When choosing between cryptocurrency trading platforms that are as popular as they are user-friendly, Coinbase and Robinhood often stand out from the crowd. With their focus on making trading accessible for everyone, these platforms have made it possible for beginners and seasoned traders to benefit from their modern interface and easy-to-use solutions alike.
But seeing that the difference between Coinbase and Robinhood is not that easy to spot, choosing one option can be more complex than it should be. With that being said, once you have the required information in front of you, you may confidently make a choice that suits all your needs.
To help you through this learning curve, here’s a detailed comparison of Coinbase vs Robinhood that covers aspects ranging from their credibility to their pricing models.
⌛ Reputation and Time in Business
Coinbase was founded in 2012 as a cryptocurrency exchange that bought and sold Bitcoin. Since the platform established its hold during the early years of cryptocurrency trading, it has become one of the most well-known institutions in the digital asset industry.
By using its time and experience in the cryptocurrency sector, the exchange currently holds licenses to provide its services in every U.S. territory except for Hawaii.
Besides these states, Coinbase also offers its solutions in international territories such as Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the U.K. Apart from these countries, it also serves a host of jurisdictions in Europe.
Over the years, Coinbase has come under fire for a variety of cryptocurrency trading practices. One such notable instance in the recent past related to a legal action threat from the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). During that scenario, the SEC threatened to sue Coinbase over one of its lending products.
With that being said, Coinbase still maintains a renowned stature in the cryptocurrency segment. According to real-time market reports, it is one of the top worldwide exchanges by liquidity.
When it comes to the difference between Coinbase and Robinhood in terms of their tenure, it is important to note that Robinhood wasn’t always dealing in cryptocurrencies. In fact, when the platform launched in 2013, it only traded in traditional assets such as stocks.
It wasn’t until 2018 that Robinhood introduced cryptocurrency trading through its platform. But even then, you could not transfer cryptocurrency from your Robinhood account to any other wallet. In fact, the company did not start the test rollout for Robinhood Wallet until January 2022.
Robinhood offers its services in all U.S. territories except for Hawaii and Nevada. Despite the option to use an active Robinhood account in almost every country of the world, Robinhood is only available to U.S. citizens. This means that if you want to utilize the platform’s services from outside the U.S. without holding a U.S. passport, you would not be able to use its solutions.
Besides this glaring distinction in the comparison of Coinbase vs Robinhood, Robinhood holds similarities with its competitor in terms of running into legal troubles over the years. In 2021, Robinhood was fined $70 million for misleading customers. But similar to many other cryptocurrency platforms, that hasn’t stopped it from still operating as a popular option for trading digital assets.
However, since Robinhood has not allowed a large-scale rollout of a wallet service, the inability for every user to send and receive digital assets between different exchanges makes it trail behind many competitors in terms of liquidity. This acts as a major drawback for various cryptocurrency traders. It also creates hesitancy in anyone who wants the freedom to move their assets to another wallet without having to wait for an extensive rollout program.
🤖 Trading Bot Support via API
This is one of the major aspects where the Coinbase vs Robinhood difference becomes glaringly evident. Where Coinbase offers full trading bot support through its Coinbase Pro platform, Robinhood only lets you use its own automated cryptocurrency bots on its solution.
This means that after creating a Coinbase account, you can use the same email address to register a Coinbase Pro profile. This latter account lets you link to a host of third-party trading bots through application programming interface (API) keys. This brings significant flexibility to your trading activities and allows you to benefit from a plethora of trading bot solutions.
But if you want to reap the rewards of automated crypto trading through Robinhood, the platform’s internal trading mechanism is your only option. While it still provides you with a way to automate your trading, it is not a flexible method and certainly not full of as many features as you can utilize through a third-party app that is built for this purpose.
This makes the difference between Coinbase and Robinhood clear as day for those traders who want more control over their cryptocurrency trading and the ability to use conventional trading tools.
⚙️ Trading Modes and Features
When it comes to trading modes and features, Coinbase and its variation of Coinbase Pro win by a large margin against Robinhood. This is mostly due to Coinbase Pro, which brings a host of popular features to the table.
On the other hand, Robinhood only offers basic crypto trading mechanisms that are available in Coinbase but run short of what Coinbase Pro brings to the table. This makes it lose this round to Coinbase’s offerings.
In order to see a side-by-side comparison of Coinbase vs Robinhood, you can take a look at the following list of features.
Coinbase Trading Modes and Features
- Market Order
- Limit Order
- Stop-limit Order
- Trading Bot Support
- Mobile Apps
Robinhood Trading Modes and Features
- Market Orders
- Limit Orders
- Platform-Run Trading Bots
- Mobile Apps
It is important to note that even though Coinbase Pro offers more features than Robinhood, it still lags behind exchanges such as Binance or Kraken that equip you with more trading or purpose-built features such as margin trading. Due to this reason, it is important that you move forward with comparing these features with other popular exchanges in order to make an informed decision.
🦾 In-house Automated Trading
This is where another major difference between Coinbase and Robinhood makes itself known. It’s because in-house automated trading is not an option with Coinbase and Coinbase Pro. But it is one of Robinhood’s prime offerings.
This option is better for those traders who don’t want to go through the steps of setting up a third-party trading bot solution, but who don’t mind giving away their flexibility in return either.
However, if you don’t want to give up your long-term control in exchange for short-term convenience, this option is not for you. In that case, Coinbase would prove to be a better option for you.
💸 Trading and Withdrawal Fees
The trading and withdrawal fees for Coinbase and Robinhood work a bit differently. Here is an overview of charges for both of these platforms.
Coinbase Fees
Trading Fee: On Coinbase, your trading fees vary and depend upon a variety of factors. This makes it difficult to determine what type of charges you will have to pay until you are about to make a trade.
On Coinbase Pro, the trading fee ranges on a maker-taker model, which starts from 0.40 percent per trade for market makers and 0.60 percent per trade for market takers. The higher your trading volume, the lower the fee.
Deposit and Withdrawal Fee: Deposit and withdrawal fees depend upon the method that you are using. These fees are free for ACH transfers and have some charges for credit cards as well as other transaction methods.
Robinhood Fees
Trading Fee: Robinhood has 0 percent fees for the buying and selling of cryptocurrency. This makes it stand apart from other exchanges such as Coinbase.
Deposit and Withdrawal Fee: Robinhood doesn’t have any charges for deposit and withdrawal fees. But there are some charges for transaction fees.
This makes the difference between Coinbase vs Robinhood quite glaring. But if you are moving forward with the intention of paying little to no fees, Robinhood is the better option with a certain compromise on the features that you can utilize.
📊 Trading Pairs and Volumes
The trading pairs do not pose a significant difference between Coinbase and Robinhood. Where Coinbase currently offers 8 different cryptocurrencies, Robinhood supports a total of 7 different cryptocurrencies.
Coinbase
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Avalanche (AVAX)
- Solana (SOL)
- Cardano (ADA)
- USD Coin (USDC)
- Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Polygon (MATIC)
- Tether (USDT)
Robinhood
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Bitcoin SV (BSV)
- Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Ethereum Classic (ETC)
- Litecoin (LTC)
The most glaring difference here is that Coinbase lets you hold stablecoins such as USDC in your wallet, while you don’t get the same option with Robinhood. In terms of long-term investment approach, this makes Coinbase leave Robinhood in the dust but with very little distinction.
👩💻 Customer Support
Coinbase’s customer support has become known as one of the best in the cryptocurrency industry. Whereas, Robinhood’s customer support leaves some room for improvement.
Coinbase
- Live Phone Support (24/7 except for the U.K. and Ireland)
- Live Chat
Robinhood
- Live Phone Support (24/7 in the U.S.)
This makes both platforms almost stay on par with each other. But for those customers who want a rapid texting option, Coinbase stands out with the live chat offering.
👍 Pros and Cons of Each Exchange
Both Coinbase and Robinhood bring their own pros and cons to the table. These include the following aspects.
Coinbase
Pros
- User-friendly
- Availability of Coinbase Pro and extensive features
- International outreach
- Trading bot support
Cons
- High trading fees
- Switching between Coinbase and Coinbase Pro can get frustrating
Robinhood
Pros
- Easy to use interface
- Straightforward trading options
- No trading fees
- Built-in trading bots
Cons
- Not available to non-U.S. citizens
- No support for external trading bots
After taking a detailed view of these features, you can easily determine whether it will do you good to select Coinbase or Robinhood as your primary trading platform.
📢 Conclusion
Coinbase is a fully-fledged cryptocurrency exchange that is laden with conventional trading features in an intuitive interface. On the other hand, Robinhood is a niche trading platform that gives you the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with limited features. While the former comes with support for external trading bots, the latter comes with reduced fees.
In order to make an informed decision, you can study all of these factors and then determine which platform is more suitable for you. This allows you to move forward with your trading activities after considering all options at hand.