Does Robinhood offer bonds? Alternatives in 2026

Robinhood has quickly made a name for itself since being founded in 2013 as a commission-free broker with an intuitive and simple interface design. It is listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker HOOD and joined the S&P 500 in September 2025.

Since there is no such thing as a free lunch, Robinhood makes money from payment for order flow (especially on options), event contracts (prediction markets), subscriptions to its premium account (Robinhood Gold), margin lending and interest on uninvested cash.

Its 28.6 million funded customers (August 2026) can choose between investing in stocks, options, ETFs, and cryptocurrency, all without trading commissions.

Can you buy bonds on Robinhood?

Bonds are back on the radar of many investors after years of near-zero interest rates, with yields that again compete with cash and dividends.

The short answer is no: Robinhood does not offer individual bonds, only bond ETFs. That means you can buy a fund that holds hundreds of bonds, but you cannot pick a single bond, hold it to maturity and know exactly what you will receive. Robinhood’s own education pages say it plainly: bonds are not offered by Robinhood Financial LLC. Robinhood’s UK and EU apps don’t offer individual bonds either.

What you can buy on the app is any bond ETF listed on a US exchange, commission-free, covering Treasuries, corporate bonds, high yield or target-maturity ranges.

Each approach has pros and cons. An ETF is an excellent risk diversifier and is easy to buy and sell, but it carries a management fee (the TER, or total expense ratio), it never matures, and its price moves with interest rates.

Buying individual bonds gives you a stable and predictable income and a known maturity date, as long as the issuer pays. Still, there is always the risk of the bond issuer defaulting, and of price drops if you sell the bond before maturity.

One middle ground worth knowing: target maturity bond ETFs, such as the iShares iBonds or Invesco BulletShares ranges, hold bonds that all mature in the same year and then return the capital to investors. They behave more like a single bond than a traditional bond fund, and they are available on Robinhood.

If you are looking for an alternative platform that would allow you to buy individual bonds, we got you covered. Below we will go through our top picks of brokers that offer individual bonds, among other products:

Best Robinhood alternatives for investing in bonds

What a typical bond order costs

To make the fees easier to compare, here is the commission on two typical orders, based on each broker’s published schedule.

Having been around since 1978 and surviving multiple financial crises, the Interactive Brokers’ major advantage is its reputation. It is also publicly listed on the NASDAQ exchange (ticker: IBKR), which brings audited accounts and public reporting.

Other significant advantages of using Interactive Brokers are its wide selection of financial products from 170 markets in 40 countries, solid trade execution (IB SmartRouting), and supporting 20+ currencies in its account. There are also 100+ currency pairs available for exchange.

Some downsides of using Interactive Brokers are its complex fee structure, lengthier than average registration and fund deposit processes, and limited commission-free trading (IBKR Lite is only available to US investors). However, the last point is largely mitigated using narrower spreads and lower FX fees than most competitors.

Speaking of the fee structure, there are two distinct plans to choose from, IBKR Lite and IBKR Pro. IBKR Lite offers unlimited commission-free trading for products such as U.S. listed stocks and ETFs, with low fees for other products and no account minimums or inactivity fees.

IBKR Pro is geared more towards advanced investors and active traders, offering fixed or tiered pricing plans without commission-free trading available. It also uses the IB SmartRouting system for advanced trade execution and uses APIs and some other advanced tools. You can compare the plans here.

Bond selection is wide, with U.S., Canadian, U.K., European, and Hong Kong bonds. The bond trading fees for US bonds are 0.002% of face value for Treasuries ($5 minimum), 0.1% for corporate bonds ($1 minimum, $250 maximum) and 0.05% for municipal bonds ($1 minimum, $125 maximum), with lower rates on the part of the order above $10,000. European bonds on Euronext cost 0.1% of the trade value with a €2 minimum. For a European investor this is the key difference from the two US brokers below: you can buy government and corporate bonds in euros or pounds without opening a second account.

The Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation (TWS) platform offers many basic and advanced features, such as a demo account, watch lists, alerts and monitoring in real-time, advanced technical analysis tools, and more. One of the downsides of the platform is that the learning curve can be steep for beginners, even with the provided educational materials.

The IBKR GlobalTrader mobile app is a much more intuitive choice for beginner investors, offering stocks, ETFs, and options trading in a more user-friendly format. Other app features include automatic currency conversions, fractional shares (only for US stocks), and more. The app was redesigned in December 2025, with a new Explore section, AI-generated news summaries and investment themes. Note that bonds are traded on the main platforms rather than in GlobalTrader.

Overall, Interactive Brokers is a good choice for beginners and advanced investors looking for a secure broker and access to various financial instruments, including bonds.

Offering a wide range of financial products, most of them with low or zero commissions, in an easy-to-navigate mobile platform makes E*TRADE an excellent choice for beginner investors. It is also a reputable broker, founded in 1982, owned by Morgan Stanley since 2020 and regulated by top-tier U.S. regulators such as SEC and FINRA, while also offering SIPC investor protection.

One caveat before you read on: E*TRADE is only available to residents of the United States, so this option is out of reach if you live elsewhere.

Some features that set apart E*TRADE from other brokers are access to rich educational resources (articles, videos, courses, webinars, and research tools) and their managed portfolios (Core Portfolios) which charge an annual 0.3% fee ($500 minimum).

As far as bond investing goes, it is important to note that E*TRADE offers a large bond catalogue, but only from the U.S. markets. The fee structure for bond investing varies depending on the type of bonds you’re interested in. U.S. treasuries are commission-free at auction and secondary trades, but other bonds are charged a $1 fee per bond with a $10 minimum and a $250 maximum.

Broker-assisted bond trades are also offered (costing an extra fee), and new bond issues (except treasuries) offer a price that includes a selling concession. Interestingly, E*TRADE also offers ultra-short bond ETFs, which are diversified and lower-risk investments.

You can see their full fee structure for bonds and other financial products here.

Some of the cons of investing with E*TRADE include the aforementioned access to U.S. markets only, the lack of forex trading, limited customer service channels, and limited deposit options (credit and debit card and electronic wallet deposits are not accepted).

What sets TradeStation apart from other platforms on this list are its excellent educational and research tools. The choice of financial products is wide, including stocks, ETFs, bonds, options, futures and mutual funds.

Stocks and ETFs are commission-free. TradeStation is owned by the Japanese Monex Group and regulated by the SEC and FINRA, with CFTC registration for futures.

Access to a vast catalogue of educational and research tools has been particularly praised with this platform. These include articles, videos, courses, webinars, and advanced research tools such as trading ideas and strategy builders.

There are desktop, web trading, and mobile platforms to choose from, in order of decreasing complexity and features available. The desktop platform is also highly customisable and offers many features, such as direct market access, dynamic market-scanning tools, automatic trade execution, and tools for custom trading strategies.

As far as bond trading goes, it’s important to note that TradeStation’s bond trading fees are fairly high, especially so for lower trading volumes. Its pricing page lists $50 per trade for US Treasuries and $14.95 plus $5 per bond for corporate and municipal bonds, and bond orders (around 630 bonds) can only be placed by phone. This makes TradeStation’s bond trading more suitable for larger orders.

You can see their full fee structure (including bonds) here.

Apart from high bond trading fees, some other cons of using TradeStation include the platform being too complex for many beginners, the lack of fractional shares, and high mutual fund fees.

It is overall a good choice for experienced investors looking for a wide choice of (mostly) low-cost financial products and advanced research and trading tools, but not the cheapest way to buy individual bonds.

What to look for in a broker that’s offering bond trading?

There are several key factors that go into the decision to choose a brokerage platform that offers bond trading:

• Platform’s overall experience and user interface: You want to ensure you are confident using the platform from start to finish. Factors like account opening, minimum deposit, user experience, available tools, etc., all come into play.
• The range of available bonds: Not all brokers offer bonds from a wide range of global markets. Make sure that the broker you choose has access to the bond markets that you’re interested in.
• Commissions: They say fees are the only 100% certain thing in investing. Needless to say, they can eat away at a large portion of our profits and it is important to keep them under control. With bonds this matters twice over, because a fixed fee of $10 or $50 is a very different thing on a $1,000 order and on a $50,000 one.
• The minimum order size: Many bonds trade in denominations of $1,000, €1,000 or even €100,000. Check the minimum before you plan a position, because it decides whether you can build a diversified bond ladder at all.
• Currency exchange fees: Bonds on different markets are denominated in different (most often local) currencies. If you are not buying bonds in your domestic currency, you are exposing yourself to currency risk and currency exchange fees.

Bottom line

Bonds have become a more popular asset class again, with yields that make them attractive for investors looking for relatively limited risk and predictable income.

However, not all brokers offer access to individual bonds, and Robinhood is one of them: there you can only buy bond ETFs. If that is enough for what you want, you do not need to change platform. If you want to pick a specific bond and hold it to maturity, you do need a broker that offers them, and in this article we have highlighted some of the best alternatives in our opinion.

Each platform has pros and cons, so it is important to choose wisely the one that best suits our needs. Hopefully, we helped you with your choice.