How to Develop a Mobile App like Robinhood

Launched in March 2015, Robinhood’s mobile app pioneered zero-commission trading and removed the barrier for beginners. Since then, stock apps like Robinhood, e.g., Charles Schwab, E-Trade, Interactive Brokers, Merrill, and others, have attracted millions of users. The COVID-19 pandemic only reinforced their advantages.

2020 saw increased demand for online trading solutions and record growth of trading apps like Robinhood. Such apps appeal to lots of users because they facilitate investing for people with no economic background or prior experience and at minimum cost.

The Robinhood business model is also one of its success factors — after all, the app is free to download, allowing investors to start immediately. There are no fees or commissions for selling or buying stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency, no annual, monthly, inactivity, or ACH transfer fees.

So how and why is Robinhood free? It has to do with some idealism on the side of Robinhood founders: they wanted to ‘unlock the micro-investor market’ and ‘democratize’ the world of finance for all. This unique value proposition helped attract the first adopters quickly.

Moreover, Robinhood is not entirely free. The Robinhood revenue model is freemium, so users also may purchase a variety of additional services to boost their trading capabilities.

For a flat monthly fee of $5, Gold members enjoy extended trading hours, access to in-depth research from Morningstar on over 1.7k stocks and Level 2 market data powered by NASDAQ TotalView, and extra buying power because of the ability to borrow money when they wish to purchase stocks.

Core functionalities of the Robinhood-like trading app may comprise:

• Check-in process;
• User profile;
• Dashboard;
• Portfolio;
• Real-time market data;
• Watchlist;
• Stock trading functionality;
• Notifications;
• Fund transfer functionality and deposits;
• Newsfeed, etc.

It is not nearly all that is possible to say about stock apps like Robinhood and way too little information if you plan on building some similar app — but we’ve got you covered. Visit our blog, where we prepared an extended material on The Principles and Cost of Making Trading Apps Like Robinhood with some valuable tips on functionalities, features, UI/UX principles, revenue model, and costs of Robinhood-like trading app development.