Best Roth IRA accounts of 2025
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Roth IRAs offer many benefits to retirement savers. Although you don't get an upfront tax break, Roth IRAs let your money grow tax-free. And as long as you follow the rules, you never pay taxes on withdrawals in retirement. Most online brokers and robo-advisors let you open a Roth IRA account. Below are the best places to open a Roth IRA, based on Bankrate's extensive research and testing.
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Best Roth IRA accounts of 2025
If you’re looking to maximize your retirement savings, here are the best Roth IRA accounts to consider:
Charles Schwab
Charles Schwab does it all: great education and training for beginner investors, high-caliber tools for active traders, responsive customer service and no trading commissions on most stocks and ETFs. Schwab shines all around, and it remains an excellent choice for a Roth IRA.
Schwab charges nothing for the vast majority of stock and ETF trades, while options trades cost 65 cents per contract. And mutual fund investors can find something to love in the broker’s offering of more than 4,000 no-load, no-transaction-fee funds. With no account minimum, it’s easy to get started.
Schwab Trading Powered by Ameritrade is the overarching name for the broker’s suite of trading offerings, and includes access to the thinkorswim platform on desktop, web and mobile. More advanced investors should find the array of research — from CFRA, Morningstar, Market Edge and more — helpful, too.
Read Bankrate’s Charles Schwab review.
Wealthfront
Wealthfront is one of the top robo-advisors, and it brings a lot to the table for investors looking for help with the investing legwork. Wealthfront picks your investments based on your risk tolerance and time until retirement. All you’ll need to do is add the minimum $500 deposit to the account.
Wealthfront chooses from investments in numerous asset classes, giving you a wide assortment of funds and increasing its diversification, which can reduce your risk. Besides picking your investments, Wealthfront also brings some serious tools, including a robust financial planner that can help you track all your assets in one place and provide guidance for optimizing your goals.
The management fee for Wealthfront is a reasonable 0.25%, right in line with the industry standard. If you want to hold cash outside your IRA (or amass cash waiting to go into it), you can also quickly open a cash management account — with a debit card, competitive interest rates and early access to your paycheck— at no additional cost or monthly fee.
Read Bankrate’s Wealthfront review.
Betterment
Betterment is another excellent choice for investors who want to hand off the investment and portfolio management decisions. Like Wealthfront, Betterment is a robo-advisor that does all the heavy lifting — selecting the appropriate investments, diversifying your portfolio and allocating funds — so that you can focus on something else. And it does that at a reasonable cost, too.
Betterment is one of the oldest and largest robo-advisors, and the company offers two tiers of service: Digital and Premium. In either case, Betterment will craft your portfolio based on your risk tolerance, time horizon and goals so that your portfolio meets the needs of your financial life.
Betterment Digital manages your investments from a selection of about two dozen exchange-traded funds. You’ll pay $4 a month for this account, though the pricing switches to an annual 0.25% on your investing account if you set up recurring monthly deposits of $250 or more, or reach a balance of $20,000 or more across all your Betterment accounts. You’ll get automatic rebalancing, so that your portfolio stays in line with its target allocation, automated tax-loss harvesting (which applies only to taxable accounts, not IRAs or Roth IRAs) and, depending on your account balance, varying levels of access to financial advisors.
The Premium package requires a total balance of at least $100,000 across your accounts and carries a 0.65% annual fee, but also gives you unlimited access to a team of certified financial planners who can offer personalized financial planning advice.
Read Bankrate’s Betterment review.
Fidelity Investments
With its clean layout, helpful customer representatives, lack of commissions and all-around low fees, Fidelity is an excellent broker for beginning investors or those opening their first Roth IRA. Fidelity also features a well-developed education section, which is great for customers who are new to the investing game and want to get up to speed quickly. Investors opening their first Roth will appreciate how Fidelity makes it easy to invest, down to the little details like the layout of its web pages. It’s easy to place an order or find information.
Fidelity also takes a customer-first approach with its fees. The broker has slashed nearly all its fees, including pricey transfer fees. It also chopped fees on its mutual funds, becoming the first broker to bring the expense ratio of mutual funds to zero (for a handful of its own funds).
When you’re ready to advance, Fidelity can also provide research, offering reports from more than a dozen providers. You get all this for zero commissions on most trades, too.
Read Bankrate’s Fidelity review.
Interactive Brokers
Interactive Brokers does everything that traders and professionals need, and does it at high quality. It excels at global trading and speedy execution, and it offers advanced trading platforms. In short, Interactive Brokers is great for active and expert traders.
Interactive Brokers charges no commissions on U.S. exchange-listed stock and ETF trades for its IBKR Lite tier, which compares well with Schwab and Fidelity, and the broker charges a half-cent per share in its Pro fixed tier, with a $1 minimum trade.
If you’re an especially active trader, though, you may appreciate the broker’s volume-based discounts. Options pricing has no additional base commission and a per-contract fee of 65 cents for IBKR Lite traders, making it highly competitive. Interactive Brokers also does surprisingly well on mutual funds, offering more than 20,000 without a transaction fee.
At Interactive Brokers, you can trade almost anything that trades on a public exchange: stocks, bonds, futures, metals, cryptocurrency and more. Plus, you can access virtually any world market to make a trade, so the investing world is really at your fingertips. Altogether, these attributes make Interactive Brokers a top pick for active traders.
Read Bankrate’s Interactive Brokers review.
Fundrise
Fundrise is known for getting everyday investors access to private real estate deals. Real estate is a popular investment, and because it tends to pay cash dividends, it can be a smart investment inside a Roth IRA, where dividends are earned tax-free. Fundrise won’t be a good choice for all investors, but for those looking for this niche of real estate investing, it could be a snug fit.
Fundrise creates real estate investment trusts, or REITs, using investors’ money to buy real estate or mortgages. It also offers a more speculative set of funds that use investors’ money to develop residential real estate. These investments tend to offer sizable dividends and some opportunity for appreciation over time. Like many alternative investments, Fundrise’s offerings require you to lock in your money for years, so you don't want to invest money you'll need anytime soon.
You can get started with an IRA account minimum of $1,000, though taxable accounts are available with only a $10 minimum.
Schwab Intelligent Portfolios
If you’re a fan of Schwab’s investor-friendly street cred but don’t want to invest your Roth IRA on your own, consider its robo-advisor: Schwab Intelligent Portfolios. This service will create a portfolio based on your financial needs, including when you want the money and how much risk you want to take.
One of the biggest positives of Schwab’s robo-advisor is its management cost: zero. That’s right, you won’t pay Schwab anything for managing your account, but you’ll still have to pay any expense ratios for the mutual funds or ETFs that you’re invested in, as you would anywhere. But Schwab invests your money in its in-house funds, which are some of the market’s cheapest.
Of note: Schwab had offered a premium tier service, complete with access to financial advisors, but it's discontinuing that premium service in 2026. Whereas customers could previously opt to upgrade with a one-time fee plus ongoing monthly fee, thus unlocking unlimited access to certified financial planners, this service will no longer be available in 2026.
Perhaps the main downside for potential Schwab customers, though, is the $5,000 minimum deposit required to get started in the base service. Still, that’s less than one year’s maximum IRA contribution.
Read Bankrate’s Schwab Intelligent Portfolios review.
Vanguard
Vanguard is great for investors who are looking to minimize costs, especially if they’re long-term buy-and-hold stock investors. Vanguard has long been known for its low-cost mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, and it’s expanded that reputation into its brokerage, too.
Vanguard was founded on the principle of helping investors take advantage of the stock market in a low-cost way. So not only does the broker offer zero commissions on stock and ETF trades, it also provides more than 3,100 mutual funds without a transaction fee.
The brokerage adds to its reputation with education and planning tools. Investors will find videos, podcasts and articles that provide market commentary and help them make sound investment decisions. You’ll find tools to help you plan for retirement as well as for college and other financial goals.
Read Bankrate’s Vanguard review.
Merrill Edge
Merrill Edge is the web-based broker from the storied Merrill Lynch, now owned by Bank of America. Merrill is a solid, full-service broker that does a lot right. It provides deep research from the broker’s large team of analysts, and it offers solid educational resources for new investors looking to get up to speed. If you’re rolling over a Roth 401(k) to a Merrill Edge Roth IRA, depositing your rollover check using the broker’s mobile app is seamless and extremely convenient.
But where Merrill really out-distances the competition is its ability to provide in-person assistance to clients. There are Merrill advisors available in nearly 40 states, and you can also get customer support at one of the approximately 3,700 Bank of America locations.
Merrill also is a great fit for current Bank of America customers, because your accounts are integrated on one platform and you can access it all from the bank’s site.
Read Bankrate’s Merrill Edge review.
How a Roth IRA works
Both traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs are retirement accounts that give you tax benefits for saving for the future. With a traditional IRA, you get the tax benefit right up front (your contributions are deductible each year, assuming you qualify). With a Roth IRA, the tax break comes much later: Your money grows tax-free and when you withdraw money in retirement, you don't owe any taxes. (With a traditional IRA, your money grows tax-deferred but then everything that you pull out in retirement is subject to income taxes.)
It’s best to think of a Roth IRA as an "account wrapper.” It's a type of account that gives tax advantages. Many companies offer Roth IRAs, including banks, brokerages and robo-advisors, and each allows you to choose from various types of investments within these accounts.
How much you earn in a Roth IRA all depends on what you choose to invest in. At a bank you can invest in CDs, which are safe and insured by the FDIC so that you won’t lose principal (up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank). At brokerages and robo-advisors, you can invest in assets such as stocks and bonds that can earn much higher returns over time, but they’re also riskier, meaning that you can lose money. While a CD specifies what you’ll earn each year, these other investments can fluctuate, sometimes drastically.
How much do you need to open a Roth IRA?
Every bank, brokerage and robo-advisor has its own requirements for a minimum investment to open an account but these days, many of them allow you to open an account with no money (see table below). Keep in mind that if you choose to invest in mutual funds, each fund might have its own investment minimum.
While investment minimums aren't an issue with many Roth IRA accounts, one of the most important factors in owning a Roth IRA is being mindful of the annual maximum contribution limit, set by the IRS each year. In 2026, you can contribute a total of $7,500 to one or multiple IRA accounts (the maximum is $8,600 for those age 50 or older). Those limits have increased from $7,000 and $8,000 for 2025, respectively. (The contribution limits don't apply to rollovers.) There are income limits too — see our Roth IRA income and contribution limits page for more.
One thing you won’t have to worry about is having too many Roth IRA accounts. You’re allowed to have as many as you like, but you may not contribute more than the annual maximum. If you have three Roth accounts, you can divide that annual maximum among the accounts in any way you see fit.
Best Roth IRA accounts to open
| Provider | Commissions | Minimum to open |
|---|---|---|
| Charles Schwab | $0 | $0 |
| Wealthfront | Management fee: 0.25% of assets annually | $500 |
| Betterment | Management fee: 0.25% – 0.65% of assets annually | $0 |
| Fidelity | $0 | $0 |
| Interactive Brokers | $1 minimum/$0 with IBKR Lite | $0 |
| Fundrise | Varies | $1,000 |
| Schwab Intelligent Portfolios | Management fee: $0 | $5,000 |
| Vanguard | $0 | $0 |
| Merrill Edge | $0 | $0 |
Editorial Disclaimer: All investors are advised to conduct their own independent research into investment strategies before making an investment decision. In addition, investors are advised that past investment product performance is no guarantee of future price appreciation.
—Anna-Louise Jackson contributed to an update of this report.
