Public.com Review: Options Rebates, Cheap Margin

Public's fee structure is its defining advantage. Here's the full breakdown as of April 2026:

Stock & ETF Trading:

• $0 commissions on all stock and ETF trades during market hours
• $2.99 per trade for after-hours and OTC stocks (waived for Premium members)
• No payment for order flow on equity trades — orders route to exchanges

Options Trading:

• $0 commissions and $0 per-contract fees on stock and ETF options
• Rebates of $0.06–$0.18 per contract based on monthly volume:
  • Tier 1 (up to 999 contracts): $0.06 rebate
  • Tier 2 (1,000–4,999 contracts): $0.10 rebate
  • Tier 3 (5,000–9,999 contracts): $0.14 rebate
  • Tier 4 (10,000+ contracts): $0.18 rebate
• Index options (SPX, NDX, VIX, CBTX): $0.35–$0.50 per contract
• Adjusted rebates on QQQ, SPY, IWM: $0.06 for Tiers 1–3, $0.10 for Tier 4

The rebate program shares 50% of Public's payment-for-order-flow revenue with traders. That's the mechanism — not charity. Public gets paid by market makers for routing your order; you keep half.

Margin Rates:

• 4.90% (up to $50K)
• 4.75% ($50K–$100K)
• 4.50% ($100K–$1M)
• 4.25% ($1M–$10M)
• 4.20% ($10M–$50M)
• 3.95% ($50M+)

For context: Fidelity charges 11.83%, Schwab 11.83%, Vanguard 12.00%, E*TRADE 12.25%. Even Robinhood's 5.00% and Interactive Brokers Lite's 6.14% sit above Public's base rate. With the Fed funds rate at 3.64%, Public's 4.90% effective margin is a 126 bp spread — sustainable economics, not a teaser. At $100K borrowed, Public saves you $6,930/year versus Fidelity. At $250K, that's $17,325/year — more than most active traders pay in lifetime commissions on a discount platform.

Yield Products:

• Bond Account: 5.73% YTW — diversified portfolio of investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds (yield-to-worst, locked in at purchase)
• High-Yield Cash Account: 3.30% APY, up to $5M FDIC insurance across 20 partner banks
• Treasury Account: 0.29% management fee (tiered down for larger balances), Treasury bill interest is state-tax-exempt
• Fractional bonds from $100 — no other broker offers this

Premium & Account Fees:

• Public Premium: $8/month (annual) or $10/month (monthly billing) — free for accounts over $50,000. Adds Morningstar research, extended-hours trading, fee-free OTC trades, and priority support
• Concierge tier ($500K+): dedicated account manager, exclusive events
• Inactivity fee: $3.99/month for accounts under $70 after 6 months dormant
• Outgoing ACAT transfer: $100
• Wire transfer: $25
• Direct Indexing: 0.19% annual fee, $1,000 minimum
• Generated Assets: 0.49% annual fee
• Investment Plans: $0.49–$1.99 per trade for non-Premium users

Crypto:

• Spread-based fees through Zero Hash LLC
• Transaction fees start at $0.49 for orders under $10, scaling to 1.25% for orders above $500
• 1.25% on crypto in Investment Plans via Bakkt Crypto
• These fees apply even for Premium members — no waiver

Public started as a social-investing app. The asset menu now rivals brokers three decades older.

• Stocks — 9,000+ US-listed equities, fractional shares available
• ETFs — full range of exchange-traded funds
• Options — stock, ETF, and index options (SPX, NDX, VIX, CBTX). Strategies from basic calls/puts through iron condors, butterflies, and credit spreads
• Bonds — 40,000+ corporate, Treasury, and municipal bonds. Fractional bonds from $100
• Treasuries — custom Treasury ladders, maturities from 3 months to 30 years, minimum $1,000
• Crypto — 40+ cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP. 24/7 trading. Available inside IRAs through Alto Trust Co. following Public's CryptoIRA acquisition
• Direct Indexing — 100+ customizable indices with automated tax-loss harvesting, $1,000 minimum
• Generated Assets — AI-built custom indices from natural language prompts (0.49% annual fee)

Account Types:

• Individual brokerage (taxable)
• Traditional IRA
• Roth IRA
• Rollover IRA (via Capitalize partnership)
• Crypto IRA (Traditional or Roth, custodied by Alto Trust Co.)

The IRA includes a 1% uncapped match on rollovers, transfers, and annual contributions. The match is treated as interest income, not a contribution — so it doesn't count toward your IRS limit. Matched funds must stay 5 years. Options trading inside the IRA earns the same rebate structure — unusual for retirement accounts.

Notably missing: no joint accounts, no SEP IRAs, no 529 plans, no custodial accounts, no mutual funds, no futures, no forex. Families, small business owners, and mutual fund investors need another broker.

Public sells four yield products. Two are genuinely best-in-class. One has quietly fallen behind. The fourth depends on how much you trust 60-month duration.

1. Bond Account — 5.73% YTW (genuine differentiator).

The Bond Account is a portfolio of ten investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds. As of April 2026, the average yield-to-worst is 5.73% — down from 6.05% earlier this year as Public rebalanced into shorter-duration paper after the 10Y Treasury fell to 4.34% (from peaks above 4.9% in Q4 2025). The yield is locked in at the time of purchase; you receive that rate until the first bond matures or is called.

That's a critical distinction. Unlike a savings account whose APY floats, the Bond Account behaves like a small, diversified bond ladder you bought once. If rates fall further, the income stream you locked in keeps paying. If rates rise, the bonds' market values drop — but you still earn the original YTW if held to maturity.

Spread vs. Treasuries: 5.73% YTW vs. 4.34% on the 10Y is a 139 bp credit spread (see bond prices vs yields for why this matters). That's compensation for default risk on the high-yield component. With BBB- and BB-rated bonds in the mix, the spread is reasonable but not generous — you're being paid roughly average for cycle-average defaults. If credit quality deteriorates, the YTW you locked in still pays unless individual bonds default.

The fractional-bond unlock. Until Public, retail bond investors faced $1,000 minimums per CUSIP. Building a 10-bond Treasury ladder required $10,000+. Public's $100 fractional bonds let you build the same ladder with $1,000 — democratising fixed-income diversification.

2. High-Yield Cash Account — 3.30% APY (no longer industry-leading).

This was Public's strength a year ago. As of April 2026, it's mid-pack at best:

Marcus by Goldman Sachs offers 3.65% with no direct deposit requirement. Wealthfront pays 4.05%. Axos tops the table at 4.21%. Public's 3.30% APY is competitive with Ally and SoFi's standard rate but undershoots the leaders by 35–91 bp. On $50,000 cash, Wealthfront pays $375/year more than Public; Axos pays $455/year more.

Why stay in Public's cash account anyway? FDIC coverage scales to $5M across 20 partner banks (vs. Marcus's standard $250K), and the cash sits inside your brokerage — useful for opportunistic redeployment without ACH delays. For straight savings, look elsewhere.

3. Treasury Account — 0.29% management fee (transparent but priced).

Public builds you a custom Treasury ladder for a 0.29% annual fee. With the 3-month T-bill at 3.69%, 2Y at 3.84%, 10Y at 4.36%, and 30Y at 4.94%, the curve is finally upward-sloping (T10Y2Y spread now positive at +51 bp after years of inversion). A $50,000 T-bill ladder at 3.69% loses $145/year to the management fee — net 3.40%, below the HYCA. For most retail Treasury buyers, TreasuryDirect (zero fees, slightly worse UX) is better economics. Public's value proposition here is laddering convenience, not yield.

4. The 1% IRA match — unusually clean.

The match is treated as interest income, not a contribution, so it doesn't count toward the 2026 IRA contribution limit of $7,500 ($8,500 catch-up). On a $7,500 Roth IRA contribution, that's $75 of free money. On a $50,000 401(k) rollover, $500. Five-year stay requirement is the only meaningful catch.

Bottom line on yields. Use Public for the Bond Account and the IRA match. Use Marcus, Wealthfront, or Axos for cash. Use TreasuryDirect for Treasury ladders unless you specifically want them inside a brokerage account.

Public launched AI Agents on March 31, 2026 — the first US broker to ship autonomous trading automation inside a regulated brokerage. The marketing calls it "agentic brokerage." Stripped of marketing, here's what it is and isn't.

What Agents can do:

• Execute stock, options (including multi-leg strategies), and crypto trades
• Place market orders, limit orders, and conditional orders triggered by price thresholds
• Monitor technical indicators in real time: EMA, SMA, RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, ATR
• Manage cash transfers between accounts
• Run risk-management actions: stop-losses, hedging trades, position-size caps
• Operate 24/7 inside Public's authenticated brokerage environment — no third-party API keys, no external connections

What Agents can't do (yet):

• Trade outside the assets Public supports (no futures, no forex, no mutual funds)
• Make discretionary judgment calls — every Agent runs from rules you define, not freeform LLM reasoning over your portfolio
• Constitute investment advice. Public's disclaimer is explicit: "Outputs from Agentic Brokerage are provided for informational and illustrative purposes only."

Safety controls.

Three mechanisms keep this from being a black box:

1. You approve every Agent before it goes live. No Agent activates without your explicit sign-off on its rules and triggers.
2. Edit, pause, or stop at any time. A live Agent can be killed instantly if behaviour deviates from intent.
3. Full transparency. Every Agent action shows up in your activity feed and transaction history. There's no hidden trade routing.

How it compares.

Capability	Public Agents	Robo-advisors (Wealthfront/Betterment)	IBKR (Pro/Lite)
Custom trading rules	✅ Plain-English	❌ Pre-baked allocation models only	✅ Requires API + code
Options automation	✅ Multi-leg	❌ Equity ETFs only	✅ TWS scripting
Crypto automation	✅	❌	❌
User must approve each rule	✅	✅ (via questionnaire)	❌ (programmer fully responsible)
Code required	❌	❌	✅
Free	✅ (no extra fee)	0.25% AUM	✅ (commissions only)

The meaningful comparison isn't to robo-advisors — those are passive allocation tools. It's to IBKR's algorithmic trading, which has existed for 20 years but requires Java/Python and TWS integration. Public's Agents bring algorithmic execution to traders who don't code, with brokerage-native infrastructure handling the plumbing. That's a real expansion of who can run rule-based strategies.

Regulatory and execution caveats.

Public's stock execution quality remains 94% vs. ~97.5% industry average — Agents inherit that routing. For high-frequency Agent strategies, the price-improvement gap compounds. The "informational only" disclaimer also matters: SEC and FINRA have not yet built a regulatory regime for AI-driven brokerage automation, and Public is conservatively framing Agents as user-controlled tools rather than advice. If regulatory guidance shifts, the framing could change.

Who should care. Active options traders running rules-based strategies (e.g., "sell weekly puts on SPY when VIX > 25"), yield-overlay strategies ("reinvest Bond Account coupons when 10Y > 4.5%"), or systematic rebalancing. With VIX at 19.31 heading into the April 29 FOMC and Q1 mega-cap earnings same week, traders who want pre-staged conditional logic ahead of binary events have a genuinely new tool. For buy-and-hold investors, the feature is irrelevant noise.

Public's interface is polished — dark mode, clean typography, responsive design. The mobile app and web platform offer the same feature set.

AI Research Tools:

• Alpha — GPT-4-powered investment analysis. Ask any question about any stock, get sourced answers
• Market Briefing — daily AI summary of what's moving markets, from economic data to global events
• Key Moments — AI explanations of major price movements, embedded in performance charts
• Earnings Hub — AI recaps of earnings calls, company KPIs, actual call audio and transcripts, up to 4 years of history
• Income Hub — monthly breakdown of earnings from every income-generating asset, with forward projections
• Bulls Say / Bears Say — AI-generated bull and bear cases for any stock (Premium)

Trading Tools:

• Options Hub — real-time monitoring of heavily traded contracts
• Strategy Builder — translates market outlook into multi-leg options trades
• Rolling Options — adjust expiration dates or strike prices without closing positions
• Queue — batch trades, edit with live prices, execute multiple orders at once
• Bond Screener — filter 40,000+ bonds by yield, risk, duration
• API — programmatic trading with real-time market data, same fee schedule including rebates

Up to $250,000 in instant buying power — no waiting for settlement.

The execution quality caveat. Public's stock order execution quality sits at 94%, several points below the industry average of ~97.5%. For small retail orders this difference is negligible. For large block trades, the price improvement gap matters more. Public doesn't accept PFOF on equities (good), but its execution routing isn't best-in-class. For Agents running high-frequency rules, this gap compounds across hundreds of fills.

Security gap. NerdWallet flagged that Public's app lacks a passcode system or automatic logout after inactivity. If your phone is stolen while unlocked, your account is exposed. Fidelity and Robinhood both force re-authentication.

Public makes sense for:

• Active options traders — the rebate is structurally unique. At Tier 4, you earn $0.18 per contract instead of paying $0.84 at Fidelity. That's a $1.02 per-contract swing on every trade
• Yield-seekers focused on the Bond Account — 5.73% YTW with $100 fractional bonds is genuinely best-in-class. The Bond Account yield exceeds the Fed funds rate of 3.64% and the 10Y Treasury yield of 4.36% by meaningful spreads
• Bond investors with modest capital — $100 fractional bonds exist nowhere else. Schwab and Fidelity require $1,000+ per bond, putting a diversified ladder out of reach for sub-$10K accounts
• Margin traders — 4.90% is the lowest base rate among major US brokerages. At $100K borrowed, you save $6,930/year versus Fidelity's 11.83%
• Crypto-in-IRA investors — Public offers crypto trading inside Traditional and Roth IRAs through Alto Trust Co., one of few brokers to do so
• Rules-based systematic traders who don't code — AI Agents bring algorithmic execution to traders who can't or won't write Python for IBKR's TWS

Skip Public if you need:

• A high-yield cash account that beats Marcus or Wealthfront — Public's 3.30% APY is no longer competitive at the top of the table (Axos 4.21%, Wealthfront 4.05%, Marcus 3.65%)
• Joint accounts, custodial accounts, or 529 plans — not available
• SEP IRAs or SIMPLE plans for your business
• Mutual funds — none offered
• Phone support — email and chat only, weekdays 9am–5pm ET
• Best-in-class execution quality — 94% vs. 97.5% industry average
• Transparent crypto pricing — spread-based model obscures your actual cost
• A broker with a multi-decade track record — Public launched in 2019

vs. Robinhood: Both offer $0 stock/ETF commissions. Robinhood charges $0.04/contract for options; Public pays you $0.06–$0.18. Public's margin rate (4.90%) edges Robinhood's (5.00%). Public has bonds and Treasuries; Robinhood doesn't. Robinhood Gold ($5/month) includes a higher cash yield. For options volume, Public wins on cost.

vs. Fidelity: Fidelity charges $0.84/contract for options and 11.83% on margin. It offers mutual funds, joint accounts, custodial accounts, phone support, and decades of institutional stability. Fidelity's execution quality (99%+) is best in class. Fidelity wins on breadth and trust; Public wins on options cost, margin, and bond accessibility.

vs. Schwab: Similar to Fidelity — broader product set, thinkorswim for advanced charting, full banking integration. Options at $0.69/contract and 11.83% margin rates make it substantially more expensive for active traders. Schwab's advantage is the all-in-one financial ecosystem.

vs. Interactive Brokers: IBKR Lite starts at 6.14% margin. IBKR Pro offers tighter spreads for high-volume traders and access to futures, forex, and international markets. IBKR's TWS supports algorithmic strategies via Java/Python — more powerful than Public's Agents but requires coding. For pure options cost and no-code automation, Public still wins. For futures, forex, and bespoke quant strategies, IBKR remains the right tool.

vs. Wealthfront/Betterment robo-advisors: Different category. Robos do passive allocation; Public's Agents do rule-based execution. If you want to set goals and forget, use a robo. If you want to define triggers and let them fire, use Public.

Public occupies a specific niche in April 2026: the cheapest options broker that also offers competitive bonds, the lowest margin rates among majors, and the first no-code algorithmic trading available to retail. Outside that niche — particularly for cash savings, mutual funds, or a one-stop family-finance broker — the established platforms cover more ground.