Updated. I have the strange hobby of trying out new fintech apps while also collecting their sign-up incentives. Here are several different brokerage apps that offer some variation of free stock trades, modern user interface, real-time quotes, and social sharing. Many are structured like a free lottery ticket with a minimum payout – the odds are that you’ll get a stock valued on the lower end of the ranges mentioned, but I have gotten a few big shares like AAPL before the recent split. They usually require a referral link, which means I can get some free stocks as well. A couple are offering 2X to 4X their usual bonuses right now.
Stash $20 in Free Stock Offer- Open a Stash account and deposit as little as a penny ($0.01) and get $20 worth of free stock (or cash).
- Stash allows you to invest as little as $5 into fractional shares of individual companies and/or ETFs. This is an improved offer, the standard offer is only $5 of free stock.
- Stash runs a #StashStockParty every other day or so, where they give out tiny pieces of popular companies using those fractional shares. I’ve gotten 30 cents of Peloton, John Deere, Figs, Sonos, Johnson and Johnson, Krispy Kreme, Oatly, Home Depot, Hershey, and more. It’s irrationally enjoyable.
- I have gotten my free bonus from Stash as promised without issue. See my Stash review for details.
WeBull 12 Free Fractional Stocks Offer
- Open a Webull brokerage account Open an account and get 2 free fractional shares. Deposit any amount and get up to 10 free fractional shares..
- WeBull will also reimburse you for a transfer fee up to $100 if you transfer at least $2,000+ value to WeBull from another brokerage.
- WeBull offers free stock trades, free options trades, free crypto trades, and a full-featured brokerage account. This is a limited-time offer, the standard offer is only one free share of stock.
- I have done this deal and gotten my free share of stock as promised without issue. See my WeBull review for more details.
SoFi Invest Free $25 in Stock Offer
- Open a SoFi Invest account and deposit at least $10 to get $25 worth of stock.
- SoFi offers free stock trades, free fractional trades, and free crypto trades.
- I have done this deal and gotten my free share of stock as promised without issue.
TradeUP Free Stocks Offer- Open an account for a free stock worth up to $30. Fund your account to draw additional free stocks, depending on how much you deposit. See link for details.
- TradeUP will also reimburse you for a brokerage transfer fee up to $200 if you meet their requirements.
- TradeUP is a backed by Marsco Investment Corporation and offers free stock trades, free real-time quotes, and a full-featured brokerage account.
- I have done this deal and gotten my free stocks as promised without issue.
Public Free Stock Offer- Open a Public account via referral download link (open in mobile) and get a free stock slice. No deposit required.
- Public app offers free fractional stock trades, in additional to the ability to share your portfolio.
- I have done this deal and gotten my free share of stock as promised without issue. Be sure to open the link in a mobile web browser, which will redirect you to the app download.
Robinhood Free Stock Offer- Open a Robinhood account and link a bank account to get a free share of stock (up to $200 value). No deposit required.
- Robinhood app offers free stock trades, free fractional trades, and free crypto trades.
- I have done this deal and gotten my free share of stock as promised without issue.
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I decided to give WeBull a shot. They “credited” my 2 sign-up stocks (actual transfer is in a couple of weeks) – both SWN (~$3), which seems to be the most likely one you’ll get based on the comments on your review article. At least it was same-day and pretty quick to know what I “won”. It looks like it might be about a week for the transfer related stocks to be credited to my account.
Thanks! Most recently I got Ford (F) at about $9 and General Electric (GE) at about $10 from Firstrade.
These companies check your credit report.
What is your evidence for that claim? Based on my own experience, I don’t recall a single one of them doing a hard pull. They might do a soft pull for identity verification purposes, but that does not affect your credit score and it doesn’t show to anyone.
I confirm. I tried half of these companies and no hard pull.
Hi Jonathan,
Here is the information I have available to me.
A soft pull will not impact your credit score.
But if you apply for a margin account that will cause a hard pull. That is because you are borrowing money from the bank called a brokerage company or in this case a fintech company.
A hard pull will cause your credit score to go down 10% if the bureau is using FICO.
If they are using some other method it might only go down 5%.
I really don’t know where you are getting your information. Please stop spreading misinformation without providing some support. For example, which brokerage, specifically, did this? Most people have no need for a margin account. So really, no credit pulls for most people when opening an account. The only reason I open a margin account is if I know that I will want to maintain full buying power while trades clear. The vast majority of margin accounts do not perform a hard credit check on your credit report. Margin accounts are collateralized by your securities holdings, which they can sell at any time to pay a margin loan. There may be a few that do a hard pull out there, I can’t rule them all out, but I have several margin accounts and no hard pulls. WeBull, no hard check. Robinhood, no hard check. TD Ameritrade, no hard check.
“A hard pull will cause your credit score to go down 10%” What? So if my FICO is 800 it goes down 80 points? Um, no. The number varies based on your other credit factors and it might be 10 points. Having several credit checks should be managed to maximize your profit perhaps, but I find too many people overly scared of a single credit check.
I agree. I have had at least 5 margin account over the last decade and not a single one of them did a hard pull, including Firstrade, which is listed in this post.
If your account value drops to the point where even liquidation will not pay back your margin loan, you are personally on the hook to make good. Failure to pay back your outstanding margin loan will affect your credit payment history, which is the largest component of your overall credit score. This will happen even if you are only on the hook for a few hundred dollars,
None of that means that a brokerage account will check your credit score for margin accounts, which is your claim.
Thanks for the Recs here Jonathan.
Do you keep all these accounts open after capturing the bonus offer? Do you tend to keep the stock/asset or do you liquidate it and just transfer back to your main account. Just asking as I’m trying to figure out the hassle factor at tax time of having a bunch of brokerage accounts open for small incentives. Thanks.
I tend to keep them open if there are no maintenance fees. When you get a stock, some will 1099-MISC you but honestly most will not. If you sell the stock, then you will generate a 1099-B and capital gain/loss. If you don’t sell and just keep it, then you only have to worry about an annual 1099-DIV if it distributes a dividend. If I am given a choice, that is why I pick BRK, because it doesn’t generate any dividends. However, 1099-DIVs are pretty easy at tax time, just one extra form to fill on TurboTax, etc. If I didn’t want to keep the account, I’d just sell and deal with the one 1099-B line to fill out and be done with it. Once the account has no positions, then no further 1099s will be issued.
I picked the Webull offer from the menu of opportunities. Mostly for the same reason people play games. I thought it would be fun. Everything went well and today I checked and I have been given all four stocks with a value of $24.76. Not very rewarding monetarily, but it was fun. I doubt that I will every use the account for my investments. But, I am tempted to play with some options.
Wait, that would require a hard pull on my credit. Just kidding. I don’t think our friend Joejaynap is maybe as smart as he thinks he is.
I signed up for the MooMoo offer and it looks like I’ve got a margin account.. I didn’t mean to get a margin account specifically. I think I did check a box for options account but options aren’t necessarily a margin account.
This might be the kind of thing that Joejaynap is talking about. I do think if you get a margin account then a hard pull is likely. I’ll watch my credit reports to see if it happens.
Looks like MooMoo had a much better offer expire in February. Wish I knew about it then.
Jonathan, love your blog and not mad at all, but went through the gusto of building a “Public” account with your link and Mymoneyblog referral code; got $4 worth of my selected stock instead of $15.
Seems like they must have updated the terms without updating you. I reviewed post hoc; if I understand right, you now get a random amount between 1-50 worth of a stock slice. (If I had to guess, more likely to be on the lower end!)
Sorry about that! Thanks for letting me know and for using my referral link. Public did change the landing page and now I can’t find any details beyond “free stock”. It doesn’t show details on my app account page either. Boo.
“As an incentive to enroll new customers, Public will be distributing a free stock worth up to $50 to qualified customers who either are the “Referrer” or “Referee” for a “Qualified Account”. Eligible users will select from 1 of 9 different stocks and upon selection, a portion of that stock will be randomly designated to the user in an amount up to $50 only once the account is fully approved and verified.”
https://help.public.com/en/articles/2711925-free-stock-slice-terms
As a datapoint, got $4 from you, referred my S/O, she got $7 and a I got another $4 for referring her. If it was equal odds 1-50 it’d be an ok change, but they’re not disclosing the distribution, and these data points make it look pretty ugly.
Thanks for the link. They really should show this when you apply though, in my opinion.
For what it’s worth, I’ve had Firstrade for a decade, but have been having a terrible time getting them to set cost basis information for an inbound transfer of a single stock over the past 4 months. Still trying. Since then, that stock spun off another company, so that needs to be resolved as well.
So I might just move all of it elsewhere, really disappointed.
I started to do webull, but ended up waiting. I started getting emails from them saying sign up now and get 5 free stocks, then 6 stocks, then 7. I waited until it hit 10 free stocks and ended up with $80 in free stock. ($8 per stock) 🙂
Which stocks did you get?
I have been getting a lot of spammy emails from
Webull, moo moo and tiger brokers… not sure how legit they are