moomoo Review Australia: Fees, Custody and What It Really Costs

The short version

• ASX: A$3.00 per trade, or 0.03% of transaction value, whichever is greater, GST inclusive.
• US: US$0.99 per order, commission only. moomoo's Financial Services Guide refers you to sections 4 and 6 for the pass-through fees that sit outside it.
• Currency conversion: an added spread of 50 pips, which is 0.0050 on the AUD/USD rate, charged both ways and built into the rate you are shown.
• As a percentage: 0.0050 divided by 0.7126 is 0.70% of the amount converted, which makes moomoo's conversion the dearest of the nine platforms we track, not one of the cheaper ones.
• Custody: CHESS sponsored under your own HIN by default. If you opened the account with a custodian instruction, a sub-custodian holds your ASX shares on bare trust instead.
• Leaving: A$55 per ASX holding and US$50 per US holding, an exit cost that appears in no brokerage comparison we have seen.

What it costs

The ASX fee is a flat A$3.00 per trade, or 0.03% of transaction value, whichever is greater, GST inclusive. The two cross over at A$10,000 of trade value: below that you pay the flat fee, above it the percentage. There is no subscription fee and no inactivity fee. On the US side the headline is US$0.99 per order, and that is commission only. Currency conversion is charged separately again.

Order size, all in

Look at the ASX column and then the US column. A A$500 ASX order costs A$3.00. A A$500 US order costs A$4.90, and most of that is the conversion, not the trade.

Ten years, A$1,000 a month

The gap between paying A$360 and paying A$1,009 for the same monthly habit is the whole argument of this review in one row. Nothing about the trades changed. Only the currency leg did.

Pips are not basis points

This is the section that decides whether moomoo is cheap for you, and it is the section most reviews, including our own first attempt, get wrong.

A pip is 0.0001 of an exchange rate. It is a distance along a price quote: a rate moving from 0.7126 to 0.7127 has moved one pip. A basis point is 0.01% of an amount. It is a slice of a value, so a 0.70% conversion cost is 70 basis points. One is measured along a rate, the other against the money you are moving. You cannot line them up side by side, which is exactly what happens when a comparison table puts a pip figure in a column of percentages.

Now the arithmetic. moomoo's added spread is 50 pips, which is 0.0050 on the AUD/USD rate. Divide that spread by the rate itself, using the RBA rate of 0.7126 for 18 September 2026:

0.0050 divided by 0.7126 equals 0.0070, or 0.70% of the amount converted.

Not 0.50%. Read 50 pips as 50 basis points and you land on 0.50%, which is what our first version did. That makes moomoo's conversion the dearest of the nine platforms we track, not one of the cheaper ones, which is where the pip figure puts it when it is read as a percentage.

There is a second effect, and no other platform in the set behaves this way. Because the spread is an absolute distance on the rate rather than a percentage of the amount, the effective percentage moves with the exchange rate. Hold the 50 pips steady and change the rate, and the share of your money it eats changes too. If the Australian dollar falls, the same 0.0050 is a bigger slice. Your conversion cost depends on where the currency market is on the day you click, not on a schedule you can read in advance.

And it is charged both ways. Convert to buy and you pay the spread. Convert the proceeds back when you sell and you pay it again. A round trip pays it twice, which is another thing a single pip figure never shows.

We got this wrong, and here is the fix

For part of September 2026 we published moomoo's currency conversion cost as 0.55%, which put it mid-table against the other platforms we track. That was wrong, and the error was ours. We read 55 pips in an older Financial Services Guide and recorded it as 55 basis points: the exact mistake this page warns readers about.

We corrected the figure on 20 September 2026, after reading the worked example in moomoo's own document. The corrected number is 0.70%, and moomoo moves from mid-table to the dearest of the nine on conversion.

The lesson is not that we got a decimal wrong. It is that the unit is the trap, and the unit changed the ranking. A wrong figure that is consistent with itself everywhere passes every check you can automate. So every number in this review comes from moomoo's pricing page and its Financial Services Guide, both read on 19 September 2026, or from the RBA.

The two moomoo documents that disagree

Two moomoo documents, both read on 19 September 2026, describe the conversion differently.

The help centre states that the rate shown to you is the real-time rate and that no fees will be charged. Read that sentence alone and a conversion looks free.

The Financial Services Guide describes an added spread of 50 pips built into that rate. The rate you are shown is the market rate plus a margin, and the margin is the cost.

Both statements come from moomoo and neither is hidden. We are not going to accuse anyone of anything or tell you which to believe. We can tell you what each one answers. One answers a customer asking whether a fee line will appear on a statement. One discloses how the price they are quoted is built. A spread is not a fee line, so a support page can describe a conversion as fee-free while a disclosure document describes the margin inside the same rate. If the cost of converting matters to your decision, read both, and read the worked example.

Cheapest on small US orders, dearest on large ones

Here is the flip, and it is why the word cheap depends entirely on your order size. On a A$20,000 US order, priced across the nine platforms we track, moomoo comes out dearest of the set.

Now shrink the order. On small US orders moomoo has the cheapest published US brokerage in the set at US$0.99, and on a A$500 order the flat commission is most of what you pay. So moomoo holds both ends of the table at once: cheapest US brokerage, dearest all-in cost at A$20,000. That is not a quirk of our engine. A flat fee dominates a small order and becomes irrelevant on a large one, while a spread charged on the amount converted grows with the amount. US$0.99 does not grow at all. The A$141.79 does. The moomoo vs Stake comparison carries that curve out across four order sizes.

One caveat gets dropped everywhere, so here it is plainly. US$0.99 is commission only and excludes pass-through fees, which moomoo's Financial Services Guide covers in sections 4 and 6. A comparison that lines US$0.99 up against another platform's all-in figure is not comparing the same thing, and the difference is in moomoo's own disclosure document.

Who holds your shares, and why one choice at sign-up decides it

By default, your ASX shares are CHESS sponsored and registered in your own name under your own HIN. The holding sits on the ASX register in your name, kept separate from the broker's own assets.

The word is default, though. If you opened the account with a custodian instruction, your ASX shares are held on bare trust by a sub-custodian instead. You are still the beneficial owner. You are not the registered holder. Same platform, same fee schedule, two different legal arrangements, and the difference comes from a preference chosen once at sign-up that plenty of people will not remember choosing. Check which one you have in the app before you assume. If your holdings sit on bare trust, your position rests on the terms of that arrangement and on the soundness of the entity holding the assets, rather than on a register in your own name.

US holdings are a separate case again. CHESS is an ASX register, so US shares were never going to sit on it. They are held under a custodial arrangement.

The cost of leaving: A$55 and US$50 per holding

moomoo charges A$55 per ASX holding and US$50 per US holding to transfer out. Per holding, not per account. A portfolio of twenty positions is not one transfer, it is twenty, and the fee lands on each.

No brokerage comparison we have seen puts this in its table, because comparisons price buying and nobody signing up asks what it costs to leave. That makes it a switching cost, and it is worth more to the platform than the A$3.00 trade that brought you in. Weigh the two exits: selling costs ordinary brokerage, crystallises a capital gain or loss and takes you out of the market, while transferring keeps the position and the cost base intact at A$55 or US$50 per holding. Which is cheaper depends on your tax position, which we cannot assess for you. What we can say is that the exit fee belongs in your comparison before you sign up, not after.

Is moomoo safe? What AFSL 224663 does and does not promise

The Australian entity is Moomoo Securities Australia Ltd, ABN 51 095 920 648, holding AFSL 224663. That licence authorises it to deal in financial products, give general financial product advice and provide custodial or depository services. It also means the business answers to ASIC on conduct and compliance, and that retail clients can take a complaint to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

What an AFSL does not do is insure your shares. It is a permission to operate, not a guarantee of your capital, and it does not stop a licensed business from failing. Nor does it say anything about whether a fee structure suits your portfolio. Licensed and suitable are two different tests.

The scheme people assume covers them does not. The Financial Claims Scheme, run by APRA, protects deposits held with banks, credit unions and building societies up to A$250,000 per account holder per institution if the institution fails. It does not cover shares, ETFs or brokerage cash at any broker, moomoo included. That is true of every platform in this series.

On minimum investment, moomoo does not publish a figure we could confirm, so we are not going to state one. The honest answer to whether moomoo is safe comes in layers. It is a licensed Australian broker. Your ASX holdings can be registered in your own name if you chose that account type. Your US holdings sit under a custodial arrangement. And no government scheme stands behind your shares at the end of it, which is why the sign-up choice above matters more than it looks.

Where it wins, where it loses, who it suits

Where it wins. Small orders. A$3.00 flat on ASX trades and US$0.99 on US orders are as cheap as published brokerage gets in the set we track. No subscription fee and no inactivity fee, so a quiet account does not bleed. CHESS sponsorship under your own HIN if you took the default.

Where it loses. Large US orders, where the conversion spread carries the cost instead of the commission. Transfers out at A$55 and US$50 per holding. And transparency: the two numbers that matter most to a large investor, the conversion margin and the custody default, live in the Financial Services Guide rather than on the pricing page.

Who it suits. Someone building an ASX portfolio in small regular parcels who checks their account type once. Someone who wants a modest US position and is comfortable with a custodial arrangement on that leg.

Who it does not. Someone buying US shares in large lump sums, where 0.70% on the amount converted changes the arithmetic. Someone moving in a large existing portfolio and likely to move it again, given the per-holding exit fee. And anyone who wants advice, because moomoo provides general information and execution, and neither it nor this review gives personal recommendations.