M1 Finance Review: Top Rates, Low Monthly Fee

M1 Finance might be for you if: You're looking for flexible options for a mix of automated and active investing. M1 Finance gives you the ability to build customized portfolios, pick stocks, and choose your own investments -- while also offering diversified model portfolios and automated features. This brokerage also offers a few unique banking products, like a high-yield cash account and rewards credit card. Read our M1 Finance review to see if this brokerage platform is right for your investing style.

Author's note: I've been investing for about 20 years, and I prefer passive investing with low-cost, diversified index funds. But if I wanted to build my own customized portfolio of stocks and ETFs, I would consider M1 Finance. This brokerage combines automated investing features of a robo-advisor with some hands-on investing features so you can choose your own investments. If you're more of an active investor than me, M1 Finance could be a great brokerage for you. I am not an M1 Finance customer, but I've heard great things about M1 Finance from my friend who uses it for active investing and trading fractional shares.

M1 Finance gives customers the ability to invest in a range of securities and account types. It offers more than 6,000 stocks and ETFs, and some other investment assets like cryptocurrencies and OTC securities. M1 Finance does not offer mutual funds or options trading.

Investments

• Cryptocurrency
• ETFs
• OTC Securities
• Stocks

Brokerage accounts

• Crypto
• Custodial
• Individual brokerage
• Joint brokerage
• Roth IRA
• SEP IRA
• Traditional IRA
• Trust

M1 Finance charges a $3 per month platform fee -- but you can avoid this fee by having at least $10,000 of M1 assets or an M1 personal loan. Other than that, M1 Finance is mostly free of fees -- it doesn't charge commissions, trading fees, or management fees for self-directed brokerage accounts. M1 Finance does charge a few other miscellaneous fees, like account closure fees, transfer fees, and termination fees, and some one-time fees for special account services.

Margin rates

M1 Finance offers margin loans on up to 50% of your portfolio. "Borrowing on margin" is a way for investors to borrow against the value of their investment portfolio. With M1 Margin Loans, you can borrow against the securities (ETFs, stocks, etc.) in your M1 brokerage account or trust account.

M1 Finance's margin loans are available for all balances above a $2,000 minimum investment amount and have a low fixed rate of 7.25% (as of May 17, 2024). Margin loans can be risky, especially for beginners and less-sophisticated investors. But if you want to use margin as part of your investing strategy, M1 Finance offers much lower rates than most other brokerages.

M1 Finance offers a dedicated Research tab within its platform. Customers can use this tab to see market news, investment data, and other research to help you learn about stocks and decide how to invest your money. Like most brokerages, M1 Finance also provides consumer-focused educational content on investing-related topics. M1 Finance can help you learn about industry trends, different types of investment asset categories, economic news, and more.

Some recent topics of investment education content from M1 Finance include:

• Real estate investment trusts (REITs)
• Risks and opportunities for airline industry investors
• How Nvidia became a stock market darling
• Guide to investing for long-term financial wellness

If you want advanced, academic-style, original market research, M1 Finance is not the best fit. Some other brokerages offer more extensive selections of third-party research that is suitable for professional traders. M1 Finance's research and education content is intended more for everyday investors who are saving for retirement.

M1 Finance has a unique, creative, and visually engaging interface that could make investing more simple and fun. The M1 Finance platform is set up so your investments are organized into "Pies" (interactive pie charts) so you can see what your asset allocation looks like.

For example, let's say you decide to invest a total of $1,000 in your M1 Finance brokerage account, and you buy $250 each of four stocks. Your M1 Finance "Pie" will show four equal "slices," with each stock representing 25% of your portfolio. If you want to keep investing in those same four stocks, you can set up your M1 Finance Pie to automatically keep investing in the same percentages over time.

Each Pie can contain up to 100 slices, and each slice can contain a single investment, or another Pie, or a group of Pies -- this lets you customize your investments in flexible ways. You can also choose Model Portfolios with diversified investment portfolios selected by M1 Finance. Or you can also experiment with ideas for Custom Pies, without actually funding them. This can be a good way to try new investing ideas, before you commit real money.

App

The M1 Finance mobile app gets mostly positive reviews on the App Store (4.7 stars) and Google Play (4.4 stars). You might find that working with M1 Finance "Pies" is even easier and more fun when you're looking at your mobile screen.

The M1 Finance app gives you comprehensive features and access to the M1 Finance platform. You should be able to use the app to do everything that you can do on the website, including access to your brokerage account, customizing portfolios, using M1 Finance's automation tools, and more.

Although the M1 Finance app generally gets good reviews, this company (like other brokerages and banks) unfortunately seems to be having a few issues with customer service. M1 Finance is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and the BBB.org website gives it a grade of "F," with 30 customer complaints closed in the past 12 months.

A few recent topics of customer complaints on the Better Business Bureau website include:

• Objections to new mandatory $3 per month platform fee
• $100 fee to transfer account to another brokerage
• Referral bonus not being credited to customer's account
• Poorly trained customer service representatives
• Difficulty in closing account and accessing $3,000 of customer money

Trustpilot rates M1 Finance at 2.0 stars (out of 5). Some recent customer complaints about M1 Finance on Trustpilot include:

• Unable to close M1 Finance account after 18 days of effort
• Forfeited incentive bonus that the customer believed they had earned
• Cannot roll over traditional IRA funds from another brokerage (after over a month of trying)
• M1 Finance interface did not follow the customer's trading instructions -- it allegedly bought more investments than the customer had requested
• M1 Finance interface executed buy orders that the customer had tried to cancel

M1 Finance has over 1 million users, and only a few of them are complaining on websites. Most people who use M1 Finance are apparently not experiencing glitches and substandard service; the high ratings for the M1 Finance mobile app could be a more accurate picture of the typical investor's experience with M1 Finance.

But it's important to be aware that sometimes mistakes, delays, and frustrations can happen with brokerage accounts. Be sure to read the fine print about fees and interface instructions before you start buying stocks with any brokerage.

M1 Finance customer service is available in a few ways:

Existing clients

Contact M1 Finance customer support by using these steps:

1. Log in to the Client Center.
2. Do the following step depending on whether you're using the website or mobile app:

• Web platform: Click the chat bubble in the lower right corner
• Mobile app: Go to your settings and tap "Client Support"

Other options to contact M1 Finance customer service include:

• Phone: Call the M1 Finance customer support team at (312) 600-2883. (Available Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET, except market holidays.)
• Email for login assistance: If you can't get into your M1 Finance account, send an email to [email protected].

New clients

If you are a prospective client who wants to bring investments to M1 Finance, you need to schedule a call with the Client Success team via Calendly.

M1 Finance uses a few powerful security measures to help protect your account and your personal data. These include:

Encryption: M1 Finance uses military-grade 4096-bit encryption for all data stored and transferred within its systems.

2FA: Two-factor authentication (2FA) is one of the best tools you can use to protect your financial accounts, whether it's with M1 Finance, a bank, or any other account online. M1 Finance's 2FA does not use text messages to send you a code -- instead, it uses Google Authenticator to get a new code generated every 30 seconds.

M1 Finance is a fintech company dedicated to helping people manage their investments for sophisticated wealth-building, with a simple approach. The company was founded in 2015 and now has over 1 million users and more than $8 billion of client assets (as of May 2024). M1 Finance encourages long-term investing, not day-trading -- but it does provide some helpful tools and features for hands-on investors who want to trade individual stocks and design their own custom portfolios.

Keep reading about M1 Finance on these pages:

At The Motley Fool Ascent, brokerages are rated on a scale of one to five stars. We primarily focus on fees, available assets, and account types; however, we also take into account features like research, education, tax-loss harvesting, and highly rated mobile apps. Our highest-rated brokerages generally include low fees, a diverse range of assets and account types, and useful platform features.

See our full methodology here: Ratings Methodology