Questrade vs Wealthsimple Trade — which broker is better?

Pros

• CAD 0 commission on every Canadian and US stock and ETF trade, on both the buy and the sell side, with no ECN fees at all on Canadian orders
• CAD 0 contract fee on US-listed equity options and free assignment — one of only two Canadian brokers offering this
• Questrade Pro is free to all clients and includes Level 2 depth, time and sales, chart trading, hot keys and a multi-leg options strategy builder
• No inactivity fee, no annual account fee and no minimum balance on any registered or non-registered account
• Dual-currency registered accounts let you hold USD inside a TFSA or RRSP, removing forced conversion on every US dividend and sale
• Fractional shares, pre-IPO access, private credit, bonds, GICs, mutual funds and a separate FX & CFD account under one brand
• CIRO-regulated with CIPF coverage of CAD 1,000,000 per account category, and a record as Canada's largest independent broker going back to 1999

Cons

• The 1.5% CAD/USD conversion charge is high and unavoidable unless you deliberately manage currency; on a CAD 20,000 US-stock purchase it costs CAD 300, dwarfing any commission saving
• Cash earns effectively 0% below a CAD 250,000 balance — the published formula is prime minus 8.50%, floored at zero — while Wealthsimple pays 1.25% or more on chequing balances
• CAD 150 to transfer an account out, full or partial, and CAD 9.95 per journalling request unless you pay CAD 19.99 a month for Questrade Plus
• The 'margin rates as low as prime minus 2.5%' headline applies only to USD borrowing for clients trading 5,001+ US options contracts a month; the standard CAD non-registered rate is prime plus 4.25%, and registered accounts pay prime plus 8.10%
• No spot crypto, no exchange-traded futures, and no meaningful international equity access — non-US foreign shares cost 1% of trade value with a USD 195 minimum per side
• Questrade advertises no practice or paper-trading account for self-directed clients, so there is nowhere to learn Questrade Pro without real money at risk

Pros

• CAD 0 commission on Canadian and US stocks and ETFs, plus USD 0 per equity and ETF options contract on every tier, including free assignment
• Futures at USD 1 per contract with free real-time futures market data — no Canadian competitor matches that combination
• CAD 0 to transfer your account out, where Questrade, Qtrade and the banks all charge CAD 150
• Best-rated broker app in Canada at 4.6 on the App Store across roughly 130,000 ratings, with real-time streaming quotes free to everyone
• 24/5 trading on eligible US stocks and ETFs and 24/7 on gold and crypto — the longest trading hours available in Canada
• Margin at prime + 0.5% on Core and prime − 0.5% on Generation, well under the big banks
• CIRO-regulated with CIPF coverage of CAD 1,000,000 per account category, backed by Power Corporation of Canada with a 52.4% stake
• Interest on chequing balances of 1.25% to 2.25% by tier, against effectively 0% on idle cash at most brokers

Cons

• The 1.5% CAD/USD conversion is the same as Questrade's. A USD account (CAD 10 a month on Core, free on Premium from CAD 100,000) removes it on the US trades themselves but not on the CAD you convert into it, which still costs 1.5% per transaction under CAD 10,000 and falls to 0% only from CAD 100,000; journalling at CAD 9.95 is the other way round it
• Crypto costs 2.0% per trade at the Core tier — a round trip is 4% — and the advertised 0.05% requires CAD 10 million of 30-day volume; staking takes 30% of rewards before validator fees
• No bonds, no GICs and no mutual funds anywhere in the self-directed account, so a fixed-income allocation has to be built entirely from ETFs
• No desktop platform, no Level 2 depth, no API and no paper-trading account; the research stack is news and basic charts rather than screeners and analyst coverage
• The crypto assets themselves sit outside CIPF protection and are held in trust instead — only the cash balance in a crypto account is covered, and the cold-storage insurance cited is USD 75 million per custodial partner, not per client
• Meaningful benefits are gated behind CAD 100,000 and CAD 500,000 balances, so the sticker price a small account actually pays is the least attractive version of the offer