Interactive Brokers Bonds
If you’re looking for a place to trade fixed-income securities, Interactive Brokers is worth checking out. Not only does the brokerage firm offer bonds and other fixed-income assets in the U.S. marketplace, but global fixed-income securities are available as well.
Availability of Fixed-Income Securities
Interactive Brokers offers a wide variety of bonds and bond equivalents. These securities include corporate debt, certificates of deposit, municipal bonds, U.S. Treasuries, and non-U.S. sovereign bonds.
Besides the U.S. marketplace, Interactive Brokers offers access to global bond trading, including bonds on the Euronext Exchange and Hong Kong government bonds.
Searching for Bonds on the Website
The best place to begin is on Interactive Brokers’ Bond Scanner. This useful tool can be found on the website under the Research tab. It’s also possible to use the screener without logging in by visiting the dedicated Bond Search Tool.
Once the search wizard is pulled up, it’s easy to go through the many search criteria and specify values. Available search variables include:
- Coupon rate
- Yield to worst
- Country of issue
- Maturity date
- CUSIP number
- Bond rating
- Currency
- Industry
During our research, we found tens of thousands of bonds. Interactive Brokers provides access to more than 1 million bonds globally. Here’s a sampling of the quantity available that we found:
- US muni bonds — 2,525
- Global corporate bonds — 39,762
- US Treasuries — 1,072
Only two search variables can be sorted in the results: maturity and ask yield. This is a major drawback that makes sorting through results more cumbersome.
Clicking on an entry in the search results generates a profile for the bond. A chart appears at the top of the page. Up to five years of price history can be shown for a bond that has that much. All of the regular tools available for stock analysis are there—tools like pitchforks and Gann Fans.
Below the chart, there are lots of bond details. Examples include:
- First interest accrued date
- Call status
- Face value
- Maturity date
- Coupon type
On the profile page, the bond can be placed on a watchlist, and alerts can be established for it as well. There are two trade buttons on the profile—a blue one for buy and a red one for sell.
Clicking on a trade button creates a trade ticket with the specific bond populated. The trade ticket will show the bid-ask spread on the bond along with the real-time price. Limit and market orders are possible, although IBKR recommends using limit orders for U.S. Treasury trades because some exchanges to which Treasury orders may be routed do not accept market orders. A half-bracket order can be added.
A bond order must be placed in quantities of face value. Typically, this will be a multiple of 1,000. For example, if a bond has a face value of $1,000, the quantity field should display a 5 for $5,000.
Interactive Brokers Referral Link
Searching for Bonds on IBKR
Interactive Brokers’ desktop platform also has a bond search engine. It is similar in many ways, with mostly the same search variables. The one difference is that there’s a pre-installed search button for agency debt. This does not exist on the website scanner.
To pull up the bond wizard on Trader Workstation, click on the New Window tab in the upper-left corner of the platform, go to Scanners, and then select Bond Scanner.
Doing so will automatically generate a pop-up window where a search can be performed. Simply enter the scan parameters and click on the Search button in the upper-right corner. A list of bonds will be returned. Results can be sorted by ask, bid, and ask yield.
Double clicking on a bond’s title brings up a small window with details on that bond. Single clicking on the title produces a scatter plot graph that will display the yield-to-worst against the time to maturity.
A search can be saved. Look for the floppy disk icon in the upper-right corner.
IBKR Bonds Cost
You may have heard about $0 commissions. Well, those don’t apply to bond trades. U.S. corporate bonds, municipal bonds, CDs, and Treasuries at Interactive Brokers have commissions based on face value. The commission rate varies by bond type.
U.S. corporate bonds and CDs cost 0.1% of the first $10,000 in face value and 0.025% of additional face value, with a $1 minimum and a maximum of the smaller of $250 or 1% of trade value. U.S. municipal bonds cost 0.05% of the first $10,000 in face value and 0.0125% of additional face value, with a $1 minimum and a maximum of the smaller of $125 or 1% of trade value. U.S. Treasuries cost 0.002% of the first $1,000,000 in face value and 0.0001% of additional face value, with a $5 minimum and no maximum.
European bonds are a similar story. On the Euronext Exchange, commissions start at 0.1% of trade value and decline at higher trade-value tiers. The minimum commission is €2, and there is no maximum. Europe OTC bond commissions also use tiered pricing, with the rate depending on the trade value and currency.
Hong Kong government bonds also use percentage-based pricing. Flat-rate pricing is 0.08% of trade value with an HKD 18 minimum and no maximum. Cost-plus pricing ranges from 0.05% down to 0.015%, depending on monthly trade value, with lower minimums at higher tiers.
Despite the commissions, Interactive Brokers has no markups or built-in spreads on bond trades, and the firm doesn’t always act as a dealer. It’s possible to trade directly with other IBKR clients as the counterparty.
IBKR Referral Link
Updated on 6/30/2026.
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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