The Ascent's 2021 Stock Broker Awards Winners

TD Ameritrade stands out as a top pick due to its versatility. The deep lineup of account types and investment vehicles offered provides solutions for nearly every investing need under the sun. It consistently receives high customer satisfaction scores. Lastly, the lineup of trading platforms online, on desktop, and via its mobile app is unmatched in terms of robust capabilities and ease-of-use.

TD Ameritrade offers its account holders two different apps to manage their investment accounts. We think users should use both. The standard TD Ameritrade app gives users access to real-time quotes, charts, trade entry, account monitoring, research, and price alerts. The thinkorswim mobile app is a trading platform on steroids with advanced order entry and charting. Importantly, your preferences and settings sync from the thinkorswim desktop platform to the mobile app for a seamless experience.

Investing for the first time can be daunting, but it helps if you're with the right broker. Fidelity has a feature-rich platform that's good for investors of all levels managing their accounts on the run. Its fractional shares offering means you can invest in high value stocks with only a few dollars. It has a great mix of no-fee mutual funds and ETFs. And, if you get stuck, Fidelity provides 24/7 customer support.

Charles Schwab offers pretty much every type of IRA that exists and you can access these accounts easily in the app. Beyond the app, Charles Schwab has great customer support (even in-person branch locations) and a great assortment of no-fee mutual funds, including its own proprietary products. New IRA investors may be interested in its fractional shares and wealth of educational resources. Plus, its widely praised standard app trading platform makes it easy to track your investment portfolio.

Betterment is a robo-advisor pioneer and the app experience is top notch with consistently high app ratings. As a robo-advisor, Betterment charges low fees and doesn't have minimum account requirements. In addition, it provides automatic rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting. If socially responsible investing is important to you, Betterment has a couple of SRI portfolio options focused on climate, social impact, or broader social goals. For a fee, you can upgrade to the premium account and deal with a human advisor.

As a brokerage, tastyworks has always focused heavily on options trading. The tastyworks app provides all the tools you need to trade options from your phone and has low trade fees. Traders can quickly scroll through call and put prices for any available expiration date. There are plenty of popular options trading strategies available, including covered calls, iron condors, and butterfly spreads. Other apps have more to offer if you're interested in all types of investing, but tastyworks is the top choice for mobile options trading.

Charles Schwab packs in one of the deepest ETF lineups, including its branded, low-cost ETFs that are great options for passive index investors. Importantly, investors can buy and sell these ETFs online with no commission. Charles Schwab also shines with one of the broadest feature sets in the market to meet nearly any investing or banking need.

Charles Schwab is a runaway winner in this category. We're big fans of its proprietary mutual funds. The expense ratios rival the lowest cost providers and some funds have minimum investments of $100 or less. Clients also get access to thousands of no-transaction-fee mutual funds and a network of hundreds of branches for in-person help.

Robinhood offers access to fractional shares for a wide array of companies. Fractional shares mean you can invest with as little as $1 in most companies with a market capitalization of at least $25 million. We've not come across a broker that offers such a low bar to entry for a broad selection of the market and a simple-to-use app.