I wish I had a nickle for every time someone said that. Makes ya' wonder if the IB reps on Elite Trader report back to their bosses "we don't need to invest in options analysis capabilities because our customers get it for free from TOS and then trade with us." For the original poster, here's a review of online brokers from Barron's magazine: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=270677
Some comparisons between TOS and IB: Fees: ------- IB - Min monthly commissions/data fee (low, but still a cost). Quarterly IRA fee. Order modification fee, which varies depending on what exchange you use. Per contract commission is less. TOS - $15 per strike exercise fee. Data and order mods are free. I get $1.25/option, but I've been with them since before TDA. I've heard it's higher now. Still pretty reasonable if you are trading low volumes I believe. Platform: ----------- IB - Pretty basic. Perfectly fine if you just want to bring up an option chain and place an order. TOS - Nice interface. Good charts. Very easy to place conditional orders (based on other prices or even technical indicators). Nice feature is conditionals can be referenced to the current bid/ask when the condition is hit (rather than a fixed price). You can do conditionals in IB, but not that way (as far as I know). You can also set alerts based on things like technical analysis (even on custom studies). Analysis: ----------- IB - Again, pretty basic. P/L curves for analysis, etc. TOS - P/L charts are pretty nice. "ThinkBack" is pretty cool feature for manual back-testing (historical option data is offered). Pretty slow, though. Automated/API: ------------------ IB - Variety of interfaces. Been around a long time, so there's even a few open source platforms out there. TOS - Prodigio is wretched. You can dump data down to Excel if you want to try and automate there. Customer Service: ----------------------- Only a handful of queries (usually with funding) to IB. Online help has been useful in all of my cases for both TOS and IB. Anyway, a few tidbits of info from my experiences.
I have an account with them and last year I was able to get my commissions lowered to $9.99 + $0.75 per contract. I ended up switching to OptionsHouse for most of my trading, however, since they only charge $8.50 + $0.15 per contract. OptionsHouse passes through a lot more regulatory and exchange fees than TOS does, but their deal is still much better if you trade large size.
Think or Swim is the best platform out there. They've got great charts and its very easy to sign up. I'm also a member of keeneonthemarket.com which I find very helpful in analyzing unusual options activity.
Completely agree - they are the best. For active traders, the difference in commissions will be VERY significant - IB is MUCH cheaper. TOS platform has better tools, but you can use them with paper account (just have to change the userid every 2 months).
TOS is definitely the premier platform out there. It has a very intuitive user interface which as a beginner trader I have come to love.