Overview of SoFi Invest
If you thought SoFi was only about student loans, it’s worth taking another look. The company has built out an investment platform with several useful services, making it a brokerage firm that deserves some attention.
SoFi Invest Pricing
| Investments | Commissions |
|---|
| Stocks and ETFs | $0 |
| Foreign securities | not offered |
| Options | $0 |
| Mutual funds | 0.2% per purchase, capped at $20 (interval funds: 2%) |
| Treasury bills, notes, municipal and agency bonds, zeros & strips | not offered |
| Investments | stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, and alternative funds |
| Minimum deposit to open an account | $0 |
Opening and Funding an Account
SoFi offers a straightforward online application that makes opening an account very fast. The form begins with only basic information, such as your name, email address, and password. By clicking the "Invest" button on the SoFi Invest homepage, you can start the process and choose from the available investing options.
Once you’re ready to fund the account, you’ll need to provide standard personal details, including your Social Security Number and date of birth. Linking an outside bank account is simple, and the setup process is quick.
Investments and Accounts
SoFi Invest is a low-cost brokerage firm, although the menu of tradable assets for self-directed investors is still somewhat limited. At the moment, self-directed customers can trade stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, and alternative funds. Certain securities, including many foreign stocks, penny stocks, and over-the-counter securities, are not available.
The broker’s robo service has a narrower lineup and focuses on ETFs in professionally managed portfolios.
In terms of registrations, SoFi offers both retirement and non-retirement accounts. These include individual accounts, joint accounts, Traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, SEP IRAs, and Traditional Rollover IRAs. SoFi also gives members access to credentialed financial planners, with broader planning access available through SoFi Plus.
Website
SoFi Invest does have a website for customers, although the platform is fairly basic in terms of trading tools and depth of functionality.
At the top of the site, there are links that make it easy to move among the company’s different products, including loans, bank accounts, and investment accounts.
Within the brokerage section, the available tools are pretty limited. Security profiles show simple charts without extras like technical indicators or drawing tools. The charts cannot be expanded to a true full-screen mode, and there is only one plot style, which is a line graph.
Asset pages do include a watchlist button for quickly bookmarking investments, but alerts are not robust. The order ticket supports recurring purchases and also provides market and limit orders, although the available choices for stocks and funds remain basic.
Mobile App
Moving over to the mobile app, SoFi delivers account alerts, including badges and sounds for account activity such as transfers. The app also brings together several financial categories, including credit scores, loans, cards, and investing, which are easy to reach by scrolling and tapping icons.
Even so, the app’s brokerage section is still not especially advanced. Charts inside security profiles display as much as 5 years of price history, similar to the website. Oddly enough, horizontal chart rotation still is not supported.
The app’s order ticket is similar to the one on the website and offers the same basic trade types. The brokerage tools still fall short in important areas, such as advanced charting and deeper trading features. However, the broader SoFi app does support mobile check deposit for eligible checking and savings users.
Other Software
SoFi Invest does not offer additional dedicated software platforms, such as a desktop trading system or smartwatch app.
Customer Support
On the customer-service side, SoFi keeps things simple. Because there are no branch locations, in-person support is not available. Invest support by phone and chat is available Monday through Friday from 5 am to 5 pm PT, and there is no weekend support for Invest accounts.
Outside support hours, customers can use SoFi’s Help Center for answers. The resource center includes a large set of frequently asked questions across many product categories, including investing.
SoFi Invest Fees
SoFi Invest emphasizes low pricing. Self-directed brokerage accounts have no commissions on many standard securities trades, and there is no minimum balance required just to keep an account open. Still, there are some service fees, and inactivity can result in a charge if you do not log in at least once every 6 months.
Some of the fees include: ACAT transfers to another firm ($75), outgoing wire transfers ($25), IRA closing fee ($20), option exercise and assignment fees ($5), and returned ACH / insufficient funds ($15). The inactivity fee is $25 per account for each 6-month period of login inactivity.
Robo accounts charge a 0.25% annual advisory fee, and the minimum to begin investing in a robo account is $50.
Security Research and Financial Education
Even though SoFi’s margin service does not stand out, the broker does offer a respectable supply of educational content through articles and videos. Because the company started in student lending, there is a strong emphasis on personal-finance education, which can be especially useful for Millennials and younger investors.
The available articles and videos cover many topics, such as "How Do Student Loans Affect Your Credit Score?", "How Does a Balloon Mortgage Work?", and "Do Student Loans Count as Income?"
When it comes to trading-specific education, however, the resources are thinner. The SoFi Invest website still lacks stock and fund screeners, which is a major weakness.
SoFi does provide groups of securities on its site, such as Trending, Recent Searches, and SoFi ETFs, which can help somewhat with research. Both securities and digital assets are presented with icons, which makes browsing easier.
Unfortunately, once you move inside an individual asset profile, the amount of detail for stocks or ETFs is limited. Items such as dividend yield, volume, and P/E ratio are displayed, but the information remains fairly thin, and company descriptions usually amount to just a short paragraph.
On the plus side, there are news articles for popular stocks. For example, we found a sizable list of recent Tesla headlines from recognizable outlets.
Securities can be added to a watchlist that syncs with the mobile app, giving access to the same resources found on the website. The app also includes some information that does not appear on the site.
The app shows popular SoFi investors and highlights positions in their accounts. Users can follow these traders and review recent transactions.
Miscellaneous Services
Initial Public Offerings: SoFi Invest does offer early access to upcoming IPOs and actively promotes this feature. IPO fees are $50 for the first sale of a security obtained through an IPO offering within 120 days of the IPO and $5 for each later sale within that same window.
DRIP Availability: Available free of charge in SoFi self-directed accounts.
Fractional Shares: Stocks and ETFs can be traded in whole dollars or whole shares at SoFi.
Extended Hours Trading: Supported extended-hours trading runs for 90 minutes before the market opens (8:00 to 9:30 AM ET) and four hours after the market closes (4:00 to 8:00 PM ET).
Security Lending: Available.
Individual Retirement Accounts: SoFi Invest offers Traditional, Roth, SEP, and Traditional Rollover IRAs.
Recommendations
Retirement Savers and Long-Term Investors: The SoFi website does have some good tools
for long-term investing. These include home loans, a life insurance calculator, a mortgage
calculator, and plenty of educational materials on lots of personal financial topics.
Nevertheless, other resources are missing, like a 401(k) option, annuities, and target-date
mutual funds. But
Charles Schwab has all of these and more.
Beginning Investors: SoFi Invest would be a decent choice for new traders. It has a robo
program, lots of personal financial tools, educational materials, and user-friendly self-directed
accounts, too.
Small Accounts: With relatively few fees and low barriers to entry, SoFi Invest is a good
choice for investors who are just getting started. But watch out for the inactivity fee.
Mutual Funds: It would be a decent choice.
ETF and Stock Trading: The lack of decent software makes SoFi Invest a poor choice for
stock and ETF trading. Robinhood
has excellent software, plus good research tools and fractional-share trading.
SoFi Invest Review Summary
SoFi has done a good job of building a financial powerhouse with lots of services.
We particularly like its banking tools and robo-advisor service. But the
company has failed to deliver many tools and resources for traders and investors, and that
causes us to balk at this firm as a broker.
Updated on 3/26/2026.
Chad Morris is a financial writer with more than 20 years experience
as both an English teacher and an avid trader. When he isn’t writing
expert content for Brokerage-Review.com, Chad can usually be found
managing his portfolio or building a new home computer.
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