Robinhood became the default first brokerage for millions. Then it made leaving feel expensive.
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✦ The bottom line
Anyone can offer free trades now — Schwab, Fidelity, everyone copied it. Robinhood's real moat is 27 million Funded Customers who keep more of their financial lives on the app every year, and $322B in assets now sitting on the platform. Money that's already there tends to stay there.
↓ the brief below
✦ Teach me
Why customers stay
Robinhood started as a free-trading app. But the strategy is to become a customer's whole financial life: retirement accounts (with a match), a cash card, Robinhood Gold (a paid subscription with perks), crypto, and more. The more of your money and accounts live there, the more annoying it is to leave.
The clearest evidence this is working: Net Deposits — new money customers move onto the platform — were $68 billion in 2025. People aren't just signing up; they're funding.
Wall Street calls this
Switching costs + platform stickiness
A brokerage's strength isn't trades — it's *assets that stay put*. Once your retirement account, your match, and your direct deposit are on a platform, switching means paperwork most people never do. That inertia is the moat.
Total Platform Assets · fiscal year 2025
$322
B
Customer assets held on the platform at year-end 2025 — up from $192.9B a year earlier, a +67% jump driven by both new deposits and rising markets.
Assets on the platform show customers trust Robinhood with their money. But the deepest kind of loyalty is when a customer pays a recurring fee to stay. That's a subscription — predictable, high-margin revenue that doesn't depend on whether anyone trades that month. Robinhood Gold is exactly that, and it's growing fast.
Robinhood Gold subscribers · fiscal year 2025
4.18
M
Paying Gold subscribers at year-end 2025, up from 2.64M — +58%. A recurring-revenue base that steadies the cyclical trading business beneath it.
Real stickiness building — $322B in assets, 4.2M paying subscribers. But 'free trading' is now table stakes, and giants like Schwab and Fidelity have deeper pockets.