The retail brokerage business in the U.S. has become entirely a game about scale: It’s dominated by a handful of very large firms that have devoted themselves to delivering services cheaply. Zero-commission trades are common. Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, and even index mutual funds with 0% expense ratios are easy to find.
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There is actually a tie for the largest brokerage by assets under management, or AUM. Both Vanguard and Charles Schwab report $10.1 trillion in assets. That is more than 100 times the estimated number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, according to NASA. That’s also more than double the total gross domestic product of Germany.
For a retail investor looking for a wide range of offerings and products with the security of a brokerage with several trillion in assets under management, there’s a good chance you’ll be selecting from one of the five largest brokerage firms below:
| Brokerage Firm | Assets Under Management* |
| Vanguard Group | $10.1 trillion |
| Charles Schwab | $10.1 trillion |
| UBS | $5.9 trillion |
| Fidelity Investments | $5.8 trillion |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | $4.05 trillion |
*Verified through investor relations as of Feb. 24.
Vanguard Group
Known best for its index funds, Pennsylvania-based Vanguard manages $10.1 trillion in assets and has more than 50 million clients. Founder Jack Bogle, who died in 2019, was known as an evangelist for low-cost investing. It’s a philosophy the firm continues to live by, having recently announced its “largest fee cut ever” on nearly half its funds.
The firm offers more than 400 proprietary funds around the globe, including the nation’s oldest balanced mutual fund, the Vanguard Wellington Fund (ticker: VWELX), which was founded in 1929.
Vanguard takes its stewardship of client assets seriously. Overall, it’s more focused on long-term and retirement investing than its largest rivals, and set up less to serve active investors across a range of assets. For example, it doesn’t let clients buy cryptocurrencies on the firm’s platform since it believes these speculative assets are ill-advised for long-term investors. If you already own crypto ETFs, you can sell them through Vanguard, but can’t buy more.
That said, for investors most interested in what Vanguard does best — retirement investing and a focus on low-cost and indexed products — the firm lives up to its name.
Read our full broker review of Vanguard.
Charles Schwab
Schwab got an early start in 1975 as a discount broker when brokerage commissions were deregulated and started offering 24-hour order entry and quotes in 1982. The firm also opened its first international office in Hong Kong that same year. It now has 36.5 million active brokerage accounts on its platform.
There’s $1.2 trillion invested in Schwab’s proprietary ETFs and mutual funds. The firm also offers fractional investing, called Schwab Stock Slices, for as little as $5.
In 2020, Schwab acquired TD Ameritrade, a recognized leader in delivering low fees across a range of services. This means that TD Ameritrade’s thinkorswim trading platform, a favorite among retail traders for its analysis and charting tools, is now available through Schwab’s website.
Read our full broker review of Schwab.
Read our full broker review of TD Ameritrade.
[READ: 5 of the Best Companies to Invest In for 2025]
UBS
UBS not only manages nearly $6 trillion in assets, it’s also over 160 years old. Of course, it wasn’t UBS at the time. It didn’t become the UBS until 1998 when the Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation merged to create the global banking institution it is today.
This long history has given UBS plenty of time to grow and expand. While it remains headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, you can also find offices all across the U.S. where you can get investment, wealth and asset management services.
UBS considers wealth management to be the core of its business in the U.S. This makes it better suited for investors who want to work with a financial advisor than those looking to DIY their investing and financial planning.
Fidelity Investments
If you were to count Fidelity’s assets under administration, or AUA, which are assets owned and managed by clients but administered by a third-party financial institution, Fidelity would be the biggest stock brokerage firm on earth, at $15.1 trillion in AUA. However, this list ranks for assets under management, of which the firm has $5.8 trillion.
Fidelity’s customers include individual investors, employers, third-party wealth management firms, institutions and charitable donors. Its suite of features can appeal to every type of investor, from the do-it-yourself investor who can enjoy the research Fidelity offers — including targeted news feeds by sector and analysis by Fidelity experts and outside providers — to hands-off investors who can work with a personal financial advisor or use the firm’s robo advisor.
Like many of its competitors, the firm also offers commission-free online trades on ETFs, stocks and options. In 2018, it launched the industry’s first zero expense ratio mutual funds, called the Fidelity Zero Funds.
Read our full broker review of Fidelity.
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The company that eventually became JPMorgan Chase was originally founded by former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr as The Manhattan Company in 1799. It provided fresh drinking water as a way to work around first Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton’s opposition to any bank that would threaten the monopoly his Bank of New York had on the sector. It wasn’t until 1996 that J.P. Morgan & Co. — started by investment banker John Pierpont Morgan Sr. of U.S. Steel and General Electric — merged with the Chase Manhattan Co.
Today, JPMorgan’s securities disclosures put the amount of client assets it manages at $4.05 trillion. As you might imagine, at that size it does a little of everything. At the low end, its digital platform can be a good commission-free broker for beginning traders, charging zero commissions on stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and options trades, with screening tools to help users define their strategies.
The firm also provides wealth management, banking and personalized lending services. Ultra-high-net worth clients can enjoy an even broader suite of family wealth planning services, such as philanthropy planning.
Read our full broker review of JPMorgan Chase & Co.
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Update 02/24/25: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
