Superhero Review: The Cheapest Brokerage in the Set, and Who Holds Your Shares

The short version

• A$2.00 flat ASX brokerage, the lowest of the nine platforms we track, and US$2.00 flat on US orders, about A$2.81 at the RBA rate of 0.7126 for 18 September 2026.
• 0.50% currency conversion, equal lowest in the set with Pearler.
• Both rates are advertised as "from", and the conditions attached to the lowest price are not published. Every figure on this page is the best case.
• No HIN in your own name. ASX holdings are held by FinClear Pty Ltd as sub-custodian, US holdings by Apex Clearing Corporation. You keep beneficial ownership, not legal title.
• Fractional US shares and automated investing are both available, and the minimum investment is A$10.
• Licensed as Superhero Securities Limited, AFSL 430150.

What it costs, and one warning before the numbers

Read this before the tables. Superhero publishes both brokerage rates as "from". The A$2.00 ASX figure and the US$2.00 figure are advertised entry prices, and the conditions attached to them are not published anywhere we could find. Our tables use the published rates because that is what the platform publishes, but treat every number below as the best case, and check your own confirmations rather than assuming A$2.00 is what you will be charged.

Order size, all in

The ASX column is flat at every size, which is the whole point of the pricing model. The US column is not flat in Australian dollars, because the 0.50% conversion sits on top of the US$2.00 brokerage and scales with the order.

Ten years, A$1,000 a month

All three are the lowest of the nine platforms we track on those splits, with one exception: Interactive Brokers beats Superhero on US-only.

The cheapest in the set, and by how much

Over a decade of A$1,000 a month into ASX shares, the gap between Superhero and the dearest platform in our set is A$1,080.

That is a real difference and it is the strongest argument Superhero has. It is also worth reading the next section before deciding what it is worth to you, because the saving and the custody model come from the same design decision.

Who holds your shares

This is the part of the review that matters most, and the part most reviews skip.

What a HIN in your own name gives you. When a broker is CHESS sponsored and opens a holder identification number for you, the holding is registered to you at the ASX. It is portable: you can move it to another sponsoring broker without selling, which means a platform failure is usually resolved by a broker-to-broker transfer rather than by a claim on a collapsed company. Legal title and beneficial ownership sit in the same place, with you.

What Superhero does instead. Superhero uses a custodian model and you do not get a HIN. ASX holdings are held in a CHESS account in the name of FinClear Pty Ltd as sub-custodian, and US holdings are held by Apex Clearing Corporation. Two legs, two different custodians. You keep beneficial ownership, so the economic exposure, the dividends and the capital growth are yours. What you do not keep is legal title.

What the custodian model gives you. Lower cost, fractional US shares and faster account opening. Those are not consolation prizes, they are the reason the model exists. A custodian can net orders across thousands of clients, which is how a flat A$2.00 is possible at all. Fractional US shares are difficult to deliver inside a personal HIN structure. And opening an account does not require the CHESS sponsorship paperwork that a HIN does.

Superhero's own position. The company is open about the choice and defends it. Its material frames the custodial model as a deliberate decision over what it describes as the system the ASX has been trying to replace. That is a considered position rather than spin: CHESS is decades-old infrastructure, its replacement has been in progress for years, and a generation of newer platforms has concluded that the settlement layer is not where they want to compete. You can disagree with the conclusion and still accept that it is a reasoned one.

What you actually give up. Legal title sits with the custodian. If something goes badly wrong, recovery depends on the custody arrangements and on insolvency processes rather than on a holding registered in your name at the ASX. The holding is also not portable in the same way, so moving to a CHESS broker generally means selling and buying back, which is a tax event rather than an administrative one. None of that predicts anything will go wrong. It describes who is standing where if it does.

The honest framing. Against the dearest platform in our set, the ASX-only decade gap is A$1,080, which is roughly A$9 a month. That is not nothing, and it is not life-changing either. This is a question about what happens in a rare bad event, not about the monthly bill, and it deserves to be priced that way. We are not going to tell you which side of the trade to take.

Is Superhero safe?

Superhero Securities Limited holds AFSL 430150. An Australian Financial Services Licence means the business has been assessed as competent to provide the services it offers, is subject to ASIC oversight, and must meet conduct and disclosure obligations, including handling client money in accordance with the Corporations Act. It is a genuine gate.

What an AFSL does not guarantee. It is not a deposit guarantee, it is not insurance against business failure, and it does not make your shareholdings whole if the company becomes insolvent. A licence regulates conduct. It does not underwrite outcomes.

The Financial Claims Scheme. This is where a lot of people get confused. The scheme, run by APRA, covers deposits with Australian banks, building societies and credit unions up to A$250,000 per account holder per institution. It does not cover shares held at any broker, custodial or CHESS sponsored. Hold a share through a CHESS broker that fails and the scheme is not what protects you, your HIN is. Hold it through a custodian and the scheme is not what protects you either, the custody arrangements and the insolvency process are.

How custody changes the question. With a CHESS sponsored broker, what happens if this company fails has a fairly short answer: the shares are registered to you, and you move them. With a custodian the same question runs through the custodian's arrangements, the sub-custodian's arrangements, and the client money and asset rules that apply to each. A longer chain is not automatically a broken one. It is a different risk shape, and it is the one you are accepting in exchange for A$2.00 trades.

Where it wins and where it loses

Where it wins

• Cheapest ASX brokerage of the nine, by a wide margin over the middle of the field.
• Equal lowest currency conversion at 0.50%, tied with Pearler.
• Fractional US shares, which makes small US positions practical.
• Automated investing, which suits a set-and-forget monthly contribution.
• A A$10 minimum, so the entry point is genuinely low.
• W-8BEN at A$0, and share transfers advertised as free.

Where it loses

• No HIN in your own name, so no direct registration at the ASX and no equivalent portability.
• Two custodians across two markets, which is more counterparties than a single CHESS relationship.
• Both headline rates are "from" pricing with unpublished conditions, so the advertised number is not a guaranteed number.
• Account fee not confirmed. We could not verify whether one is charged, so we are not claiming there is none.
• The saving is small in absolute dollars at low contribution levels, which weakens the case if you are putting in a few hundred a month.

Who it suits and who it does not

It suits someone who buys ASX shares regularly in small parcels and wants the brokerage line as low as it goes. Someone building a US position in small amounts who wants fractional shares and a low conversion rate. Someone who wants automated monthly investing without paying a percentage for the privilege. And someone who has read the custody section, understood it, and decided the trade is worth taking.

It does not suit someone who wants holdings registered in their own name at the ASX and portable between brokers without a sale. Someone who would rather pay more for a shorter chain of counterparties. Someone who needs certainty about the exact price of a trade before placing it, given the "from" caveat. Or anyone choosing a platform on app design alone, because the app is not what you are buying.

If the low price appeals but the custody model does not, Stake is the cheapest platform in our set that does register the shares in your name, at A$3.00 flat. The Stake vs CMC Invest comparison and the Pearler review both cover CHESS platforms at the cheaper end.