Schwab clients can buy Treasury bills on Schwab.com in two ways: as new issues at the Treasury's own auctions, or already issued, on the secondary market. Schwab's Pricing Guide for Individual Investors, dated April 2026, lists Treasury bills bought either way at $0 for an online trade and $25 when a Schwab broker places it, and an opt-in rollover service can put the principal of a maturing auction-bought bill into a new bill at a later auction.
The Schwab details below come from Schwab's own pages: its Pricing Guide, its rollover page, its fixed income FAQ and its learning articles, read on 14 October 2026. No yield is printed here: bill rates are set afresh at each auction, weekly for most terms and every four weeks for the 52-week bill, and TreasuryDirect's Treasury bills page links to the latest results. What a bill is and how its discount price works are on what Treasury bills are.
What Schwab sells
Schwab says its clients "can participate in Treasury auctions on Schwab.com", and that it also offers Treasuries through the secondary market, "where market participants trade Treasuries that have already been issued or purchased at auctions". For a bill, the two routes differ like this:
| At auction (new issue) | On the secondary market | |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A new bill, issued through the auction | A bill already issued, at a market price, with whatever time it has left to run |
| Online | $0 | $0 |
| Through a Schwab broker | $25 | $25 |
| Schwab's auto-rollover | Eligible; rolls into 4-, 8-, 13-, 17- or 26-week bills | Not eligible |
Treasury sells seven regular bill terms, from 4 to 52 weeks. Schwab's Treasury Auctions page lists the issues on offer, and if the maturity you want is not there, Schwab's how-to guide points to the Upcoming Treasury Auction calendar on the same page.
Whichever way it is bought, a bill is an obligation of the US government, not a bank deposit. The FDIC lists Treasury bills among the products it does not insure, while noting that they are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government; are CDs FDIC insured sets out how the two guarantees differ.
Placing an auction order on Schwab.com
Schwab describes the route in its auction explainer and its how-to guide:
- Open the auction list. From the Trade tab, select Bonds, then scroll down the page that appears to the Treasury Auctions link, under the list of fixed income offerings.
- Pick the issue. If the term you want is not listed, check the Upcoming Treasury Auction calendar.
- Complete the disclosures, the first time. Before a first fixed income purchase, Schwab requires you "to complete a few disclosure agreements before moving forward".
- Enter the order. Schwab says you will be prompted for "order details, such as dollar amount and order type".
- Choose Auto-Rollover, or not. To have the principal reinvested at maturity, Schwab says to select Auto-Rollover when buying a new Treasury; on a first rollover you also agree to the service's terms, described below.
At the auction, Schwab's explainer says, the Treasury first accepts all non-competitive bids, which agree to take the rate the auction sets, then accepts competitive bids until the offering is sold, and "All successful bidders get the same rate, yield, or discount margin as the highest accepted bid." A bill's rate is therefore known only once the auction is over. The two kinds of bid, and the run from Treasury's announcement to the issue date and maturity, are set out on how to buy Treasury bills, which also compares buying through TreasuryDirect and a bank. How the same order works at Fidelity is on a separate page.
What it costs
Schwab's Pricing Guide for Individual Investors (April 2026) has one row for "Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds and TIPS (Secondary and Auction)": $0 online, $25 broker-assisted. Schwab's pricing page shows the same row as $0 online and $0 plus a $25 service charge through a broker, and its fixed income pricing page says online trades for Treasuries at auction carry "no additional cost".
| Trade in Treasury bills | Online | Through a Schwab broker |
|---|---|---|
| New issue, bought at auction | $0 | $25 |
| Secondary market, buying or selling | $0 | $25 |
The broker-assisted charge depends on who places the trade. Schwab's pricing FAQ says that if you place a trade online yourself and then call with a question about it, you do not pay the broker-assisted fee, "as long as you place the trade yourself". The rollover service adds no fee of its own; its purchases are "subject to Schwab's standard pricing schedule". Schwab's pricing page shows a $0 account minimum, and $0 opening and maintenance fees, for both a brokerage account and an IRA. That is the account; the smallest bill order the ticket accepts is one of the questions at the end of this page.
Two passages in the same guide qualify the $0:
- The price can include a markup. Schwab reserves the right to act as principal on any fixed income transaction, and "When Schwab acts as principal, the bond price includes our transaction fee (outlined below) and can also include a markup that reflects the bid-ask spread and is not subject to a minimum or maximum." The $0 is Schwab's listed charge, not a promise that no spread sits inside the price.
- A defined transaction fee. Under Special Service Fees, the guide defines a transaction fee as including "fees charged for purchasing U.S. Treasury obligations via the auction process", and says its amount will appear on your trade confirmation. The Treasury row itself reads $0 online, so the confirmation is where any such fee on a particular purchase would show.
The $25 charge on illustrative bills
A flat charge weighs more on a short bill, because a short bill earns less. Take $10,000 of face value bought at auction at an illustrative 4.000% discount rate, priced with Treasury's formula as shown on what Treasury bills are, and assume the bill is bought at that price with no markup or other fee. Online, the interest at maturity is the whole discount; through a broker, $25 comes off it.
| Illustrative bill: $10,000 face, 4.000% discount rate | Price | Interest at maturity | After a $25 broker-assisted charge | The $25 as a share of the interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13-week (91 days) | $9,898.89 | $101.11 | $76.11 | 24.7% |
| 26-week (182 days) | $9,797.78 | $202.22 | $177.22 | 12.4% |
| 52-week (364 days) | $9,595.56 | $404.44 | $379.44 | 6.2% |
The 4.000% is a round illustrative figure, not a recent auction result. In this example the charge takes about a quarter of a 13-week bill's interest and about a sixteenth of a 52-week bill's. Selling a bill early is a secondary-market trade, priced on that row of the cost table.
Auto-rollover: reinvesting a maturing bill
Schwab's CD and Treasury Rollover service will "Automatically reinvest the principal on your maturing CDs and U.S. Treasury securities." It is opt-in. During the order entry for your first trade, you read and agree to Schwab's terms and conditions; you then mark eligible investments to roll over at maturity, and on a new Treasury you select Auto-Rollover on the order. Enrolled bills keep rolling at each maturity "until you choose to change or cancel your instructions on Schwab.com."
What rolls, and into what
- Auction bills only. Among Treasuries, the eligible investments are "New-issue Treasuries bought at auction"; a bill bought on the secondary market is not on the list.
- Five terms. They "can be rolled into 4-, 8-, 13-, 17-, and 26-week bills at auction." The 6-week and 52-week bills are not on that list.
- Same face value, same maturity. Schwab buys "The same face value as your maturing Treasury", with "The same maturity as your original order or most recent instruction", and "All orders will be placed at auction".
- Non-competitive, up to $5,000,000. Schwab states that "the Treasury rollover limit is $5,000,000" and that "Treasury rollover orders are submitted at auction as non-competitive orders." Each replacement takes the rate its own auction sets, and Schwab notes that the replacement yield is likely to vary from the original.
- Principal only. "Interest earned will not be reinvested." With the face value held level, the position does not grow from one bill to the next.
- One instruction per CUSIP. Schwab will "maintain only one rollover instruction per CUSIP in each account", and the last instruction submitted controls the whole position. Its own example: an 8-week bill bought at auction, then a 4-week bill bought four weeks later that carries the same CUSIP because of a Treasury reoffering. Both lots then follow whichever instruction came last.
- No match, no order. "If Schwab is unable to meet any of the above criteria, your new rollover order will not be placed and the money will remain in cash in your account." Schwab notifies you and asks you to choose a new investment yourself.
Notices, changes and the cancellation cutoff
Schwab emails a reminder roughly two weeks before a bill marked for rollover matures, and a second notice on the day it places the new order. The rollover page's FAQ says Treasury instructions can be changed or cancelled from the Positions page "anytime until 7 days before maturity".
Once Schwab has placed the rollover purchase and sent that second notice, there is a limited time to cancel it. Schwab's wording: "For Treasuries, you may cancel before our cutoff on the morning of the auction, typically 10:00 a.m. ET." Schwab gives that cutoff for cancelling a rollover purchase it has already placed; the rollover page sets no deadline for an ordinary auction order. Schwab also "reserves the right to modify its methodology or criteria at any time", so the rollover page, not this summary, is the current statement of the rules.
Selling a bill before it matures
Schwab's fixed income FAQ says it lets clients "sell most Fixed Income securities via Schwab.com if there are sufficient existing market bids available." The Market Depth tab shows existing bid and ask prices for a bond. If bids cannot be found, or do not cover the quantity you want to sell, you can ask Schwab to look for more and receive an email alert when your bid is ready. The FAQ covers fixed income in general, not bills alone.
Three cautions from Schwab's own pages:
- The statement price is an estimate. The price shown on your Positions page or statement "may differ from actual market transactions and should be used for approximate account valuation purposes only."
- A sale can lose money. "A Treasury investor could still lose money if they had to sell a Treasury prior to maturity", Schwab writes, though it calls the Treasury market much more liquid than the CD market.
- A sale is a trade. It is priced on the secondary-market row: $0 online, $25 through a broker.
How far a bill's price moves depends on rates and on the time left to run; for 4- to 26-week bills, the swing is small but not zero, as HYSA vs CD vs T-bills explains. Any gain on an early sale has its own tax rule, set out on are Treasury bills taxable.
Tax, and bills inside an IRA
Schwab's individual-bonds page puts the tax position in one sentence: "Although federally taxable, the interest on Treasuries is exempt from both state and local taxes." What counts as a bill's interest, which year it belongs to and where it is reported are covered on the tax page linked above, along with how an IRA's own rules replace the bill rules. What the state exemption is worth against a savings account or a CD depends on your state and bracket; the comparison linked above works it through on illustrative numbers, and it is not recomputed here.
Inside an IRA, that state-tax advantage falls away. Schwab notes: "If investing in a tax-sheltered account, like an individual retirement account (IRA) or a 401(k), the tax benefits that Treasuries provide don't apply". Schwab's IRA page lists bonds among the investments a Schwab IRA can hold, without naming Treasury bills.
Ladders at Schwab
Schwab's CD & Treasury Ladder Builder lets you "search, build, and purchase a laddered portfolio of CDs and Treasuries". You choose CDs or Treasuries, then a predefined ladder of 1, 2 or 5 years or a custom structure, then the account and the starting amount, which "must be divisible by the number of rungs in your ladder." A ladder longer than a year necessarily reaches beyond bills, which run 52 weeks at most. The rollover page adds that if one leg of a Treasury or CD ladder fails to reinvest, Schwab will attempt to roll over the remaining positions.
A ladder built only from bills is shaped by the bill terms themselves: which exist, how often each is auctioned, and which a rollover can keep. The Treasury bill ladder page works through that constraint and the two ways of keeping rungs rolling, in TreasuryDirect and at a brokerage.
What to confirm before ordering
- Auction or secondary market. Only a bill bought at auction can join Schwab's rollover service.
- The order ticket's own terms. Ask before you submit: the minimum and step size it accepts, the latest time to place or cancel an auction order, and when the cash leaves your account.
- Online or through a broker. The listed charge is $0 or $25; the trade confirmation shows any transaction fee charged on the purchase.
- Rollover, yes or no. Schwab rolls auction bills into 4-, 8-, 13-, 17- or 26-week bills, at the same maturity as the original order or the latest instruction, and a rollover purchase can be cancelled only until Schwab's cutoff on the auction morning.
- The account. In a taxable account the interest is exempt from state and local income tax; Schwab says the tax benefit does not apply inside an IRA.
- The maturity date against the date you need the money. An early sale depends on there being bids and can lose money. Money you might need on any given day is a different question, taken up on where to keep an emergency fund.
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