No fees if you trade US stocks at x1 leverage since they buy the underlying assets for you but the same roughly 0.09% spread is built into the buying/selling price. It costs $5 per withdrawal and the minimum initial deposit $200 but every subsequent one is $50. Do note that there's minimum trading amounts so that $50 is essentially just 1 investment:

Shares: $50
ETFs: $200
Commodities: $25 (at least for OIL)

So it's not really a fractional share broker. Other platforms like Trading 212 allows you to invest with as little as $1 which is better for weekly/monthly DCA. Also like Rakuten, this platform has tendency to have issues whenever the market opens under volatile conditions. If you're thinking of daytrading during opening hours, this might not be the ideal platform for you as it usually takes some time to "fix" the issues.

Still no fees for buying shares in the long term as long as you don't use leverage even for CFD shares in the UK and elsewhere. They already factor in their "sales charge" when you buy and sell. That's how they make money. Etoro has been around since 2006 so they're one of the better and more stable fintechs out there. As long as you do the proper research about it you'll be fine. I've seen a recent influx of newbies crying about the price difference between "the market" and eToro because they're just there to gamble  But there is some truth to that. Some of the extremely volatile stocks have had issues with price differences for stuff like NCH since the NYSE keeps carrying out trading halts. Etoro isn't great when it comes to opening the trades back up after they're released. There's a massive delay in that regards which is why I said it's not great for daytrading along with the technical issues on busy days where their servers get overwhelmed.

No. You'll get $200 worth of shares but it's 0.XX higher than the market price. Then when you sell it, it's reduced by that amount again. Different stocks/etfs/whatever have slightly different rates but you'll be shown the price up front when you're buying/selling. I'll use Apple as an example since Alibaba isn't showing the correct prices for whatever reason.



Notice the price difference. If you google the Apple share price the top left corner is what the market price is right now but you're paying more than the actual price, the difference is the profit etoro makes and is what people refer to as the spread. You get charged the same percentage when trying to close your position. That's the reason why people dislike platforms like etoro because you're down a certain amount just by opening a position. There's a practice account that you can try out to get a feel of how it all works. It's a lot simpler than the other alternatives out there since it's built around social trading and for newbies to lose make their money 

Only if you register through the main site and not through the alternative. Otherwise there's no fee if your balance is above $1000. The thing is about long term investing you want the company to be there when you retire. Etoro has a decent track record but I wouldn't put it firmly in the same territory as Interactive Brokers or TD Ameritrade, which is under Charles Schwab. Etoro is a good way to get into the whole investing scene but the lack of fractional shares trading leaves a lot to be desired if you're trying to DCA instead of lump sum. Their stupid minimum balance makes investing into a selection of ETFs unfeasible.