Article contents
The best expert-managed investment app is Moneyfarm, it's low cost, easy to use and has a great track record of growing money over time. If you want to make your own investments, interactive investor and eToro are the best investment apps. Trading 212 is great if you want to invest within an ISA.
Ready to start investing? Great! It’s the best way to build your wealth over time, and you can get started with very little. The important bit is getting started. Let's dive into the best investment apps first, and run through everything you need to know after.
Lightyear is a slick investment app that's easy to use and low cost. It also offers one of the best rates for saving cash!
Moneyfarm is a great option for saving and investing (both ISAs and pensions). It's easy to use and their experts can help you with any questions or guidance you need.
They have one of the top performing investment records, and great socially responsible investing options too. Plus, you can save cash and get a high interest rate.
The fees are low, and reduce as you save more. Plus, the customer service is outstanding.
Lightyear is a slick investment app that's easy to use and low cost. It also offers one of the best rates for saving cash!
Lightyear is a slick investment app that's easy to use and low cost. It also offers one of the best rates for saving cash!
Get £100 - £3,000 cashback
interactive investor (or simply ii) is a very well-established investment platform with 30 years of helping people make their money do more. They’ve successfully kept with the times, and are still a leading platform today.
ii has one of the widest ranges of investment options out there, and the platform itself (whether you’re on the website or the app) is easy to use, suited to both beginners and experienced investors.
It’s low cost overall, and fairly unique in that it charges a flat monthly fee depending on which account you’d like (e.g. an ISA for tax-free investing, or a pension to save for retirement), rather than a percentage of your investments.
ii offers a range of account types to suit your financial goals, including an ISA (which can be self-managed or managed by their experts for the same fee), a Trading Account, and a three-time Which? Recommended Personal Pension (SIPP).
Their plans start from £4.99 a month, with a range of unique benefits as you move to higher-priced plans (such as free accounts for your friends and family). There’s also useful analytical tools, which are embedded in the platform, and are great for in-depth insight into the markets, helping to make smarter investment decisions.
Trades typically cost from £3.99 per investment (buying or selling), although regular investing monthly is free. Other fees apply too, depending on what you’re investing in.
If you’ve got a larger portfolio, ii’s flat fee makes investing very low cost. And if you’re just starting out, it’s still low cost overall, but the monthly fee will be a higher proportion of your investments while you’re building up your portfolio.
The UK-based customer service team is excellent and award-winning, with both online and phone available (which is very rare these days).
Overall, we think ii is great, and definitely worth checking out to see if it’s right for you.
Best for: experienced investors with a growing portfolio (benefit from the flat fee)
Nuts About Money rating: 5 stars
Fees: low
Minimum deposit: £25
eToro is great. It's an easy to use, low cost, trading platform, with a huge range of investment options. It's crazy popular, with a huge community you can get involved in, learn from and copy their trades!
It’s also got the largest range of assets to trade, including stocks, ETFs, crypto, CFDs, currencies and commodities (such as gold).
Highly recommended for beginners to get started, and there's great features for more experienced traders too (such as margin trading).
Platform experience: great
Device options: website & phone app
Support: 24/5
Stocks & Shares ISA: no
Pension (SIPP): no
Range of investments: huge
Stocks: yes
ETFs: yes
Fractional shares: yes
Crypto: yes
CFDs: yes
Forex: yes
Spread fees: yes (low)
Currency conversion fee: 0.50% on non-USD deposits
• Very easy to use
• Low trading fees (commission-free stocks)
• Awesome trading software
• Good range of investment options
• Offers CFD trading (alongside regular investing)
• Available on desktop, tablet and mobile
• 24/5 support
• Demo account
• No 3rd party integrations
Deposit £50, get 10 free trades
Lightyear is a great, low cost investing and stock trading platform. There’s a good range of investment options (over 3,000 stocks and ETFs), you can store multiple currencies, and the app itself is modern and super slick.
ETFs are completely free, and stocks are £1/$1/€1 per order.
There's also very low currency conversion fees of 0.35%, or you can hold the currency itself, and avoid this fee.
Lightyear is a slick investment app that's easy to use and low cost. It also offers one of the best rates for saving cash!
Get fractional shares worth up to £100
Trading 212 is a platform built for everyone in mind – there's over 2,000,000 customers! It’s great for beginners to get started, and perfect for experienced investors too with a huge range of investment options.
It’s one of the cheapest platforms out there with low fees when buying foreign stocks (currency conversion fee).
Investing is for everyone. So, whether you know your Apples from your Blackberrys, or think FTSE is something to do with your feet, we’re here for all of you.
We’ve reviewed the best apps for beginners all the way to experienced investors.
First of all, investment apps fall into 2 categories, there’s expert-managed investment apps and self-managed investment apps:
Expert-managed investment apps are perfect for beginners and those looking to be more hands-off. Experts who know how to make money will handle everything for you and grow your money sensibly over time. Just add money, sit back and relax.
Self-managed investment apps are great for those a bit more familiar with investing, or wanting to have more control over their investments. The range of investments is far greater, and you get to decide which investment decisions you’d like to make.
By the way, you can sign up to multiple investment apps, so you could have one of each type. You could let the experts do their thing with your Stocks & Share ISA, and use a self-managed investment app to invest in your favourite investments yourself.
To determine the best investment apps, we’ve looked at 5 key criteria, which are:
Although there’s a fair few investment apps out there, we’re only showing you the best. Ones that we’re happy to recommend, and use ourselves here at Nuts About Money. You can be confident in whichever one of the above you choose.
Investing is a broad topic, but ultimately it can be summed up as making money, from well, your money. Or in other words, growing your money.
If you're completely new to investing, we've got a guide on investing for beginners too.
The most common form of investing is buying stocks and shares, which is where you own a part of the company, a share of a company (explained below).
Investing could also be buying funds, property, cryptocurrencies (if you want to trade crypto, check out the best crypto exchanges), or investing in new businesses just starting out, in fact the possibilities are quite endless!
That may sound complicated, but most investing is done for you by experts, especially when using an investment app on your phone. You can think of it like a savings account, except your money is invested in stocks and shares rather than sitting in a bank account earning you interest. You simply add your money within the app, leave it to the experts, and watch your money grow over time.
Although people tend to think investing as ‘risky’, in the long run, you’ll often make a lot more money investing your savings than keeping it in a savings account. Particularly if you invest with the help of experts and if you use a Stocks & Shares ISA, as you won’t be paying any tax either. It’s a win-win!
As mentioned, Stocks and Shares is where you own a part of the company, a share of a company.
These shares combined together make up the total value of a company, and they are bought and sold (traded) on stock exchanges across the world (this can be done using an investment app on your phone). The value of a share is linked to the value of the company, so if the company does well, the value of the company usually increases and so do the shares.
A fund, or better known as an exchange-traded fund (ETF) is most commonly a group of shares from different companies, all bundled together, so you can buy a share of the fund, rather than all the individual shares themselves. For instance, the top 100 companies in the UK (FTSE 100), or you could have a group of companies in the electric vehicle industry.
It's a great way to invest as your money is invested across a range of companies, making them safer than individual company shares (which has a higher risk of the price dropping).
ETFs are becoming incredibly popular. They’re traded on stock exchanges too, just like shares.
When you buy shares, you’re actually buying part of a company. So instead of earning a fixed amount in interest each year, like you would with a regular savings account, or a Cash ISA, your investment is linked to the value of the whole company. So as the company grows in value, so do your shares.
Now, the special bit, because there’s no set interest rate, if your investments are doing really well, you can earn a lot more! In fact, there's no limit to how much your shares could be worth in the future (if the company grows rapidly, you could earn many, many times your original investment).
Now we’re not saying you should go out and start investing in everything, we’re saying that in general, stocks and shares have the potential to earn far more than a savings account over time – and by quite a lot! Plus, you can let the experts make all the decisions too. Easy.
Note: it's important to remember that companies do go down in value. So it's best to let the experts choose which stocks to buy with an expert-managed investment app.
With technology improving rapidly, it’s now super simple to invest your money using an investment app on your phone.
Again, there’s 2 main ways to invest your money with an investment app, you can either invest with an expert-managed investment app or a self-managed investment app. Let’s take a look at both in more detail.
These are the super easy option, and the best option for beginners who don’t want to be hands-on with their investments. With these, you simply add your money and then sit back and relax. The experts will handle everything for you – that’s picking the right investments and using an investment strategy to grow your money safely over time.
Expert-managed investment apps are often called ‘robo advisors’ because they have an app or a website that their customers use. A lot of customers believe that all the investments are actually done by a computer too. But actually, there’s experts managing the investments. You’re in safe hands.
Note: however, there are actually some investment options where the computers do make the decisions of what to buy and sell – and they can actually perform better than some experts!
With self-managed investment apps, you’ll be the one picking investments and buying and selling shares and funds (ETFs) yourself. The power is all yours!
There’s thousands of shares and funds to choose from and that’s why self-managed investment apps are hugely popular.
You're not suck with what the experts decide, which are often safe investments that grow slowly compared to the potential of the next must have stock (we’re not saying that’s a bad thing!).
You could buy shares of a business that you really like with great potential, that could pay off big time in the future, and invest any amount you’d like to. Or, you could play it safer with a choice of ETFs that you think are solid buys and have great potential. Best of all, you can do both! The investment strategy is entirely yours.
The good thing about investment apps is that there’s often no minimum amount, or it’s quite low, such as £1. Which means beginners can start with an amount they feel comfortable with.
It really all depends on your budget, if you’re not comfortable (yet), start as low as you feel comfortable with. However, do bear in mind fees to buy and sell shares if you are using a traditional broker – it’s best to use a cheap trading app, investment platform or trading platform for smaller amounts.
It’s also a great strategy to invest a certain amount regularly to build up your savings over time, and you’ll be reducing risk by smoothing out the ups and downs of the stock market. Learn more with our pound cost averaging guide.
Good question! The best type of investment app you should start with is an expert-managed investment app. Here's the best investment apps for beginners.
This way, the experts do all the work for you, you just sit back, relax and watch your money grow. All you need to do is add money whenever you want to (ideally monthly), and it will automatically be invested for you.
You’re not locked into any app either, you can use multiple investment apps. You could also check out the best online stock brokers.
Ethical investing is almost exactly the same as ‘normal’ investing – buying stocks and shares, and funds (ETFs), except you're making conscious choices on which companies to invest in.
You’ll only be buying shares in companies or funds (ETFs), that have a positive impact on the environment and society (for instance no oil companies, or tobacco, mining etc.). To help investors make the right decisions, they use an ‘ESG framework’, which stands for:
Environmental: combating pollution, climate change, water usage, and deforestation.
Social: great treatment of employees, good health and safety, diversity, and helping local communities.
Governance: corruption, inequality and bribery – and steps that are taken to avoid this.
It’s easy to invest ethically too, in fact just like regular investing, you don’t have to do anything! The experts will handle it all for you – you’d often just select the ethical, or often called socially responsible option, and that’s it! Learn more about ethical Stocks & Shares ISAs.
Yep! Thanks to awesome technology, gone are the days where you’d have to get an old person in a dusty suit round to your house to decide your best options, and charge you huge fees.
Investing apps are one of the best and cheapest ways to invest – just add your money and let the experts do all the work for you. Scroll up for the best investment app managed by experts.
Or, if you’re confident, use a self-managed investment app for more control over your investments.
You’ll be investing in no time. Just remember long-term strategies are the best – there’s no get rich quick scheme!
Christopher Dowling combines a communications degree with over 10 years experience in the financial services industry in London – with focus on educating people on a wide range of money topics in an easy to understand way. He writes about savings, investing, pensions, mortgages, insurance, banking, loans, business finance and other money topics.
This article was written, reviewed and fact checked by the expert team at Nuts About Money. You’re in safe hands. Learn more.
We're experts in all things investing, with many years of combined experience writing and talking about investing and trading. Some of our team were top financial advisors. We understand and love helping people learn more about both short term trading and investing for the long term – investing can be a great way to grow your money over time.
More than 20 years of combined experience researching and writing about investing
Qualified team (APFS - Advanced Diploma in Financial Planning)
A wide range of trading and investing companies researched and reviewed, and a transparent review process
We follow a strict editorial code to ensure you get the best information possible
Lightyear is a slick investment app that's easy to use and low cost. It also offers one of the best rates for saving cash!