Interactive Brokers is an automated electronic broker-dealer. Because they automate virtually everything they do, their cost structure is lower than their competitors. This results in Interactive Brokers having the lowest prices and highest margins in the brokerage industry. They also have fewer conflicts of interest than their competitors. All orders are sent directly to the exchanges or internally matched between clients. They don’t sell orders—like the retail brokers—and they don’t trade against their own clients—like the big banks.

Interactive Brokers is more akin to a tech firm than a traditional retail broker such as Schwab or TD Ameritrade. Interactive Brokers was founded by a programmer, Thomas Peterffy, and the man overtaking him as CEO, Malin Galik, has been a software engineer at Interactive Brokers for 28 years. Peterffy has said before that around 50% of all employees are programmers.
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