Public.com Review 2024: Fractional and Alt Asset Investing
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Our Take
4.6
The bottom line:
on Public's website
Pros & Cons
Pros
Commission-free stock, options and ETF trades.
Rebates for trading options.
Impressive selection of alternative assets.
Easy-to-use signup and trading interface.
High interest rate on uninvested cash.
Cons
No mutual funds.
Lack of tools (e.g. customizable investment screeners).
No IRA accounts.
Compare to Similar Brokers
Current Product
NerdWallet rating 4.6 /5 | NerdWallet rating 4.8 /5 | NerdWallet rating 5.0 /5 |
Fees $0 | Fees $0 per online equity trade | Fees $0.005 per share; as low as $0.0005 with volume discounts |
Account minimum $0 | Account minimum $0 | Account minimum $0 |
Promotion Earn up to $10,000 when you transfer your investment portfolio to Public. | Promotion None no promotion available at this time | Promotion Exclusive! U.S. residents who open a new IBKR Pro account will receive a 0.25% rate reduction on margin loans. Terms apply. |
Learn more on Public's website | Learn more on Charles Schwab's website | Learn more on Interactive Brokers' website |
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Full Review
Where Public shines
Get paid to trade options: Public offers free options trading (besides regulatory fees), which isn't totally unique among online brokers — but they're almost certainly the only broker that will pay you to trade options. Public offers a revenue-sharing program that pays options traders a rebate of $0.06 to $0.18 per options transaction, which is up to half of the company's payment-for-order-flow (PFOF) revenue per trade.
Investment plans: Public allows investors to create their own customized baskets of stocks, ETFs or other assets, set up recurring purchases of those baskets of investments, and buy or sell multiple investments at a time. The company calls these multi-asset trades "investment plans," and they could be handy for investors who are looking to use dollar-cost averaging to build a diversified portfolio over time. Investment plan trades incur fees for non-Premium users, though.
IPOs, fractional shares and alternative assets: Public has made a point to offer investors access to a wide variety of asset classes — in addition to stocks, bonds, ETFs and crypto, Public offers fractional shares, IPO access, and ways of investing in alternative assets such as shares of artwork.
Where Public falls short
No mutual funds: The lack of mutual funds may be a difficult adjustment for some investors, although Public offers plenty of ETFs.
No international accounts, retirement accounts or custodial accounts: Public is a relative newcomer to the brokerage industry and doesn't quite have the same diversity of account types as some of its competitors. Public doesn't offer retirement accounts, and isn't open to non-U.S. investors or kids.
Alternatives to consider:
For mutual funds: Ally Invest, E*TRADE, Firstrade
For retirement, custodial or non-U.S. accounts: Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab
What type of investor should choose Public?
Options traders: There are few other brokers that charge zero commissions or per-contract fees to trade options ... and there are no other brokers that pay users to trade options.
Alternative asset investors: If you're looking to diversify outside of the stock market, Public is an appealing choice, offering access to crypto, bonds and even art shares.
Mobile investors: Public, much like Robinhood and Webull, has a clear "mobile-first" philosophy, and its app runs smoothly and is easy to use.
What the Nerds think 🤓
Sam Taube, lead investing writer
"Public has really gone all-in on a fast, easy, frictionless mobile trading experience. The interface is streamlined but simple — the experience of selling out of some ETF and Bitcoin positions took less than 20 seconds in total after opening the app. Much like with Robinhood, you could almost argue that this style of trading app makes it too easy to trade impulsively. But for beginners, or busy investors who need to trade on-the-go, it’s definitely a plus.
One minor security issue: The app does not seem to be protected by a passcode or automatic logout. I hadn’t used my account in a long time, yet when I opened the app to test it out again for this year's review, I was just … ready to trade, right away."
Public at a glance
Account minimum | $0. |
Stock trading costs | $0 ($2.99 per trade for after-hours trades or OTC stocks, for non-Premium members.) |
Options trades | $0. Public pays options traders a rebate of $0.06 to $0.18 per options transaction (as a share of their payment-for-order-flow revenue). The amount of the rebate depends on how many friends you refer to Public — for each referral, your rebate increases to the next tier, up to the maximum:
If you are referred to Public by a friend, you start at tier 2. |
Account fees (annual, transfer, closing, inactivity) | $75 ACAT outgoing transfer fee (partial or full). No annual fee for non-Premium members — Public Premium costs $10 a month or $96 a year. $3.99 monthly inactivity fee for accounts with no activity for six months and balances below $70. Instant withdrawals cost 3.5% of the amount withdrawn, with a minimum of $1. |
Interest rate on uninvested cash | New users can opt into a high-yield savings account with yield of over 4% by checking a box at sign-up. High-yield Treasurys account is also available; yield at last update was 4.47%. |
Tradable securities | Stocks, ETFs, options, cryptocurrency, American Depositary Receipts, fractional shares, bonds, alternative assets (e.g., music royalties). In addition to individual bonds, Public offers a high-yield bond account with a current yield of 6.8%. |
Number of no-transaction-fee mutual funds | Not rated. |
Trading platform | Public's mobile and web platforms offer a smooth sign-up, funding and trading experience, but are fairly basic when it comes to tools like charts and screeners. |
Mobile app | Public's iOS and Android apps are both fairly well-liked by users and offer virtually the same features as the web trading platform. |
Research and data | Research from Morningstar. Public offers earnings call playback, as well as bespoke company metrics like subscriber numbers. |
Customer support options (includes how easy it is to find key details on the website) | Email and chat support available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday. Responses prioritized for Premium members. |
How to sign up for a Public account
Public has clearly put a lot of thought into creating a smooth sign-up experience, particularly for new investors. The broker guides new users through an easy account creation process that collects your personal information, contact details, Social Security number and means of funding your account in just a few minutes.
Once your account has been approved and funded (which may take a day or so), you'll be able to buy stocks through Public.
What to know about Public's fees
As we've mentioned, Public is the only broker we review whose options trading fees are negative — meaning they pay you. The broker also offers free trades of exchange-listed stocks during market hours to all users. After-hours trades and OTC stocks cost $2.99 for free users, and multi-asset investment plan trades cost between $0.49 and $1.99 for free users, depending on the number of assets involved.
Once you've opened an account, Public's minimum deposit size is $20. There's no account maintenance fee for free users, although accounts with six months or more of inactivity and balances below $70 may incur a $3.99 per month inactivity fee. Public Premium costs $10 monthly or $96 yearly. It eliminates many of the fees non-Premium users incur for nonstandard trades, such as OTC stocks, after-hours trades and investment plans.
One of the biggest fees Public charges is the $75 outgoing ACAT transfer fee — but that cost is pretty average within the industry. (An ACAT transfer is when you want to transfer your investments to another broker; there's no fee for selling your investments and having the money transferred via ACH to your bank.)
Public's trading platforms and apps
Public's streamlined trading interface resembles that of other upstart brokers such as Robinhood. The app and website both make it easy to buy or sell stocks or ETFs in seconds.
We only found two significant drawbacks to Public's trading platform. First, the broker is a bit lax on security — there's no passcode system like Robinhood or Webull, and our tester found that they were still logged into the app and ready to trade, even after a long period of inactivity.
How we nerd out testing trading platforms
Our reviewers — who are writers and editors on NerdWallet’s content team — hands-on test every online broker platform in our analysis. That way, we’re able to report on every aspect of the user experience, from funding a new account to actually placing trades.
We score each broker against a set of criteria that factors in both the capabilities offered and the actual user experience of trading with those capabilities. This includes how easy it was to sign up for and fund a new account. Note that a broker may score very highly for the platforms it offers, but low for the experience of actually using that platform. These are scored separately in our analysis, and they are weighted evenly when factored into the broker’s overall score. This means a broker can offer an advanced trading platform, but if it is clunky to use or the process of opening an account is unnecessarily arduous, that will be reflected in their score.
Second, advanced traders may find Public's charting and screening tools to be somewhat entry-level and lacking in customizability, compared to the tools from some other brokers.
Public's investment selection
Public offers a fairly impressive array of investment choices for traders — stocks (including fractional shares), corporate and government bonds, options, ETFs, major cryptocurrencies, select American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), and even some alternative assets like art shares and music royalties. But Public doesn't offer futures or commodities — and its lack of mutual funds puts it at a disadvantage relative to many other brokers.
In addition to individual bonds, Public offers a "bond account" that invests in corporate bonds (which, we should note, can be riskier than Treasury bonds) and currently advertises a 6.8% yield.
Crypto offering: Through a partnership with Bakkt Crypto Solutions, Public allows users to purchase cryptocurrencies right in their brokerage account. It offers access to seven popular coins — Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Litecoin (LTC).
Much like its stock trading experience, Public's crypto trading experience is smooth and easy-to-use, especially for crypto beginners — but it lacks a number of features advanced crypto traders might want, like crypto-crypto trading pairs, deposit insurance or the ability to stake coins and use your own crypto wallet.
Investors who are used to pure-play crypto brokerages might get a shock from another aspect of Public's crypto offering — Public charges fees on crypto trades, and fairly hefty ones at that. They start at $0.49 for orders less than $10, gradually rise to $6.49 for orders between $250 and $500, and then equal 1.25% of the order amount for orders over $500. These fees still apply for Premium members.
Other key Public features
Research and data
The research selection at Public is not quite as robust as at some of its competitors. Users get access to earnings call playback and a set of company metrics from Public itself, such as subscriber numbers. Premium users get access to Morningstar research as well.
Customer support
Public offers email and chat support on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Premium users get priority over non-Premium users in the support queue. Public's AI educational assistant may also be able to answer some basic questions. This is better than nothing, but it pales in comparison to the customer support offerings from many other brokers, which frequently offer phone support and night and weekend hours.
However, the broker deserves some credit for offering decent educational support to beginner investors, particularly in the domain of options trading. Public offers an "education mode" which serves users visual and written tutorials as they use the app, and hosts a collection of educational articles and user forums.
High-yield savings account and Treasury account
Public lets users opt in to a high-yield savings account with an APY of over 4% for uninvested cash. That yield has decreased slightly in recent months, as the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates, but the same is true for the uninvested cash yield of other brokers we review.
Public is unique among brokers for offering several different types of high-yield accounts. In addition to a conventional savings account, Public allows users to open a Treasury account through a partnership with Jiko Securities. It allows users to buy six-month Treasury bills for as little as $100. Interest on Treasury bills is exempt from state and local income tax.
Partnership with Clear
Clear, a biometric screening company that allows members to skip part of the security lines for certain stadiums and airports, launched a partnership with Public in 2024. Public says Clear members can "open an account on Public in a minute or less," as Clear's biometric identification process will speed up Public's account-opening process for Clear members.
As part of the partnership, Clear members who sign up for a Public account will receive a $50 credit in their Public account, while Clear Plus members who sign up for a Public account will receive a $100 credit in their Public account.
Public Premium
For $10 per month or $96 per year, Public Premium members get prioritized customer service responses, Morningstar research, and Premium-only market news and analysis content from Public's team. Premium members are also exempted from fees on OTC trades, after-hours trades and investment plan trades, although they still pay fees for crypto trades.
Unlike the premium offerings at some other brokers, Public Premium does not come with a higher level of FDIC insurance than unpaid accounts, nor special margin rates.
Good to know about Public
Public Premium pushiness
Like other brokers with premium account types, Public tries in various ways to get non-Premium members to sign up for Premium, such as with email and in-app offers of free trials.
The reason we mention this is because we accidentally enrolled in a Premium trial last year while testing the platform out, as a result of a misclick.
Due to a system bug that has since been addressed, we did not receive any notification emails about the free trial, and only found out about it when the trial ended (and our test bank account was unexpectedly charged $96 for a year of Premium). Public's support team sorted out the issue promptly and refunded the charge, but those Premium offers are something to watch out for, if you aren't interested.
Subpar execution quality
Public doesn't accept PFOF revenue for stock trades. It does accept PFOF for options trades, but it's currently sharing 50% of its PFOF revenue per trade with its options-trading customers.
Some regulators believe that the PFOF business model is a conflict of interest because it involves market-making firms paying brokers to route customer orders through them. PFOF's effects are negligible for most investors, but it's possible that PFOF brokers could execute orders slightly slower or at slightly worse prices than non-PFOF brokers. Public says its order execution quality is 94%, which is a few points below the average among brokers we review.
The average execution quality of all brokers we review was 96.95% as of Oct. 16, 2024. That means 96.95% of orders sold for at a price that was at or better than the National Best Bid and Offer. Executing at or above the NBBO means you may receive a price improvement or a better share price than you were originally quoted.
Is Public safe?
No investment is completely safe from the risk of loss, but Public carries several types of insurance that protect customer funds from broker or bank insolvency.
Public's high-yield savings accounts work with a network of 20 partner banks, and are thus insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for up to $5 million — 20 times the typical FDIC coverage limit for bank accounts.
Public's brokerage and bond accounts are insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) for up to $500,000 per account, with a cash sublimit of $250,000. Public also allows users to add up to $100 million in supplemental SIPC coverage.
Public has room for improvement when it comes to the security of its app; the lack of a passcode or automatic logout system could make users vulnerable to theft of funds if their phone is stolen or compromised. But otherwise, Public takes cybersecurity quite seriously, employing "bank grade" security measures including AES 256-bit encryption and TLS 1.2 (or newer).
Is Public right for you?
Public earns high marks for ease-of-use, and for its investment selection — and options traders will likely get excited about their PFOF rebate program. However, Public is not quite as well-established as some of the other brokers we review, and it still lacks certain features, like phone support, offered by its competitors. It also lacks IRAs and custodial accounts, and the fees can add up for non-Premium users. But on the whole, Public offers an impressive brokerage experience for new investors or traders who are looking to up their options game.
on Public's website
