Robinhood Review 2026: Pros, Cons, & Features

Robinhood Overview

What Is Robinhood?

Robinhood is an investing app that lets you trade stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, futures, prediction markets, and other products in one place.

It originally blew up because it made investing feel easy – but it’s become a lot bigger than the simple app you might remember.

Today, you can also use it to open an IRA, earn interest on cash, get a credit card, and jump into serious charts and trading tools with its new “Legend” interface.

Robinhood isn’t focusing on getting you to buy your first stock anymore – they’re trying to keep you for the long run.

The numbers back that up:

Their earnings presentation for Q1 2026 showed the average customer balance grew by 30% over the last year, while the amount of retirement assets held for customers almost doubled.

That’s the change you might’ve missed.

Robinhood used to be the app you started with, then grew out of as you looked for advanced features or other financial tools.

Now they’re quickly closing that gap, giving you a whole financial setup that works for anyone – including if you’re an experienced trader.

If your focus is on crypto, Robinhood feels like it’s halfway between a normal brokerage and a pure crypto exchange.

It’s easier to use than a lot of crypto-first platforms, but it’s quickly catching up in terms of supported assets and extra features.

Now you can withdraw your crypto to your own address, stake your coins, pay lower maker/taker fees instead of a spread, and use advanced charting tools that feel more like using Coinbase Advanced or Kraken Pro than a beginners app.

They even have their own self-custody wallet, Robinhood Wallet, that lets you take your crypto for a spin in the DeFi world.

Robinhood’s also pushing into impressive newer areas like prediction markets, tokenized finance through Robinhood Chain, and AI-powered tools – all spaces I’d definitely recommend keeping an eye on.

So if you’ve skipped over Robinhood in the past for being too simple – think again.

Things are changing fast.

Robinhood Key Features

• Stocks, ETFs, and Fractional Shares: Build a stock or ETF portfolio with $0 commissions, fractional shares, and recurring buys, all from the same app you use for crypto.
• Crypto Trading and Transfers: Buy and sell 84+ crypto assets in the US, and 65+ in the EEA. You can withdraw and deposit crypto now too – which you couldn’t do before.
• Crypto Staking and Stablecoin Yield: Earn rewards on your $SOL, $ETH, $ADA, and $USDG.
• Robinhood Legend: Advanced charts plus indicators, drawing tools, custom layouts, linked widgets, and real-time data.
• IRA Accounts: Build retirement savings in Robinhood, with a 1% IRA match for standard users or 3% for Gold members on eligible contributions.
• Gold Card Cashback: Gold members can earn 3% cashback with no cap on eligible purchases with Robinhood's Gold credit card.
• Web3 Wallet: Move supported crypto into self-custody, swap tokens, and use more of the onchain ecosystem outside the main Robinhood app.
• Robinhood Chain: Robinhood’s big tokenized-finance bet, built for Stock Tokens, real-world assets, lending, borrowing, and DeFi-style apps.
• AI Trading: Use agentic trading tools to connect AI agents, test trade ideas, build portfolios, and place trades from a dedicated Agentic Account.
• Crypto Market Pulse: Gold users can get AI-powered crypto updates that explain what moved, why it may have moved, and what to watch next.
• Prediction Markets: Trade Yes/No contracts on real-world events, with payouts based on whether the outcome happens.
• Commission-Free Trading: Trade stocks, ETFs, and options with no standard commission, but still check crypto spreads and routing before assuming it’s cheapest.
• Gold Membership: Best if you use Robinhood as your main app, since it bundles IRA matching, cash yield, card rewards, research, AI tools, and trading perks.

Robinhood Fees

Robinhood can be genuinely cheap if you’re buying regular stocks and ETFs.

But “commission-free” doesn’t always mean completely free.

There are still some costs you’ll wanna watch.

Trading Fees

Stock and ETF trading

Robinhood is usually super cheap for heavily traded stocks and ETFs.

You know, the usual suspects like Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, SPY, and QQQ.

The spreads (difference between the buying and selling price) on those are usually tight, so on a $1,000 buy or sell you’ll likely only lose a few cents or dollars.

Where you *should* start paying attention to the spread is on stuff like penny stocks, low-volume investments, and fast-moving markets, where gaps can be much wider.

Simple crypto trades are “commission-free”

These simple, commission-free trades are what you get by default when buying or selling crypto through Robinhood’s normal trade screen.

Just like with smaller stocks and ETFs, spreads are more noticeable here than on the popular assets.

Robinhood says it receives about $0.95 for every $100 traded this way on crypto. In their own example, a $100 crypto buy with a 0.96% spread gives Robinhood $0.95.

Here’s roughly what that looks like:

Basically, a full buy-and-sell cycle can cost close to 2%, even though Robinhood shows a $0 commission.

Keep that in mind if you’re trading crypto frequently.

Advanced crypto trades use maker/taker fees

Now, when you’re trading crypto using Robinhood’s advanced features such as Robinhood Legend or ladder trading, your trades might use something called exchange routing instead.

That means your trades are being put through EDX Markets or Bitstamp USA instead – and don’t worry, it’s usually a good thing.

Instead of hiding the cost in the spread, Robinhood charges a visible maker or taker fee, which is almost always more cost-effective for you.

This fee depends on how much exchange-routed crypto you’ve traded over the past 30 days. The more you’ve traded, the lower your fee rate will be.

• A taker order fills straight away at the available market price.
• A maker order sits on the order book and waits for someone else to fill it.

Coinbase and Kraken work in a fairly similar way.

Their simple trading screens tend to cost more, while their advanced platforms use clearer maker and taker fees.

Crypto staking, transfers, and payments

The staking fee is pretty simple, at 25% of staking rewards.

So if your staked $ETH earns $100 in staking rewards, Robinhood keeps $25 and you receive about $75.

Robinhood Connect is their crypto on-ramp tool, built into Robinhood Wallet, and it charges between 0% and 1.5% of the purchase value, depending on your payment method.

Options trading: Watch out for spreads

Robinhood doesn’t charge the usual per-contract options commission.

Yeah, that might sound great – but the spread can still catch you out.

Say an option is quoted like this:

One options contract normally represents 100 shares, so if you buy one contract at the $1.20 ask, it costs $120.

But if the option is really worth something closer to the $1.10 midpoint, you’re already down about $10 as soon as the trade fills.

On 10 contracts, that would work out to $100.

So with options, the visible fee usually isn’t the biggest issue – the bigger problem is getting a bad price.

Using limit orders can go a long way here.

Robinhood Gold

The Robinhood Gold membership costs $5 per month, or you can get a discount at $50 per year.

It’s the subscription you’ll need to unlock the biggest perks of the platform like 3% IRA contribution matching, earning yield on your idle cash, and becoming eligible for the Robinhood Gold credit card.

Robinhood Gold Credit Card

The Robinhood Gold credit card doesn’t have its own annual fee, but you still need to pay for Robinhood Gold.

You get 3% cash back on all eligible purchases, with no cap – just watch out for the 29.99% variable APR.

If you carry a balance, the interest can wipe out the value of that 3% cash back very quickly.

There’s also a separate Robinhood Platinum Card on the way, with a $695 annual fee and more travel and lifestyle perks.

Deposits and withdrawals

Standard withdrawals from Robinhood are free. It’s only when you want your money instantly that a 1.75% fee kicks in.

Account transfer fees

Robinhood charges $100 if you transfer your brokerage or IRA account to another provider through ACATS.

Transferring money into Robinhood is usually free.

Robinhood may also reimburse up to $75 of another company’s transfer fee if you move at least $7,500 across.

Just note that crypto and fractional shares usually can’t be transferred through ACATS.

Our Expert Review of Robinhood

In this first-hand Robinhood review, I take a look at what it’s like to sign up, fund an account, place trades, and use the platform in 2026.

Keep in mind that Robinhood isn’t just a stock trading app anymore – it’s trying to become your main finance app.

That means there are a TON of features, so buckle in…or skip to the part that you’re most interested in.

Signing up to Robinhood

First off, this is a good time to point out that you can only use Robinhood if you’re a citizen or resident of the US, the EEA, or the UK.

I got my friend and US-based Milk Road colleague, John, to sign up and tell me all about it.

You can do the entire onboarding process from start to finish on the mobile app, which makes things nice and easy.

Rigorous KYC comes up-front

Right after you enter your email, Robinhood gets straight into ID verification steps.

This is the most crucial step to getting started – so even though it’s a little work, it’s good to get it out of the way.

When it comes to trading stocks, there are some extra verification steps that you won’t find on crypto-only platforms.

If you’re in the US, you’ll need to provide details like your Social Security number, employment details, investing experience, and answer a few questions that help Robinhood check for things like insider trading risk.

I can imagine the process would look very similar in the EEA/UK equivalents for those countries.

So, how long does everything take?

• KYC approval: John said his KYC approval was pretty much instant, which was a very pleasant surprise – Robinhood themselves say it can take 1-2 weeks on their website.
• Funding the account: Also immediate. This was thanks to Robinhood’s Plaid integration, which lets users make instant ACH transfers. Other funding methods can take longer, though.
• Start to finish: It took John 10-15 minutes to go from downloading the app to buying his first asset.

In his own words:

“It’s pretty easy to go from zero to holding some stock in a couple dozen clicks and a handful of simple questions”

Robinhood also gave him a free $5.17 to invest for signing up, which isn’t huge but was a nice touch.

One thing he pointed out was that they seem to make it veeery easy for you to skip over the fine print on several steps.

I’d caution that you don’t fall into the trap of just clicking “next” – take the time to make sure you know what you’re agreeing to.

Alright!

Now that we’ve set up an account and funded it…let’s take a look at what features there are to play with.

The core app experience

Ok, so before we jump into the new stuff, let’s recap what you get with the core product: General investing.

As soon as you’re signed up and ready to go, you get a nice main page – basically your home base for finding things to invest in.

You get market news, current prices for popular and trending assets, and specialized discovery lists for things like new crypto, ETFs, IPOs, daily movers, stocks with upcoming earnings, and popular sectors.

You can also create your own watchlists, with live prices and daily moves, to keep your eye on anything you want to watch.

Individual stock/asset pages

Robinhood has individual pages for each asset on the platform.

These act as quick research hubs for individual companies and ETFs, giving users a snapshot of the asset before they decide whether to buy, sell, or keep watching it.

A typical stock page includes all the critical at-a-glance info you could want like:

• Current price
• Price chart
• Recent news
• Analyst ratings
• Earnings info
• Short interest.

It also gives you a bunch of key stats and metrics like:

• Market cap
• P/E ratio
• Trading volume
• Daily high and low
• 52-week range.

For stocks, these pages also provide all of the company basics, such as what the business does, who runs it, where it’s based, and how many employees it has.

The “related” lists give you a glimpse into other assets you might want to branch out into.

Overall, Robinhood asset pages make basic research super quick and accessible, and even give you the option to place a trade directly from the same screen.

IRAs, Trump Accounts, Cash Yield, & Credit Cards

Retirement accounts & IRA match

Robinhood now lets you open traditional or Roth IRAs – one of its biggest moves into becoming a true long-term financial app.

You can choose if your IRA is self directed (where you choose your own investments), or managed through Robinhood Strategies.

Now, I know you’re already thinking about sticking your retirement into $BTC and $ETH – but sorry! Crypto isn’t available inside Robinhood IRAs (yet).

Access to options is also limited based on factors like your investing experience, risk profile, and your account type.

Now, here’s the part that you’re probably most interested in – Robinhood’s IRA match.

Robinhood Gold members get a 3% match on eligible IRA contributions, while standard users get 1%.

Robinhood also offers a 1% match on IRA transfers and old 401(k) rollovers.

What’s the catch?

Robinhood wants you to keep the money there for a while.

If you get an IRA match, the matched funds generally need to stay in your Robinhood IRA for at least 5 years.

If you move the money out too early, Robinhood may take back the match.

Gold users also need to keep Gold for 1 year after their first 3% match to keep the full Gold bonus.

You can also move more retirement money into the platform, including old IRAs, old 401(k)s, Roth conversions, and some eligible 529-to-Roth rollovers.

Trump Accounts

This one’s a pretty cool new feature.

Trump Accounts were created by the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill as a federal program to help children start investing early, with Robinhood acting as one of the initial trustees.

If you’ve got a kid under 18, it’s basically a long-term investment account set up in their name.

The perk is that children born from 2025 to 2028 can qualify for a $1,000 government contribution. Family, friends, and employers can also add up to $5,000 a year.

You don’t get much control over the investments, though.

The money goes into a low-cost US index fund and is pretty much locked away until the child turns 18, when it becomes a traditional IRA they control.

You also won’t manage it through the normal Robinhood app – you’ll need to file IRS Form 4547, then activate and manage the account through the Trump Accounts app or website.

Earn interest on your cash balance

One of the handiest benefits from Robinhood Gold is earning interest on idle cash.

If (and only if) you have a Gold membership, their High-Yield Cash Program currently pays 3.35% APY on cash sitting in your taxable Robinhood brokerage account before you invest it.

Behind the scenes, Robinhood can move that cash into partner banks so it earns interest.

Just keep in mind that this interest rate doesn’t apply to Self-directed IRAs and spending accounts.

Robinhood credit cards

Robinhood’s Gold Card is a 17g stainless steel Visa credit card for Gold members that earns 3% cash back on eligible purchases across all categories.

There’s no separate card annual fee, but you do need the $50/year Robinhood Gold subscription.

Here are some of the best extras:

• Virtual cards
• Single-use card numbers
• Free-trial cards that cancel after 24 hours
• Spending limits
• Mobile wallet support
• Family cardholders
• Instant card locking
• Authorized-user credit reporting

But watch out! Please remember that it’s still a credit card, not free money.

The interest rate can be brutal if you carry a balance, currently listing a purchase APR of 29.99% – so the 3% cash back is only gonna be handy if you pay the card off in full each month.

Robinhood has also announced a Platinum Card, aimed more at premium travellers.

It’s got a $695 annual fee and gives you higher rewards including 5% cash back on flights and 10% on hotels and rental cars.

You also get lounge access, travel credits, DoorDash perks, and health benefits.

Robinhood Gold Membership – Is it Worth $50 a Year?

Robinhood Gold would be worth $50 a year for three main reasons:

1. The additional 2% IRA match breaks even at $2,500 in eligible contributions per year.
2. You spend over $1,667 with the Robinhood Gold credit card, earning 3% cash back.
3. You keep around $1,500 in eligible idle cash on average for a full year, earning the 3.35% APY yield.

A smaller combination of all three of those benefits may also get you there.

Even though there are plenty of other perks, these are the three that are likely to contribute the most.

Crypto on Robinhood in 2026

Robinhood has offered crypto for a while now, but it’s come a long way.

A lot of this is thanks to its acquisition of Bitstamp in June 2025, which gave Robinhood stronger infrastructure and a serious foot in the door for the wider crypto world.

What’s changed?

Let’s break it down:

More cryptos to choose from

Robinhood has a much bigger crypto offering than it used to, now with 84+ assets on the US platform, and more than 65+ crypto assets on the European platform. UK crypto support is still on its way.

This list is still quite tightly curated though, so you might be less likely to get access to newer or trending assets than crypto-only exchanges.

Buying and selling: simple, but spreads matter.

As I explained in the fees section, buying and selling crypto on Robin Hood is supposedly commission-free – but you’ll want to look out for the spread.

The spread on your trades will usually work out to about 0.96%.

The exception to that 0.96% fee is when your orders move through market maker routing, which happens when you make more complex order types.

When you do this, you get a maker/taker fee model, which is actually pretty competitive with Kraken and Coinbase if you trade more than $50-100K in monthly volume.

You can finally transfer crypto

When Robinhood first started supporting crypto, it came with one major catch:

You could buy and sell it, but you couldn’t move it anywhere.

Now, Robinhood has finally made it possible to send and receive crypto to your account, if you apply for that feature.

Keep in mind this takes an extra ID verification step, and can take up to 5 business days to be approved.

Stake $ETH, $SOL, and $ADA

Don’t wanna leave your $ETH, $SOL, or $ADA sitting around collecting dust?

You can now also stake these in-app, without any of the tech expertise you’d need to do it normally.

You only need $1 worth of any of those coins to start staking – just keep in mind that the APYs can change and that your crypto isn’t FDIC or SIPC insured.

It’s also worth noting that Robinhood takes a 25% cut of any staking rewards.

This looks like a big chunk of the reward, but its lower than Coinbase (25%–35% depending on your membership tier), competitive with Kraken (25% unless you stake over $1M), but more than DeFi alternatives (Lido 10%, Rocket Pool 14%).

Remember that once bonding starts, you can’t sell that crypto or cancel the request.

If you want access to your crypto again, you’ll need to unstake it and wait through the unbonding period (if any).

That can take between a day to several weeks.

It is currently unavailable in California, Maryland, New Jersey, Wisconsin.

Earn yield on the $USDG stablecoin

Robinhood Earn lets you lend $USDG through a self-custody wallet in the Robinhood app for an estimated 7% APY, with rewards accruing in real time.

There are no lock-ups or extra fees, but withdrawals depend on available vault liquidity and the rate can change at any time.

It’s also much riskier than a savings account, since your funds are lent through Morpho, aren’t FDIC or SIPC protected, and the insurance only covers certain cyber or smart-contract losses.

Robinhood Wallet: Self-custody and DeFi

Robinhood Wallet is Robinhood’s separate self-custody crypto wallet.

The main Robinhood app is for buying, selling, and holding crypto through Robinhood Crypto.

Robinhood Wallet is different because you control the wallet keys yourself, and you can take advantage of the DeFi world in its browser.

That includes support across 7+ EVM networks, Bitcoin, Solana, and Dogecoin.

Robinhood Wallet is a completely separate app, but it has a nifty Robinhood Connect feature that makes it easy to buy and sell crypto via Robinhood itself.

Robinhood Legend: Advanced Trading Tools

As a trader, the “Robinhood Legend” interface is probably the biggest improvement I found on the platform.

This is an absolutely huge step up from the old basic interface, which may have left some of you underwhelmed in Robinhood’s earlier days.

Robinhood Legend is the real deal, for real traders.

The best way I can describe Legend is like Binance’s or BitMEX’s (if you were around for those glory days) futures interface – but for Robinhood.

By that, I mean it’s a modular layout, with a custom selection of tools and windows.

You can pick and choose which charts, and data you want to see – all at once. You can arrange and size the layout that works best for you and your own strategy.

Just choose a template for a suggested layout, or go completely custom to tailor things to your needs.

Whereas other platforms typically use TradingView charts, Robinhood Legend charts have their own version of all the best indicators, charting tools, labelling tools, and more.

Another one of the best parts about this is the advanced order types you can use, especially stop-loss orders.

It’s best used on desktop for the best experience, but you can also get Robinhood Legend charts on the mobile app as well.

Features for the future: Prediction markets, agentic trading, Robinhood Chain

Prediction markets

I didn’t know Robinhood got down like this in prediction markets, so this was a really cool surprise.

They have a ton of categories and markets – you can bet on pretty much anything here.

I took a thorough look and found everything from sports to elections, economic data, what’s going to be popular on Netflix, and even the upcoming temperature in Las Vegas.

This range of prediction markets really stood out to me – I actually recently wrote about how prediction markets can be a strong addition to financial strategies.

That’s especially true of stuff like economic data and political outcomes, since you can bet directly on the outcome of those specific events instead of indirectly through a loosely-linked asset.

For example if tariffs might affect your business, you could bet directly on tariffs being put in place – instead of betting on a particular stock or index fund going up or down.

Agentic Trading

Robinhood’s agentic trading lets you connect an AI agent to a Robinhood trading account and let it trade for you.

Here’s how it works:

1. Give an AI agent access to a dedicated account
2. Fund that account only with the money you’re willing to let the agent manage
3. The agent will look at markets, build or rebalance portfolios, create custom trading tools, and place trades as your strategy changes.

The nice part is that it stays completely separate from your normal Robinhood account.

You can watch what it’s doing in the app, get alerts when it trades, and pull the plug whenever you need to.

The risk is obviously that the AI can trade without checking with you first, so it could make bad calls, misread your instructions, use the wrong information, or lose the whole balance.

Remember that Robinhood doesn’t supervise the agent, so once you connect a third-party AI, your data is handled under that provider’s own rules.

Robinhood Chain (Ethereum L2)

This one might be Robinhood’s biggest forward-thinking move so far.

Basically, Robinhood doesn’t just want to be the app where you buy stocks and crypto anymore.

It wants to build the actual blockchain infrastructure that other financial apps can run on.

Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum-style Layer 2, which lets developers build things like trading apps, lending platforms, yield products, wallets, borrowing tools, and tokenized real-world assets on top of it.

Since it’s based on Arbitrum, its super fast and cheap to use.

I tried it out myself to trade some memecoins when it launched. I never spent over 4 cents for a transaction, and every trade I made finalized pretty much instantly.

And for Robinhood, tokenized stocks and ETFs may be the killer use case they’re looking for.

It could open the door to 24/7 stock trading, and full-on DeFi capabilities like:

• Using it as collateral to borrow against it
• Earning yield on it
• Trading it through decentralized apps.

As crypto people, we already know how useful it is to have all of these functions in DeFi.

Robinhood might be the ones that create this kind of entirely new economy around tokenized stocks.

Is Robinhood Still Good for Crypto Users in 2026?

Robinhood is actually great for crypto in 2026.

You get:

✅ A bigger selection of cryptos to choose from

✅ Transfers to and from your own wallets

✅ DeFi is only one step away with Robinhood Wallet and now, Robinhood Chain

✅ Staking for $ETH, $SOL, $ADA

✅ Stablecoin yield for $USDG.

Robinhood Legend’s advanced charting tools also bring the platform up to speed with competitors, with indicators and advanced order types giving experienced traders everything they need.

The only downsides are that the token selection is still a little smaller than other platforms, and fees can be higher if you don't intentionally use Robinhood's exchange routing for orders.

Robinhood Customer Service

Robinhood’s support section is actually pretty solid.

The Help Center has a huge library covering basically every feature, fee, and common question.

I found it detailed enough to answer most things without needing to contact anyone.

If you actually need help from a person, Robinhood usually sends you through the signed-in support flow in the app or on the website.

You can use 24/7 chat and, for some issues, request a callback.

It’s not really the kind of setup where you just Google a phone number and call. Honestly, that’s probably a good thing, given how many fake Robinhood support numbers are floating around.

I tried the virtual assistant at 2:29 am PT on July 13, and it was actually better than I expected.

It replied almost instantly and gave me accurate, detailed answers, which caught me off guard because I’m usually pretty sceptical of support bots.

My colleague Jonny tried it again at 4:28 pm PT with a much stranger question about Trump Accounts.

The chatbot wasn’t quite as helpful for him and sent him toward custodial accounts and the TRUMP meme coin, which was definitely not what he was asking about.

Once it started going in circles, he asked for a human. To Robinhood’s credit, it handed him over straight away, with both chat and callback showing about a one-minute wait.

He connected with Ethan in under a minute, which was impressively quick.

Ethan couldn’t fully solve the question, but instead of leaving Jonny stuck, he passed him over to another assistant, Rhonalyn, who kept digging until she found the answer.

By 4:52 pm PT, Jonny had what he needed.

Getting to the final answer wasn’t the fastest experience overall, but the support assistants were super attentive and didn’t rest until they had a satisfactory answer, which is top-notch.

This was a purposefully difficult answer, and the Robinhood support team did a stellar job.

Considering how new and loosely connected the product was, I thought the support team handled it pretty well.

Overall, the experience was much better than either of us expected.

The web chat is clean, it keeps your full support history in one place, and getting through to a real person was surprisingly painless.

Who’s Robinhood For?

• People who want everything in one app: Robinhood makes it easy to manage stocks, ETFs, crypto, cash, and retirement without juggling a bunch of separate platforms.
• People who want to buy and withdraw major cryptos: It’s a great fit if you mostly trade major and proven coins and tokens, with the option to move them to your own wallet later.
• People who want to grow into active trading: The main app stays simple for beginners, while Robinhood Legend gives you more advanced charts and tools when you’re ready to step things up.

Who’s Robinhood Not For?

• People who want every crypto under the sun: Robinhood covers the major names, but you’ll still need another exchange or a DeFi platform for low-cap tokens, early launches, and more memecoins.
• People who assume commission-free means cheapest: Robinhood can still be good value, but bigger crypto trades are worth comparing carefully because spreads and routing fees can make the final price less competitive.
• People who want to trade anonymously: Robinhood isn’t a good fit, since you’ll need to verify your identity and trade through an account linked to your personal details.

Robinhood Alternatives

Robinhood vs. Coinbase

Coinbase goes deeper on crypto, with more coins, cheaper advanced trading, Base, self-custody tools, and more onchain features.

Robinhood is broader. You get crypto alongside stocks, options, IRAs, prediction markets, credit cards, and Robinhood Legend, so it feels more like a full finance app.

Robinhood vs. Kraken

Kraken is built more for serious crypto traders. It has lower fees, more coins, margin, staking, perpetual futures, and stronger trading tools.

Robinhood is easier for someone who wants everything together. Kraken doesn’t have Robinhood’s retirement accounts, credit cards, prediction markets, or wider everyday investing setup.

Robinhood vs. Webull

Webull’s big crypto downside is that you can buy and sell coins, but you can’t withdraw them to your own wallet.

That being said, Webull gives you more charts, screeners, paper trading, and market data. It’s the more technical trading platform.

Robinhood feels much cleaner and gives you more outside the trading screen, especially crypto transfers, managed IRAs, Gold perks, credit cards, and better self-custody access.

Is Robinhood Safe to Use?

As a centralized platform, most of Robinhood’s safety relies on the company itself and its practices being solid.

Here are they key facts:

Who founded Robinhood?

Robinhood was founded in 2013 by Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt.

These two had already started two finance companies together and built trading software for hedge funds before launching Robinhood.

Interestingly, they both also studied maths and physics at Stanford.

Vlad still runs Robinhood today as its chairman, CEO, and president, and you see him very involved in the public eye with a passion for the industry.

Bhatt served as co-CEO until 2020 and chief creative officer until 2024, and still sits on the company’s board.

Is Robinhood a serious, established company?

Oh you bet it is.

Robinhood is publicly traded on Nasdaq under HOOD and is currently worth around $104 billion.

That means they have to publish audited financial results, risk disclosures, and other important updates through the SEC, giving us a lot more visibility than you’d get with a private exchange.

It’s safe to say there are a lot of eyes on Robinhood, making sure that it’s operating honestly.

Who backed it early on?

Before going public, Robinhood was backed by major investment firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, NEA, Ribbit Capital, DST Global, and ICONIQ Capital.

Its funding included a $3 million seed round, a $110 million round in 2017, $280 million led by Sequoia in 2020, and a $3.4 billion raise in 2021 – with Ribbit putting in more than $500 million alone.

How is Robinhood regulated?

Robinhood’s stock side is a proper US brokerage.

Robinhood Financial and Robinhood Securities are registered broker-dealers, FINRA members, and overseen by the SEC.

It’s also a member broker of The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), who can step in and cover a shortfall if the company fails.

(Obviously that doesn’t protect you from losing money in the market, though!).

On the other side, it's worth noting that Robinhood Crypto is a separate company, which means it plays by slightly different rules.

It still has state money-transmitter and virtual-currency licences, including a New York BitLicense – but it’s not a broker-dealer or a SIPC member.

Don’t treat crypto held there as having the same safety net as stocks just because they’re sitting in the same app.

Who holds my crypto on Robinhood?

When it comes to crypto, Robinhood works pretty much like any other centralized exchange.

It holds your coins for you in shared wallets with other customer funds, keeping most of it offline in cold storage and a smaller amount in hot wallets so trades and withdrawals can still happen smoothly.

You can withdraw your coins into your own wallet, but unless you do, Robinhood is holding onto it for you.

Robinhood handles the custody itself rather than using an outside custodian.

Its documents say this involves multi-party security, hardware protection, backup keys in different locations, tight staff access, and extra approvals for large transfers.

There is some crime and cyber insurance, but it’s limited, and your crypto still isn’t covered by FDIC or SIPC protection.

It also says it won’t lend out or use your coins, unless you tell them to.

What controversies has Robinhood faced?

Robinhood’s biggest controversy came during the 2021 GameStop frenzy, when it temporarily stopped customers from buying certain meme stocks.

Robinhood said clearinghouse deposit requirements had suddenly jumped, but a lot of users still felt locked out at exactly the wrong time.

It’s also had a couple of run-ins with regulators.

In 2025, FINRA fined Robinhood $26 million and ordered another $3.75 million in customer repayments over issues including weak supervision, anti-money-laundering failures, and some customers getting worse trade prices.

There was also a 2021 data breach that exposed names or email addresses belonging to millions of users, although Robinhood said Social Security numbers and bank details weren’t exposed.

None of this means Robinhood is automatically unsafe today – the company’s way larger, more established, and definitely more heavily watched now.

Final Thoughts On Robinhood

Robinhood is really blooming into a one stop shop for anything to do with finance and investments and it’s finally up to speed with crypto, too.

It’s got more coins and tokens available than ever before, transfers enabled, staking, a self-custody wallet, and now its very own Robinhood Chain.

Experienced traders can also enjoy advanced trading tools in Robinhood Legend, and the platform is clearly aiming right into the future with new features like agentic trading and prediction markets.

Throw in retirement accounts with up to 3% contribution matching, earning 3.35% yield on idle cash, and 3% cash back on credit card purchases, and you’ve got yourself an entire financial suite without ever leaving the Robinhood ecosystem.

That being said, you’ll still have a better (and cheaper) time day trading crypto on a crypto-specific exchange with a bigger range of coins to choose from, and you’ll have to pay $50 a year for a Robinhood Gold membership to unlock the best platform perks.

Robinhood Frequently Asked Questions