Owning a share of a public company is a different transaction from speculating on its price. The first gives you a registered, recorded claim against a small slice of a business — corporate-action rights, dividend entitlements, voting if you bother, and recoverability if the broker fails. The second gives you a contract for the difference between the price at which you opened a position and the price at which you closed it. Most retail brokers selling "stocks" sell the second kind. This list is for the first.
The distinction matters because the failure modes are different. A real stockbroker that goes bankrupt loses your money temporarily; the shares are still yours, registered with the depository, and recovered through the broker's administrator. A stock-CFD broker that goes bankrupt loses your money permanently or until a deposit-guarantee scheme reimburses up to its cap (€20,000 in the EU, $500K SIPC in the US). For positions you intend to hold for more than three months — index funds, dividend stalwarts, single-stock conviction trades — this is not a theoretical concern.
Across our 2026 review cycle we opened live brokerage accounts with thirty-two stock brokers and tested ten across full equity workflows: deposit, market-order execution, limit-order behaviour at open and close, dividend handling, currency conversion on cross-listed shares, fractional-share availability, and end-of-year tax statement quality. The seven below are the brokers we kept funding. We have flagged the entries that route through stock CFDs rather than real equity ownership — those are good products for short-horizon directional exposure, but should not be your home for long-term holdings.
