Best tokenized stock platforms in 2026, honestly compared

The best tokenized stock platforms in 2026 fall into two groups: venues where you trade, and issuers who create the tokens. Arcus is the only one here that runs 24/7 spot stock tokens and perpetual futures side by side. Ostium and Hyperliquid are perps venues.

Backed is an issuer. None of them makes you a shareholder.

Before the comparison, the disclosure that should come first. Arcus runs a referral programme that pays a share of net trading fees, and the Arcus links on this page carry our code. Ostium, Hyperliquid and Backed pay this site nothing, and we have no commercial relationship with any of them. Arcus is listed first because of what it does, and you should read the reasoning and decide whether you agree with it rather than taking the order on trust.

A second note on numbers. The Arcus fee figures below come from Arcus’ own blog and help centre. We have deliberately not published fee numbers for the other platforms, because we have not verified them against primary documentation and a wrong fee table is worse than none. Read each platform’s own fee page.

How we are comparing them

Four questions, in order of how much they matter.

Can you open an account at all. Most English-language readers are in the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada, and that rules Arcus out entirely.

What do you actually own. A spot token backed by a share in custody is a different instrument from a contract settled in stablecoins.

What does holding it cost. Entry and exit spreads for spot, funding for perps, gas on every chain transaction.

What happens when it goes wrong. Audits, custody structure, insurance funds, and whether reserves are attested by a named third party rather than merely promised.

Arcus

Arcus is a self-custodial DEX on Robinhood Chain, built by the team that built dYdX, with Robinhood Crypto as a strategic investor. It is not a dYdX rebrand and it is not owned by Robinhood, which describes itself as an independent DEX. Our full explainer has the corporate detail.

The case for putting it first is narrow and specific.

It is the only venue in this comparison that runs both sides. Spot Stock Tokens are quoted through a request-for-quote system where market makers compete to fill you, and perpetual futures run on a separate central limit order book. Arcus published its reasoning for that split design on its own blog. Everywhere else, you pick spot or perps and accept a second account for the other.

The spot fee is 0%. Arcus charges no exchange fee on Stock Tokens. The cost moves into the RFQ quote and the spread, which widens outside US market hours, and you still pay gas in ETH. That is a genuine structural difference rather than a promotion, though the perps beta discounts around it are explicitly temporary.

It is self-custodial. Arcus says it never holds your funds or keys. Spot settles wallet to wallet on-chain, and perps collateral sits in Robinhood Chain contracts that move only under user-authorised conditions. Onboarding uses Privy embedded wallets with email or social login and no seed phrase step, which removes most of the friction that usually comes with self-custody.

The market list is broad for a venue this young. The Block reported more than 190 stock tokens on 1 October 2026, alongside RWA perps covering indices, commodities based on ETFs rather than futures, and crypto.

Now the case against, which is substantial.

It blocks the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. For most readers of this page, that ends the discussion. Perps also need an invite code, minted at one per $1 million of qualifying volume from you or your direct referrals, non-transferable and impossible to buy legitimately.

The beta fee schedule is temporary by Arcus’ own wording. Proof of reserves is aspirational: reserves are described as intended to be publicly attestable, with no attestor, cadence or link published. And the volume figures do not reconcile across sources, which our review sets out in full.

Perps taker fees start at 0.045% at the base tier, halved to 0.0225% for the duration of beta, falling across six volume tiers. Maker fees are zero for tiers 0 to 4 during beta. Both schedules are beta rates and Arcus says so. The fees page has the complete table and the costs that sit outside it.

Ostium

Ostium is a real-world-asset perpetuals DEX on Arbitrum. It covers equities, indices, commodities, forex and crypto, it is self-custodial, and it takes USDC as collateral.

The reasons to look at it are the breadth of non-crypto markets and the fact that it has been running on Arbitrum, a mature chain with deep bridging options, rather than a network that launched in 2026. Its documentation describes pricing and liquidity drawn from underlying markets, and it uses rollover fees rather than a conventional crypto funding mechanism.

The limits are the same ones every perps venue has. You own a contract, not a share. There is no spot token to hold, so there is nothing to keep if you stop trading. And it applies its own jurisdiction restrictions, which you should check on its own site rather than here, because those change.

We have not verified Ostium’s current fee schedule, leverage caps or restricted-country list, so we are not publishing numbers for any of them.

Hyperliquid, with xStocks and HIP-3 perps

Hyperliquid is a perps-focused layer 1 that reaches tokenized equities from two directions.

It hosts xStocks spot markets, so Backed’s tokens can be bought and sold there. And through HIP-3 it lets third-party builders deploy their own perpetual markets on Hyperliquid’s matching engine and settlement layer, including equity and index perps. Nansen’s explainer describes HIP-3 as going live on mainnet in October 2025, with deployers able to set their own margining, order books and collateral choice.

The attraction is liquidity. Hyperliquid’s order books are among the deepest in perps, and a builder-deployed equity market inherits that infrastructure rather than bootstrapping its own.

The complication is that “Hyperliquid” is not one product with one set of terms. A HIP-3 market is operated by its deployer, with that deployer’s parameters and that deployer’s risk. Due diligence is per market rather than per venue, which is more work than it sounds. We have not verified individual deployers’ fees, leverage or oracle arrangements, so none are quoted here.

Backed and xStocks, an issuer rather than a venue

Backed Finance issues xStocks. It is not a place to trade, which is why comparing it against Arcus on fees makes no sense.

What Backed does is the hard part of tokenization. Its documentation says each xStock is collateralised on a one to one basis, that the underlying securities are held with regulated custodians under a bankruptcy-remote structure in segregated accounts, and that proof of reserves information is available through its own DeFi portal. That last point is a real difference from venues where attestation is only an intention.

Dividends are handled by reinvesting into additional units of the same asset, so a holder’s balance grows rather than receiving cash. The tokens do not convey shareholder rights such as voting. Retail redemption is possible but set at a $5,000 minimum, with most users trading on secondary markets instead. Secondary trading is 24/7 while issuance and redemption run 24/5, aligned with the underlying market.

The tokens are not marketed, offered or solicited in the United States or in jurisdictions where that is prohibited. Ondo and Swarm occupy similar ground as issuers.

Side by side

	Arcus	Ostium	Hyperliquid	Backed (xStocks)
Type	DEX, spot plus perps	Perps DEX	Perps L1 plus xStocks spot	Token issuer
Spot stock tokens	Yes, 0% Arcus fee in beta	No	Yes, xStocks markets	Issues them
Stock perps	Yes, up to 50x	Yes	Yes, via HIP-3 deployers	No
Chain	Robinhood Chain	Arbitrum	Hyperliquid L1	Multiple
Collateral	USDG, Stock Tokens	USDC	Set per market	Not applicable
Custody	Self-custodial	Self-custodial	Self-custodial	Regulated custodians
Blocks US, UK, Canada	Yes, all three	Check their site	Check their site	Not offered in the US
Pays this site	Yes, referral programme	No	No	No

Everything in the Arcus column traces to Arcus’ own documentation or to The Block. The other columns are deliberately light on numbers for the reason given at the top.

What to do with this

If you are in the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada, none of this is a route in. Read Arcus alternatives and then consider whether a regulated broker with fractional shares does what you actually want, with investor protections attached.

If you are eligible and you want spot exposure you can hold, a 0% spot fee on a venue that also runs perps is a real advantage, and Arcus is where that combination exists today. Read the Stock Tokens page first so you are clear that you are buying an issuer’s instrument, not a share.

If you only want leveraged trading, compare Arcus against Ostium and Hyperliquid on the markets you actually trade, and remember the invite code gate on Arcus perps. The perp fee and liquidation calculator will show you what a position costs before you open one.

Leveraged positions can be liquidated and most leveraged traders lose money. Stock Tokens are not shares: no voting rights, no dividend claim as such, and the price can diverge from the underlying. Nothing on this site is financial advice.

Related: how Arcus fees work, whether Arcus is legit, stock perps compared with tokenized stocks and the glossary.