Scottrade is 7 bucks per trade, and comes with very good customer service and branches all over the country. There are some online brokers who offer free trades. In fact, there is no such a thing as "free". They all have caveats (e.g. minimum 25,000 balance). But having said that, if you are willing to meet the minimum balance, then they could your best bet. You could be trading for free. There are some brokers (e.g. Ameritrade) who offer teaser rates (e.g. 1 month free, first 100 trades free, etc) but do not offer competitive trading rates. I would not be attracted with those freebies because finally I would end up paying even more. Many online brokers charge account transfer fee of upto $250 if you want to transfer to some other brokers. So, you also do not want to constantly open and close your accounts. One of the cheapest brokers I have seen is sogotrade.com. Its website is not bad at all, offers $3/trade, also gives some promotional freebies. I see two choices for you - scottrade or sogotrade.