The 6 Best Brokers for IRA Matching in 2026

2025 may be over, but it’s not too late to contribute to an IRA (and potentially reduce your tax bill in the process). You have until the tax deadline to make IRA contributions for last year.

What’s more, we just wrapped up our annual brokerage review process for 2026, and identified several brokers and robo-advisors that now offer a 401(k)-style match on IRA contributions, usually as a retention incentive for users who keep their funds in their IRA for at least four or five years. Here’s the scoop on them.

If you like to choose your retirement investments yourself — say, because you’re willing to accept more risk than you’ll get in an index fund, by trading individual stocks or options — then you probably want to open an IRA through an online broker instead of a robo-advisor.

Four of the brokers reviewed by NerdWallet offer IRAs with contribution matches, and three of those also offer matches on rollovers. The details of these programs are listed below.

The matching program: Public offers all users a 1% match on IRA rollovers and contributions.

Public stands out for its basket-trading feature — it offers multi-asset orders called “investment plans” which allow users to buy a customizable mix of stocks, ETFs and crypto in a single transaction.

While several brokers reviewed by NerdWallet offer free options trades, Public is the only broker we review that pays you to trade options. It pays users a rebate of between $0.06 and $0.18 per contract traded, depending on volume.

Options trading can be risky, and isn’t necessarily a conventional investing strategy for retirement accounts. But for investors with a longer investing timeline (allowing plenty of time to recover from potential losses) and a high risk tolerance, it may provide a way to boost your returns if you’re well-versed and well-practiced in this more advanced strategy.

The matching program: Robinhood offers a 1% match on all IRA contributions and rollovers to all users. For Robinhood Gold users, the match increases to 3% (although users are required to keep Robinhood Gold for at least 12 months from their first Gold IRA contribution to keep that extra match).

Robinhood is one of the only brokers we review that offers 24/5 trading, meaning that you can place an order at any time between Monday morning and Friday night.

Fractional share trading, however, is only available during normal trading hours from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Many popular index ETFs, such as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), cost several hundred dollars per share. So the inability to put in a fractional order outside of normal trading hours, plus low liquidity, higher bid-ask spreads and therefore suboptimal prices, all really limit the usefulness of Robinhood’s extending-hours trading feature.

I personally have been foiled by Robinhood’s no-fractional-shares-after-hours thing several times when I’ve tried to put $100 into my SPY position after 4 p.m. However, Robinhood does allow you to schedule a fractional order for the next morning in that situation, which mitigates the inconvenience somewhat.

on SoFi Invest®’s website

The matching program: SoFi offers all users a 1% match on IRA rollovers and contributions.

SoFi is unique among brokers we review for offering users unlimited access to a financial advisor for a relatively small fee. Previously, users could qualify for unlimited access to an advisor simply by setting up direct deposit through SoFi, however that perk is ending in March 2026.

Still, SoFi Plus users get unlimited appointments included in their SoFi Plus subscription for $10/month. At $120 per year, that breaks down to a 0.48% fee on a balance of $25,000. This is very competitive, and that fee percentage would only fall as your balance grows.

All this, combined with the IRA match and SoFi’s extensive fractional share offering, may make SoFi a good choice for beginner investors who are trying to get a head start on saving for retirement.

The matching program: Webull offers a 1% match on IRA contributions for free users, and a 3.5% match for Webull Premium users. In theory, the Premium offering is the highest IRA match of any broker we review, but in practice, it comes with more restrictions than the other matching programs above.

Webull’s IRA match is only for contributions, not for rollovers (although it has run limited-time promotions that offer a match on rollovers in the past). Like Robinhood Gold, Webull Premium requires users to keep their premium subscription for a year in order to keep the higher matching percentage, or else it will claw back the extra match.

But unlike Robinhood Gold, each Webull Premium IRA contribution has its own 1-year clock, making it much more likely that you’ll get some of your extra match taken back if you decide to discontinue Webull Premium at some point in the future.

Depending on how much you contribute to your IRA, and how much you like Webull Premium, that extra 0.5% match may put you ahead of a Robinhood Gold user in dollar terms. The main drawback of Webull Premium compared to Robinhood Gold is just that you are likely to get an unpleasant surprise in the form of a small match clawback (calculated by a complicated, opaque formula) if you do ever downgrade to a regular Webull account during a time when you’re making frequent IRA contributions.

Webull offers a very high interest rate on uninvested cash (3.35% at the time of last update), and also offers a good balance of advanced charting and trading tools with an easy-to-use mobile interface.

If you’re a day trader or just generally into high-risk, high-potential-reward speculation, Webull will likely appeal to you, with its trading-oriented UX and wide selection of speculative investments. These include dozens of cryptocurrencies (which are no longer sequestered in the Webull Pay sister app) as well as prediction markets on things like stock index movements, crypto prices, and economic events such as Fed decisions.

However, It’s worth mentioning that this kind of short-term betting is generally not recommended as a long-term wealth-building strategy by most financial advisors, and it’s not something we like to encourage here at NerdWallet. But if it’s your thing, and you understand the risks, Webull could be a good choice for you.

The matching program: Acorns offers a 1% match on the first year of IRA contributions for Silver users, and a 3% match on the first year of IRA contributions for Gold users.

Acorns also puts clawback provisions on its matches similar to those imposed by Webull: Users must keep the funds in their IRAs for at least 4 years to keep the match, and downgrading from Gold to Silver during that time will result in the extra match being taken back. Both conditions are imposed on a pro-rata basis, meaning that each deposit has its own 4-year clock.

Acorns’ signature offering is a feature where you can link payment cards to it and have it automatically invest the “spare change” on small purchases. For example, if you spend $5.75 on a latte with a linked card, Acorns will round the purchase up to $6 and invest the extra $0.25 automatically.

The Acorns Earn program also allows users to earn small amounts of cash back on purchases from select retailers. The Earn program is multi-tiered, with Gold users earning higher cash-back rewards. You can put these little round-ups and cash-back rewards in your Acorns IRA, and earn a match on them (provided that the match would be greater than or equal to 1 cent).

The matching program: Stash offers a 3% match on IRA contributions for Stash+ users only, and pays the match on a monthly basis, not for each deposit. As a result, there’s no clawback provision in the terms and conditions if you downgrade to a free account; you’d just stop receiving your monthly match starting that month. However, like the other matching programs described in this article, Stash may claw back your match if you remove money from the account after a certain period of time (less than 4 years in this case).

Like Acorns, Stash offers a round-up feature that automatically invests “spare change” from purchases with a linked payment card. These can be used as IRA contributions and augmented with the 3% match for Stash+ users.

In addition, Stash allows users to transfer money from their checking account to their Stash investment account (or IRA, with match for Stash+ users) like conventional IRAs. Users can transfer a set amount of money on a set schedule, or use the “Smart Stash” feature, which studies their spending patterns and increases the transfer amount during periods when they spend less (or decreases it when they spend more).

Stash offers users a choice of DIY investment selections or automated portfolio management options for taxable brokerage accounts, but it’s DIY-only for IRAs. That’s not a huge drawback considering how many index ETFs and target date funds are available to investors nowadays, though. In fact, Stash’s extra optionality — both in terms of your investment selection, and the ability to choose between making small “spare change” investments and full-size deposits — may make Stash a better choice for investors who want to start saving for retirement and aren’t quite as cash-strapped as Acorns’ target demographic.

Traditionally, IRA accounts offered no matches on contributions; matches were only a feature of employer-sponsored retirement accounts such as 401(k) plans until recently. But 401(k) plans still have several advantages over IRAs, even those with matching programs.

Given these advantages, it might be worth maxing out your 401(k) plan first if one is available to you and you’re able to hit such high maximums. If that’s not feasible, consider contributing at least as much to get the company match, and then look at an IRA with a contribution matching program if you still have extra savings to put away.