Public.
My Honest Review.

Why I Signed Up — and Why This Site Exists

I opened Public in April 2026 while I was researching brokers for my new day-trading path and genuinely unsure which one to use. It looked modern and approachable, so I funded it and traded a few names early on. What I found is that there weren't many other day traders there — and once I tried to trade the way I actually wanted to, the platform ran out of room fast. That whole experience of not being able to find one honest place that compared brokers for how I trade is exactly why this site exists: it's the resource I wished I'd had when I started.

Where Public Falls Short for Day Trading

Public is polished, but polish isn't depth. Measured against how a momentum trader actually works, the gaps are specific and they add up:

• No technical indicators on the charts. The mobile charts don't support technical studies at all — no moving averages, no VWAP, nothing. For chart-driven trading, that's a non-starter.
• Quotes are real-time but don't stream, and there are no price alerts — both of which make timing an entry or exit harder than it should be.
• No downloadable desktop app. Public is web and mobile only. There's no native Mac (or Windows) trading platform.
• The options chain is missing the essentials — no bid-ask spreads, no Greeks, no implied volatility — so it's hard to size up a trade with any confidence.
• Standard data sits behind a paywall. Advanced charting, Morningstar research, and extended-hours trading all require Public Premium unless your balance tops $50,000.

None of that makes Public a bad broker — it makes it the wrong broker for active trading. It's built for calm, deliberate investing, not for the 9:35–11:00 AM tape I trade.

What It's Genuinely Good At

Give Public its due, because on its own terms it's strong:

• Real multi-asset breadth — stocks, ETFs, fractional shares, options, a genuinely approachable Treasuries and bonds experience, 40+ cryptocurrencies, and a high-yield cash account with FDIC coverage up to $5 million through partner banks.
• One of the lowest margin rates anywhere — 4.90% on balances under $50,000, tiering down from there.
• Genuinely innovative idea tools — its AI "Generated Assets" feature turns a plain-language prompt into a themed, backtestable basket you can invest in, and it's won industry awards for exactly that.
• A clean, modern interface and a broad, readable education library — a friendly on-ramp for someone brand new to investing.

What It Costs

On price, Public is competitive — the catch is the subscription model, where tools that are free elsewhere sit behind Public Premium.

The margin rate is a real strength — one of the lowest in retail. The Premium paywall is the real cost to weigh: on a smaller account you'll pay $10/month for data and research that Fidelity or Schwab bundle for free. Rates and fees move, so confirm the current numbers when you sign up.

Account Types

Public covers the basics for a self-directed investor, but not much beyond them:

• Individual & joint taxable accounts, cash or margin.
• IRAs — Traditional and Roth only.

What's missing adds up if your financial life is more complex: no custodial or trust accounts, no SEP or SIMPLE IRAs, no business accounts, no mutual funds, and no futures or forex. A few basic tasks — like adding a beneficiary — still require emailing a physical form, which feels oddly analog for a platform this modern.

Execution & Order Routing

Here's Public's genuine differentiator: on stock and ETF orders it doesn't accept payment for order flow. Instead of selling that flow to wholesale market makers, it routes to lit exchanges and points to better average price improvement as the result — on paper, the cleanest routing story of the brokers I've reviewed. (It's not absolute: options orders and an optional wholesale route can still involve PFOF.) The catch is that a routing philosophy only helps if the platform lets you act on it, and Public's doesn't: no streaming quotes, no Level 2, no direct-access route selection, and no desktop app. So you get better-in-principle execution on a platform that's too basic to scalp with. For a buy-and-hold or dollar-cost investor, no-PFOF routing is a real, honest plus; for a day trader, it's the right answer to the wrong question.

Is Public Safe?

Yes — Public operates as Open to the Public Investing, Inc., a FINRA member, with SIPC protection up to $500,000 (including $250,000 in cash) and Apex Clearing Corporation as its custodian. Its high-yield cash account carries FDIC insurance up to $5 million through a network of partner banks. As always, SIPC and FDIC protect against firm failure, not against market losses.

Who It's For

Public is a strong fit if you want a clean, modern home for investing rather than trading: building a diversified multi-asset portfolio, laddering Treasuries, parking cash at a high yield, holding some crypto as just another asset, or exploring ideas with its AI tools. It's also the account I'd steer a new copy-trader toward, given the Autopilot partnership. Where it isn't the answer is active or day trading — for that you want charts with indicators, streaming data, and a real platform, which means Webull or TradeZero.

Where It Comes Up Short (for Day Trading)

Measured against a serious day-trading setup, the shortfalls are the whole story:

• No desktop app — web and mobile only.
• No technical indicators on charts, and no streaming quotes or alerts.
• Thin options data (no bid-ask, Greeks, or implied volatility).
• Core data and research gated behind a $10/month Premium tier.
• Not many active traders actually use it — you feel that when you get there.

So why 3.2? Because for the investor Public is actually built for — passive, multi-asset, cash-and-Treasuries focused — it's a genuinely good, well-designed account, and the low margin and AI idea tools are real pluses. It lands at 3.2 on this site's day-trading yardstick because the pieces a day trader needs simply aren't here. It's the most clearly "not for day trading" of my honorable mentions — even Robinhood's browser-based Legend has more active-trading depth than Public offers. For what it's worth, independent reviewers land in the same neighborhood: StockBrokers.com rates Public 3.0 / 5 overall for 2026, with a 1 / 5 on advanced trading.

Bottom Line

Public is one of the most polished brokers you can open, and it's a legitimately good place to invest passively, earn yield on cash, build a Treasury ladder, or run an Autopilot copy portfolio. But it's not where I day trade, and it isn't close: no desktop app, no chart indicators, no streaming data, and key tools behind a paywall. I keep it as a sidecar for what it's good at. If you're getting into active trading, this isn't the one — start with Webull.