions rather than treating it as a separate billing matter.

Account Types

Interactive Brokers runs two account tiers plus a set of higher-tier and institutional accounts, and the firm’s own pages are inconsistent about who can actually hold the cheaper one.

IBKR Lite and IBKR Pro

Both accounts carry a $0 minimum deposit and $0 maintenance fee, according to the firm’s fee page. IBKR Lite advertises $0 commissions on US exchange-listed stocks and ETFs, margin loans starting as low as 6.13%, and interest of up to 2.13% on uninvested cash. IBKR Pro charges $0.005 per share on US stocks and ETFs, with margin starting as low as 4.13% and interest of up to 3.13% on uninvested cash; Pro also carries IB SmartRouting, which Lite does not get. Pro adds fixed or tiered commission schedules across products: the fee page lists options at $0.15 to $0.65 per contract (tiered) or a flat $0.65 (fixed), futures at $0.25 to $0.85 per contract (tiered) or a flat $0.85 (fixed), bonds at 10 basis points of face value, and mutual funds at 3% of trade value capped at $14.95, with no-fee funds priced at $0 per transaction.

The account-eligibility disclosure on the firm’s accounts page restricts IBKR Lite to US residents holding Individual, Joint, IRA or Trust accounts with a natural-person trustee or beneficiary, plus US-domiciled financial advisors trading for retail clients. A separate FAQ on the same fee page instead describes Lite as open to “eligible US and Singapore residents.” Those two statements on the firm’s own site contradict each other, and nothing in what we read resolves which one governs a given application.

Lite’s headline of $0 commissions comes with a routing condition buried in a footnote to the Lite/Pro comparison: if an account’s combined monthly volume of OnClose, OnOpen, outside-regular-hours, or sub-$1.00 NMS orders exceeds 10% of its monthly US stock trading volume, IBKR charges the lesser of $0.005 per share or 1% of trade value on that volume. The same footnote states IBKR can reject any Lite order it judges to show non-retail trading behavior, and when it does, the client is offered the option to resubmit that order on a Fixed commission basis instead.

What Interactive Brokers charges beyond the headline rate

Custody carries no fee from Interactive Brokers itself, per the fee page, though it notes third parties may charge one. Spot currency trading is priced at 0.08 to 0.20 basis points of trade value, and the fee page advertises spreads as narrow as a tenth of a pip. Prediction market contracts are priced from as low as $0.01 per contract. Fixed-plan Pro orders carry a $1.00 per-order minimum and a cap of 1% of trade value; the tiered plan’s minimum per order runs as low as $0.35.

Margin and cash-interest rates on the fee pages are pegged to a benchmark: Lite margin runs at the benchmark plus 2.5%, Pro margin starts at the benchmark plus 1.5% with lower rates at higher loan balances, Lite pays benchmark minus 1.5% on cash, and Pro pays benchmark minus 0.5%. One fee page gives the resulting tiers directly: 0% on balances of $0 to $10,000, then 3.130% (benchmark minus 0.5%) for Pro or 2.130% (benchmark minus 1.5%) for Lite above $10,000.

Market data is unbundled from the account fee. The market data page prices a snapshot quote at $0.01 per request for US-listed equities and ETFs or $0.03 for everything else, with every account getting a $1.00 monthly waiver before charges start; a Quote Booster pack adding 100 simultaneous Level I quotes plus one more Level 2/Depth of Book quote costs $30.00 per month, up to 10 packs per account. Subscriptions of this kind are not pro-rated for a partial month, per the same page, and the firm keeps 5% to 10% of these fees to cover administrative costs, passing the rest to the data vendor.

Higher-tier and institutional accounts

Beyond Lite and Pro, an earlier review of this firm’s account structure describes a Portfolio Margin account requiring $110,000 (or the equivalent) to open, with Reg T margin rules kicking back in if the balance drops below $100,000; that same earlier review reports this account type is not offered to Interactive Brokers Canada clients. The same source describes a Broker Master account for institutional clients, requiring a $10,000 up-front deposit applied against commissions over the first eight months and then a $2,000-per-month commission minimum from the ninth month on, and an IBPrime account requiring a $1,000,000 minimum for prime brokerage services. We did not fetch the pages describing these three account types ourselves, so treat the figures as what the earlier review reported rather than as read directly from Interactive Brokers’ own material.

The firm’s own accounts page also lists a Non-Professional Advisor account: a master account linked to individual client accounts, limited to advisors exempt from SEC or state investment-adviser registration who serve 15 or fewer clients, priced at what the page calls professional rates with, in its own words, “no added spreads, ticket charges or account minimums.”

Where this score moved

Our previous review scored this broker 7.4 out of 10; this review scores it 7.1. The fees criterion sits at 9 here, the highest of the five scored categories, which fits a $0-minimum, $0-commission Lite tier and Pro’s per-share pricing running as low as $0.005. The lower categories are platform (6.6), support (6.5) and reviews (6), and it is the pull of those three, not any change in what Interactive Brokers charges for its accounts, that accounts for the lower overall figure. The account and fee structure itself is unchanged in the evidence between the two reviews.

Negative Balance Protection

Interactive Brokers’ own margin and CFD warnings state plainly that clients “may lose more than your initial investment” and that for security futures “the amount you may lose may be greater than your initial investment.” There is no published negative balance protection guarantee sitting alongside those warnings, and for accounts trading on margin, futures, or short options, that gap is where losses become debt rather than a wipeout of the deposit.

How Interactive Brokers handles a margin shortfall

Where most brokers describe a margin call with a window to add funds, Interactive Brokers describes the opposite. The firm states that a client short on margin does not receive the days regulation would otherwise allow to correct the deficiency; instead, liquidation is immediate and automatic, carried out in real time. A client short of margin does not get a grace period to wire in cash or close positions on their own schedule. That speed cuts the other way for negative balances too: fast, automatic liquidation is the mechanism that is supposed to stop a losing account from running further into deficit, but it does not eliminate the risk, since gapping markets or a large single position can still leave the account underwater by the time the liquidation completes.

Where the protection differs by entity

The FCA and EU rule limiting negative balances applies narrowly, to retail CFD accounts, and Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited and Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited are the entities operating under CBI reference C423427 and FCA reference 208159 respectively. Outside that narrow retail-CFD carve-out, the same “may lose more than your initial investment” language governs margin, futures and short-options exposure across the group’s entities, including Interactive Brokers LLC (NFA ID 0258600, CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant) in the US and Interactive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd (AFSL 453554) in Australia.

What happens if unpaid fees pile up alongside a loss

The firm’s own Market Data Pricing notes describe a separate but related mechanism: clients without enough cash to pay market data fees have positions liquidated to cover them, and clients without enough equity have their remaining equity applied to the fees before the account is closed. That is a second route by which a shortfall in one part of the account, not just an adverse market move, forces liquidation of the rest.

Compensation scheme cover if the firm itself fails

Negative balance risk from trading losses is separate from what happens if Interactive Brokers itself becomes insolvent, and the schemes differ sharply by entity. The firm tells UK clients that FSCS cover applies only in limited circumstances, since their assets are mostly held with the US affiliate. Irish and EEA clients fall under the Investor Compensation Scheme at 90% of the loss capped at EUR 20,000, a fraction of the USD 500,000 SIPC figure available to equivalent US clients through Interactive Brokers LLC’s membership of NYSE, FINRA and SIPC. Canadian clients sit under the Canadian Investor Protection Fund via Interactive Brokers Canada Inc.’s CIRO membership instead. For Australian clients, shares held on the ASX or Cboe Australia are custodied by BNP Paribas as sub-custodian, and the firm notes that this could affect their eligibility to claim compensation under the National Guarantee Fund. None of these figures address a losing trade; they address what a client recovers if the broker itself fails, and they vary enough by jurisdiction that a client should check which entity actually holds their account.

Score note

This review scores Interactive Brokers 7.1 out of 10, down from a prior score of 7.4. That is a restatement of our own assessment under the current scoring criteria rather than a claim that the firm’s terms have moved; the fixed criteria breakdown here (regulation 7.6, fees 9, platform 6.6, support 6.5, reviews 6) reflects this review’s own weighting, applied to the same kind of evidence set out above: real-time liquidation with no correction window, no published negative-balance guarantee outside the narrow retail-CFD carve-out, and compensation-scheme cover that varies by entity from EUR 20,000 to USD 500,000.

Trading Instruments

Interactive Brokers markets its product range as stocks, ETFs, options, futures and futures options, spot currencies, US spot gold, bonds, mutual funds, prediction markets and hedge funds, all listed under “Trading & Investment Products” on the firm’s own fee pages. A separate About page adds cryptocurrencies to that list, with a footnote that execution and custody for crypto are handled by two named third parties, Paxos Trust Company and ZeroHash, for eligible clients of Interactive Brokers LLC specifically, not the group generally. The firm’s Australia and UAE platform pages extend the list further with warrants, structured products, inter-commodity spreads and combinations. This review is filed under CFDs, but nothing in the evidence gathered from the firm’s own pages describes a CFD product line, CFD pricing, or CFD account terms; the one CFD reference in the evidence is second-hand, from the earlier review being rewritten, which reported that EEA and UK residents are offered CFDs on US-domiciled ETFs because those ETFs cannot be sold to them directly under Key Information Document rules. That is a claim about a narrow substitute product for a specific residency group, not a description of a general CFD offering, and it did not come from a page we fetched.

What Interactive Brokers actually prices

The firm’s own fee schedule gives per-product pricing rather than a single blended rate. Options run USD 0.15 to 0.65 per contract on Tiered pricing or a flat USD 0.65 on Fixed pricing, both under IBKR Pro. Futures run USD 0.25 to 0.85 per contract Tiered or USD 0.85 Fixed. Spot currencies are priced at 0.08 to 0.20 basis points times trade value, which the page also frames as spreads as narrow as a tenth of a pip. Bonds carry a flat 10 basis points times face value. Mutual funds cost 3% of trade value capped at USD 14.95, except funds in the No Transaction Fee programme, which cost nothing per transaction. Prediction markets are priced from as low as USD 0.01 per contract. IBKR Pro also sets order-level floors and caps: a Fixed-pricing order has a minimum charge of USD 1.00 and a maximum of 1% of trade value, while Tiered pricing has a low minimum of USD 0.35 per order. US stocks and ETFs are commission-free under IBKR Lite and cost USD 0.005 per share under IBKR Pro, according to the firm’s own account-comparison and India root pages.

Where the advertised range and the fine print pull apart

The “commission-free” framing on IBKR Lite carries a condition buried in a footnote on the same fee page: if an account’s combined monthly volume of on-close, on-open, outside-regular-hours or sub-USD-1.00 orders exceeds 10% of its monthly US stock trading volume, IBKR charges the lesser of USD 0.005 per share or 1% of trade value on top. The same footnote gives IBKR the right to reject any Lite order it judges non-retail and to push the client onto Fixed commission pricing to resubmit it. Neither condition is visible in the headline “$0 Commissions” claim on the firm’s root and country pages.

The asset range advertised across the firm’s own country sites is also inconsistent in scope: the Australia and UAE platform pages list warrants and structured products as tradable, while the pages fetched for the US, UK, Ireland and India sites describe only the shorter core list of stocks, ETFs, options, futures, currencies, gold, bonds, mutual funds, prediction markets and hedge funds, without mentioning warrants or structured products at all. That is a difference in what each fetched page states, not a confirmed restriction; we did not fetch every country page for every product.

Market data for these instruments is a further, separate cost layer. The firm’s market-data pricing page sets a snapshot-quote fee of USD 0.01 per request for US-listed equities and ETFs and USD 0.03 for everything else, offset by a USD 1.00 monthly waiver on every account, and a Quote Booster pack at USD 30.00 per month adding 100 simultaneous Level I quotes, capped at 10 packs per account. The same page states IBKR retains 5% to 10% of subscription fees for administrative costs and passes the remainder to the data vendor, and that accounts falling below a minimum equity threshold, USD 500.00 for most account types, USD 200.00 for Non-Professional Advisor and Introducing Broker clients, USD 100.00 for Indian residents on an IB India account, have market data switched off outright. A further clause on the same page states that clients without enough cash to cover unpaid data fees can have positions liquidated to cover them, and clients without enough remaining equity can have the account closed.

Score

Our previous review scored Interactive Brokers 7.4 out of 10; this review scores it 7.1. The move is our own reassessment against our published scoring criteria, not a claim that the firm’s offering changed: fees score 9, the strongest of the five criteria, reflecting the per-contract and per-share pricing the firm publishes directly, while platform sits at 6.6 and support at 6.5, pulling the blended score down from the prior figure. We are not attributing the change to anything Interactive Brokers did differently.

Education & Analysis

Interactive Brokers markets a spread of platforms rather than one, and what we read pulled apart cleanly by audience. Client Portal is the browser platform for account management and trading. IBKR Desktop is described on the firm’s own pages as “our newest streamlined, high-speed platform,” aimed, per the Australian platforms page, at active traders, options traders and global investors. IBKR Mobile covers iOS and Android. Trader Workstation, TWS, is called “our most advanced desktop platform,” built for high-volume traders, multi-asset strategies and professional users, with a configurable workspace and what the Australian platforms page describes as complex options strategies and deep analytics. IBKR GlobalTrader is pitched as a simpler mobile-first app for new and global investors trading stocks and ETFs with, in the firm’s words, more straightforward controls. IB Gateway appears as a separate download alongside TWS and IBKR Desktop, for running a connection without the full TWS interface. None of the pages we fetched give a breakdown of how many chart types, drawing tools or timeframes any of these carry, so the review can’t score depth of charting itself, only confirm that a multi-platform lineup exists and what each one is built for.

What Interactive Brokers actually ties to analysis tools

The firm’s own risk pages describe Risk Navigator as a real-time market-risk management tool spanning multiple asset classes, with What-If portfolio scenarios and what the page calls advanced beta analysis. A separate risk disclosure page is explicit about the limits of that tool: “the projections or other information generated by the Risk Navigator tool regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results and are not guarantees of future results.” That is Interactive Brokers disclaiming its own risk-analysis output in writing, not a caveat we are adding.

On research, the Indonesian fees page states IBKR offers access to over 60 news and research providers, naming Morningstar, Zacks, Dow Jones and TipRanks among them. The same page immediately qualifies that claim: “Much of the tools, information and services accessible through this listings page are prepared and offered by independent third-party providers and not by Interactive Brokers… Information about a third-party provider provided in the listings page is NOT a recommendation of that provider by Interactive Brokers.” So the depth of research on offer is real by count, but it is vendor content the firm is explicitly not standing behind, and the fee schedule backs that arm’s-length framing: each subscription is billed per vendor (examples on the fee page run from USD 3.00 to USD 750.00), and the firm’s own market-data page says it “retains 5%-10% of these fees to cover administrative and other costs,” passing the remainder to the vendor. A reader paying for a research feed here is paying the vendor through IBKR’s billing rails, not buying an in-house Interactive Brokers product.

Market data behind the charts

Live pricing on any of these platforms is not bundled by default. The market-data page we read sets a snapshot quote fee of USD 0.01 per request for US-listed equities and ETFs and USD 0.03 for everything else, with a USD 1.00 monthly waiver applied to every account and an automatic upgrade to real-time streaming once the monthly snapshot cost matches the streaming service cost. For accounts that want more simultaneous quotes than the base entitlement, the same page prices a Quote Booster pack at USD 30.00 per pack per month, adding 100 simultaneous Level I quotes and one additional Level 2/Depth of Book quote, capped at 10 packs per account. The page also sets a minimum equity threshold before market data is switched on at all: USD 500.00 for Individual, Financial Advisor, and Institutional/Organizational accounts, USD 200.00 for Non-Professional Advisor and Introducing Broker clients, and USD 100.00 for Indian residents trading through the IB India entity, with data turned off below that level. None of those thresholds include the subscription cost itself. There’s a harder edge behind this too: the same source states that clients without enough cash to cover market-data fees will have positions liquidated to cover them, and clients without enough equity will have the remaining equity applied to the fees before the account is closed. Whatever charting tools a client is running, the feed behind them is metered, and unpaid data bills escalate to forced liquidation rather than simply switching off.

Automation and third-party AI on the same account

The firm’s own pages describe IBKR APIs, covering REST, Python, FIX and a native API, for clients building automated strategies or connecting external trading systems, alongside a Paper Trading environment for testing without live money. Separately, the Indonesian root page and the firm’s own about page describe an AI integration letting clients connect Model Context Protocol tools, including Claude, ChatGPT, Grok and Perplexity, directly to an IBKR account to analyze portfolios, research opportunities, and, in the site’s own words, “generate trade instructions.” The about page carries the same arm’s-length disclaimer pattern seen with research vendors: AI integrations are stated to be provided by third parties, and Interactive Brokers says it does not endorse or verify content those platforms generate. A feature that lets an external AI tool draft trade instructions against a live account is a distinctive piece of the platform stack, and the firm’s own wording is also the clearest signal that responsibility for what that tool outputs sits with the client, not with Interactive Brokers.

This review scores the platform criterion at 6.6, down from 7.4 overall in our last pass. The platform breadth here, Client Portal, IBKR Desktop, TWS, GlobalTrader, IBKR Mobile, IB Gateway, plus Risk Navigator and the API stack, is genuinely wide, but the evidence we hold is heavier on entitlement mechanics, billing thresholds and disclaimers than on describing what the charting and analysis tools inside those platforms can actually do. That gap between a well-documented fee and access structure and a thin account of the analysis tools themselves is what the platform score reflects.

Special Offers

Every page pulled for this review is one of Interactive Brokers’ own product, fee and account pages across the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore and UAE sites. Deposit bonuses, welcome credits, cashback and rebate promotions are not part of what IBKR offers. Three standing programmes make up what IBKR runs instead, each with published terms of its own: the Stock Yield Enhancement Program, a no-transaction-fee ETF programme, the Insured Bank Deposit Sweep Program, Refer a Friend, and other standing offers such as free trial access and paper trading. The fee pages describe commissions, margin rates and interest on cash instead: IBKR Lite at $0 commissions on US exchange-listed stocks and ETFs, IBKR Pro at $0.005 per share, margin loans quoted from 4.13% and interest on uninvested cash up to 3.13%, all pulled from the firm’s own account and fee pages. That is a pricing structure, not a promotion, and the pages we read frame it that way throughout.

The one program that does move money toward a client for a specific action is Refer a Friend. Residents of Japan, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Poland, mainland China and Israel are excluded from Refer a Friend, and Canadian residents may make referrals under the scheme but cannot earn the IBKR stock reward it otherwise pays out. We have not read the referral program’s own terms, so the mechanics of what a successful referral actually pays cannot be stated here beyond that.

What we found instead of an offers page

Interactive Brokers’ own account and fee material lists ongoing account-level perks rather than time-limited promotions. The Insured Bank Deposit Sweep Program is one: IBKR’s fee page states it gives eligible clients up to USD 5,000,000 of FDIC insurance for an individual account (USD 10,000,000 for a joint account) on top of the existing USD 250,000 SIPC coverage, for total coverage of USD 5,250,000 or USD 10,250,000. Enrollment is not automatic. The same page qualifies the headline figure directly: “Participation in the Insured Bank Deposit Sweep Program required; restrictions apply.” A client who never opts in, or who does not qualify, is left with the standard SIPC figure alone.

The Karta Visa Infinite Charge Card is the other benefit IBKR markets prominently, and it reads like a loyalty perk rather than a promotion: no foreign transaction fees, Priority Pass Select lounge access and Visa Infinite protections, drawn from the account pages we fetched. It carries a USD 300 annual fee, stated on the same pages, and is restricted to IBLLC individual or joint account holders who are citizens of a list of roughly 40 countries. Most nationalities reading this review would not qualify for it at all.

Fee waivers built into Interactive Brokers’ standard pricing

The closest things to a discount in the fee pages we read are standing waivers rather than promotional offers. The market data page states every IBKR account gets a USD 1.00 monthly waiver against snapshot quote fees, and that a subscription upgrades automatically to real-time streaming if the monthly snapshot cost would equal the streaming cost anyway. The same fee schedule gives account holders two free withdrawals per calendar month before a withdrawal fee applies (for example, USD 10.00 for a bank wire, USD 1.00 for ACH or SEPA, figures the earlier review reported and carried here as such). None of this is dressed up as a sign-up incentive on the pages we fetched; it sits in the ordinary fee schedule.

What Interactive Brokers’ own risk pages say about “free” claims

IBKR’s frauds-and-scams page, which we did read directly, is worth citing here because it works against fake-promotion fraud rather than for one: it states the firm “does not cold call consumers,” “does not make investment recommendations,” and does not charge a fee to withdraw your funds. That last line is the firm’s own denial of the very withdrawal fee its fee schedule elsewhere confirms exists after the two free monthly withdrawals, worth flagging as an inconsistency between two of the firm’s own pages rather than resolving it either way. The same page lists interactivebrokers.com, interactivebrokers.co.uk and interactivebrokers.ie as the only legitimate email domains, useful for anyone checking whether a “special offer” email claiming to be from IBKR is genuine.

Our warning-list search against 934 mirrored entries from CYSEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius turned up no match for Interactive Brokers, so there is nothing there tied to fraudulent promotional activity under this firm’s name. That check does not cover every regulator’s list, only the ones we mirror.

Regulation for this review scores 7.6, fees 9, platform 6.6, support 6.5 and reviews 6, for an overall 7.1, down from 7.1 the score card gives here versus 7.4 in our prior review of this broker. That movement is our assessment being restated against the current evidence and criteria, not a change in what Interactive Brokers offers; the evidence above does not itself explain a shift in a promotions-specific score, since this category rests on the absence of promotional material across the pages we fetched rather than on anything that changed.

Opening an Account

Opening an account with Interactive Brokers means picking one of the affiliate entities the firm operates under and, in most cases, one of two pricing tracks first. Interactive Brokers’ own accounts page states the plan choice up front: IBKR Lite is restricted to US residents holding Individual, Joint, IRA or Trust accounts where the trustee and beneficiary are natural persons, plus US-domiciled financial advisors trading for retail clients. Non-US residents can only choose IBKR Pro, and Pro is likewise the only track that retains IB SmartRouting, a feature Lite lacks. Worth flagging: a separate FAQ on the same fee page describes Lite as available to “eligible US and Singapore residents,” which does not match the formal eligibility disclosure restricting it to US residents. The pages disagree with each other, so anyone in Singapore should check directly with Interactive Brokers before assuming Lite applies to them.

Age and account-type rules at Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers’ account disclosures set a minimum age of 21 to open a Margin Account and 18 for a Cash Account. A cash account can be upgraded to a margin account, but the reverse is not offered. According to the earlier review of these account terms, cash accounts come with their own trading restrictions: short selling is off the table, a purchase plus commissions must be fully covered by settled cash already on hand, sale proceeds sit unavailable for three business days, and a 5% cash cushion is required for market, relative and VWAP orders. IRA accounts are limited to individual US citizens living anywhere and US resident aliens. A UGMA/UTMA custodial account is cash-only and, per Interactive Brokers’ own accounts page, is meant for a custodian acting for a minor who is a US legal resident and citizen, with one custodian and up to five power-of-attorney users. Advisors wanting the Non-Professional Advisor structure must be exempt from SEC or state investment-adviser registration and serve 15 or fewer non-professional clients; Nevada-domiciled advisors specifically must hold an Investment Advisor licence under NRS 90.330 to use it, and Interactive Brokers’ own disclosure puts the burden on the advisor to check every state’s registration threshold, since “the rules vary from state to state.”

Two higher-tier structures carry their own capital bar, according to the earlier review of these terms: a Portfolio Margin account needs USD 110,000 (or the equivalent) to open, and Reg T rules apply instead if the balance drops below USD 100,000; that account type is not offered to Interactive Brokers Canada clients because of Canadian regulator restrictions. An IBPrime account needs USD 1,000,000, and a Broker Master institutional account needs a USD 10,000 up-front deposit applied against commissions over the first eight months, moving to a USD 2,000-a-month commission minimum from month nine.

Who Interactive Brokers will not open an account for

Interactive Brokers’ accounts page states it accepts applicants from citizens or residents of all countries except those on the US OFAC sanction list or similar lists, or countries the firm determines to be higher risk. The earlier review of Interactive Brokers’ compliance record names the specific bar: residents of Iran, Cuba, Syria and Crimea are excluded under OFAC sanctions programmes. That same earlier review reported that Interactive Brokers LLC agreed on 15 July 2025 to settle with OFAC for USD 11,832,136 over 12,367 apparent sanctions breaches between 15 July 2016 and 31 January 2024, self-disclosed after the firm’s own compliance review, and that OFAC’s findings included a technical bug in Interactive Brokers’ IP-blocking system that let some Iranian, Cuban and Syrian customers reach its trading applications, plus a multi-year gap where Crimea and Sevastopol were missing from the IP blocking list. Base currency is also fixed by entity: the earlier review reported that accounts opened through Interactive Brokers India can only run in INR, and accounts through Interactive Brokers Securities Japan can only run in JPY.

Verification and how Interactive Brokers wants funds to arrive

Interactive Brokers’ funding disclosures describe what happens after the account is opened rather than a document checklist, but the funding rules amount to an identity and source-of-funds screen in practice. The firm “strongly discourages and, generally, rejects” third-party deposits, stating the industry and regulators have historically viewed them as susceptible to fraud and money laundering. Cheque deposits are only accepted where Interactive Brokers is the direct payee and the cheque either carries the account holder’s own surname or, for an organisation account, comes from an affiliated party; a bounced cheque costs USD 25 for US accounts, per the earlier review. Physical currency deposits are against Interactive Brokers’ stated policy and, if one goes through anyway, draw a special handling fee of 1% of the amount with a USD 50 minimum; physical stock certificates are not accepted at all. Funds are not usable the moment they land, either: Interactive Brokers’ own disclosures define a Credit Period before deposited funds post and become available for trading (the example given is 4 business days) and a separate Withdrawal Hold Period before those funds can even be requested back out (the example given is 6 business days).

Once opened, an Interactive Brokers account sits with one of the regulated affiliates depending on where the applicant lives: the FCA register lists Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited under FRN 208159, the Central Bank of Ireland lists Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited under reference C423427, ASIC lists Interactive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd under AFSL 453554, the SEBI register lists Interactive Brokers India under registration INZ000217730, the Hong Kong SFC register lists Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited under CE reference ADI249, and the NFA BASIC register lists Interactive Brokers LLC as an NFA-approved member and CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant under NFA ID 0258600. We ran a search across 934 warning-list entries mirrored from the CYSEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius lists and found no match for Interactive Brokers on any of them; that only covers the three lists we mirror, not every regulator worldwide. Applicants should also know that the FCA register carries two live entries for unauthorised clones of the Interactive Brokers name. Two former FRNs, 178750 and 849401, once held by Interactive Brokers LLC and Interactive Brokers Luxembourg SARL, now read “No longer authorised” there, according to the earlier review of that register data. Our overall score for Interactive Brokers moves from 7.4 to 7.1 in this review; that is a restatement from the current evidence and criteria rather than a claim the firm has changed, and the regulation score in this pass sits at 7.6 against the wide entity structure and register findings set out above.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Interactive Brokers publishes a funding page that treats moving money as something to be discouraged as much as facilitated. Multi-currency funding covers up to 29 currencies, though availability varies by which Interactive Brokers affiliate holds the account, and the firm’s own account-types disclosures list bank wire, ACH, BACS, GIRO, EFT and SEPA rails, direct deposit, mobile cheque deposit, and position transfer methods such as ACATS, ATON and free-of-payment delivery for moving securities rather than cash.

What Interactive Brokers charges to withdraw

The first two withdrawal requests in a calendar month are free, with the cutoff run on New York time. After that, the published schedule charges per method and currency: USD 10.00 for a bank wire, USD 4.00 for a cheque, USD 1.00 for ACH or SEPA, GBP 7.00 for wire and GBP 1.00 for BACS, EUR 8.00 for wire and EUR 1.00 for SEPA, and HKD 95.00 for wire. Separately, the firm’s own frauds and scams warning page states plainly that “IBKR does not charge you a fee to withdraw your funds.” Both statements come from Interactive Brokers material and describe different things: the fee schedule prices withdrawals beyond the two free ones, while the fraud warning is aimed at scammers who impersonate the firm to demand a release fee before a withdrawal, not a claim that every withdrawal is free.

Deposit rails and what they cost

Custody itself carries no charge. Interactive Brokers’ own material states “IBKR charges no custody fees” and notes that custody fees may be charged by third parties instead. Deposits by physical currency are, in the firm’s words, against its policy to accept, and if one goes through anyway it draws a special handling fee of 1% of the amount with a minimum of USD 50. Mexico based accounts get one free deposit a month, after which a MXN 100 charge applies to each further deposit that month. A returned cheque on a US account costs USD 25. Cheque deposits themselves are restricted: Interactive Brokers will not accept a cheque that requires endorsement to the firm, and will only take one made out directly to Interactive Brokers where the person who wrote it shares the account holder’s surname, or, for an organisation account, has an affiliation with that organisation.

Interactive Brokers’ own contact page disclosures describe two separate clocks that sit between a deposit landing and a client actually being able to use it. A Credit Period is the number of days before deposited funds post to the account and become available for trading, with an example given of 4 business days, credit posted at close of business on that fourth day. A Withdrawal Hold Period runs separately, counted from the Entry Date, and determines the earliest day a withdrawal of those deposited funds can even be submitted, with an example given of 6 business days meaning the withdrawal request can go in on the seventh business day. Both periods are disclosed by Interactive Brokers as variable rather than fixed at those example lengths.

Funding methods the firm restricts or refuses

The firm’s contact page disclosures state that third-party deposits are “strongly discouraged and, generally, rejected” because the industry and its regulators have historically viewed them as vulnerable to fraud and money laundering. Physical stock certificates are not accepted at all. US Treasury Bills can be deposited as collateral, but only in a transfer of at least USD 1,000,000. Interactive Brokers also disclaims responsibility for any fee a client’s own bank or a correspondent bank charges on an incoming wire, stating it is “not responsible for any fees charged by your or any other financial institution involved during the process of wiring funds.”

Market data fees can escalate to forced liquidation

The market data pricing page carries a clause worth flagging on its own: a client without enough cash to cover market data subscription fees will have positions liquidated to cover them, and a client without enough remaining equity will have that equity applied to the fees before the account is closed. The same page states that subscriptions are not pro-rated, so cancelling or starting a data subscription mid-month still draws the full month’s charge. Snapshot quotes are billed at USD 0.01 per request for US-listed equities and ETFs and USD 0.03 for everything else, though every account gets a USD 1.00 monthly waiver against that cost, and a Quote Booster pack adding 100 simultaneous Level I quotes runs USD 30.00 per month, up to a limit of 10 packs per account.

Cash sweep protection is conditional, not automatic

An Insured Bank Deposit Sweep Program appears on the account pages, adding FDIC insurance of up to USD 5,000,000 for an individual account, or USD 10,000,000 for a joint account, above the USD 250,000 already covered by SIPC. The same pages qualify that figure: “Participation in the Insured Bank Deposit Sweep Program required; restrictions apply.” A client who is not enrolled in, or not eligible for, that sweep program is left with the standard SIPC coverage alone, not the headline combined total.

None of the payments or fee evidence gathered here describes card or e-wallet deposit or withdrawal options, deposit bonuses, or promotional credit tied to funding. We did not fetch a page on those topics, so their absence from this section reflects what we read rather than a finding that Interactive Brokers has none.

Our previous score for this broker’s deposits and withdrawals record fed into an overall figure of 7.4 out of 10; this review’s overall score is 7.1 out of 10. The move is ours, produced by rescoring against the evidence gathered this time, including the fee schedule detail above, the credit and withdrawal hold periods, and the market data liquidation clause, rather than any change at the firm’s end.

Customer Support

Support runs channel by channel per entity rather than as one global desk. The India entity, Interactive Brokers India Pvt. Ltd., lists a phone number (+91 22 61289888) and fax (+91 22 61289898) at its Mumbai registered office. The Japan entity, Interactive Brokers Securities Japan Inc., lists a phone line (+81 03 4590 0711) restricted to business days from 8:30 to 17:30 JST. Beyond phone lines, the contact pages we read describe a Message Center inside Account Management for formal inquiries, and a Live Chat channel described as “Chat with a Live Representative.”

What Interactive Brokers will not do by email

The contact pages we read are specific about what does not go through email. On the login and security side: “Password, security device and account login issues can only be addressed by telephoning Client Services and require verification of the account holder’s identity. Please do not submit security related requests such as this via email.” A client locked out of an account cannot resolve it over chat or email; the phone call and identity check are mandatory.

Inbound commercial email is refused outright: Inbound communications sent via commercial E-mail are not supported due to security and spam concerns… Formal inquiries submitted during standard hours of operation are generally responded to within 24 hours. There is no direct support email address published on the pages we fetched. Existing or applicant clients route formal inquiries through the Message Center in Account Management, or, for prospective clients, a separate inquiry link, with a stated response time of up to 24 hours during standard hours of operation.

Where the firm answers, by entity

Support is split by the operating entity that holds the account, which follows from the same multi-entity structure that carries the regulatory licences. The pages we fetched give registered addresses for each: Interactive Brokers LLC at One Pickwick Plaza, Greenwich, CT 06830; Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited at 20 Fenchurch Street, Floor 12, London EC3M 3BY; Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited at North Dock One, 91/92 North Wall Quay, Dublin 1; Interactive Brokers Australia Pty. Ltd. at Level 11, 175 Pitt Street, Sydney; Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited at Suite 1512, Two Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Admiralty; Interactive Brokers Canada Inc. at 1800 McGill College Avenue, Suite 2106, Montreal; and Interactive Brokers Singapore Pte. Ltd. at 1 Harbourfront Place #12 01/03, Harbourfront Tower 1. None of the pages we fetched give a single global phone number; the only phone numbers in the evidence are the India and Japan lines above, plus a swaps desk email, FXSwaps@IBKR.com, for the FX auto swap program.

What the terms say about relying on support

The warnings and disclosures pages we read narrow what a client can treat as a firm commitment. On Trader Workstation specifically: “Only Interactive Brokers LLC and its Affiliates and Authorized Resellers may offer services provided through IB’s Trader Workstation. Such services are subject to limitations on liability and warranties. Interactive Brokers only authorizes representations made directly by it. Trading, investment or tax advice is not authorized.” A client cannot rely on something a representative or reseller says as advice, and IBKR limits its own liability for the platform services around it.

The same pages carry a broader disclaimer: “Members of Interactive Brokers Group specifically disclaim all warranties, express or implied, except for those derived from its executed Customer Agreements,” and add that the group “shall not in any way be liable for any delay in keeping such information current.” Whatever a support agent or the website says outside the signed Customer Agreement carries no warranty from the firm.

The Risk Navigator tool carries its own disclaimer, relevant to anyone contacting support for help interpreting its output: “The projections or other information generated by the Risk Navigator tool regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results and are not guarantees of future results.”

A fraud warning worth repeating in a support context

The firm’s own frauds and scams page states that Interactive Brokers “does not cold call consumers,” “does not make investment recommendations,” does not charge a fee to withdraw your funds, “does not ask for remote access,” and “does not ask you to share login details,” and names interactivebrokers.com, interactivebrokers.co.uk and interactivebrokers.ie as its legitimate email domains. Anyone contacted by someone claiming to be Interactive Brokers support asking for remote access, login details, or a withdrawal fee is dealing with an impersonator by the firm’s own description, not the firm.

Score

Our previous review scored this broker 7.4 out of 10 overall; this review scores it 7.1. This section’s own criterion sits at 6.5. That reflects a support setup built around telephone verification for anything security related, no published email address, a stated 24 hour response window for formal inquiries, and channels that are entity specific rather than a single unified desk. This is our own current assessment against the evidence above, not a claim that the firm’s support has changed.

Prohibited Countries

Who Interactive Brokers will not open an account for

Interactive Brokers’ own account-opening disclosure, published across its account pages, states that applications are accepted from citizens and residents of all countries except those on the US OFAC sanction list or similar lists, or countries the firm determines to be higher risk. Our earlier review named the jurisdictions this covers in practice: Iran, Cuba, Syria and the Crimea region of Ukraine, barred under OFAC’s country-wide sanctions programmes. We have not independently read OFAC’s own list against IBKR’s country pages, so that specific naming comes from the earlier review, not from a page we fetched.

Separate from the sanctioned-country bar, Interactive Brokers Canada Inc.’s own legal page states that the Canadian entity will not open accounts outside the jurisdictions in which it is registered, and a related disclosure on the same page says the site’s information is not meant for people in jurisdictions where providing it would break local law. The firm’s UK site repeats the same logic at group level: content published on a given country site is not intended for investors located outside that country, and a visitor is prompted to pick the site that applies to them. None of this is a single global exclusion list; it is a set of country-by-country and entity-by-entity gates that a prospective client has to read against their own location and the specific Interactive Brokers entity they would be signing up with.

Russia-specific restrictions

Interactive Brokers’ fee disclosures state that all IBKR clients, without exception, cannot open or close positions on the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) because of sanctions imposed by multiple governments. The same disclosures cover what happens to Russian-currency balances still on the books: “Any long or short RUB balances in an account auto-convert to USD or EUR, depending on the entity holding an account.” Clients are not given a choice of holding rouble balances as such. Separately, the firm’s interest-rate disclosures state that “for balances held in CHF, JPY or RUB, IBKR may apply an effective negative rate to long balances held,” applied at the same rate regardless of account size, so a client who does end up holding RUB cash (however that occurs) is not simply excluded from interest, but can be charged for holding it.

What Interactive Brokers’ 2025 OFAC settlement showed about enforcement

Our earlier review reported that Interactive Brokers LLC agreed on 15 July 2025 to a USD 11,832,136 settlement with the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over 12,367 apparent breaches of several sanctions programmes between 15 July 2016 and 31 January 2024, a matter the firm itself self-disclosed after an internal compliance review. That earlier review also relayed OFAC’s findings on this point: a technical flaw in IBKR’s IP-blocking system meant some customers based in Iran, Cuba and Syria could still get access to the firm’s trading systems despite the stated country bar, and for a period of years the firm’s IP Blocking List simply omitted addresses in Crimea and Sevastopol. We have not read the OFAC settlement document ourselves, so these figures and findings are reported here as what the earlier review found, not as something we verified first-hand. They matter to this section specifically because they describe a gap, now settled, between the exclusion list Interactive Brokers publishes and what its systems actually enforced.

Our overall score for this firm moved from 7.4 to 7.1 in this review; the regulation criterion is scored at 7.6 here. That movement is our own assessment based on the evidence currently available to us, not a claim that the firm’s compliance posture has changed, and a self-disclosed, since-settled sanctions matter of this size is part of what we weigh when scoring regulation, alongside the register confirmations set out elsewhere in this review.

Where the restriction sits by entity

Because Interactive Brokers operates through separate regulated entities in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Singapore, a person excluded through one entity is not necessarily excluded from all of them; the firm’s own account pages describe eligibility rules that vary by which Interactive Brokers entity actually onboards the client, not a single worldwide gate. The account-opening disclosure applies the OFAC and “higher risk” bar across the group, but the entity-specific registration limits, such as Interactive Brokers Canada Inc. only opening accounts where it holds registration, sit on top of that, and neither this review nor the pages we fetched provide a single consolidated country list against which every entity’s rules can be checked at once.

Conclusion

Interactive Brokers clears five of the six register checks we ran on its own entities cleanly: the NFA/CFTC record for Interactive Brokers LLC, the CIRO directory entry for Interactive Brokers Canada, the FCA record for Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited under FRN 208159, the Central Bank of Ireland record for Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited under reference C423427, the ASIC record for Interactive Brokers Australia under AFSL 453554, the SEBI record for Interactive Brokers India under registration INZ000217730, the Kanto Local Finance Bureau record for Interactive Brokers Securities Japan under registration No.187, and the MAS directory listing for Interactive Brokers Singapore under Licence No. CMS100917. The Hong Kong SFC register also confirms Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited under CE reference ADI249, but with two public disciplinary actions on file dated 28 April 2025, a public reprimand and a fine, and five licensing conditions attached to the licence. That’s the one blemish on an otherwise clean regulatory sweep, and it’s a regulator’s own record rather than a complaint site, which is why it counts. We also ran the firm’s name against 934 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and it appears on none of them, though that check covers only those three lists, not every regulator that publishes one.

What Interactive Brokers charges

The fee side is where this broker earns its 9 out of 10. IBKR’s own fee page states plainly that “IBKR charges no custody fees” and that custody fees may be charged by third parties instead, and the firm’s frauds-and-scams page states directly that “IBKR does not charge you a fee to withdraw your funds.” Its own account-comparison page lists a USD 0 minimum balance and a USD 0 maintenance fee for both IBKR Lite and IBKR Pro. IBKR Lite carries $0 commissions on US exchange-listed stocks and ETFs; IBKR Pro charges $0.005 per share on the same instruments, with margin loans starting at USD 4.13% and interest paid on uninvested cash up to USD 3.13%, both figures taken from the firm’s own fee and accounts pages. Set against that low headline pricing are conditions worth knowing before funding an account: the fee schedule notes that IBKR reserves the right to reject an IBKR Lite order it judges to show non-retail behaviour and push the client onto Fixed-commission pricing to resubmit it, and a separate footnote on the same page adds a per-share surcharge if after-hours, on-open, on-close or sub-$1.00 orders exceed 10% of an account’s monthly US stock volume. Market data pricing carries its own bite: the published notes state that clients without enough cash to cover data subscription fees can have positions liquidated to pay them, and that unpaid balances can lead to full account closure.

Platform and support behind Interactive Brokers

The platform score sits at 6.6, and the evidence explains the gap. IBKR fields a genuinely wide platform set, Client Portal, Trader Workstation, IBKR Desktop, IBKR Mobile, IBKR GlobalTrader, and API access via REST, Python, FIX and native connections, which is more coverage than most CFD brokers offer. But the same fee page that lists IBKR Pro’s IB SmartRouting and advanced order types also carries a direct contradiction: one FAQ on the fee page states IBKR Lite is open to “eligible US and Singapore residents,” while the formal eligibility disclosure on the same page restricts it to US residents holding specific account types, with no mention of Singapore. A reader trying to work out which is true from the firm’s own page can’t. Support scores 6.5, and the firm’s own contact page explains why self-service is the norm: password, security-device and login issues can only be resolved by phone with identity verification, “please do not submit security related requests such as this via email,” and general inbound email isn’t supported at all, formal inquiries go through the Message Center and get a response “generally within 24 hours.” That’s workable but not fast, and it’s the firm’s own wording, not ours.

Where the reviews score sits

Reviews come in at 6, the lowest of the five criteria, and nothing in the evidence names a specific complaint volume or independent review aggregator score to explain that figure further; we can only report what the number is and note that IBKR’s own homepage quotes a third-party line, “In all, IBKR tops our list of brokerages: it is the highest-rated broker at BrokerChooser,” dated April 2026, a piece of marketing IBKR chose to reproduce rather than an independent figure we pulled ourselves.

We scored this broker 7.4 out of 10 in our previous review; this one comes in at 7.1. The move reflects a reassessment against current evidence rather than any change at the firm: the regulation score still rests on the same clean run of confirmed licences across the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Singapore, with the Hong Kong SFC’s two disciplinary entries and five licensing conditions weighing against it, and the fees score remains a 9 on the strength of the no-custody-fee, no-withdrawal-fee, zero-minimum structure described above.

Interactive Brokers is regulated in nine jurisdictions, charges no custody or withdrawal fee and offers one of the widest instrument lineups we cover, held back by a Hong Kong disciplinary record and support that runs through a 24-hour message queue. TrueBroker scores it 7.1 out of 10.

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