Best Online Brokers for Dividend Investing and Reinvestment

Below you’ll find a table with the best online brokers for dividend reinvestment and fractional shares. I’ve created this list as a way to document how each online broker handles dividend reinvestment. 

After more than 25 years of dividend investing, I’ve used several brokers and dividend reinvestment plans. My personal favorites are the ones that make it easy to automate the reinvestment into the most undervalued stocks. I call this the portfolio reinvestment strategy. 

Some online brokers have more flexibility to include the ability to select which individual stock you’d like to reinvest dividends into and those which you want to pool the dividends. 

My favorites let you automatically direct dividend reinvestment to your ideal portfolio allocation. 

Best Online Brokers for Dividend Reinvestment and Investing

Here’s a list of the best online brokers for dividend reinvestment, popular with dividend growth investors. 

BROKER	BROKER DESCRIPTION	Fractional Shares?	DIVIDEND REINVESTMENT	LEARN MORE
	Excellent platform designed to empower intermediate investors Fractional shares and gifting primary features of the platform Extensive portfolio sharing, commenting, and collaboration built-in	Yes	Yes. Dividend reinvestment is available on all equity securities held at Public.	Learn More→
	The original commission-free mobile investment platform Disruptive business model changed entire industry for the better Recently added fractional share feature to platform	Yes	Yes. DRIP fractional shares back into the same stock or ETF.	Learn More→
	All-around top online broker for individuals and employers Build portfolio one stock or ETF at a time Powerful online platform and smartphone app	Yes	Yes. Online selection of individual stocks for reinvestment, or pool dividends.	Learn More→
	Biggest mutual fund company in the world Invented index investing revolutionizing investing Popular broker in the FIRE community	Yes	Yes. Online selection of individual stocks for reinvestment, or pool dividends.	Learn More→
	Pioneering broker, one of the largest in the industry Wide range of investment options including ETFs and index funds Will acquire TD Ameritrade in 2020	Yes	Yes. Online selection of individual stocks for reinvestment, or pool dividends.	Learn More→
	Fast-growing, designed for traders but expanded for beginners Robust trading dashboard for stocks and options Part of Ally Bank, global customer-centric banking institution	Yes	Yes. Online selection of individual stocks for reinvestment, or pool dividends.	Learn More→
	One of the first online brokers Robust platform for retail investors Flexible dividend reinvestment	Yes	Yes. Online selection of individual stocks for reinvestment, or pool dividends. $5 stock price minimum.	Learn More→
M1 Finance	Create portfolio first, then dollar cost average into your "pies". Similar traditional DRIPs, but for your entire portfolio.	Yes	Yes, built into the platform. Automatically pools dividends and reinvests into undervalued 'slices'.	Learn More→

Note: Bold links indicate affiliate links from our partners included in the best brokers for dividend reinvestment list.  

What is Dividend Reinvestment?

Dividends are payments made to shareholders of a stock. The payments generally come out of the company’s quarterly profit and lower the stock price by the amount of the dividend. The price change occurs on the ex-dividend date. 

Investors can receive dividends a few different ways:

• Into the brokerage cash account – Most common
• ACH to a bank account
• Check – More typical for direct stock purchase plans (DSPPs/traditional DRIPs)

For years, the term dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP) was reserved for direct individual stock ownership (owned through the company, managed by the transfer agent (e.g., Computershare), not a broker.

However, nowadays, many of the brokers are calling the reinvestment option a dividend reinvestment plan. 

Dividend reinvestment describes what is done with the payment instead of using it for spending. Reinvestment usually refers to buying more stock of the company that paid the dividend. But that’s only one dividend reinvestment strategy. 

Three Dividend Reinvestment Strategies

There are three dividend reinvestment strategies: individual stock reinvestment, pool and deploy, and portfolio reinvestment. 

Individual Stock Reinvestment

Reinvestment into the same stock that pays a dividend is what most people think of when they here dividend reinvestment. This option seems to be most attractive because long-term stock returns are usually quoted with dividends reinvested along the way. 

However, reinvesting into the same stocks is the worst of the three strategies. That’s because doing so ignores the current valuation of the stock. You may be overpaying, thus, not optimizing your reinvestment strategy. 

Plus, not all brokers allow fractional shares. Therefore, you must own enough shares to pay a dividend large enough to buy one share. 

Nonetheless, many stockbrokers give investors the option to reinvest into the dividend-paying stock. See the table below for a list of brokers that allow dividend reinvestment. 

Investors may benefit from utilizing a dividend stock newsletter to construct a portfolio. 

Pool and deploy

The pooling dividend strategy is when the investor receives dividends and lets them accumulate in a brokerage cash account before deploying to new investments. The investor then purchases the most undervalued stock on their buy list. 

Most serious dividend investors prefer this method instead of buying an individual stock every quarter. 

Set an investment minimum (e.g., $1,000), then wait for that much cash to accumulate before making your next investment. Or supplement the investment minimum with a cash infusion. 

Now that most online brokers are commission-free, you can lower the minimum without worrying about trading fees. 

Portfolio Reinvestment 

The portfolio reinvestment strategy is a good strategy for dividend reinvestment.

With this strategy, you create your ideal dividend stock portfolio. Then the specific allocation directs where to invest the dividends automatically. 

Instead of reinvesting the dividend directly into the stock that paid the dividend, or pooling dividends before deploying, the platform reinvests the dividends into the most undervalued stocks in your portfolio. Thus, it automatically balances your portfolio to your set allocation percentages. 

Let’s say you own four stocks and want each to be 25% of your portfolio (or pie, if you’re using M1 Finance). If the stock price of on stock increases to be 28% of the portfolio, and another decreases to 22%, the M1 Finance platform will reinvest the dividends into the 22% stock.

You must monitor each stock to make sure you want to hold it long-term. 

With that, here is the table of brokers. Scroll right on mobile. You’ll find more details about each dividend reinvestment policy after the table. 

Dividend Reinvestment at Various Brokers

Public

Public offers fractional shares and dividend reinvestment. Public is a social investing platform, on which you can discuss stock purchases with your peers. They’ve added alternative assets and easy access to bonds. 

As the company continues to innovate and grow, Public has become a leader in the fintech brokerage space. 

Fidelity

Many investors open their first account with Fidelity through their employer 401(k). That’s because Fidelity is the leading administrator for employer-sponsored retirement plans.

But Fidelity is also one of the best online brokers for dividend investing. I’ve chosen Fidelity as my primary broker because my employer-sponsored retirement accounts are already there. 

And I’ve been delighted with the platform. 

My preference is to pool dividends and invest in undervalued stocks when my cash account gets large enough. However, Fidelity has an excellent dividend reinvestment interface. 

Fidelity does offer fraction shares. However, if you want to sell fractional shares, you must liquidate your entire holding. 

While logged in, go to Accounts & Trade/Account Features/Brokerage & Trading/Dividends and Capital Gains to adjust. Choose “Reinvest in Security” or “Deposit to Core Account.” Learn more here.

Here’s what it looks like:

Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab is one of the largest and most powerful online brokers for stock and mutual fund investing. It recently eliminated all stock trading commissions, which caused a cascade in the industry. Almost all online brokers eliminated commissions on stocks. 

Doing so devalued many of its competitors. Schwab is expected to complete the acquisition of TD Ameritrade sometime in 2020.

Charles Schwab offers dividend reinvestment to its customers. You can select which stocks you want to enable dividend reinvestment on the platform.

The company recently announced it plans to offer fractional trading, further expanding the dividend reinvestment capability. Learn more here. 

Vanguard

Vanguard is the biggest mutual fund company based on assets under management. It’s extremely popular among the FIRE community because of its low-cost index funds, which the company invented in the 1970s.

They offer dividend reinvestment for stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs. You can pool dividends or reinvest per holding. Vanguard calculates fractional shares to three decimal points.

Ally Invest

Ally Invest offers a dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP) for all customers. You can either request that all eligible securities get enrolled for dividend reinvestment or individual stocks. Ally Invest is a commission-free broker. There is no cost to the DRIP plan. 

Only stocks priced at $4 and above are eligible. 

To enroll, go to Ally Invest Live. Then select the gear icon and choose All Settings. The dividend reinvestment toggle is at the bottom of the screen. 

Craig Stephens

Craig is a former IT professional who left his 19-year career to be a full-time finance writer. A DIY investor since 1995, he started Retire Before Dad in 2013 as a creative outlet to share his investment portfolios. Craig studied Finance at Michigan State University and lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and three children. Read more.