Until October 28, 2025, Qtrade charged $8.75 per stock or ETF trade. Questrade had already gone to $0 commissions in February 2025. For most of this comparison’s history, Questrade was the obvious low-cost pick for active investors, and Qtrade was the premium-service option that cost more per trade.

That gap closed when Qtrade moved to $0 commissions and simultaneously eliminated all quarterly administration fees. Stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds are now free to trade at both brokers. Options at Qtrade sit at $0.75 per contract with no base commission.

One caveat on Questrade: ECN fees can apply on a small subset of US trades depending on routing. This is not a standard per-trade charge — most investors will never see it — but it is worth knowing it exists on the Questrade side.

FX markup: similar rates, different transparency

Questrade publishes its FX markup at 1.5%. That is the rate applied when converting CAD to USD on a trade. Qtrade does not publish its FX markup — it acts as principal on currency conversions, meaning the spread is built into the exchange rate you receive. Third-party sources estimate Qtrade’s effective rate at roughly 1.5%, but this cannot be verified from Qtrade’s own pricing documentation.

In practice, the rates are likely similar. The difference is that with Questrade you can model your FX cost exactly; with Qtrade you cannot.

USD registered accounts: the $60/year gap

If you buy US stocks or ETFs regularly in a registered account (RRSP, TFSA, RRIF), a USD-denominated account lets you hold the proceeds in USD rather than converting back to CAD after every sale. This avoids repeated FX conversion on round-trips.

On a $20,000 RRSP, that $60/year fee is 0.30% p.a. — meaningful on a smaller portfolio. On a $100,000 RRSP, it drops to 0.06% p.a. The break-even logic: if avoiding repeated FX conversions saves you more than $60/year (i.e., you’re converting more than roughly $4,000 CAD to USD per year), a USD account pays for itself even at Qtrade. But since Questrade provides the same account for free, there is no reason to pay the Qtrade fee for equivalent functionality.

Norbert’s Gambit

Both brokers support Norbert’s Gambit — the strategy of buying a CAD/USD dual-listed security (such as DLR/DLR.U) and journaling it to the other currency side to avoid FX spreads. At both brokers, the trades themselves are now $0. At Qtrade, you also need the USD registered account ($15/quarter) to execute the strategy effectively in registered accounts. Questrade’s free USD accounts make the Gambit marginally simpler to execute at no extra carrying cost.

The October 2025 fee changes levelled the playing field on commissions. In 2026, neither broker is objectively “better” — they are optimised for different investors.

One practical note: both brokers reimburse transfer fees up to $150 if you bring assets over from another institution. If you are currently at a bank-owned brokerage paying $9.95+ per trade, either broker is a meaningful upgrade. The choice between them matters most at the margins — and for most Canadian buy-and-hold investors, those margins come down to whether you need a free USD registered account and fractional shares (Questrade) or prefer better research tools and customer support (Qtrade).