T. Rowe Price Review

Our Take

T. Rowe Price is best for long-term investors who want support in making portfolio management and investment decisions, including planning for retirement and college. Individual,  tax-advantaged retirement mutual fund accounts are T. Rowe Price’s primary business, but you can open a more traditional brokerage account. Higher net-worth investors preferring a focus on individual stocks or access to separately managed stock accounts may want to look elsewhere. Active traders will definitely look elsewhere as T. Rowe Price has comparatively high trading costs and a platform that will not meet their needs. 

Introduction

T. Rowe Price is a mutual fund company, and its funds and fund customers are its primary focus. While you can open a brokerage account to trade individual securities, the trading functionality—such as order entry and tools like charting—is limited compared to other online brokers.

These limitations, combined with high trading costs and margin rates, place T. Rowe Price at a disadvantage compared to its competitors in the online brokerage space. That said, long-term investors at T. Rowe Price may benefit from knowledgeable and capable investment professionals who can help them with their financial planning needs. We’ll take an in-depth look at T. Rowe Price’s offering and whether it is a good fit for your portfolio.

Pros & Cons

Pros Explained

• Professional advice: T. Rowe Price provides customers with professional advice and investment planning that helps them manage their finances for the long term and adjust for key life events, such as college expenses, buying a home, and retirement.
• Good research and analysis: Solid research and analysis are available to customers through a dedicated T. Rowe Price research department that also performs in-depth analysis for the broker's mutual fund managers.
• Automatic cash sweep account: T. Rowe Price provides an automatic sweep of excess investor cash into multiple money market funds the customer can choose from. This feature helps to increase overall customer returns, but not all online brokers offer cash sweeps or pay interest on cash balances.
• Ability to link outside accounts: T. Rowe Price provides the ability to link outside accounts and sync balance information so that customers have a full picture of their financial health at any given time. 

Cons Explained

• Weak trading platforms and amenities: T. Rowe Price does not have strong trading features on its online or mobile platforms. Functionality for order entry, position management, and charting are all basic compared to other online brokers targeted at investors who actively trade. 
• Relatively high costs, margin rates, and minimums: T. Rowe Price's account service fees, options trading costs, margin rates, and account minimums are relatively high compared to its competitors in the online brokerage space.
• No forex, cryptocurrency, or futures trading: T. Rowe Price does not have as wide a product offering as many competing online brokers. Futures, foreign exchange, and cryptocurrencies are not available for trading at T. Rowe Price. With a primary focus on long-term growth investing, T. Rowe Price does not appear interested in competing in these markets.
• Cumbersome account-opening process: The process for opening an individual account was cumbersome. It required multiple calls, an unnecessary fax, and more time than expected. An options trading agreement had to be sent through the mail, as customer support indicated that there weren’t online, email, or fax options for submitting the form. 
  

Usability

T. Rowe Price's brokerage account doesn't compare favorably with its competitors when it comes to usability. The company has a clunky, two-tier platform for brokerage accounts. Upon logging on, you land on a page that shows mutual fund and brokerage account balances. Choosing the brokerage account opens a new window that reveals your T. Rowe Price brokerage account information through Pershing, its clearing firm. 

Because the landing and brokerage account pages operate under separate systems, and due to differences between stock and mutual fund valuation and settlement, we noticed temporary differences in balances and asset allocation percentages. During our platform testing, the T. Rowe Price mutual fund balances page played catch-up with the real-time account information on the brokerage page.

Overall, the T. Rowe Price platform lacks the intuitive design that most online brokers have prioritized. The menus are not consistent from the log-on screen and the brokerage platform. For example, customizable watch lists are nested in the tools menu, meaning most investors will need to search around rather than accessing these lists as a persistent widget across platforms.

T. Rowe Price offers a web-based platform and a mobile platform, but it does not offer a separate desktop workstation. The website functionality is acceptable, but the web design feels dated. For example, T. Rowe Price mutual fund traders can research investment options across several separate browser tabs, but brokerage account users are more often required to navigate on a single page. It can sometimes be frustrating if your preference is to have multiple tabs open at the same time, such as having your current orders page up while also researching stocks in a separate browser tab. 

Understandably, every action on the mobile app is performed within a single screen. It is easy to navigate back to the initial screen inadvertently and be required to re-establish a connection to the brokerage account.

Trade Experience

The T. Rowe Price trade experience was sufficient for basic orders, but the overall functionality is limited. Neither of the broker’s platforms allows contingent orders for take profits or trailing stops. However, you can’t place a sell stop order in a cash account if you don’t hold the security in the account. In effect, a trader needs first to be filled on a buy order before placing a stop loss order on the position. Other platforms allow a sell stop to be placed more easily.

T. Rowe Price doesn’t allow you to create customized orders using criteria other than price (limit orders), such as volume or percentage moves. While you can open an order ticket from a chart page, it simply pre-populates a ticket order with the symbol. In this case, there is nothing dynamic about the charting, such as showing current orders on the chart or even drawing tools.

Trading in options is also limited, with no ability to enter options strategies that have more than two legs on either platform. Advanced tools for analyzing different options strategies are also absent from T. Rowe Price’s platforms, making it a poor choice for anyone looking to trade options.

Mobile Trade Experience

As with the website, the T. Rowe Price mobile app works for basic orders, but many types of contingent orders and complex options strategies are unavailable. The same limitations of needing to wait for fill before entering a stop loss order exist on the mobile platform.

Also, having to navigate two platforms for mutual fund accounts and brokerage accounts can get a bit confusing on a mobile device. For example, the menus are not consistent, making navigation harder than it ought to be. As with the web platform, multi-leg options strategies and advanced analytics for options are not available on the mobile app, there is no coordination between orders and charts, and your orders can’t be routed.

Range of Offerings

T. Rowe Price has a wide range of product offerings including, of course, its own mutual funds and no-commission ETFs. That said, the company also offers mutual funds from many mutual fund families with thousands of no-load, no-transaction-fee choices, as well as individual stocks, ETFs, and related options. In addition, the broker offers fixed income and certificates of deposit (CDs). T. Rowe Price does not offer futures, cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange trading, or fractional share trading. Customers at T. Rowe Price can only trade international securities listed on U.S.-based exchanges.

Investors using T. Rowe Price can trade the following:

• Stocks (long and short)
• ETFs
• Listed options
• Mutual funds (thousands of funds from T. Rowe Price and hundreds of other fund families)
• Fixed income (U.S. Treasury, corporate debt, municipals, and U.S. agency debt)

Order Types

Basic order types—market, limit, stop, and stop limit orders, including limit fill or kill and limit all or none—are available on the platform. As mentioned, neither the website nor the mobile app supports combining order types to create certain contingent orders, such as adding stops or profit-taking levels when entering a limit order. Trailing stops are not currently available at T. Rowe Price without using telephone support to enter the order for an additional fee. Options orders are limited to just two-leg options strategies. When selling, there is a dropdown list available in the symbol field showing current holdings, but it did not pre-fill the share amount.

Trading Technology

Trading technology at T Rowe Price is weak relative to other online brokerage offerings. Order entry is very basic, with no ability to enter conditional stop or profit-taking orders at the same time. Plus, there is no integration of orders into rudimentary charts, which lack drawing tools. There was no automation, backtesting, order routing control, or support for more than two-legged options positions, such as condor and butterfly strategies.

Costs

Trading costs for traditional brokerage services are relatively high at T. Rowe Price, with high minimum balance requirements and margin rates relative to other online brokers. While stock and ETF trading is commission-free, the company has other charges.

• Stocks and ETFs: No commission fees
• Trade by tele-trader or representative: $9.95 per trade for accounts with at least $250,000; $25 per trade for other accounts; no commission for T. Rowe Price ETFs
• Options: $9.95 plus $1 per contract for customers who qualify for the Summit Program; $19.95 plus $1 per contract for other accounts; $34.95 plus $1 per contract for representative-assisted trades
• Mutual funds (non-T. Rowe Price funds): No charge for no-transaction fee funds; $35 for transaction fee funds
• Short-term trading: Greater of $50 or 1%, not to exceed $250, for non-T. Rowe Price funds that charge fees; no fees for T. Rowe Price funds 

T. Rowe Price Fund Investment Minimums

• Brokerage account: $2,500 initial investment; $100 systematic investment and redemptions
• Brokerage account in the Summit Program: $25,000 initial investment; $1,000 systematic investment and redemptions
• Brokerage IRA account: $1,000 initial investment; $100 systematic investment and redemptions
• Brokerage IRA account in the Summit Program: $25,000 initial investment; $1,000 systematic investment and redemptions
  
  
• Bonds and CDs 
• Treasury Auctions and Treasury Bills: $50
• Agency (FNMA, FHLMC), TIPS, Treasury and coupon notes and bonds, and Treasury 0% coupon bonds: $1 per $1,000 bond
• GNMAs and CMOs: $1 per $1,000 bond (minimum of $25,000)
• Corporate bonds: $5 per $1,000 bond
• Municipal bonds: $5 per $1,000 bond (minimum of $5,000)
• CDs purchased at par ($1,000): Minimums vary by issue
  
  
• Account Maintenance: $30, waived for brokerage customers with $50,000 or more in T. Rowe Price mutual funds or brokerage accounts, who subscribe for paperless statement delivery of T. Rowe Price statements, and who are subject to the $40 cash management service fee
• Margin rates
• Accounts under $10,000: 1.75% over the Pershing base lending rate (PBLR)
• Accounts between $10,000 and $30,000: 1.25% over PBLR
• Accounts between $30,000 and $50,000: 0. 75% over PBLR
• Accounts greater than $50,000: 0.25% over PBLR

How This Broker Makes Money From You and for You

T. Rowe Price is like most modern brokerage firms in that it offers $0 commissions on stock and ETF trading. And, also like others, payment for order flow plays a part. T. Rowe Price’s disclosure about order routing pushes responsibility for order routing to its clearing firm, Pershing.

• Payment for order flow: T. Rowe Price’s SEC-required disclosure of order routing practices shows that the company doesn’t earn money on payment for order flow, a controversial but common practice among brokerage firms. However, Pershing’s SEC disclosure shows that it does take payment for order flow.
• Interest on cash balances: The company automatically sweeps customers’ excess cash into a mutual fund, resulting in customers receiving more interest than those with accounts at companies that don’t pay interest on cash balances or only offer bank rates. Of course, T. Rowe Price benefits by having those assets in their funds, making it a win-win. The current rates are between 2.78% and 4.91% on uninvested cash.

Account and Research Amenities

T. Rowe Price offers a number of amenities, but its suite of services and tools is not particularly impressive. Investors do, however, get access to high-quality T. Rowe Price research when they open an account.

Stock Screener

T. Rowe Price offers a stock screener that is straightforward to use. The stock screener has a variety of predefined screens and an advanced screener that can be used to create a customized search from scratch or via the predefined screen set. The predefined stock searches include value, small cap value, growth, growth at a reasonable price, large cap growth, and high dividend yield. The advanced screener has a variety of filters under multiple categories including market profile and ratings, earnings and dividends, and fundamentals and technicals. The screener is simple compared to the offerings from other online brokers, but it works well.

ETF and Mutual Fund Screeners

The functionality of T. Rowe Price screeners for ETFs and mutual funds is identical to the stock screener, with pre-defined screens specific to each security type. Again, the functionality is simple, but it works well. For ETFs, the predefined screens are no-transaction-fee ETFs, equity funds focusing on value, equity funds focusing on growth, top-performing low-cost stock funds, low-cost bond funds highly rated by Lipper, and general muni bond funds rated highly by Morningstar and with low expenses as rated by Lipper. For ETFs, the advanced screener has various category filters, including profile (net expense ratio, fund classification, asset type, manager tenure, minimum initial investment, and no-transaction-fee ETFs), performance, risk, holdings, analyst ratings, and technicals.

For mutual funds, the predefined screens are no transaction fee, taxable fixed income, global, large cap value, large cap growth, and specialty funds that include alternative asset classes and other strategies.

Options Screener

T. Rowe Price does not offer an options screener.

Fixed Income Screeners

The fixed income screener on the T. Rowe Price website is launched through a pop-up window that provides a basic search with an advanced search also available. The page shows the weekly economic release calendar, a daily market insight report from ICE Data Services, and a yield curve graph showing maturities from one to 15-plus years for U.S. Treasurys, corporate, municipal, and agency debt. The basic screener allows you to choose bond types corresponding to the yield curves, as well as ranges for number of bonds, maturity, coupon, price, and rating. An individual CUSIP number or ticker can also be chosen, as well as the state for municipal bond searches. The screener has a market information section that includes fixed-income news, information about investing in bonds, a market strategist section, and information about tax brackets. 

Charting

Charting features at T. Rowe Price are weak on both the website and the mobile app. Although there is a button on charts to open an order ticket, orders do not appear on the chart, there are no drawing tools, and the studies are rudimentary.

Tools and Calculators

T. Rowe Price’s tools and calculators on the brokerage side are sparse. On the mutual fund side, however, T. Rowe Price offers a number of helpful tools, including a risk profile questionnaire that recommends a portfolio and calculators related to life planning such as retirement, paying for education, and other life events.

Trading Idea Generator

T. Rowe Price does not offer a trading idea generator. The company has robo-investing options for mutual funds, but nothing that suggests specific trade ideas based on a market outlook.

News

T. Rowe Price offers functional news and market information within its research area, with content from Argus, Dow Jones, FactSet, MTNewswires, Market Research Team, Thomson Reuters, and Morningstar. On the website, the filter for the news waterfall is a simple toggle for "all headlines'' or "top headlines," and there is no ability to search news. The website also offers company-specific news when looking at an individual security, but this feature is not present on the mobile app. You can also look for news from before or after market hours on the website, but not the mobile app. There are pages on both platforms for current market conditions, charting, and news. The events section shows upcoming economic releases, earnings releases, dividends, and splits. There is a market movers section on the primary page, and a tab to show how industries and sectors are performing.

Third-Party Research

T. Rowe Price offers its own proprietary research and investment insights for all its clients. This gives you access to daily fund prices, a global markets weekly update, a monthly and quarterly market review, and the T. Rowe Price Insights newsletter. Other options for purchasing premium research were not present, although account holders with assets of at least $250,000 get complimentary access to a Morningstar premium membership and Investor Magazine. Accounts with at least $1 million in assets receive a complimentary subscription to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

Fractional Dividend Reinvestment Program (DRIP)

T. Rowe Price offers a dividend reinvestment program, and it makes fractional share purchases up to the full amount of the dividend.

Cash Management

T. Rowe Price has an automated cash management program for brokerage accounts. The program sweeps into or out of a customer-selected money market mutual fund. Funds are taken out and put back in the sweep account as needed to fund other investment activity in the brokerage account. The program is a nice feature that does not exist among all brokerage companies; some brokers do not offer interest on cash balances as a way to offset the costs of zero-commission trading.

SRI/ESG Research Amenities

T. Rowe Price doesn't offer the ability to screen for socially responsible investing (SRI) or environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) in the screening tool for stocks, ETFs, or mutual funds, although the company does sell funds based on that criteria.

Portfolio Analysis

T. Rowe Price does not offer too much portfolio analysis for individual accounts. You can’t see a chart of your account compared to major indexes, and there are no analytical reports. However, you can see account composition, unrealized and realized gains and losses, and projected cash flows.

With that said, there are tools to analyze and assist with taxes and the balances displayed are all in real time. Additional analysis can be carried out with a little effort using some of the tools and calculators provided by the broker.

Education

The company has a short library of tools and calculators to help customers understand the basics of long-term investing and saving for retirement and college. 

For example, to help new investors arrive at a risk-adjusted, diversified portfolio, T. Rowe Price offers an investment allocation tool that recommends one or a portfolio of T. Rowe Price funds after investors answer questions about their risk preferences and time horizon.

In March 2024, the company introduced a Social Security tool that analyzes an investor’s particular details to recommend the best age to begin receiving Social Security payments to maximize benefits. 

These analysis tools sit alongside company’s integrated research tools that help investors make informed trading decisions.

Customer Service

• Mutual fund customers can reach customer service by phone on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
• Brokerage account customers can reach customer service by phone on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET.
• There are professionals available to place trades via telephone for those willing to pay a commission.
• An online help center provides information including account information, login help, account performance, fees and minimums, transactions, statements, and more.
• There is a general info email, but no live chat or chatbot.

Security and Reliability

T. Rowe Price systems are secure and reliable. 

• Multi-factor authentication is available. 
• There are no reported instances of outages.
• T. Rowe Price has no reported data breaches in the past five years. 
• T. Rowe Price also provides excess Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) insurance through policies purchased through Lloyd’s of London with a per-client limit of $1.9 million on uninvested cash up to an aggregate $1 billion.

Transparency

T. Rowe Price’s online list of commissions, fees, and minimums is generally clear and written in plain English. However, the margin rates listed are based on a premium over the Pershing base lending rate, but the base lending rate is not listed. T. Rowe Price offers commissions-free trading, but rather than disclosing how it earns money on its investor customers, it states that execution is done by Pershing. The company does not clearly outline the risks of margin trading, but it does include a margin disclosure statement on its website, even if it’s hard to find.

Available Account Types

T. Rowe Price has the full range of account types, particularly when it comes to retirement accounts. Account types include:

• Taxable brokerage (held by an individual, jointly, trust, estate, power of attorney, or business)
• Custodial (UTMA/UGMA)
• Traditional IRAs (including inherited traditional IRAs)
• Roth IRAs (including inherited Roth IRAs)
• Simplified employee pension (SEP) IRAs
• SIMPLE IRAs
• Individual and small business 401(k) plans
• 403(b) plans
• Some college savings plans

When it comes to account types, T. Rowe Price actually offers more than what is commonly available at other brokerages.

The Bottom Line

T. Rowe Price has a usable platform for mutual fund investors that sits alongside a generic online brokerage platform. The mutual fund platform provides many helpful financial planning tools for its customers, who also gain access to valuable market research from T. Rowe Price. Still, nice-to-have research likely is not enough to entice pure brokerage customers to consider T. Rowe Price over other online brokers. The brokerage platform lacks many of the features other online brokers offer, and T. Rowe Price's fees and minimums are higher than many of these same competitors. 

Investors primarily utilizing T. Rowe Price for mutual funds may want to add a brokerage account to consolidate all their activity in one place, but those looking for a separate, full-featured brokerage account with robust tools will do better elsewhere.

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