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eToro wins this hands down. It’s much, much cheaper than Hargreaves Lansdown. Has a much bigger range of investments (like stocks, currencies and crypto). The platform experience is great too and customers love it. Although there’s no ISA.
Ready to invest, or a pro investor already looking to change platforms? Let’s take a look at eToro and Hargreaves Lansdown.
First of all, there’s some key differences to highlight. eToro is a trading platform, which offers a huge range of investment options, to suit all types of traders (such as stocks, currencies and crypto), and these would be traded regularly. Plus, a huge range of tools to help you trade.
Hargreaves Lansdown is a stock broker. They buy and sell stocks and funds (groups of stocks) for you, and normally with a longer time-frame, not regular trading.
If you’re in a hurry, we’ve rated eToro 5 stars, and Hargreaves Lansdown is rated 2 stars. There’s a pretty clear winner! eToro is also much cheaper. Here’s where to get started with eToro¹.
Let’s dive into the details.
First, let’s quickly run through both platforms, so we’re on the same page.
eToro is a very popular worldwide trading platform. It’s great for beginners all the way to experienced professionals.
It’s got pretty much everything you’d want to trade, that’s stocks and shares (small portions of the ownership of a company), ETFs (groups of shares combined together), currencies, commodities (things like gold and silver), and cryptocurrencies.
What’s great about eToro too, and the only place to do this in the UK, is the social trading – that’s where you can view and interact with other traders, and see their trades. You can learn from them and even copy their trades!
It’s also low cost (although not completely fee free).
You can also trade with leverage (borrowed money), and trade the price of assets going down (shorting), as well as going up of course. (This is very high risk, please be sensible.)
In general, it’s a well-rounded and great trading platform. You can learn more with our eToro review.
Hargreaves Lansdown is a traditional stock broker (a place to buy and sell stocks directly, rather than trading the price). It’s very well established and has a solid reputation.
You can buy traditional investments such as stocks, shares and funds, and the range of these is pretty broad.
You can buy these within a General Investment Account (a standard account), a Stocks & Shares ISA (invest tax-free), and a personal pension (save tax-free for retirement).
Cost wise, you’ll pay an account fee, which is a percentage based on the total of your investments, and then a fee to buy and sell (more of fees later).
You can learn more with our Hargreaves Lansdown review.
eToro wins hands down vs Hargreaves Lansdown. Learn more about eToro and get started on their website.
You may have guessed it already. eToro is vastly cheaper, and we’re not talking pennies.
eToro is low cost, and there’s no account fees (which are fees just to open and have an account).
In fact, the only fees you might end up paying is a foreign exchange fee, to convert Pounds to Dollars. As eToro is worldwide, it runs on Dollars, even if you’re in the UK. This is 0.50%. And if you want to withdraw cash from your account, you’ll pay $5.
With eToro, if you are trading CFDs (Contract For Differences), which is trading the price of an asset rather than buying the asset itself (for instance, you want to trade the price going down),
You’ll also pay spread fees, which are small hidden fees added to the price when you buy or sell. These are pretty common when trading and quite low.
With Hargreaves Lansdown, you’ll first pay an account fee, which starts at 0.45% of your investments per year (and reduces the more you have invested), that’s if you are holding funds (a group of shares). If you are holding just shares themselves, it’s no charge.
However, you’ll then pay a fee to buy and sell investments. This starts at £11.95 and reduces to £5.95 if you make over 20 deals per month.
Overall, you’re really looking at trading for almost zero cost, or trading with one of the most expensive brokers out there. There’s not much comparison.
Winner: eToro
Now here’s where it flips the other way! Hargreaves Lansdown wins this easily as eToro doesn’t offer a Stocks & Shares ISA.
A Stocks & Shares ISA is where everything you make within the account is tax-free! You don’t pay any Capital Gains Tax, Income Tax or Dividend Tax.
It’s a great way to invest for long-term growth. A common strategy is to let the experts manage your ISA, with an expert-managed investment platform, such as Moneyfarm¹ or InvestEngine¹ (here’s the best investment platforms), and then use a self-managed platform, such as eToro (not so much Hargreaves Lansdown because of the fees), to make your own investments within a General Investment Account (a standard account).
This is because you can only pay into 1 Stocks & Shares ISA per tax year (April 6th to April 5th the following year). You can invest up to £20,000 per year within an ISA too (technically across all of your ISAs, such as a Cash ISA and Lifetime ISA, if you have them. Here’s where to learn more about ISAs).
Winner: Hargreaves Lansdown
There’s some key differences here. eToro is a trading platform, and that means it offers a massive range of investment options, to suit all types of traders. There’s a huge range of stocks and ETFs (group of stocks), along with currencies, commodities (like silver and gold), and cryptocurrencies. It’s got pretty much everything you’d ever want to trade.
Hargreaves Lansdown on the other hand, is a traditional stock broker. They offer stocks and funds (such as exchange-traded funds), and that’s pretty much all they do. However, the range of stocks and funds on offer is big. One of the largest for a broker.
Both platforms cover UK, US and European stocks, plus lots more.
Overall though, if it's the range of investments you are after, eToro wins hands down.
Winner: eToro
Let’s take a look at what customers think of both. The best way to do that is look at their reviews on the popular review website, Trustpilot.
eToro has an excellent score of 4.3 out of 5, and a massive 17,000 reviews. Not bad at all. Customers love eToro.
Lot’s of the reviews are about the commission free trading, great platform experience and the ability to trade and follow other traders.
When it comes to Hargreaves Lansdown, they also have an excellent score of 4.3 out of 5. That’s from over 6,500 reviews, so pretty popular too.
Lot’s of the reviews mention the great customer service, and how easy it was to set up an account and the ISA option.
So, they’re pretty similar in terms of rating, well exactly the same!
Winner: it’s a draw!
And there we have it, eToro vs Hargreaves Lansdown. eToro wins!
eToro is considerably cheaper, you can’t really get much cheaper than commission-free! And on the other hand, Hargreaves Lansdown is one of the most expensive brokers out there.
And when it comes to the range of investments, eToro has lots more. It’s got stocks, funds, currencies, crypto and commodities (like gold), whereas Hargreaves Lansdown just has stocks and funds.
If you do want a Stocks & Shares ISA, then Hargreaves wins, but there’s lots of options of there for Stocks & Shares ISAs, and in most cases we recommend using an expert-managed investment platform, such as Moneyfarm¹ or InvestEngine¹ for your ISA – why not just let the experts grow your money over time?
You can then use a General Investment Account for your own investments and regular trading (if you are looking to trade frequently that is).
With customer reviews, they’re pretty much on par, but eToro is quite a bit more popular.
That’s it! eToro wins. If you’re keen to get started or learn more, check out the eToro website¹.
Happy trading!
eToro is a multi-asset platform which offers both investing in stocks and cryptoassets, as well as trading CFDs.
Please note that CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Past performance is not an indication of future results. Trading history presented is less than 5 complete years and may not suffice as basis for investment decision.
Copy Trading does not amount to investment advice. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more
eToro USA LLC does not offer CFDs and makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the content of this publication, which has been prepared by our partner utilizing publicly available non-entity specific information about eToro.
eToro wins hands down vs Hargreaves Lansdown. Learn more about eToro and get started on their website.
eToro wins hands down vs Hargreaves Lansdown. Learn more about eToro and get started on their website.
eToro wins hands down vs Hargreaves Lansdown. Learn more about eToro and get started on their website.
This article was written by the team at Nuts About Money, and fact-checked by 2 independent reviewers. You’re in safe hands.
eToro wins hands down vs Hargreaves Lansdown. Learn more about eToro and get started on their website.