thinkorswim Overview
Charles Schwab’s thinkorswim trading platform is perhaps the most famous trading platform on the market. With so many features, tools, and details included in the platform, there is a lot of information to cover when discussing it. We explored all the details of the platform, so if you are looking for a full review of thinkorswim, you are in the right place.
thinkorswim comes in three different versions: a downloadable desktop version, a mobile app, and a web version. All three versions are available at no additional charge to Charles Schwab clients. Real-time market data is available after the customer accepts the applicable exchange agreements, and fees may apply in some cases. Nasdaq TotalView Level II data is not automatically free for every non-professional customer. It is provided free to qualifying clients based on trading activity or household assets; other eligible clients can purchase a quarterly subscription. thinkorswim does not require a separate paid platform subscription, although Schwab’s normal trading fees and market-data charges still apply.
thinkorswim Commissions
| Investments | Commissions |
|---|
| Stocks and ETFs | $0 |
| Stocks and ETFs broker assisted | $25 |
| US Over-The-Counter (OTC) Equities | $6.95 |
| Options | $0.65 per contract |
| Mutual funds | $0 for no-transaction-fee funds; up to $49.95 or $74.95 to buy transaction-fee funds, $0 to sell |
| Futures | $2.25 per contract |
| Treasury bills, notes, bonds, and TIPS | $0 online |
| CDs new issues | $0 |
| Secondary CDs, Corporate Bonds, Municipal Bonds, Government Agencies, and Zero-Coupon Treasuries including STRIPS | $1 per bond/CD, $10 minimum, $250 maximum |
| Preferred Stocks and REITs | $0 |
| Commercial Paper, Foreign Bonds, Asset-Backed Securities, Mortgage-Backed Securities, Collateralized Mortgage Obligations, and Unit Investment Trusts | call for pricing |
| Investments |
stocks, ETFs, OTC equities, options, mutual funds, futures, Treasury issues, bonds, CDs,
preferred stocks, REITs, forex, annuities, and certain foreign securities
|
| Minimum deposit to open an account | $0 for brokerage account; $2,000 in cash or marginable securities to begin margin borrowing |
| Fees | thinkorswim fees |
thinkorswim Types of Accounts & Investments
You can use thinkorswim with many types of brokerage accounts held at Charles Schwab, including taxable brokerage accounts, IRAs, and trust accounts. The securities that can be traded through the thinkorswim platforms include stocks, ETFs, options, futures, futures options, and forex. Futures, futures options, forex, and options require appropriate account approval, and not all customers will qualify. Mutual funds cannot be traded through thinkorswim desktop, web, or mobile. Schwab customers can trade mutual funds through Schwab.com and the Schwab Mobile app.
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thinkorswim Charting
thinkorswim’s bread and butter is its charts and charting features. thinkorswim has some of the best charts and charting features in the industry, hands down. Both the thinkorswim charts and their features are highly customizable, with hundreds of different settings from which to choose.
The charts include the ability to use over 300 different technical indicators and patterns, over 20 different drawing tools, over 10 different chart types, and hundreds of potentially customizable timeframes. You can save all of your chart settings and create multiple customized layouts. You can also build and save sets of customized drawings and technical indicators, as well as save customized timeframes.
The charts are dynamic and flexible, which makes them preferable to many other charting platforms in the industry that are static and less flexible. You can rearrange the charts and adjust their sizes in many ways, and you can move them around the screen. You can add technical indicators and drawings directly to charts or display certain indicators below them. You can have up to 32 charts open at once, which may seem excessive, but it is impressive that the platform has this capability.
thinkorswim charts also have dynamic navigation features. The “pan” cursor setting allows you to drag the charts left or right to scroll across the timeframe you are viewing. The “pointer” cursor setting allows you to click and drag across an area of a chart to highlight it and automatically zoom in on that area.
You can right-click anywhere on a chart and choose “Autozoom,” which automatically adjusts the chart to the starting view for the timeframe you are viewing. You can also click the small zoom-in and zoom-out buttons at the bottom of the chart or use customized hotkeys to zoom in and out quickly.
thinkorswim Powerful & Unique Features
thinkorswim has a long list of powerful and unique features. For starters, paperMoney is included in all three thinkorswim versions. Not only does thinkorswim allow you to practice trading to learn the platform or test strategies, but its desktop platform also has tools that can help you backtest ideas and strategies. The OnDemand tool allows you to return to a previous date and time, watch historical price activity on a chart, and place simulated trades based on that chart. The thinkBack tool allows you to enter hypothetical historical options trades to see how they might have performed.
thinkorswim allows you to customize and use over 50 different hotkeys for commands such as entering orders, opening a specific tool, and editing a chart. One of the most unique features of thinkorswim is its customizable chart timeframes. You can customize and save hundreds of possible timeframe combinations. You can create a timeframe based on the number of ticks in a period, the price range in a period, or standard time intervals.
Another extremely useful thinkorswim feature is Active Trader. Active Trader is essentially a streaming price ladder that allows you to enter orders by clicking the bid or ask side of a price level in real time. You can customize the columns displayed on the ladder, including the volume at each price level, your open position’s profit or loss at each price level, and your fills at each price level. At the top of the ladder are customizable order-entry buttons, such as Buy Market, Sell Bid, and Flatten.
thinkScript is a built-in programming language in thinkorswim that allows you to create custom tools for the platform. You can use thinkScript to build technical indicators, watchlist columns, alerts, scan queries, strategy signals, and conditions for orders. Submitted conditional orders can be automatically placed or canceled when a condition written in thinkScript is met. Strategies displayed on charts generate simulated historical signals for backtesting. You can also export scripts to share with other users or import scripts created by others.
Another useful thinkorswim feature is the ability to export and share chart images. This feature allows you to create a library of saved charts for later reference and study without having to search the internet for charts showing the patterns you want to examine. Lastly, the large number of customizable settings and options in thinkorswim is a notable feature in itself.
thinkorswim Order Entry
thinkorswim allows you to enter orders in several ways, with some methods being intuitive and others functioning as hidden gems. The three main order-entry methods include using one of the traditional order tickets, using programmed order buttons such as Buy Ask, Sell Market, or Buy Market, and using the Active Trader ladder.
There are many ways to reach one of these order-entry methods. These include right-clicking securities in your current positions or watchlist, right-clicking a quote, clicking the bid or ask price for a security in scan results, clicking the bid or ask price for an option in an option chain, clicking the bid or ask price in a Level II display, and right-clicking a chart.
Regardless of your preference, thinkorswim gives you plenty of options for entering orders as efficiently and effectively as possible. thinkorswim also allows you to save orders in the traditional order-entry ticket and return to place them later. thinkorswim supports market, limit, stop, trailing-stop, OCO, and on-the-close orders, along with several other advanced and conditional order types.
thinkorswim Research Tools
Finding which securities to trade can sometimes be more difficult than trading itself. Fortunately, thinkorswim comes with several research tools that can help you find and analyze securities for your trading strategy. thinkorswim also has tools for researching the overall market and market-related data.
thinkorswim has three main scanning tools: Stock Hacker, Option Hacker, and Spread Hacker. Stock Hacker allows you to scan the market for stocks based on hundreds of available criteria, including fundamental, technical, and option-related data. Option Hacker allows you to search for individual option contracts that meet selected criteria. Spread Hacker searches for supported options strategies, such as verticals, butterflies, iron condors, calendars, diagonals, and double diagonals. The underlying-symbol lists used for these scans can include stocks, indexes, and futures.
thinkorswim has a useful calendar feature that allows you to display important stock events occurring during a week or month, such as dividends, earnings announcements, and splits. Other research tools include the Fundamentals tool, which provides a detailed overview of a company’s fundamental data; a probability-analysis tool, which displays possible stock-price ranges based on options-implied volatility; and an Economic Data feature, which offers a large library of economic data to browse.
thinkorswim Website
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User Interface
The thinkorswim user interface does not have the most modern or attractive appearance, but it is certainly not horrible. The interface could be described as outdated but highly functional. You can tell from its design that the platform was built with trading features and efficiency in mind.
The mobile and web interfaces look somewhat cleaner than the desktop version, which can have a slightly pixelated appearance. All three versions have a plain, boxy design in the way information is displayed. The interfaces in all three versions have fairly intuitive, easy-to-use navigation for moving around the platforms and finding the tools you need.
thinkorswim Cons
The biggest area in which thinkorswim could improve is its user interface. Specifically, the desktop platform’s appearance could be updated so that nothing looks pixelated or fuzzy. Some of the desktop menus could also be improved by giving tools names that describe their purposes more clearly. For example, the stock scanner is called “Stock Hacker.” Although its location under the Scan menu helps explain what it does, beginners may find the terminology unclear.
Another major area for improvement would be providing an easier and more intuitive way to open an equity-trading ticket. There are several methods for entering equity orders, as mentioned earlier. However, it could take a beginner several minutes to figure out how to reach the equity-trading ticket using the available methods. Lastly, it can initially be difficult to determine what some tools and features do. Quick tips or explanation bubbles that appear within tools or when a user hovers over them would be helpful.
Who is thinkorswim Best For
thinkorswim is designed primarily for advanced traders and short-term investors. Beginners may have a difficult time getting started because of the large number of features to learn and the potentially overwhelming amount of information displayed on the platform. thinkorswim is an excellent trading platform for scalpers, day traders, options traders, swing traders, futures traders, and forex traders.
Long-term investors can still get value from thinkorswim, although it does not have many traditional financial-planning or portfolio-management features. thinkorswim does not support fractional-share orders. Therefore, investors with small balances may not get as much use from the platform for trading, but they can still benefit from its research tools and paperMoney feature.
thinkorswim System Requirements
The thinkorswim mobile app requires a compatible Apple or Android device, a supported operating-system version, and a wireless or mobile-data connection. Functionality may vary by device and operating system. thinkorswim web requires an internet-connected web browser and can be used on desktop computers, laptops, phones, and tablets. The current minimum operating-system requirement for thinkorswim desktop is Windows 11 or later for Windows users and macOS 14 Sonoma or later for Mac users. Linux installation is also available, although it requires manual configuration and Zulu OpenJDK 21. Supported Linux distributions include Ubuntu 18.04 or later, Debian 10 or later, Fedora 28 or later, OpenSUSE 15.5 or later, and RHEL 8.9 or later.
Awards
thinkorswim Review Summary
thinkorswim is an incredibly powerful, feature-packed trading platform that can help take your trading to the next level when used effectively. thinkorswim has something to offer nearly everyone, whether you are a complete beginner who wants to practice with paperMoney or an experienced forex trader who needs advanced charting tools. thinkorswim has a steep learning curve and does not have the best user interface, but its powerful features outweigh many of its drawbacks.
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Updated on 6/18/2026.
Paul Johnson is a Licensed Stockbroker with 7+ years of experience in the financial services industry. Paul enjoys teaching about investing and writing about financial topics. He is a husband and father of twin boys.
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