This article/post contains references to products or services from one or more of our advertisers or partners. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products or services
There are endless listicle online articles running through which stock trading apps experts say are the best. But what do the users think who use these apps on a daily basis to trade stocks and monitor their portfolios?
User experience is a key factor when choosing a stock broker. With that in mind, we decided to find out what the “people’s choice” is when it comes to stock trading platforms currently available in the US. Here’s what we found.
Our Ranking Methodology
Our research took into account combined ratings from Apple’s App Store and Google Play, the total value of current assets under management and search volume in the last 30 days from SEMrush.
As well as this, we examined the number of articles that have been written about the apps in the last two years and the broker’s article engagement score based on people’s reactions (e.g. likes and shares) to those pieces of content. Both of these data points were gathered from BuzzSumo.
Each app was ranked on these metrics individually and then given a combined aggregate score from those five barometers.
We also added in the number of combined reviews from Apple and Google, not as a ranking metric, but to ensure the overall ratings of each app had a significant number of user reviews behind them.
20 Most Popular Stock Trading Apps – According to the Public
Without further ado, here are the top 20 most popular stock trading apps according to the users…
Results Breakdown
With a 4.5 out of 5 average app rating, $523 million assets under management and over 500,000 searches in the last 30 days (SEMrush) SoFi is the users’ choice when it comes to stock trading apps. SoFi has only existed since 2011 and began as solely as a student loan refinancing company. But it has quickly grown into a “one-stop-shop” for finances. For investors, SoFi now supports cryptocurrency trading in addition to stocks and ETFs.
E*TRADE ranked second having a 4.35 average app rating, assets under management worth a total of $360 million and was very close to SoFi in terms of the number of app user reviews. While it did have 20,000 or so fewer articles written about it than SoFi, E*Trade’s SEMrush search volume figure was significantly higher at 1.7 million worldwide in the last 30 days.
Vanguard ranked third on our list of most popular stock trading apps despite having a combined user review rating of just 3.3 and a low article engagement score of 39%. However, its overall score improved dramatically with the highest search volume figure of 2.7 million and ranking second in assets under management with a huge $7.2 trillion currently being overseen by the company.
eToro and Charles Schwab rounded off the top five with both having similar ratings (4 and 4.3 respectively), SEMrush search volume figures with 1.7 million and 1.6 million. The two differed in terms of their online popularity score as eToro gained 60% from over 10,000 articles while Charles Schwab scored just 43% from less than half the number of articles.
At the other end of our list, Public.com placed 20th despite having a very strong combined app review rating of 4.55. However, it was let down by a lack of overall online content and interest in that content. It recorded the lowest search volume in the last 30 days (7,100). BuzzSumo only found 941 articles written about Public.com over the past two years and the engagement score of those articles was just 13%.
TD Ameritrade placed just above Public.com. It was held back by one of the lowest content engagement scores of 11% from just 563 articles written in the last two years and a lower average app review rating of 4.05. But its aggregate score was brought up by its significantly higher monthly search volume figure at 722,200 and its $1 trillion of assets under management compared to Public’s estimated $27 billion.
Want to learn more about stock trading and investing? Check out these guides.
