Lightyear vs Public.com — which broker is better?

Pros

• Zero commission and zero custody fee on ETFs, so a monthly ETF plan costs nothing to execute or hold
• US stock orders cost 0.1% capped at USD 1 — a USD 20,000 trade still costs a single dollar
• No account fee, no platform fee, no inactivity fee and no withdrawal fee, in a genuinely short fee schedule
• Fractional shares from EUR 1, with multi-currency EUR, GBP and USD balances held free of charge
• Cash earns interest through AAA-rated BlackRock and J.P. Morgan money market funds, quoted around 2.2% APY on euros
• Two regulators: EFSA in Estonia (licence 4.1-1/31) and the FCA in the UK (FRN 987226), with US securities held at SIPC-member Alpaca
• Mobile app is genuinely well built — earnings-call audio, fundamentals and Auto-Invest plans without clutter

Cons

• 0.35% FX conversion is fine against a bank but expensive against Interactive Brokers, and it applies every time you buy a US stock from a euro balance
• No options, futures, CFDs, forex or margin, and no commodities — the product list is short by design
• Only market, limit and recurring orders. No stop-loss, no good-till-cancelled, no conditional orders
• No demo account and no structured education, which is an odd gap for a platform aimed at newer investors
• Support is email and in-app chat only, with no phone line and reported response times of several days on complex queries
• Founded in 2020 and privately held, with no track record through a full market cycle — audited accounts are filed publicly for all three entities

Pros

• Options Rebate Program pays USD 0.06–0.18 per stock or ETF contract, typically more than the roughly USD 0.05 per contract of regulatory fees — a net-negative transaction cost that no competitor here matches
• Cheapest margin of the three: 5.15% base (Fed Funds Target Rate + 1.15%, with FFTR at 4.00% as of 17 September 2026), tiering to 4.20% above USD 50 million
• A real bond desk — fractional corporate bonds at 0.35%–0.50% of par, Treasuries at 0.10%–0.25%, plus customisable Treasury ladders and a 6-month T-bill account from USD 100
• Genuinely multi-asset in one login: stocks, ETFs, options, bonds, Treasuries, 60+ crypto assets, IRAs, Crypto IRAs and a high-yield cash account quoted at 3.30% APY in mid-2026
• Free ACH in and out, free incoming wires and free incoming ACAT transfers, with no minimum deposit
• Transparent, well-maintained public fee schedule — the version used for this record was updated 17 September 2026 and states every line item including the awkward ones
• Index options at USD 0.35 per contract for every customer, plus the exchange fees Public passes on

Cons

• US residents only — no international entity, so European, UK or DACH investors cannot open an account
• USD 100 to transfer securities out, plus USD 115 per security for a DRS transfer; both are the highest in this comparison
• No futures, no spot forex, no mutual funds and no desktop application — active traders will find the charting and depth-of-market shallow next to Webull or moomoo
• The options rebate is funded by payment for order flow, so you are accepting a routing model in exchange for the payment; the free Wholesale route is the default, and choosing Smart Order or Lit-Exchange routing costs USD 0.003 per share
• A USD 3.99 monthly inactivity fee applies to accounts under USD 70 with no six-month activity, and there is no paper-trading environment to practise in