Switching brokers is the Hotel California of investing. You can check out anytime. Leaving costs $75.
Broker account transfer fees run $75 to $100 per account through the standard ACATS system. Some brokers waive it. Some brokers you are moving to will reimburse it if you ask. That sentence should be more famous. Always ask the receiving broker to cover it. Worst they can say is no.
Here is what stings. People discover this fee at the worst moment, mid-switch, already annoyed at their old broker. It feels like a parting insult. It has actually been sitting in the fee schedule in plain sight for years. Unread. The fee is not the scandal. The unread schedule is.
The move itself is where people get lost. A brokerage account transfer service is just ACATS doing its job, but the paperwork, the timing, the partial-versus-full choice confuses everyone the first time. An account transfer tracker app helps you follow it stage by stage instead of refreshing your inbox for a week. Some investors use a brokerage switch tracker app iOS Android download that watches both the outgoing and incoming side. Either way, track it. Transfers that go quiet for ten days are transfers worth calling about.
Partial transfers can help. Moving positions without closing the account sometimes avoids the full-account fee, depending on the broker. And if you are consolidating for simplicity, do it once, do it right, stop switching every eighteen months chasing promos. Every move costs you in fees and paperwork.
Before you open anywhere, check the exit fee, not just the entrance promo. BrokerCompare tracks broker account transfer fees for 50 US brokers side by side. And if you want the cheapest online broker overall, that is where to start. Start at brokercompare.fyi.