Almost every list of commodity trading apps you will find has the same problem: it was written for a reader who can open a contract for difference account. If you live in the United States, you cannot. That single fact removes most of the names from the usual roundup and changes what the remaining ones are actually selling you.
Read this before you compare a single spread. Outside the US, “commodity trading app” almost always means CFDs, and the marketing compares gold and oil spreads in pips. US residents cannot open those accounts. Every broker below that serves the US does it through a separate entity registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, offering exchange-traded futures instead. Different product, different risk, different cost structure. Any page quoting you a “spot gold spread in pips” for a US account is quoting something you cannot buy.
This page was rebuilt from each broker's own published pricing and disclosures on September 1, 2026. Commission schedules change, so confirm the number on the broker's own fee page before you fund an account.
The three ways a US resident can trade commodities
Pick the route before you pick the app. These are not interchangeable and the wrong one is the most common and most expensive mistake here.
| Futures | Commodity ETFs | Commodity stocks | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you own | A standardized exchange contract to buy or sell a quantity at a set date | Shares in a fund that holds futures, physical metal or a basket | Shares in a miner, driller, refiner or grower |
| Where it trades | CME, COMEX, NYMEX, CBOT, ICE Futures US | Any stock brokerage account | Any stock brokerage account |
| Leverage | Built in and substantial. You post margin, not the full value | None beyond what your broker offers on stock | None beyond what your broker offers on stock |
| Can you lose more than you put in | Yes. A futures account can go negative and you owe the difference | No | No |
| Account needed | A futures account at a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant | Ordinary brokerage account | Ordinary brokerage account |
| Who it suits | Traders who understand margin calls and contract expiry | Most people who want commodity exposure | People who want the sector without contract mechanics |
If you are new to this, the honest answer is that a commodity ETF in a normal brokerage account gets most people the exposure they were after without any of the machinery. Futures are a professional instrument that retail platforms have made easy to open, which is not the same as making it easy to survive. If you are still deciding how much of your portfolio belongs in commodities at all, our guide to appreciating assets is a better starting point than a broker comparison.
Commodity futures commissions compared
Commissions are the only part of this you can compare cleanly, because everything else depends on which contract you trade. Every figure below comes from the broker's own published fee schedule. None of them include exchange, clearing and regulatory fees, which are charged on top by all of them.
| Broker | Standard futures | Micro futures | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interactive Brokers | USD 0.85 per contract | USD 0.25 per contract | Fixed pricing. Tiered pricing falls to 0.25 and 0.10 at high monthly volume |
| Plus500 US | $0.89 per side | $0.49 per side | Futures only in the US. No CFDs |
| Webull | $1.00 per contract | $0.25 per contract | Mini contracts $0.60. Standard rate, before volume tiers |
| tastytrade | $1.00 to open plus $1.00 to close | $0.75 to open plus $0.75 to close | Options on futures $1.25 each way |
| TradeStation | $1.75 per side at the base tier | $0.50 per side at the base tier | Plus a $0.10 per side clearing fee on the first three tiers |
| Charles Schwab | $2.25 per side | $2.25 per side | Same rate for futures options. No separate micro rate |
Two things that table hides. First, per side matters: a broker quoting per side charges you twice on a round trip, so a headline that looks half the price of a per-contract rate may not be. Second, exchange and regulatory fees are frequently larger than the commission on micro contracts, which is why the cheapest commission does not automatically win.
Best commodity trading apps for US traders
Interactive Brokers
Interactive Brokers publishes the lowest futures commissions of any broker on this page and the widest global product access, which is why it keeps showing up in professional workflows. The trade is that the platform assumes competence. Trader Workstation is not a beginner tool and the mobile app inherits its density.
The micro rate covers the contracts most retail traders actually use, including Micro WTI Crude, Micro Gold, Micro Silver, Micro Copper and the micro grain contracts. Tiered pricing takes standard contracts down to USD 0.25 and micros to USD 0.10 above 20,000 contracts a month, which is not a threshold most readers of this page will hit. Fees to offset exchange and regulatory charges are added separately.
Open an account at Interactive Brokers if cost per contract is what you are optimizing for.
Charles Schwab and thinkorswim
Schwab is the most expensive commission on this page and still the right answer for a lot of people, because thinkorswim is the best charting and analysis platform in the group and Schwab will actually put a human on the phone. Futures are offered through Charles Schwab Futures and Forex LLC, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant.
Schwab states that its commission rates are quoted per contract per side and do not include customary National Futures Association and exchange fees. One state-level detail worth knowing: Schwab forex accounts are not available to residents of Ohio or Arizona. Futures accounts are unaffected by that restriction.
We do not have a partnership with Schwab, so there is nothing to click here. Go direct.
TradeStation
TradeStation is a broker-dealer registered with the SEC and a futures commission merchant registered with the CFTC, and it holds memberships at CME, CBOT, COMEX, NYMEX and ICE Futures US. It sits between Interactive Brokers and Schwab on both cost and complexity, and its strategy testing and automation tooling is the best reason to choose it.
Pricing is volume-tiered per contract per side. The base tier covers zero to 500 contracts a month and falls to $0.50 standard and $0.25 micro above 10,000 contracts a month. The first three tiers also carry a $0.10 per contract per side clearing fee, which is easy to miss when comparing headline rates. Futures options are $0.85 per contract per side.
See pricing at TradeStation if you plan to automate.
Webull
Webull added futures through Webull Futures LLC, a separately registered futures commission merchant and NFA member, which sits alongside the broker-dealer that handles its stock accounts. It is the most approachable mobile experience of the group and the pricing is competitive on micros.
Cryptocurrency futures are $0.50 and Coinbase Nano contracts are $0.13. Premium members get volume tiers that fall further above 15,000 contracts a month. Webull states that these exclude exchange, clearing and regulatory fees. One caveat we will be straight about: unlike Plus500 and TradeStation, Webull does not print “per side” on its futures commission rows, so treat the round-trip cost as unconfirmed until you see it on a filled ticket.
See the futures pricing at Webull before you decide.
Plus500 US
This is the one most likely to confuse you, so it is worth being explicit. The Plus500 you see advertised internationally is a CFD broker. The Plus500 a US resident can use is a completely different product: Plus500US Financial Services LLC, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant offering exchange-traded futures and prediction markets. No CFDs, at all.
Plus500 footnotes those rates as per side and not including exchange and NFA fees, and charges a $10 per contract liquidation fee. If you arrive from an international page or an old affiliate link, you will be geo-redirected to the US site and the product you were reading about will not be there.
We do not currently have a working partnership with Plus500 in the US, so there is nothing to click here either. Go to the US site directly and make sure the address bar shows the US domain.
tastytrade
tastytrade is where the IG group's US commodity access actually lives, which matters because IG itself no longer offers what this article used to say it did. Pricing is quoted as a charge to open and a charge to close rather than per side, which comes to the same arithmetic stated more honestly than most.
Options on futures are $1.25 each way and options on micro futures are $0.75 each way. We do not have a partnership with tastytrade, so this is an unmonetized recommendation. If options are really what you are after rather than the underlying commodity, our roundup of the best options trading platforms is the more useful comparison.
FOREX.com
FOREX.com in the US is GAIN Capital Group LLC, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and retail foreign exchange dealer owned by StoneX. Its US markets page lists exactly two things: forex, and futures and futures options through its affiliate StoneX Futures. Commodity futures accounts are held at StoneX Financial, which means a separate account application rather than a toggle inside the app you already have.
We found no published spot metals product and no CFDs anywhere on the US site, which is what you would expect. We are also not quoting a commission figure because FOREX.com does not publish one as a plain retail rate for the StoneX futures account. If you are primarily a currency trader, our comparison of the best forex brokers covers that side properly.
About eToro, and why it is not on the list
This page used to open with eToro as the best commodity broker. That was wrong for a US reader and we are correcting it rather than quietly dropping the name.
eToro USA does not offer commodity trading. The US platform lists stocks, ETFs, options and crypto. Securities are offered through eToro USA Securities Inc., a FINRA and SIPC member, and crypto through eToro USA LLC or eToro NY LLC. The commodity product eToro advertises is a contract for difference, and eToro's own CFD page names Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the UK as places it offers CFD trading. The United States is not among them. If you open a US eToro account expecting to trade gold or oil, it will not be there.
That does not make eToro a bad account. It makes it a stock, ETF, options and crypto account, which is a perfectly good thing to be. If that is what you actually want, open an eToro account. If you want commodity exposure inside it, the honest route is a commodity ETF bought like any other share, not a commodity contract. And if crypto was the real reason you were looking, our list of the best cryptocurrency apps compares that field directly.
What we removed from this page and why
Six names that used to appear here are gone. Every removal is a verifiable fact rather than an opinion, so here they are with the reason.
| Removed | Why |
|---|---|
| TD Ameritrade | Acquired by Charles Schwab and retired. tdameritrade.com now redirects to a Schwab page stating that TD Ameritrade has been acquired and that all of its clients are now Schwab clients. The brand survives only as Schwab Trading Powered by Ameritrade and the thinkorswim platform |
| Capital.com | Does not accept US residents. Its terms restrict the platform to individuals who are “not domiciled or located in the United States of America,” and no US entity exists |
| AvaTrade | Does not accept US residents. Its own support documentation states that AvaTrade “is not regulated in the USA” and is therefore “unable to accept clients residing in the United States at this time” |
| Libertex | Does not accept US residents. The United States appears on its own published list of restricted countries, alongside Guam, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands |
| IG | No longer applicable. The US arm has been rebranded as tastyfx, a CFTC-registered retail foreign exchange dealer that offers currency pairs only. No commodities and no futures |
| All spread and pip data | The original tables quoted spot gold and crude oil spreads in pips, dated 2022. Those figures describe CFD pricing that US residents cannot access, and we could not verify any of them against a current source |
We also removed several claims that we could not support. The old copy said commodities were “the safest trading type, suitable for a beginner,” that returns “can be superb,” and that the assets are “more lucrative than other classes in the long run.” None of that is true in any form we can evidence, and the first statement is the opposite of true for leveraged futures. The claim that the market trades 24/7 also went: futures sessions close over the weekend and each contract has its own published hours on the exchange's contract specifications page.
What commodities actually are
Commodities are interchangeable raw goods, which is the whole point of them: one bushel of number two yellow corn is contractually the same as any other, so it can be traded as a standardized contract rather than negotiated. They fall into four groups.
- Precious and industrial metals. Gold, silver, platinum, palladium and copper
- Energy. Crude oil, natural gas, gasoline and heating oil
- Agriculture, the soft commodities. Corn, wheat, soybeans, coffee, sugar, cocoa and cotton
- Livestock. Live cattle, feeder cattle and lean hogs
Every broker above trades some subset of these. None trade all of them, and the differences sit almost entirely in the agricultural and livestock complex rather than in metals and energy, which everyone carries.
What can go wrong, stated plainly
This section replaces a list of benefits that should never have been published. Commodity futures are among the most effective ways to lose more money than you deposited, and the mechanics that make that possible are not hidden. They are just rarely spelled out on pages like this one.
- Leverage cuts both ways and the margin call is not optional. You post a fraction of the contract value. A move against you can require more cash the same day, and if you do not post it the position is liquidated at whatever the market is doing at that moment
- You can end up owing money. Unlike a stock, which can only go to zero, a futures account can go negative. The April 2020 session in which WTI crude settled below zero is the reference case, and traders on the wrong side owed real money afterward
- Contracts expire. A commodity position is not a buy-and-hold. You either close it, roll it into the next month, or in principle stand for delivery. Rolling has a cost that quietly erodes a long position over time
- Fees are charged per contract, not per dollar. Small accounts trading micros pay a proportionally much higher cost than the commission tables suggest, once exchange and regulatory fees are added
- Nothing here produces income. A commodity contract pays no dividend and no interest. The only return is the price move, which is a materially different proposition from cash flow investments that pay you while you hold them
If that list has changed your mind about the instrument rather than the app, that is a good outcome. A commodity ETF held in an ordinary brokerage account gives you the price exposure with none of the margin mechanics, and for most people that is the correct version of this trade. Our guide to starting to invest with little money covers how to build that position without a futures account at all.
Frequently asked questions
No. eToro's US platform offers stocks, ETFs, options and crypto. Securities come through eToro USA Securities Inc., a FINRA and SIPC member, and crypto through eToro USA LLC or eToro NY LLC. The commodity product eToro markets internationally is a contract for difference, and eToro's own CFD page lists Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the UK among the countries where it offers CFD trading. The US is not one of them. eToro is still a reasonable account for what it does cover, so if stocks, options and crypto are the point, open an eToro account. For commodity exposure you want a futures account or a commodity ETF instead.
On published commissions, Interactive Brokers at USD 0.85 per contract and USD 0.25 on micro contracts, with Plus500 US close behind at $0.89 and $0.49 per side. The caution is that per side and per contract are not the same unit, and that exchange, clearing and regulatory fees are added on top by every broker and often exceed the commission on a micro contract. Cheapest commission is not the same as cheapest round trip.
Contracts for difference are not available to US retail customers, which is why every broker that serves both markets runs a separate US entity offering exchange-traded futures instead. The practical consequence is that international reviews of these brands describe a product you cannot buy. When a page quotes you a spot gold spread in pips, it is describing a CFD account, and a US application will not open one.
Yes. Futures are held at a futures commission merchant registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is a different registration from the broker-dealer that holds your stocks. Some firms run both under one login, and some, including FOREX.com, require a separate application entirely. Commodity ETFs and commodity stocks need no special account and trade in an ordinary brokerage account.
No. TD Ameritrade was acquired by Charles Schwab and the brand has been retired. Its old domain now redirects to a Schwab page stating that all TD Ameritrade clients are now Schwab clients. The thinkorswim platform survived the merger and is now a Schwab product, so if thinkorswim was the reason you wanted TD Ameritrade, Schwab is where it lives, at $2.25 per contract per side.
For most people, yes. An ETF gives you the price exposure inside an ordinary brokerage account with no margin, no expiry and no possibility of owing money beyond what you invested. Futures are cheaper per unit of exposure and far more capital efficient, which is exactly why they are dangerous in inexperienced hands. Start with the ETF, and only move to contracts once you can explain what happens to your account on a limit-down day.
Not as futures. Moomoo Financial Inc. in the US is a broker-dealer with no futures commission merchant registration, and the only futures feature it offers US users is paper trading. On any stock-only app, including that one, commodity exposure has to come from ETFs or from shares in miners and energy companies. Robinhood is the same story: a commission-free stock, options and crypto app with no futures commission merchant behind it. If futures are what you want, you need one of the firms listed above rather than a stock app.
Where to go next
If you are weighing metals specifically, we have a longer piece on whether silver is actually a good investment that is more skeptical than most. If the real goal was an app to trade in generally rather than commodities in particular, our list of Robinhood alternatives compares the wider field, and the research tools worth paying for matters more to your returns than the commission on a micro contract does.
