Robinhood Review 2025: Pros, Cons and How It Compares

By Alexander Reed

Last Updated: Mar 12, 2025

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Robinhood app sample portfolio and cash card
Disclaimer Icon
Disclaimer

Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.
99Bitcoins may receive advertising commissions for visits to a suggested operator through our affiliate links, at no added cost to you. All our recommendations follow a thorough review process.

Robinhood is a popular platform that enables buying, holding, and selling of various asset types, cryptocurrencies, and stocks. Robinhood is an excellent choice for combining traditional investments with digital assets due to its minimal fees, broad features, price alerts, and more.
Robinhood is worth considering because it is a user-friendly platform that helps you manage your stocks and cryptocurrencies in one place.

This Robinhood review analyzes the platform’s features and offers tips on how to maximize them. We will discuss how Robinhood provides services and products for users interested in traditional and digital assets.

Our Robinhood Review: Key Takeaways

  • Robinhood offers a mobile-first platform with a powerful web-based option;
  • One of the most affordable brokers, though with fewer features than competitors;
  • Invest with as little as $1; dividends automatically reinvest if eligible;
  • Users can participate in company initial public offerings (IPOs).
Visit Robinhood

 

 Robinhood Overview

robinhood review -  logo

Robinhood was founded in April 2013 by Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt – both of whom had experience building high-frequency trading platforms.

As implied by the name, the platform aspires to provide the average person with access to financial markets rather than just the wealthy.Robinhood introduced its mobile trading app in March 2015 and has since become one of the most popular brokerages in the US. It is a FINRA-regulated broker-dealer registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a Securities Investor Protection Corporation member.

Robinhood went public via an IPO in 2021 and was then valued at $32 billion. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, USA.


Robinhood Services and Products

Robinhood Invest

As a brokerage platform, Robinhood offers many investment opportunities, including stocks, ETFs, and options with no commission fees. These investments are available 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, which allows you to participate whenever you want. For those who prefer a more diversified and passive approach, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offer a streamlined and efficient alternative to selecting individual stocks. The investing section also provides options for trading, buying, and selling stocks or ETFs at a predetermined price within a specified timeframe, providing opportunities for strategic portfolio management and risk mitigation.

Robinhood Gold Card

Robinhood offers perks to its users, such as Robinhood gold credit cards. One is the 5% cash back when you book travel through the Robinhood Travel portal. You must have a Robinhood Financial brokerage account to redeem some money back. You’ll need an annual Robinhood Gold subscription to apply and maintain the card, with a 30-day free trial excluded. The platform offers the card through Robinhood Gold, LLC (RHG), a subscription offering premium services for a fee. Some limitations or conditions may apply. You must have a Robinhood Financial brokerage account to redeem cash back. This card provides other benefits: purchase security, extended warranty protection, trip cancellation, and interruption.

Robinhood Crypto

As an exchange platform, crypto coins are an integral part of Robinhood, so our Robinhood crypto review section will explain everything about it. It also offers some of the lowest trading costs, translating to more crypto gains. For example, investing $100 in ETH on Robinhood will earn you 0.03103 $ETH, which is 4.13% more than Coinbase. These may vary based on market conditions. The platform also includes options for setting up recurring crypto orders with as little as $1. You can also turn on the price alerts that notify you of notable price movements based on your price threshold. The crypto section also offers various chart options, with the two main ones being line and candlestick charts. These can also be set to show data for the last hour or up to the last 5 years.

Robinhood Margin

Margin investing allows you to borrow from Robinhood to leverage your holdings to purchase securities. For customers with margin-enabled accounts, it is necessary to maintain a cash balance to earn interest through the cash sweep program. If you have a margin balance, you will not have a cash balance available to earn interest. You can get your first $1,000 of margin interest-free, after which you’ll enjoy margin rates ranging from 4.7% to 5.75%, competing with the top margin trading platforms.

Robinhood Wallet

Robinhood review - Robinhood wallet

The Robinhood Wallet is a multichain portal to web3 where you can store and manage your crypto on the Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Dogecoin, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism, and Base networks.

It is a self-custody wallet operated by Robinhood Non-Custodial, Ltd. and is separate from your Robinhood Crypto account, which Robinhood Crypto, LLC provides.

With Robinhood Wallet, you have full control over your crypto, which means you hold the private keys to your assets.

Robinhood Wallet doesn’t charge fees. You can download the wallet app separately from the main Robinhood app on your iOS or Android.

Robinhood Gold

Robinhood Gold is a suite of powerful tools and features that allow members to get a 3% IRA match on eligible IRA contributions to their Robinhood IRA.

The user’s investing account will be charged the $5 monthly or $50 annual subscription at the beginning of each billing cycle. The premium features included with Robinhood Gold are:

  • 4% APY on their uninvested brokerage cash with a cash sweep
  • Bigger Instant Deposits
  • Professional research from Morningstar
  • Level II market data from Nasdaq
  • First $1,000 of margin borrowed is interest free.

Robinhood Options

The Robinhood exchange also provides an options trading feature. These crypto derivatives allow users to gain insights and knowledge about an asset’s price movements without actually holding it. Robinhood’s options trading platform offers advanced charts to help you track crucial data, such as moving averages, relative strength indexes, and more. By adding them to your watchlist, you can monitor options without actually trading. On top of that, you can now also enjoy the index options feature, which offers potential perks about tax benefits and low Robinhood cryptocurrency fees. Lastly, the Robinhood exchange also provides calendar and vertical spreads, that allow you to create your options trading strategies beforehand and optimize your experience.

Robinhood Futures

Futures are another popular form of trading in the crypto world, and they are also available on Robinhood. Futures trading is a relatively new feature on the exchange, introduced at the end of January 2025. Although futures trading doesn’t necessarily require you to hold the assets, it is still a risky investment as the crypto market is highly volatile. Robinhood online crypto exchange offers a highly beneficial environment for futures trading, because it doesn’t impose any PDT rules and you can trade crypto stock index, Bitcoin, metals, oil, and more. The platform also provides trading 24 hours a day and has some of the lowest commissions of $0.50 while also providing a unique 60/40 tax rule.

Robinhood Legend

Robinhood Legend is a unique variation of the platform created specifically for browsers and larger screens. Unlike the mobile app, Robinhood Legend offers customizable layouts that offer a variety of widgets so that you can customize it based on the data you need. It also provides a wide range of advanced trading tools, including moving averages, and Bollinger Bands. You can also choose to display up to 8 different charts and arrange them as they work best for you. Trading requires only a single click with Robinhood Legend, and you will also benefit from real-time and accurate data. Robinhood Legend is free and available for everyone who has a registered account.

Robinhood Learn

The Robinhood Learn section of the exchange provides educational content for users, equipping them with knowledge about trading. You can find information on a wide range of topics that cover terms, concepts, basic investing, and even advanced strategies. The Robinhood Learn feature is divided into several sections, including Investing 101, Options trading essentials, Futures fundamentals, and the Library for more general topics. It’s important to note that this is just informational content and not financial advice and you should be aware of the risks involved. One thing that can be considered a drawback here is that unlike other exchanges, this learning feature doesn’t provide any opportunities to earn rewards and is purely for educational purposes.

Robinhood Snacks

Robinhood releases daily and weekly newsletters to ensure its users are kept updated on the latest developments in the crypto and financial world. Both registered and non-registered users can subscribe to. The Robinhood Snacks used to be an in-house product, along with the award-winning podcast, but now the newsletters are published by SherwoodNews, an independent media publication. The weekly newsletters are created in a “week in review” format, while the daily ones cover important daily news in the financial world. Both are delivered at 6:30 am ET.

Robinhood Retirement

What makes the Robinhood IRAs so unique is the fact that this is one of the only platforms that offers non-employer IRAs with a 1% or 3% match on contributions. These retirement plans are only available in the USA, and certain requirements exist for starting them. For starters, only those who have work income can contribute towards IRAs, and they need to be eligible for a brokerage account, which means they need to be over 18 years of age, a citizen of the USA with a valid social security number, and a US address. Robinhood offers two types of IRAs, traditional and Roth, each offering a set of perks.

Supported Currencies and Payment Methods

Unlike other similar platforms, Robinhood offers a more limited selection of payment methods, focusing on affordability and ease of use. Although highly affordable, it doesn’t offer much diversity in terms of payments, making it harder to compete with competitors. Currently, Robinhood accepts only debit cards, bank transfers, and wire transfers. Debit cards are typically more suitable for smaller and instant transactions, while bank and wire transfers are best for larger transactions. Unfortunately, credit cards are not a supported payment method on Robinhood. The same goes for alternative payment options, such as PayPal, Venmo, Google and Apple Pay.

When it comes to the cryptocurrencies that are supported on Robinhood, there is a solid variety, including the best cryptocurrencies to invest in. You can also trade some of the most popular meme coins, which are included in the couple dozen coins available on Robinhood. This is not even close to competitors that offer over a hundred coins. However, Robinhood continues expanding its list of currencies, and the platform offers real-time market data for around 60 more coins, even though they cannot be traded. It should be noted that some coins might be limited due to the state you are in or whether you are using the app, the web platform, or Robinhood Legend.

Robinhood Fees

Robinhood is one of the most affordable and cost-effective platforms currently available. Apart from the minimal and mandatory network and regulatory fees, it doesn’t impose any deposit or withdrawal fees, which are typically a fraction of a cent. Debit or bank transfer purchases typically require a 1.5% fee. Similarly, withdrawing fiat to a bank account or debit card also imposes a 1.5% fee. Crypto withdrawal and transfers are not subject to any costs.

Crypto withdrawals 

No fee

Crypto deposit

No fee

Debit purchases

1.5% fee

Options trading

$0.04 per contract

Index options

$0.35 per contract for Gold users and $0.50 per contract for Non-Gold users

Futures trading

$0.75 for Non-Gold users and $0.50 for Gold users 

Deposits & Withdrawals

For Robinhood US users, daily withdrawal limits may vary. These will reset each day at 7 PM Eastern time for ACH transfers and each day at 12 AM Eastern time for debit card and instant bank withdrawals.

For users in the EU, SEPA deposits are limited to a maximum of €250,000 every business day with a 2 business day wait time, or up to €100,000 every day instantly with SEPA Instant Credit. SEPA withdrawals are limited to €100,000 every business day, usually available within 2 business days or instantly with SEPA Instant Credit.

UK users are limited to a maximum deposit of £100,000 for a transaction, with a maximum of 1 pending deposit at a time and 5 deposit attempts per day. There is a £0.01 minimum transfer amount for each transaction.

Position limits

The maximum amount of crypto that you can buy and hold using Robinhood Crypto for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Dogecoin (DOGE) is a maximum cost basis of $16,000,000 per crypto.

The position limit for Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), & Ethereum Classic (ETC) is a maximum cost basis of $5,000,000 per crypto.

Of course, the value of your crypto on Robinhood may exceed your position limits based on market fluctuations affecting crypto prices.

Robinhood Security

“Is Robinhood safe?” is one of the most important questions you should ask, and the answer is yes. Robinhood emphasizes security and provides a safe environment for its users to trade and invest. All user passwords are stored using an industry-standard BCrypt algorithm that keeps them scrambled and difficult to decipher. Also, all personal data, such as social security numbers and bank details are fully encrypted and kept secure thanks to the Transport Layer Security protocol. Robinhood only accesses this information to verify it and never uses it again. Two-factor authentication is also required for all Robinhood accounts, adding additional security layers. This step is required for every login or account change to ensure safety.

However, despite all the security measures, Robinhood has been a victim of two major hacking incidents in the past. One of them happened back in 2021, when an unknown hacked socially engineered a customer support representative on the phone to install a remote access software. This allowed the hacker to gain the email addresses of 5 million users, the full names of around 2 million people, and other leaks. There was also another hack in 2020, when around 2,000 accounts were compromised.

Customer Support and Robinhood App Review

Despite all of the excellent perks and services that Robinhood offers, it still seems to be struggling with one important aspect, and that is customer satisfaction. Based on customer reviews left on Google Play, the biggest and most frustrating issue for users is the unreliability of the customer support service and sometimes even the complete lack of it. One user has said that it takes forever to be connected to an agent and even when they manage to get through, they are not able to respond or maintain communication.

Similar reviews were left on Trustpilot, also expressing dissatisfaction with the customer support on Robinhood. One user tried to get hold of a support agent for a week, and sent over 27 emails after having no success with phone calls. Because of this, they had to resort to reaching out to an attorney general to resolve the issue. Robinhood has a significantly low score of 1.3 on Trustpilot, with 95% of reviews giving it a 1 star.

Some users say that the app runs smoothly and offers excellent features and options to navigate.

Availability 

CountriesDevices

When it comes to Robinhood’s regional availability, the platform is fully functional in the United States. However, there are still some caveats regarding individual states, where limitations can apply. Robinhood’s crypto trading and investment platform was also launched in the UK at the end of 2024. Robinhood has also been open to the European Union since 2023. Excluded countries are Cuba, North Korea, Russia, and Myanmar.

As for devices, Robinhood can be used through the web classic mode or the Robinhood Legend feature, which are both browser-based. They are compatible with PC and Mac devices and can be accessed through Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge. There is also a useful and intuitive Robinhood mobile app available on Android and iOS. Although the app is not made to be compatible with tablets, it may also run well on them as well, so it’s worth checking if you prefer it.

Robinhood vs Competitors

Exchange

Robinhood

Binance

Coinbase

Fees

No fees on deposits and withdrawals. Small network and regulatory fees

0.10% on transactions but discounts are available when using BNB or being part of the VIP program

0.50% per transaction plus 3.99% when using a debit card

Features

IRAs, Futures trading, ETFs, educational content, advanced Robinhood Legend platform, credit card, Robinhood Gold

NFT marketplace, Binance Academy, excellent referral program, liquid swap, savings

Learning program with educational content and rewards, a crypto debit card, a subscription program, advanced tools

Regional Availability

United States, European Union, and UK

Available across Europe, USA, Asia, and Africa

Available in more than 100 countries worldwide 

Ease of Use

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How to Sign Up for a Robinhood Account

Creating a Robinhood account is a straightforward process, so let’s go over it in more detail so you know how to get started.

  1. Getting Started: Navigate to the official Robinhood website or download the app from Google Play or App Store. Once done, press the sign-up button to initiate the process.
  2. Provide Basic Information: Enter your email address and create your password. After that, you will need to provide your first and last name, which must match your government ID or passport, and finally, your phone number. You will then receive a code via SMS that you will need to enter to verify your number,
  3. Set Up for Investing: This section will require your date of birth,  your residential address, and provide information about your citizenship. After that, you will need to provide your social security number, which will be encrypted and secure.
  4. Investing Experience and Information: This section requires information about your investing experience, employment, and more. You will also be able to review the brokerage agreement and agree to it to continue setting up your account.
  5. Fund Your Account: Lastly, you will need to connect your bank account to the Robinhood platform, which is a simple process. You can then choose the amount you want to transfer, and you are all set.

Robinhood Pros and Cons 

Pros

  • Offers diverse investment options (stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies)
  • Robinhood simplifies trading for beginners with its intuitive mobile app
  • Low fees: No commission fees on cryptocurrency trades
  • Secure cold storage for the vast majority of the customers’ coins
  • Offers crime insurance against theft and cybersecurity breaches.

Cons

  • Lacks features like cryptocurrency interest and staking
  • Higher spreads can lead to increased trading costs
  • Limited research tools.

Conclusion: Is Robinhood Safe to Use?

Robinhood is a well-known platform that trades crypto and other asset classes. 

Although the platform is highly compliant with regulations and security practices, Robinhood does appear to have some issues processing withdrawals for its users – perhaps most commonly with fiat withdrawals. 

So, should you buy Bitcoin on Robinhood? The prospect of fee-free trading is undoubtedly attractive, but this Robinhood review highlights some drawbacks. While the platform’s features and zero-commission model make it attractive, users should consider these benefits alongside the withdrawal limitations and reported concerns regarding customer service before making a decision.

Visit Robinhood

FAQs

What is the $100 fee on Robinhood?

Is Robinhood a trustworthy platform?

Is Robinhood good for beginners?

Is Robinhood a good brokerage?

What is the downside to Robinhood?

Is Robinhood Safe?

Robinhood

6.5

Currency support

7.5/10

Online reputation

4.6/10

Fees

8.5/10

Customer support

5.4/10

Pros

  • Allows withdrawal of coins
  • Offers stocks and ETFs, too
  • Highly compliant with regulations

Cons

  • Very poor online reputation
  • Frequent account/withdrawal issues
  • Terrible customer support

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Alexander Reed
Alexander Reed
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Having delved into futures trading in the past, my intrigue in financial, economic, and political affairs eventually led me to a striking realization: the current debt-based fiat system is fundamentally flawed. This revelation prompted me to explore alternative avenues, including... Read More

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