If you hold investments at more than one Canadian brokerage, the daily question stops being "which broker should I pick?" and becomes "which of my brokers actually shows up properly when I connect it to an app?" That is a different question, and the answer reorders the usual rankings.
This is a comparison of the three big self-directed brokerages Canadians ask about most — Wealthsimple, Questrade, and Interactive Brokers (IBKR) Canada — judged on one axis only: how well each one behaves when you connect it to an aggregator. Not fees, not the trading interface, not research tools. Connection quality, holdings depth, transaction history, options, USD sub-accounts, FHSA visibility, and the awkward edge cases.
Disclosure: I built Mozaic, a calm net-worth app that connects to Canadian and US brokerages through SnapTrade and to banks through Plaid. I use SnapTrade every day, so I know its sharp edges. I've tried to describe what's true regardless of which app you choose, and to be honest about where my own app still falls short. If you want the mechanics of consolidating multiple brokers — currencies, adjusted cost base, tax slips — that's a separate guide: how to track multiple brokerage accounts in one place. This post is about the brokers themselves.
The short version
If you want the picks before the reasoning:
- You want the connection that just stays connected → Questrade. Official OAuth API, token-based, the least likely to nag you to reconnect.
- You want the fastest setup and you already live in Wealthsimple → Wealthsimple. Credential login, connected in under two minutes — at the cost of occasional reconnects.
- You have a complex, multi-currency, high-volume account and you don't mind a one-time setup chore → IBKR Canada. A Flex Query token is annoying to create once, then it's stable and complete.
- You care most about your FHSA showing up labelled correctly → check the app, not the broker. All three offer an FHSA; whether it's labelled right is the app's job (more below).
The rest explains why.
What "aggregator fit" actually means
An aggregator reads your accounts in read-only mode and shows them in one place. In Canada the plumbing splits cleanly: Plaid for bank accounts, SnapTrade for brokerages. People assume Plaid does both, but Plaid's investment coverage of Canadian brokers is thin — for Wealthsimple, Questrade, and IBKR holdings, SnapTrade is the connector that does the work. So when an app links your bank with Plaid and your brokerage with SnapTrade, that's the design working as intended.
Within that, "fit" comes down to a handful of things that vary by broker:
- Connection method — OAuth, credential login, or a generated token. This is the single biggest driver of how often you'll be asked to reconnect.
- Holdings depth — symbol, quantity, price, market value, currency, and cost basis. The first five are reliable; cost basis is the one that's broker-dependent.
- Transaction history — how much of your buy/sell/dividend activity comes through, and how far back.
- Options and derivatives — whether contracts surface at all.
- USD and multi-currency — how each broker structures US-dollar holdings, and whether the currency survives the trip.
- FHSA and registered-account labelling — whether newer account types arrive named correctly.
- Edge cases — locked-in plans, securities lending, fractional shares, crypto.
One thing that does not vary, in a read-only app: none of these connections can trade. The token SnapTrade holds can see your positions; it cannot place an order, move cash, or change a setting. SnapTrade can do trade execution for some brokers — Wealthsimple is one — but a net-worth app deliberately takes the read-only scope. Confirm that's the scope before you connect anything, with any app.
Wealthsimple
Verdict: the easiest to connect, the most likely to ask you to reconnect.
Wealthsimple connects through SnapTrade using your login credentials, not an API. That's not a shortcut SnapTrade took — Wealthsimple simply has no public developer API, so credential login is the only door. The upside is real: you're connected in under two minutes, no tokens, no developer console. The downside is equally real: credential-based links are the most fragile kind. Change your password, clear a security flag, or trip Wealthsimple's login protections and the connection drops and asks to be re-established. If you've used a bank connection that periodically says "please sign in again," this is the same pattern, and it's inherent to credential connections rather than a bug in any one app.
Once connected, holdings come through cleanly: stocks, ETFs, and crypto with quantities, prices, market values, and currency. Cost basis (your average purchase price) comes through when Wealthsimple provides it, which is the standard caveat across every broker — treat the aggregator's cost basis as a convenience, not as your tax record.
USD: Wealthsimple holds US-dollar assets in a USD sub-account attached to each eligible self-directed account, rather than netting everything to CAD. A good aggregator surfaces those USD balances as their own currency; a careless one mislabels them. Verify on a known US holding.
FHSA: Wealthsimple offers an FHSA, and it does come through SnapTrade — but as a raw account label, with the caveat described in the cross-cutting section below.
Edge case worth knowing: Wealthsimple's stock lending doesn't break aggregation. When your shares are out on loan you still own them and they still display normally — lending doesn't make positions vanish from an aggregator. (Fractional shares are simply ineligible to be lent, which is a separate point.)
Pick Wealthsimple if: your investing life already lives there, you value a two-minute setup, and you can shrug off the occasional reconnect.
Questrade
Verdict: the most stable connection of the three.
Questrade connects through its official OAuth 2.0 API. You authorize Mozaic (or any aggregator) on Questrade's own consent screen, Questrade hands back a token, and your credentials are never shared with the app. This is the gold-standard connection method, and it shows: OAuth links stay connected for long stretches and rarely nag you to re-authenticate. Through SnapTrade the Questrade integration is read-only — you can't trade Questrade from an aggregator even though you can trade Wealthsimple — which is exactly what a net-worth app wants anyway.
Holdings depth is strong: Questrade's API is one of the richer ones, so symbols, quantities, prices, market values, and currency all come through, with cost basis where available. Transaction history (buys, sells, dividends) comes through as activity data, generally going back years rather than months, though the exact window is broker-dependent and worth spot-checking.
USD: Questrade lets you hold US dollars inside both registered and non-registered accounts, so a USD-heavy RRSP or a non-registered margin account in USD surfaces with the right currency.
FHSA: Questrade offers a self-directed FHSA, and it's actually SnapTrade's own worked example: connect Questrade and your TFSA, RRSP, and FHSA all become visible as separate accounts. It's the cleanest FHSA story of the three — subject to the same labelling caveat below.
Edge cases: Questrade also offers RESP, LIRA, LIF, and RRIF accounts, each of which surfaces as its own account through the connection. If you keep a locked-in plan, Questrade is the one of these three brokers that can hold it and show it.
Pick Questrade if: you want the connection you set up once and forget, and you keep a wider range of registered accounts (including locked-in plans) under one roof.
Interactive Brokers (IBKR) Canada
Verdict: the most complete data, behind the most setup friction — and don't confuse it with IBKR US.
First, the thing people get wrong: Interactive Brokers Canada Inc. is a distinct, Canadian-regulated entity, not a US account with a maple leaf on it. It offers the Canadian registered accounts the US entity doesn't have at all — RRSP, spousal RRSP, TFSA, FHSA, and (since early 2026) RRIF — all manageable from a single login. Any guide that says "IBKR has no TFSA or RRSP" is describing the US entity and is wrong for Canadians. See IBKR Canada's own registered-account overview. What IBKR Canada does not offer is RESP or locked-in plans (LIRA/LIF) — so those won't appear, because they don't exist there, not because the aggregator missed them.
Connection is the wrinkle. IBKR connects to SnapTrade through a Flex Query — you generate a Query ID and a long token inside IBKR's Third-Party Services settings and paste them into the aggregator. It's read-only, data-feed only (no trading), and it is genuinely the most annoying of the three to set up the first time. The payoff: once it's wired, an IBKR Flex feed is stable and exhaustive, which suits exactly the kind of investor who picks IBKR in the first place.
USD and multi-currency: IBKR uses a single multi-currency account — cash and positions in many currencies inside one account number — rather than separate USD sub-accounts like Wealthsimple and Questrade. SnapTrade returns balances per currency, which fits IBKR's model well, but it's the area most worth verifying after you connect, because a multi-currency account is the easiest place for a lazy aggregator to flatten everything to one currency.
Pick IBKR Canada if: you run a complex, multi-currency, higher-volume portfolio, you want complete data, and a one-time token setup doesn't scare you.
The cross-cutting truths every app shares
A few things are true no matter which of the three you connect, and they're where expectations usually break:
FHSA arrives as a label, not a category. SnapTrade normalizes every account into one of a few buckets — investment, deposit, or line of credit — and an FHSA lands inside "investment." The literal word "FHSA" only rides along in the broker's raw account label. So whether your app shows a clean "FHSA" tile or a generic investment account depends entirely on whether the app reads that raw label. This is the honest part: not every aggregator normalizes FHSA yet — at the time of writing, mine doesn't, and an FHSA can land as a generic account until I ship that mapping. If correct FHSA labelling matters to you, test it with a dollar before you trust the dashboard, on any app. (If you're sorting out the FHSA itself, here are the FHSA contribution rules.)
Cost basis is a convenience, not a tax record. Every aggregator passes through whatever average purchase price the broker reports. It's useful for a glance; it is not your adjusted cost base for the CRA, especially once the same security sits at two brokers. Keep your own ACB.
Options rarely survive the trip. SnapTrade has an options-positions capability, but per-broker options coverage isn't something you should assume, and many net-worth apps (mine included) don't model option contracts at all — so a covered-call or cash-secured-put position may show up incompletely or not at all. If derivatives are a meaningful part of your book, verify exactly how they appear before relying on the total.
Crypto and fractional shares are mostly fine, sometimes not. Fractional shares come through as fractional quantities. Crypto held at Wealthsimple is exposed by SnapTrade as a security type, but per-broker crypto sync isn't guaranteed — check it rather than assume it.
How to choose, in plain language
If you want the connection that stays connected and you keep a range of registered accounts — including a locked-in plan — pick Questrade.
If your money already lives at Wealthsimple and you'll trade a two-minute setup for the occasional reconnect, pick Wealthsimple.
If you run a complex multi-currency portfolio and want complete data badly enough to generate a token once, pick IBKR Canada — and remember it has the full slate of Canadian registered accounts, unlike the US entity.
And whichever you connect: the broker determines what data can come through, but the app determines how faithfully it's shown. Connect one account, check the balance against the broker, check the currency on a US holding, and check how your FHSA is labelled. Fifteen minutes of verifying beats months of trusting a number that was quietly wrong.
If you want to see how Mozaic handles the consolidated, multi-currency picture once your brokerages are connected, the pricing page has the full breakdown and the security page covers the read-only, encrypted, Montréal-hosted posture in detail. And if you've connected one of these three and seen something I got wrong, email me — laurent.risser@mozaicfinance.com — and I'll correct it.