Does Interactive Brokers Charge a Monthly Fee?
Interactive Brokers does not charge a monthly account fee, and there’s no inactivity fee either. IBKR scrapped its old inactivity charge of $10 per month in July 2021, so an idle account won’t bleed money just for sitting there. There are also no platform subscription fees for TWS, the mobile app, or Client Portal. Still, there are charges that you can incur on a month-to-month basis, explained below.
Written ByChristian Harris
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| Fee Type | Cost |
|---|---|
| Inactivity Fee | $0.00 |
| Platform Fee (TWS/App) | $0.00 |
| Delayed Market Data | $0.00 |
| Real-Time Market Data | Varies by exchange (often waived with activity) |
| UK ISA Account Fee | Minimum £3.00/month |
Here’s more detail on the few recurring costs that can show up on your Interactive Brokers statement:
- Market data subscriptions. Live data feeds for specific exchanges are paid monthly add-ons. Delayed data is free; real-time isn’t, and the bill scales with how many feeds you want. You need a minimum balance of $500 or currency equivalent to access live data. That said, lots of its live market data packages, such as the US Securities Snapshot bundle, have their fees waived if you generate $20–$30/month in commissions.
- Borrowing costs. If you run a margin balance, you pay interest on it. Interactive Brokers has competitive margin costs but they can still add up if you’re swing trading or making a large volume of trades.
- Per-trade commissions on IBKR Pro, plus the usual exchange and regulatory pass-through fees.
- For UK clients, Stocks and Shares ISAs have a £3/month minimum fee, while JISAs are £1/month. Generate commissions of these values or more and they are covered.
For a casual investor who skips the paid data feeds and doesn’t use margin, the fixed monthly outlay can be zero. That’s a real shift from the days when IBKR’s fees punished smaller, quieter accounts.