Compare Broker Fees, Including Currency Conversion

Brokerage fees in Australia: what you actually pay

Most comparison pages rank platforms by headline brokerage. That one number is the easiest to advertise and the least useful on its own, because it hides the currency conversion fee, the account fee, the minimums and how often you actually trade. This page runs a brokerage fees comparison readers set themselves: your amounts, your frequency, your horizon, and a total at the end of it.

Brokerage fees in Australia come in three shapes. A flat fee per order, one price whatever the order size: Stake charges A$3 on ASX orders up to A$30,000, and US$3 on US orders up to US$30,000. A percentage of trade value, with a floor: Interactive Brokers Australia charges 0.08% of trade value on ASX orders with a minimum of A$6.00, so a small order pays the minimum, not the rate. Or tiered pricing, where the percentage drops as the order gets bigger, common at the bank-owned, full-service end of the market.

Then there is GST. Australian brokerage generally attracts 10% GST. Run a A$20,000 ASX order through Interactive Brokers Australia and 0.08% of trade value is A$16.00 before GST, or A$17.60 after. On a flat-fee model the same order costs the flat fee plus GST, whatever its size. Same trade, different bill.

And remember the round trip. You pay brokerage when you buy and again when you sell. A platform advertising "$3 per trade" means $3 each way, so a full buy and sell is $6 before GST. Nine platforms sit in the table above. Webull is not one of them: it does not publish a currency conversion fee anywhere, and its pricing page and FAQ contradict each other on US ETFs. You cannot compare a fee that is not published.

The currency conversion fee, the cost nobody advertises

When you buy a US share, your Australian dollars become US dollars first. The platform makes that exchange at a rate with a margin built into it. That margin is the currency conversion fee, and it nearly always shows up as a rate rather than a line item, which is why it slips past anyone comparing brokerage.

The margin is a spread: the gap between the mid-market rate you would see on a currency converter and the rate the platform actually gives you. A 0.60% spread on A$5,000 costs A$30. You will not see "$30" printed anywhere. You will see a slightly worse exchange rate, and the difference disappears into the trade.

As at 19 September 2026 the published range runs from 0.002% at Interactive Brokers Australia, with a minimum of US$2.00 per conversion, through 0.50% at Pearler and Superhero, 0.55% at Stake, CommSec and moomoo, to 0.60% at Selfwealth and CMC Invest. That is a three-hundred-fold gap on the headline rate. Minimums narrow it, and the floors are where the story gets interesting.

Two features make the conversion fee bite harder than brokerage. It is a percentage, so it scales with every dollar you convert, not with the number of trades you place. And you usually pay it twice: once converting AUD to USD to buy, and again converting USD back to AUD when you sell. A 0.60% round trip on a A$5,000 position is A$60 before the share price has moved a cent.

Cheapest brokerage is not the same as cheapest total cost

CMC Invest is the clearest case study on this page. Its US share brokerage is $0. Free. And it still charges 0.60% to convert your Australian dollars into US dollars. Buy A$5,000 of a US share through CMC Invest and brokerage is $0, conversion is 0.60% of A$5,000, which is A$30. Total cost: A$30.

Now run the same A$5,000 through Stake. Brokerage US$3, conversion 0.55%, which is A$27.50. Stake's headline brokerage is higher and its conversion rate is lower, and the two totals land within a few dollars of each other. Pick on headline brokerage alone and you would have called this one a walkover, and you would have been wrong.

Now scale it, because it is not one trade. It is every trade, every month or every fortnight, for as long as you invest. Use the compound interest calculator to see what the habit builds to. Put A$1,000 a month in over ten years and you have converted A$120,000. At 0.60% that is around A$720 in conversion. At 0.55%, around A$660. The gap between the two is small. The point is that both dwarf anything a US$3 brokerage ever adds up to.

Then the floors, where the maths flips again. Interactive Brokers Australia converts at 0.002%, but never for less than US$2.00. At that rate you would need to convert around US$100,000 before the percentage beats the floor. On a US$1,000 purchase you pay US$2.00, roughly 0.2% of the converted amount, a hundred times the headline rate. On small conversions the floor is the price, not the percentage. Brokerage floors do the same thing: that A$6.00 ASX minimum means a A$500 order pays 1.2% of the trade, while a A$20,000 order pays 0.08%. Same platform, same rate, and the cost as a share of the trade differs by a factor of fifteen.

So the total is the only number worth ranking. Brokerage times the number of trades, plus the conversion rate times the amount converted, plus any account fees, plus wherever the minimums bite. Set the sliders and watch the order change. No platform is cheapest in the abstract, and this page does not pretend any of them is right for you. It states what each one charges on your plan and lets the numbers sit there.

CHESS sponsored or custodian: what the difference means for your shares

CHESS is the ASX's Clearing House Electronic Subregister System, the electronic register that records who owns Australian shares. CHESS sponsored means your shares are registered in your own name, under your Holder Identification Number (HIN), and you appear on the ASX register as the holder. Custodian, or nominee, means the platform holds the shares in its own name, or in a pooled account, and records your entitlement on its own books. You get an account rather than a HIN. The shares are still yours in a beneficial sense, but your name is not on the ASX register.

Portability. With a HIN you can move to another broker with a transfer and keep your holdings, your buy dates and your cost base. Under a custodian, moving platforms often means selling and rebuying. That is a capital gains tax event, and it resets the 12-month clock on the CGT discount.

Control of corporate actions. A HIN holder is the registered holder, so dividends, rights issues and voting come to you directly. Custodians pass these through, and most do it well, but you are relying on them to get it right.

If the platform fails. Shares held under a HIN sit on the ASX register in your name. Under a custodian you hold a beneficial interest, and what you can recover depends on the custodian's structure. That is not a reason to avoid custodians, but it is a reason to know which one you are using.

US shares. There is no CHESS register for US stocks. Whichever platform you use, your US holdings sit with a custodian or a US broker-dealer, so the HIN question is really an ASX question.

Neither structure is automatically better. Custodians often make cheaper brokerage or fractional shares possible, and plenty of investors are happy with them. Read up on CHESS sponsorship and HINs before you commit, because changing your mind later can mean a tax bill.

Buying ETFs: what it costs on each platform

An ETF trades on the ASX like any other share, so on most platforms an ETF order attracts the same brokerage as a share order. The flat-versus-percentage choice matters more than the ETF label. Two things are different, though.

The size of your regular purchase. ETFs are often bought in small, steady amounts, and that is where flat fees show up. A A$3 flat fee on a A$500 purchase is 0.6% of your money. On a A$5,000 purchase it is 0.06%, ten times smaller as a share of the trade. Put your actual monthly amount into the calculator and watch the ranking move.

Whether the platform prices ETFs differently. Some do, particularly for their own funds. Vanguard Personal Investor charges $0 to buy its own ETFs and $9 to sell them, against $9 each way on non-Vanguard ASX shares. Check the fee schedule rather than assuming ETF equals share. If you are new to them, start with what an ETF is.

Brokerage is not the whole cost of an ETF, either. Management fees and buy/sell spreads come out of the fund, not your brokerage account, and they apply whether you trade once a year or once a week. They are not in this table because they are fund costs rather than platform costs, but they belong in your total.

Buying US shares from Australia: the full cost stack

Brokerage is the first line on a US trade and rarely the biggest one. Here is the whole stack, in the order it hits you.

1. 1. Brokerage on the order. A flat fee or a per-share charge. CMC Invest charges $0 on US shares, Stake US$3 up to US$30,000, moomoo US$0.99 excluding pass-through fees, and Interactive Brokers Australia US$0.005 a share with a US$1.00 minimum, capped at 1%.
2. 2. Currency conversion. On a A$5,000 purchase that is A$30 at 0.60%, A$27.50 at 0.55%, or the US$2.00 floor at Interactive Brokers, which makes conversion the largest single cost on a mid-sized US trade.
3. 3. US regulatory and exchange fees. Small per-trade charges levied on the US side, generally on sales, and passed through by the platform. Cents on normal orders, but they show up on the contract note.
4. 4. Funding and withdrawal. Getting money in and out can add a transfer fee or a second currency conversion.
5. 5. Dividend withholding tax. The US withholds tax on dividends paid to Australian residents at a rate set by the tax treaty. You claim it back through a foreign income tax offset.
6. 6. The W-8BEN form. You complete it so the platform applies the treaty rate instead of the higher default. Here is the W-8BEN form explained.
7. 7. US estate tax. US-situs assets can fall under US estate tax rules for non-residents once a position gets large. Worth understanding before you build a big US allocation.
8. 8. Account and platform fees. Monthly fees, data fees and inactivity fees vary by platform.

Put it together and the cheapest way to buy US shares answers itself differently for different people. Convert A$5,000 once and the conversion rate decides it. Convert A$500 a month and the conversion minimum decides it. Buy and hold for ten years and the funding and withdrawal mechanics matter more than the brokerage column ever will. The stack, not the headline, is the cost.

Starting with a small balance: minimums and account rules

A small balance is where fee structures show their teeth, because fixed costs do not shrink with your order. A A$3 flat fee on a A$500 ASX purchase is 0.6% of your money, and 0.06% on a A$5,000 purchase. Percentage fees with a floor do the same: Interactive Brokers Australia at 0.08% with a A$6.00 minimum means a A$500 order pays 1.2% of the trade.

A $0 tier helps at the small end. CMC Invest charges $0 brokerage on buys under $1,000, once per security per day, excluding margin loan settled trades. So a A$500 purchase pays no brokerage at all. Note the once-per-security-per-day part: the second buy of the same security that day is charged, and a margin loan settled trade does not qualify.

Three minimums are confirmed as at 19 September 2026: Superhero from $10, Vanguard Personal Investor $200, and Stake fractional US shares from US$10. We have not verified minimum order sizes, minimum first deposits, account closure fees or fractional availability on the other platforms, so check those before you open an account rather than assuming. A monthly account fee on a small balance can outweigh the brokerage you were trying to avoid, and exit costs are worth reading before you need them.

A beginner investing A$250 a month and a beginner investing A$2,000 a month face different costs, because the fixed parts weigh differently. What separates them is the total on their own plan, and that is what the table above sorts. As your balance grows the answer can change, so it is worth re-running the numbers once a year.

If you have already narrowed it to two names, the head-to-head pages go further than this table can: Pearler vs Interactive Brokers works through the order sizes where each one wins, the subscription that changes the answer, and the difference in how each holds your shares.