Beginning investing is a great money goal for a new year. If you already have an emergency fund of around three to six months of your expenses and are looking to work towards some medium term (five years or more) money ambitions, now could be the right time to start investing.
Of the approximately 17 million UK adults who planned to set a New Year’s resolution in 2026, financial wellbeing is a priority, with 31% aiming to start a savings habit or increase savings, according to a survey of 2,000 over 18s by Chase, a bank. This is the top resolution for Gen Z (30% of those aged 18-24) and Millennials (32% of those aged 35-44).
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Among higher earners (those with incomes over £55,000), the top priorities for 2026 included ramping up investments (31%). Those planning to invest more or start investing plan to allocate £272 per month, the Chase survey found.
Some investment platforms are aimed at investors who have financial advisers and others cater for investors who are ‘self-directed’, or prepared to make the decisions on their own.
If you have a financial adviser, they will choose a platform for you. But self-directed “DIY” investors will find there are more than 30 investment platforms to choose from.
Kalpana Fitzpatrick, editor or MoneyWeek, said: “Investment platforms make it super easy to manage your investments, but it’s important to pick the right one for your needs and goals as they are not all the same. For example, some platforms may have lower costs, but have limited funds or stock options, so you may not be able to invest in everything you want.”
If you’re still weighing up investing vs saving our article can help. Our beginners guide on how to invest is also a must-read.
Best investment platforms for beginners in the UK
1. Freetrade – Best for low costs and stock picking
Whether you are just starting out investing or are a seasoned pro, it is a very good idea to keep a tight grip on the fees you pay to play the stock market, including platform fees.
Analysts at Kepler Trust Intelligence give this example. If you invested £50,000 in assets growing at 10% a year, your portfolio would be worth around £336,000 after 20 years with a zero-platform fee provider. But pick a platform charging 0.45% a year and you’d end up with almost £30,000 less, purely due to fees eroding your returns over time.
Freetrade’s basic plan has no platform fee, so you are straight away making a saving. The fintech’s no-fee trading model also means beginners can invest across 6,500+ UK, US and European stocks and exchanged traded funds (ETFs) without worrying about losing money to commissions. This makes Freetrade a particularly compelling option for newer investors who may want to maximise their returns from small amounts. Other platforms charge anywhere between around £4 and £12 per trade.
On Freetrade’s free basic account there is a foreign exchange (FX) fee of 0.99% on trades not made in pounds sterling, and you get 1% interest on up to £1,000 of uninvested cash. The FX fee reduces, and the interest rate rises, if you plump for one of the paid accounts.
Freetrade has recently made its offer even more attractive by including the ability to also invest in funds and gilts via all of its accounts — ISA, general investment accounts, and self-invested personal pensions — in its free basic package. Previously this was only available on the paid packages.
Freetrade’s ISA is what’s known as flexible, meaning you can withdraw and replace money during the tax year without impacting your annual ISA allowance, currently £20,000.
2. J.P Morgan Personal Investing – Best for transparent performance data
You’ve probably heard of American bank and investment company J.P. Morgan. But you may not be aware that J.P. Morgan Personal Investing is the new name for the British online wealth firm Nutmeg, as of November 2025, following an acquisition in 2021.
J.P Morgan has brought across many of the key features beginner investors liked about Nutmeg. Most notably that fact it is open about how its investments perform over time. You can easily see on its website how its fully managed portfolios have done over the past decade and see how the results compare to competitors. (Though remember, past performance doesn’t guarantee future performance).
For example, J.P. Morgan Personal Investing’s 5/10 risk level fully managed portfolio – which would often be termed ‘balanced’ and might be a typical choice for a new investor – has returned 50.7% over 10 years, compared with 53.5% on average for comparable funds. Not, that flattering, in this case, but honest.
J.P. Morgan Personal Investing is also transparent about its fees, with an investing fee calculator that shows how much you’ll be charged depending on how much you invest, which is very easy to use and helpful for beginner investors trying to compare costs. To invest £10,000 in one of its fully managed funds, for example, would cost you 0.97% or £97 over the next 12 months.
3. Lightyear – Best for user-friendly experience
Lightyear is the new kid on the investing platform block. It was launched in the UK 2021, having been founded by former Wise employees, and is now operational in 22 European countries.
Lightyear is a low-cost, FCA-regulated investment app that aims to simplify global investing. It offers commission-free trading for US, UK and EU stocks and ETFs within a stocks and shares ISA, general investment account, and multi-currency accounts. Key features include 3.75% interest on cash, fractional shares, and no monthly account fees.
Review site Good Money Guide ranks it as one of its three best apps for beginner investors because it shuns complex tools and confusing jargon in favour of being intuitive, easy to use and for providing clear information and straightforward navigation.
One Lightyear user review which says – “I’m a super beginner investor and Lightyear has made it easy for me to invest. The app is easy-to-use and I understand what’s going on without having to go too much trouble” – is representative of many other similar reviews for the app.
Lightyear is also award-winning. It won Best Low-Cost ISA, Best for Share Traders and Best App at Boring Money’s Best Buy Awards in 2025.
4. Moneybox – Best for micro-investing
Moneybox is a good introduction to investing for those who want to start small and need a bit of a push to get going. Nudges in the form of ‘round ups’ mean everyday transactions you make are rounded up to the nearest pound and added to your savings. For example, if you spent £2.20, it would be rounded to £3, with 80p invested.
You choose your settings – including which type of investment account you want – and link your bank account to the app. Then you’re off. You can get started with just a £1 contribution and carry on contributing money via any combination of round-ups, one-off and weekly deposits, and a monthly payday boost.
Your savings are added up throughout the week. This total is collected every Wednesday at around midday, and then debited from your bank account early the following week (normally on Monday). By the end of the day on Monday, you’ll see your payment added to your chosen investment account balance.
Moneybox offers investors three ‘starting options’ – Cautious, Balanced and Adventurous. All you need to do is pick one based on your attitude to risk and return. Each starting option contains a mix of diversified tracker (mutual) funds. If you’d like to, you can customise the asset allocations of the suggested starting options to create a personalised portfolio. But make sure you fully understand how changing your allocation could impact your investment return and risk level before making any changes.
The Moneybox app is easy to navigate and simple to use. A downside is the platform fee of 0.45% (£45 on an investment of £10,000), which is more expensive than some competitors.
5. Bestinvest – Best for coaching support
Beginner investors – frankly all investors – can often benefit from a bit of guidance. Bestinvest has recongised this and moved, rather cleverly, to fill a gap in the market by making its financial experts available to new and existing customers, as well as investors who aren’t even customers.
For zero money Bestinvest provides investment coaching (worth up to a few hundred pounds if you sourced it separately) with its qualified financial planners to everyone. This makes it perfect for beginners who want some support while starting out.
When you book online you can select a time and date that works for you from the calendar. If you are a Bestinvest client there’s no limit on the number of free coaching sessions you can book. But everyone can have at least one free 45-minute coaching session where your Bestinvest coach can talk to you about your investments and financial plans.
They won’t talk about the suitability of individual investments, although they can always pass you to someone who can. As well as this hands-on guidance, Bestinvest provides educational content to help with investment research and executing trades. For a chat
The only downside is Bestinvest is quite expensive compared to other platforms. Bestinvest charges an investment platform fee of 0.5% per year on funds under management, capped at £125 per quarter, and typically £9.95 per trade. This is higher than other investment platform options on the market. There may also be extra fees for ISA accounts and some fund purchases.
6. eToro – Best for helping you learn from experienced investors
eToro is an easy-to-use investing app that could be one to consider for newer investors mainly because of its copy trading feature, which allows beginners to mimic the strategies of more seasoned, successful investors.
eToro’s CopyTrader allows you to automatically mirror the trades of experienced ‘popular investors’ by allocating funds to copy them.
It works by replicating their portfolio’s asset allocation, opening trades in your account at the same ratio as their own investments, and letting you manage risk with tools like Copy Stop Loss (CSL) to protect your capital. You find investors, set an investment amount (min $200) and CSL, then eToro handles the trade, letting you benefit from their strategies without manually trading.
In terms of cost, eToro doesn’t charge any fees for opening an account, nor does it have monthly maintenance fees. It also doesn’t charge a commission for most trades.
There are a bunch of other fees to watch out for though – like the $5 (around £4) withdrawal fee when you want to access your money, the currency conversion fee of around 0.5% for pounds sterling to US dollars (the base account currency), and, most punishing of all, the $10 (around £8) a month after 12 months with no login activity fee. So this is not an ‘invest and forget’ account.
7. AJ Bell Dodl – Best for simple options
Dodl is AJ Bell’s app for beginners, a sleeker version of its main investment platform, with eight ready-made investment portfolios, 29 themed investments and 75 popular UK and US shares. This leaner offering could be ideal for newer investors who don’t want to be dazzled by thousands of investment options.
Dodl sells itself as a ‘low-cost, little-effort investing app’ – and with charges an attractive 0.15%, less than the AJ Bell’s main investment platform, on portfolios under £40,000 it is hard to beat. It also payspay 4.06% variable interest on cash held in its investment ISA and investment lifetime ISAs, so you earn interest on cash in your account while you decide what to invest in. And you can ease into investing from as little as £25 a month with Dodl.
Most support is app-based or via online content, so those seeking in-person advice or more comprehensive coaching may prefer another platform with more hands-on guidance.
8. Interactive Investor – Best for bigger sums
Interactive Investor has some perks for beginner investors – clear pricing, easy account setup, access to ISAs for tax-efficient investing and educational tools – but investors with smaller sums should beware they will be paying a high price.
The firm is best known for flat fees in pounds and pence and it has recently overhauled its charging structure. The below will be correct from 1 February 2026.
For investors with up to £100,000, its Core plan costs £5.99 a month and includes an ISA, Sipp and trading account. This means the plan can work out very expensive for smaller investors. An ISA investor with £1,000 would find themselves paying an effective annual fee of almost 6%. However, flat fees can offer good value for money for those with significant sums.
Once you go above £100,000, you move to the Plus plan, at £14.99 a month. The big advantage is these fees stay the same as your portfolio grows, making it great value for bigger portfolios. The platform does charge extra for trading (buying and selling) investments, but you can make free regular monthly investments.
How do investment platforms work?
Investment platforms are just a digital way of holding and accessing all of your investments online. You go onto your investment platform, often via a mobile app, to buy, sell and monitor your holdings, including shares, bonds and investment funds.
Typically an investment platform will allow you to hold your investments in their ISA and self-invested personal pension (Sipp) – which are both good options as any gains you make grow in them free of income tax or capital gains tax. There will also be a general investment account, but you’ll be taxed on your profits in that one.
There’s usually lots of educational content provided for free on investment platform websites that you can use to help guide your decisions about where to invest even before you sign up as a customer. So it’s perfectly possible to visit one platform to get some investment ideas, and then use another platform to buy and sell your chosen investments.
What to look for in an investment platform
Product and investment range
You should consider the product and investment range, alongside the cost of investing. Some people might feel a good app is essential. Others might focus on customer service rankings too. If that’s you, then Trustpilot is a good place to check these out.
Tax wrappers
Although you might not need all the tax wrappers when you’re starting out, it could be important to have them available as you progress with your investments.
It’s important that an investing platform offers an ISA and SIPP wrapper. If you’re under 40, the Lifetime ISA may be important to you. Parents might want the option of Junior ISAs too.
Our stocks and shares ISA guide looks at tax-free benefits in more detail.
Type of investing platform
Platform suitability also depends on your level of confidence. Are you a “do it for me” customer, who would like guidance to make your choice? Or do you want to learn to do your investing by yourself?
Investing fees
Most investment platforms operate on a “percentage fees” charging model, where the platform charges a certain percentage of your investments held on the platform each year, usually broken down into monthly payments. A minority of platforms charge fixed fees, specified in pounds and pence. On top of this, there may be transaction charges for buying and selling certain investments.
Don’t underestimate the importance of charges. Even small differences in fees can make a big difference to the outcome over a 25-year investment career due to the compounding effect.
For example, imagine you invest a lump sum of £20,000 and plan to add £200 a month to this. If your platform charges 0.25%, over 25 years, with average investment growth of 6% a year, the fund would be worth £211,970 (per the financial education website CandidMoney.com). But with a platform that charges 0.45%, your fund would be worth £204,487. That’s a difference of £7,483.
On larger investment sums, the effect is magnified and could be the difference between you retiring in comfort or not.
