Yes, the shares are real. No, you are not getting twenty of them.
What do you actually get for showing up with $100? Under the terms behind Webull’s promotions center, a new depositor of $100 or more gets 10 fractional shares, each valued between $3.00 and $300.00. The bigger number you may have seen, 20 shares, is not what a new depositor gets; it survives on an older landing page whose terms expired in February 2025. And the terms print the odds, which none of Webull’s help pages do: 98% of shares are $3.
What Webull’s own pages said on September 18
We read six live Webull documents on the same day. They do not tell the same story, and only one of them is a contract.
| The July 2026 Initial Deposit Promotion terms, behind the promotions center | 10 shares for $100+, each $3.00 to $300.00, odds printed |
|---|---|
| Promotions center, the page in Webull’s own nav | 10 shares for $100+, no value printed; its referral card said $3 to $300 |
| The deposit offer page it links to | 10 shares valued up to $3,000; by October 3, no value at all |
| Deposit landing page | 3 shares for $100, 20 for $500+, each $3 to $3,000 |
| Help article, Free Stock Value | $3 to $3000, deposit and referral alike |
| Help article, Free Stock Allocation Rules | No values, no odds, no share count |
The promotions center now reads: “Make your first deposit of $100+ to unlock up to 5.0% APY with Premium and get 10 fractional shares. T&Cs apply.” On September 14 the same card gave a value, “each valued between $3-$300”; the rewrite dropped it. On September 18 the offer page behind the card put the ten shares at up to $3,000, which is all ten landing on the top draw at once; on October 3 it read only “10 Free Fractional Shares”, with no value. Those T&Cs, the July 2026 Initial Deposit Promotion terms, carry an offer period of “July 22, 2026, 12:00 AM ET – January 6, 2027, 11:59 PM ET”, extended on September 17 from October 14, and define the reward as “ten (10) Fractional Reward Shares” of SpaceX, Nvidia, Apple or Tesla, “each valued between $3.00 to $300.00 as of the date the Offer Reward is granted.” The deposit landing page runs a two-row table, “$500+” against “20 Free Fractional Shares” and “$100 – $499.99” against “3 Free Fractional Shares”, and states “Each share is valued between $3 - $3,000”, but the only terms it opens are for offer periods ending October 31, 2024 and February 28, 2025. Webull’s help center article Free Stock Value gives a table of its own: Initial Deposit Bonus Promotion, $3-$3000; Referral Bonus Promotion, $3-$3000. None of the web pages carries a last-updated date; the terms are the only document with a date on it.
Where the 20-share number actually comes from
Two places, and neither is a new depositor’s own offer. The first is Webull’s July 2026 Referral Offer, where the 20 shares were never the reward for the friend who deposits; as that friend, you get the ordinary 10. Its terms, as we saved them on September 30, 2026, end that offer period on September 28, 2026. The second is the older deposit landing page, which still displays 20 shares for a $500 deposit under terms that ran out in February 2025. So the 20-share figure is real, but as a new customer it is not yours.
What one share is worth, now that Webull says
A fractional share is a slice of a share, not a whole one. The reward is a slice of a real listed company. Webull’s help article Free Stock Allocation Rules still describes the pool as “stocks with a minimum market capitalization of $2.5 billion from U.S.-based companies listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ” and contains no probabilities; the July 2026 terms narrow it to four names and add the table that article lacks.
Webull has printed odds before, always in terms rather than on the page. An older terms page, still hosted, whose stated offer period was “04/11/2023 00:00ET - 11/30/2023 00:00ET”, sets out an account-opening pool with the same $3 to $300 band and breaks it down: “Stock in the $3/share - $10/share range, approximately 1:1.02; stock in the $11/share-$50/share range, approximately 1:52.63; stock in the $51/share - $150/share range, approximately 1:1111.11; stock in the $151/share - $300/share range, approximately 1:10000.” The same document says plainly that “Stock allocation is random and determined by an algorithm.”
That document is nearly three years out of date and describes a promotion that has closed. The shape has not changed since: the bottom band is essentially certain, and the top band is one in ten thousand. The $3,000 ceiling that Webull’s help article still quotes comes from a later set, the 2024 deposit terms still attached to the old landing page, which put $3 at 92% and $3,000 at 0.01%.
Our estimate, and where it comes from
Webull’s table makes this arithmetic rather than guesswork. Weight each value by its odds and a share is worth about $3.34 on average, so 10 shares come to about $33. The average is pulled up by draws hardly anyone gets. One thing the terms leave open is whether the algorithm draws once per share or once for the lot. The table cannot be the total for all ten, because ten shares at a $3 minimum can never add up to $3. If each share is drawn separately, a 98% chance of $3 ten times over means about 82 people in 100 collect exactly $30; if a single draw prices all ten, it is 98 in 100. Either way $30 is the number.
The deposit, the 10-day hold, and where the 12-month clock actually is
$100 is the lowest deposit Webull attaches to the shares. The July 2026 terms then attach a hold that the older pages never mention: “The Locked Reward will become unlocked and eligible for claiming after a holding period of ten (10) calendar days. During this 10-day holding period, the Eligible Customer must maintain the full initial Qualifying Funding in their Webull Account. Any withdrawal of funds during this holding period will result in immediate forfeiture of the Offer Reward.”
The widely repeated claim that the free shares carry a twelve-month maintenance period needs a correction: it lives somewhere else. The line “Maintenance Period: 12 Months ( T&Cs Apply).” does appear on the deposit landing page, but it sits immediately under a completely different table, headed “Deposit More, Get More”, which pays a cash bonus against “Net Qualifying Funding Amount”: $100 for $5,000 to $24,999, rising through the tiers to $7,500 for $1,000,000 or more. We found no current terms for that cash bonus at all.
Five things to sort out before you deposit
- Claim it within 30 days or it evaporates. The July 2026 terms: the reward “must be claimed by the Eligible Customer through the "My Rewards" page within thirty (30) calendar days from the date it is unlocked”, and one “not timely claimed will expire and will not be reissued.” The help articles say the same in fewer words: “You have 30 days to claim your free stock; after this period, the offer will expire.”
- Expect the shares late, and expect the timings to disagree. Free Stock Allocation Rules says the stock “will be credited to your account within five business days after being awarded”. Claiming Your Rewards says it “will be deposited into your Webull brokerage account within 15 business days after the date you claimed the offer reward”. The terms give a third figure, “within 10 calendar days after it is successfully claimed”. Plan for the longest one, after the 10-day hold.
- The fractions cannot leave with you. Webull’s Fractional Shares Addendum is explicit: fractional shares “are unrecognized, unmarketable, and illiquid outside the Webull Financial platform; (ii) are not transferrable in-kind; and (iii) may only be liquidated and the proceeds withdrawn or transferred out.” Move to another broker later and the slivers get sold, not carried across.
- A reverse split turns your share into cash. The same allocation article: “If the stock undergoes a corporate action, such as a reverse split, you will receive cash instead of fractional shares within ten business days of the action’s completion.”
- Write down what arrives, and what it was worth that day. The July 2026 terms say “the value of all Webull offers received may be reported as Other Income on Form 1099-MISC”, and the help articles do not mention it at all. More in are sign-up bonuses taxable.
So is it worth doing?
If you wanted a brokerage account and $100 was going in regardless, then yes, take the shares. They are real, the account is a genuine registered broker-dealer, and the trade is fifteen minutes and a 10-day wait for about thirty dollars.
If the account only exists because of the offer, we would think harder: the twenty-share figure is not for you, the value is very probably $30, and the reward cannot be carried to another broker if you change your mind.
Depositing $500 to chase the twenty-share tier is the version we would skip entirely. No current terms pay it; the extra four hundred dollars buys nothing.
Related reading
What we found across every offer
Every one of these is read from the company’s own document and dated. See all 66 questions we have answered.