Kraken vs moomoo — which broker is better?

Pros

• Wyoming SPDI bank charter through Kraken Financial — a full-reserve institution required to hold 100% unencumbered liquid assets against customer fiat, with a Federal Reserve limited-purpose master account
• Two MiCA Crypto-Asset Service Provider authorisations plus an EMI licence from the Central Bank of Ireland, passported across all 30 EEA countries
• The first crypto-native firm to hold all three CFTC licences — DCM, DCO and FCM — through Bitnomial, plus a second FCM in Kraken Derivatives US
• SEC-registered broker-dealer (Kraken Securities LLC) and registered investment adviser (Kraken Adviser LLC)
• 831 assets and 1,432 trading pairs on the public API as of August 2026, spanning spot, margin, futures, options, forex markets and indices
• Cash deposits are free on every major rail — EUR SEPA and SEPA Instant, USD ACH and FedWire, GBP Faster Payments, CHF SIC — with fully published withdrawal fees
• Staking commission of 20% on flexible on-chain staking, well below Coinbase's 35%
• Kraken Pro, a native desktop client, a mature API and a CLI aimed at automated agents — a genuinely deep tooling stack for a crypto venue

Cons

• Entry-tier spot pricing of 0.40% maker and 0.80% taker is the most expensive base rate among major regulated venues, and you need USD 10,000 of 30-day volume before it drops below 0.40% taker
• The simple app charges 1% on instant buys, 1.5% on custom orders and a punitive flat 3% on conversions below the minimum order size
• Zero-fee buying, selling and converting in the app (up to USD 10,000 a month, not Kraken Pro trades) is behind a USD 4.99 monthly Kraken+ subscription rather than built into the base schedule
• Payward is privately held and does not publish audited financial statements; Proof of Reserves attestations are useful but are not the same thing
• The 11,000 commission-free stocks and ETFs are US-only — EEA clients get xStocks tokenised equities, which are crypto-asset products with different rights and no share ownership
• Product sprawl is real: Kraken, Kraken Pro, Kraken Desktop, Krak, NinjaTrader, Bitnomial, Breakout and xStocks sit under one brand with different entities, licences and eligibility rules per country

Pros

• Free Nasdaq TotalView Level 2 depth on the US platform — Webull charges USD 3.99 per month for comparable data
• USD 0 commission and USD 0 contract fee on US stocks, ETFs and equity options for US residents
• A desktop terminal with institutional-holdings tracking, heat maps, an options strategy builder and 100+ indicators, plus the newer moomoo NX shell
• Parent Futu Holdings is Nasdaq-listed (FUTU) and clearing runs through an in-house FINRA/SIPC member, Futu Clearing Inc., rather than a third party
• Five regulated entities across the US, Singapore, Australia, Canada and Malaysia, including CIPF cover of CAD 1,000,000 for Canadian clients
• No inactivity fee, no maintenance fee, no minimum deposit, and free ACH in and out
• Multi-market equity access — US, Hong Kong and China A-shares appear on the same platform, which most zero-commission apps cannot do

Cons

• Available to residents of only seven countries — the United States, Canada, Singapore, Australia, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand — with no EU, UK or DACH entity
• Parent company Futu was publicly named by China's CSRC in 2022 over unlicensed cross-border brokerage; mainland onboarding stopped and the apps were removed from mainland stores in 2023
• Trustpilot sentiment is mixed at roughly 2.4–3.4 out of 5 depending on locale, with slow support responses the most common complaint
• No futures, no bonds and no traditional mutual fund supermarket for US retail clients — futures exist only via the Singapore and Australia entities
• Non-US residents pay a materially worse schedule on the same US market: USD 0.005 per share with a USD 1.00 order minimum
• Only ACH moves money for free: an outgoing wire costs USD 20 domestic or USD 25 international, and an outgoing account transfer costs USD 75