Vanguard might be for you if: You're a hands-off investor who wants low-cost index fund ETFs and mutual funds. This broker is a longtime industry leader in passive investing, offering thousands of low-fee or no-fee diversified stock and bond ETFs and mutual funds, a wide range of investment account types, and an easy-to-use platform. Read our Vanguard review to see if this brokerage is the right choice for your investment goals.
Ratings Methodology
2024 Award Winner
Vanguard
Our Rating:
Rating image, 4.5 out of 5 stars.
4.5/5Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale.5 stars equals Best.4 stars equals Excellent.3 stars equals Good.2 stars equals Fair.1 star equals Poor.We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs. = Best
= Excellent
= Good
= Fair
= Poor
Bottom Line
Vanguard is one of the best brokerages for passive investors who want to buy low-cost index fund ETFs. It also offers thousands of no-transaction-fee mutual funds, and excellent zero-commission options for buying stocks online, with no account minimums for brokerage accounts. Vanguard tries to keep its costs and expense ratios low so investors (like you) can keep more of your returns.
Fees:
$0 online; $25 broker-assisted fee for some phone trades of stocks and ETFs from other companies (Less than $1 million)
Alternatives to Consider
We recommend comparing brokerage options to ensure the account you're selecting is the best fit for you. To make your search easier, here's a short list of our best trading platforms of 2024.
Account | Fees | Account Minimum | |
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Featured Offer Rating image, 4.5 out of 5 stars. 4.5/5Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale.5 stars equals Best.4 stars equals Excellent.3 stars equals Good.2 stars equals Fair.1 star equals Poor.We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs. | $0 for stocks, ETFs, and options; $5 monthly for Robinhood Gold | $0 | Open Account for Robinhood |
Rating image, 4.5 out of 5 stars. 4.5/5Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale.5 stars equals Best.4 stars equals Excellent.3 stars equals Good.2 stars equals Fair.1 star equals Poor.We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs. | $0 for stocks, $0 for options contracts | $0 | Open Account for SoFi Active Investing |
Rating image, 5.0 out of 5 stars. 5.0/5Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale.5 stars equals Best.4 stars equals Excellent.3 stars equals Good.2 stars equals Fair.1 star equals Poor.We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs. | $0 commission for online U.S. stock and ETF trades. No fees to buy fractional shares. | $0, ($1 minimum per fractional share transaction) | Read Review |
Full Vanguard review
My experience: I'm a longtime Vanguard customer, and despite some other people's recent complaints about customer service, in my experience the Vanguard Client Services team has always been super-responsive, helpful, smart, and detail-oriented. Vanguard's funds tend to have some of the lowest fees and a wide range of ways to invest in stocks and bonds. I'm not a day trader. If you want professional trading capabilities for active investing, Vanguard's not the right brokerage. But if you want to slowly, quietly, simply build wealth with passive investing in low-cost index fund ETFs, Vanguard makes it easy.
Jump To
- Investment offerings
- Commissions and fees
- Research and education
- Interface and app
- Customer service
- Security
- About
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Investment offerings
Vanguard offers a wide range of investment products and account types, and you can buy Vanguard ETFs with a minimum investment of $1 in your brokerage account. Vanguard is owned by its investors, so it keeps its costs low -- the average Vanguard ETF and mutual fund expense ratio is 82% less than the industry average.
Investments
- Bonds
- CDs
- ETFs
- Money market
- Mutual funds
- Stocks
Brokerage accounts
- Cash Plus
- Individual brokerage
- Individual 401(k)
- IRA
- Joint brokerage
- Organization accounts
- Roth IRA
- SEP IRA
- SIMPLE IRA
- Trust accounts
- UGMA/UTMA
- 529 savings
Commissions and fees
Vanguard, like most major online brokers, offers commission-free online stock trades. Although Vanguard's per-contract options commissions are not free, they're close: only $1. Vanguard charges $0 commissions for Vanguard ETFs and mutual funds, but it does charge commissions for some ETF and mutual fund trades from other companies. Both the options and mutual funds commissions can be waived for accounts with more than $1 million invested in Vanguard funds.
Investment product | Cost |
---|---|
Stocks | $0 online, $25 for broker-assisted trades by phone if you have less than $1 million invested with Vanguard |
ETFs | $0 for Vanguard ETFs, $25 for broker-assisted trades by phone for ETFs from other companies (if you have less than $1 million invested with Vanguard) |
Mutual funds | $0 online for Vanguard mutual funds and no-transaction fee (NTF) mutual funds from other companies; up to $20 for others. Extra fee of up to $25 for broker-assisted trades by phone for mutual funds from other companies (if you have less than $1 million invested with Vanguard) |
Options | $0 plus $1 per contract (less than $1 million invested with Vanguard) |
Data source: Vanguard.
Margin rates
Vanguard offers margin loans that let investors borrow against the stocks, bonds, ETFs or other eligible securities that they hold in a brokerage account. Borrowing on margin can be risky, but it gives you a flexible line of credit.
Margin balance | Effective rate |
---|---|
Up to $19,999 | 13.75% |
$20,000-$49,999 | 13.25% |
$50,000–$99,999 | 12.75% |
$100,000–$249,999 | 12.25% |
$250,000–$499,999 | 11.75% |
$500,000 and above | Contact Vanguard for rates. |
Data source: Vanguard. Rates as of May 16, 2024.
Research and education
Vanguard publishes extensive original research on the economy, markets, retirement savings, and investing. You can get free insights from Vanguard's experts on topics such as stock market trends, the U.S. and international economies, and deciding whether to invest in different asset categories.
Recent Vanguard research focuses on understanding the municipal bond market, deciding how much cash to have in your portfolio, and Vanguard's fundamental principles of investing success. In addition to its academic-style research, Vanguard offers extensive financial education content to help everyday investors.
Some of its recent educational content on investing strategies includes topics such as:
- How to build resilient portfolios through diversification
- Understanding robo-advisor performance
- How to choose a financial advisor
- What to do with your inheritance
Interface
Vanguard lets you open an account, manage your account, invest, and conduct transactions online through its online brokerage platform. Everything you need to buy stocks and ETFs with Vanguard is available through the Vanguard website.
The Vanguard interface is designed more for passive investors and it shows. If you only want to check your investment account balance a few times per year, or perhaps buy investments once per month on payday, Vanguard's interface should give you plenty of functionality to do everything you need.
Vanguard is definitely not a day-trading platform. If you are an active investor who wants more sophisticated trading tools for frequent stock trading and advanced investment strategies, other brokerages will likely be a better fit.
App
The Vanguard mobile app is available for Android and iOS, and lets you invest on the go via mobile device. You can use Vanguard's app to buy and sell investments, deposit checks via mobile check deposit, withdraw funds, check your account balance, track your investment performance, compare investment options, and more.
Vanguard's app gets significantly better reviews on the App Store (4.7 stars) than on Google Play (3.5 stars). Android users have recently complained about login issues and navigation problems; some Vanguard customers said that the Android app worked so poorly that they had to go use the Vanguard website instead.
Customer service
Vanguard customer service seems to be going through a time of struggle. The company is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB); the BBB website gives Vanguard a grade of "F," with 202 customer complaints closed in the past 12 months. Trustpilot gives Vanguard a rating of 1.7 stars.
Customers have complained on the BBB website about serious problems with Vanguard's service -- such as:
- Vanguard allegedly failing to deposit a check from a 401(k) rollover
- A 76-year-old customer having their retirement account frozen because they could only remember one security question
- Over $40,000 missing from a customer's account
Vanguard is a major financial institution with more than 50 million clients. Just like the biggest banks sometimes make mistakes, with any brokerage of this size there are going to be a few customers that encounter problems and have bad experiences. But even Vanguard's biggest fans on the Bogleheads.org website (named after Vanguard founder John Bogle) have recently been complaining that Vanguard's customer service has gone downhill.
Maybe you can get better customer service by signing up for Vanguard Personal Advisor®? This service gives you automated investment help (like a robo-advisor), personalized investment planning, and on-demand access to Vanguard financial advisors. But you need a minimum of $50,000 of assets to qualify.
Vanguard Personal investors (which includes brokerage account customers) can contact Vanguard Client Services in the following ways:
- Call (877) 662-7447 during Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Eastern Time
- Send Vanguard a message through your account in the Personal investors site
Security
Vanguard uses a variety of advanced, industry-standard security techniques to help protect your account. These include:
- Account activity alerts
- Biometric authentication
- Encryption
- Masking digits to protect bank account information
- Mobile app verification
- Two-factor authentication: security codes sent to your phone, or security keys
- Security questions for authenticating users
- SSL validation
- Username and password protection (disabling your password after a number of unsuccessful login attempts)
About
Vanguard was founded in 1975 and has become one of the largest and most influential investment management companies in the world. Vanguard's approach to investing is focused on keeping fees low and encouraging low-cost, long-term, uncomplicated, passive investing. This brokerage is popular with everyday investors who aren't trying to beat the market, but who want to buy and hold diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds -- without paying unnecessary fees and commissions. As of Dec. 31, 2023, Vanguard had more than $8.6 trillion of assets under management (AUM).
Learn more about Vanguard
Keep reading about Vanguard on these pages:
- Best Brokers for Mutual Funds
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- Best IRA Accounts
- Best Online Stock Brokers for Beginners
- Best Robo-Advisors
- Best Roth IRA Accounts
- Vanguard Digital Advisor Review
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- Vanguard vs. Ally Invest
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Review sources
- https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products
- https://investor.vanguard.com/client-benefits/brokerage-fees-commissions
- https://investor.vanguard.com/accounts-plans
- https://investor.vanguard.com/client-benefits/margin
- https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/what-we-think/research-library.html
- https://investor.vanguard.com/resources-education/investing-strategies
- https://investor.vanguard.com/client-benefits/mobile-apps
- https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/who-we-are/sets-us-apart/our-management-team.html
- https://investor.vanguard.com/trust-security/security-center
- https://www.fr.vanguard/content/dam/intl/europe/documents/en/vanguard-in-a-nutshell-eu-en.pdf
- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vanguard/id335186209
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vanguard&hl=en_US&gl=US
- https://www.bbb.org/us/pa/malvern/profile/investment-security/vanguard-group-of-investment-companies-0241-80000841
- https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.vanguard.com
- https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=351604&start=800
Our brokerage rating methodology
At The Motley Fool Ascent, brokerages are rated on a scale of one to five stars. We primarily focus on fees, available assets, and account types; however, we also take into account features like research, education, tax-loss harvesting, and highly rated mobile apps. Our highest-rated brokerages generally include low fees, a diverse range of assets and account types, and useful platform features.
See our full methodology here: Ratings Methodology
FAQs
There is no specific account minimum to open a brokerage account with Vanguard. However, since Vanguard doesn't allow fractional share investing except with its own ETFs, you'll need at least enough money to purchase one share of a stock or a fractional share of an ETF, or the minimum investment amount for a mutual fund you want to invest in.
There are a few things Vanguard doesn't offer for investors. Fractional share investing of stocks is a big example -- if a stock is trading for $500 per share, you'd need $500 to invest in it. Many competitors would allow you to directly buy a piece of a share. Plus, as a platform focused on long-term, buy-and-hold investing strategies, Vanguard's trading platform isn't as feature-packed as many other traditional brokerages.
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By:Cole Tretheway
Cole Tretheway is a full-time personal finance writer whose articles have been featured on The Ascent and The Motley Fool. He has a degree in English with a Certificate in Professional and Technical Communication from California Polytechnic University, SLO.
By:Ben Gran
Fact CheckedAshley Maready
Writer and Editor
Ashley Maready is a former history museum professional who made the leap to digital content writing and editing in 2021. She has a BA in History and Philosophy from Hood College and an MA in Applied History from Shippensburg University. Ashley loves creating content for the public and learning new things so she can teach others, whether it's information about salt mining, canal mules, or personal finance.