Wealthsimple’s smart order routing gets you best execution on every trade — for zero commission

When you place an equity trade through most platforms in Canada, your order gets sent to that company’s trading desk, where it’s routed to the market to be filled. At Wealthsimple, however, we have a network of five Canadian brokers and three US market makers for self-directed equity trades. We constantly monitor them for execution quality, then route your orders to the best option. And if one broker loses connectivity, we move on to the next, so any new orders aren’t impacted.

This helps us consistently get you “best execution,” a regulatory obligation placed on all brokerages to ensure that client orders obtain the most advantageous terms for them, not for the brokerage handling the trade. What we think makes us so different from the other options out there is that we achieve best execution for much lower fees — and often no fees at all.

Here’s a chart showing just how often we’re able to get you the price you see (or better) when you place a trade. Under the chart we’ve also included explanations for what these categories mean, since some of them get pretty wonky.

Note: numbers reflect our most recent data, as of Q1 2025.

Now here’s what those terms actually mean:

Executing brokers

We spread your orders across multiple executing brokers, the people in the middle of a transaction who buy and sell securities to and from stock exchanges and individual investors for every trade. Equity trades have access to as many as seven brokers, crypto uses up to 12, and options currently use two, with a third being added by the end of 2025. This system ensures that, if one broker goes down, any new orders are unaffected (although an order in progress would be affected until connectivity was restored). 

Our unique setup also allows us to compare execution quality among our brokers. If one is underperforming in terms of price, speed, or volume, we shift orders away from them. If necessary, we find a new broker.

Shares executed at the current market quote or better

As a retail trader, you are quoted a specific price, called the National Bid and Best Offer (NBBO), when you place an order. The brokers executing your trade will almost always get you the quoted price or better so long as your order is marketable (can execute right away) and the security you’re trading is liquid (i.e., there’s enough volume at the NBBO to fulfill your order without trading through additional price levels). Price volatility can also come into play since, if the price is moving quickly enough, it can change before you’d had a chance to submit your order.

Often, brokers will try to get you a better price than what is quoted by sweeping dark markets in Canada or internalizing the order (executing it using the broker’s own inventory) in the U.S. That is why you sometimes see “Price Improvement” on your orders. That Price Improvement is the amount you received that was better than what was quoted at the time the order was sent.

You’ll notice that the stats for Canadian execution quality trail the ones for the U.S. That’s common among all Canadian brokerages, and it happens because, even though the Canadian and U.S. market structures are different, they are evaluated using the same criteria. Which doesn’t really work. We’ve teamed up with our data provider to improve things, but in the meantime, we think it’s important that traders understand how their orders are analyzed and why that method results in the numbers that it does.

The explanation can get complicated, so here’s an overly simplified version (using a fruit metaphor!): in Canada, not all order types (e.g., odd lots) can be executed on all exchanges. Here’s where the fruit comes in. Instead of stocks, let’s say you want to buy seven oranges. 

In one scenario, you go to the fruit market and see a sale: $0.75 each. But they only have four oranges left! You get those, then head to the grocery store, which sells oranges for $0.85 each, to buy the other three. When those purchases are run through data analytics, the data shows that you weren’t able to get seven oranges at the lowest price — even though in this case there was never anyone selling that many oranges at that price, and you got them at the best price possible. In another possible scenario, the market is selling oranges for $0.75 each, but they’re only available in bags of 50. You only need seven, so you go to another store that sells individual oranges for $0.80 each. That lower price was never accessible to you, as a seven-orange buyer. But current data analytics do not reflect that.

Best execution

This is an industry term with a specific legal meaning that is required of all Canadian brokerages. We obtain the best execution terms that are reasonably available under the circumstances. To do that, we consider several factors, including: ​ 

These factors are considered in light of market conditions. That means that, as we mentioned above, if you’re talking about infrequently traded securities with low liquidity, those trades are at the mercy of the market. Since there aren’t many buyers or sellers, these trades can take longer to execute. With market orders, clients may get pricing that deviates from expectations, which is less likely for liquid securities.

Additionally, our execution quality statistics are reviewed on a regular basis, by a committee, to ensure that there is proper oversight and governance, and to comply with regulatory requirements.

Smart order routing

The brokers and market makers we work with often use smart order routers, or SORs, which automate the process of finding the best market to make a trade on. Whether our brokers and market makers use SORs or not, we monitor them to make sure every one of your trades gets high-quality execution.

CIRO regulation

As a Canadian trading platform, we are regulated by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) just like IBKR, Questrade, TD Direct, and any other platform operating in Canada. We adhere to the same standards and execution expectations as everyone else.

We also know that fees are important to traders, and we’re proud to have the lowest fees in Canada — and often no fees at all. Here’s how we stack up against the competition.

Trading Fees in Canada

Here’s what we mean by each of these fee types.

No commissions

There’s not much more to say here. We’d rather you save that money — as much as $9.99/trade with the other guys — and put it toward your own wealth instead of ours.

No spreads

When you trade equities with us, we don’t add any charges to your order. If you are trading USD equities from a CAD account, you will be subject to an FX fee (which would include our corporate exchange rate), but on every order, the executed price is always the price you pay/get. Wealthsimple does not apply any fees, commissions, or spreads to your order. So your all-in cost to trade is lower than brokerages that charge fees or commissions.

No regulatory fees

We actually absorb the Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory fees we sometimes get charged executing your trades — just for you. (And anybody else who trades with us, but you are still very special.)

No ECN fees

Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs) are digital platforms that connect buyers and sellers. They charge fees to the brokers who use them, typically when an order is removing liquidity from the market (i.e., an order that can be filled right away, like if you were to place a buy order on a stock that already had an existing sell offer in the market). Although these fees are usually a fraction of a cent per share, they can add up for daily traders. Which is why we don’t pass them on to you.

Minimum account balance fees

Start trading with less than $1 if you want. Makes no difference to us.

Maintenance fees

We don’t charge them. It doesn’t matter what your account balance is, how many trades you make a month, how old you are, what accounts you trade out of, or whether you choose Drake or Kendrick — we’re not going to use that information to sneak in extra fees.

Transfer fees

Your money is your money. That’s why we don’t charge you to move money into or out of Wealthsimple. And to make things even easier on you, if you transfer $25K or more to us at one time, we’ll reimburse any transfer-out fees your old institution charges.