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Tembo comes out top with their LISA. It’s one of the highest interest rates out there, it’s easy to use, and there’s great features to help you plan and save more. Plus, they’ll help with the mortgage when the time comes. Moneybox is great too, but the rate reduces after 12 months.
Ready to get saving for your first home? (Or even retirement?), great. Make the most of that free 25% government bonus as soon as you can, and don’t delay, you’ll need your LISA open for at least 12 months in order to use it to buy your first home.
So without delay from us, here’s our pick of the top 10 Lifetime ISA providers:
Tembo tops the list when it comes to Lifetime ISAs – it’s pretty awesome, and super popular, with over 350,000 customers.
First, it’s one of the highest interest rates you’ll find. There's marginally higher ones (below) but they normally reduce their rate after a year, cheeky!
Second, it’s super easy to use, and the app is great and comes with some great tools to help you save more.
Third, Tembo will even help you get a mortgage when the time comes to buy your first home (with your LISA), and they could potentially help you borrow more than otherwise could – so you might be able to buy your first home just that little bit quicker.
Alongside that, the customer service is fantastic, and Tembo have won many awards over the years.
With the LISA, you can save like a normal savings account, getting a set interest rate. Or, you can invest your cash and let the experts handle things – aiming to grow your money more over time.
All sounds pretty great right? Here’s where to learn more and get started with Tembo¹.
Interest rate: high
Cash Lifetime ISA: yes
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: yes
Transfer in other ISAs: yes
Minimum deposit: £1
Cash LISA cost: free
Stocks and Shares LISA cost: low
Moneybox is great, and also has one of the highest interest rates out there, but the rate drops after 12 months.
The mobile app is good, and there’s great features to help you save more such as rounding up your spare change when shopping.
You can also invest your cash within a range of investment options (e.g. stocks and shares) – although only recommended for experienced investors.
Moneybox can also help you with the mortgage when the time comes to buy your first home too, and there’s other types of savings and investing accounts too (such as a Cash ISA).
To learn more and get started, here’s the Moneybox website¹.
Interest rate: high
Cash Lifetime ISA: yes
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: yes
Transfer in other ISAs: yes
Minimum deposit: £1
Cash LISA cost: free
Stocks and Shares LISA cost: average
Beehive money offers a good interest rate, but it’s not the best. However, it’s pretty good overall (and online), and part of the large financial company Nottingham Building Society.
There’s a decent app to view and manage your LISA savings. And, when the time comes to buy your home, you’ll be able to get free mortgage advice later on (with a partner company).
Learn more on the Beehive Money website.
Interest rate: average
Cash Lifetime ISA: yes
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: no
Transfer in other ISAs: no (only LISAs)
Minimum deposit: £1
Cash LISA cost: free
Paragon is a large reputable bank, and offers an okay interest rate on their LISA.
You can manage things all online via their website, but unfortunately there’s no mobile app. Interest is only added yearly, so you can’t watch your money growing.
To learn more, visit the Paragon website.
Interest rate: average
Cash Lifetime ISA: yes
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: no
Transfer in other ISAs: no (only LISAs)
Minimum deposit: £1
Cash LISA cost: free
Skipton Building Society is a well established financial company, and they offer a reasonable interest rate on their LISA.
It’s fairly old school, and there’s no mobile app, but you can register online. The interest is also only added yearly, so you won’t see your money growing every day.
Learn more on the Skipton Building Society website.
Interest rate: average
Cash Lifetime ISA: yes
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: no
Transfer in other ISAs: yes
Minimum deposit: £1
Cash LISA cost: free
Nutmeg was one of the first ‘robo-advisors’, which is essentially an investment app where you can pick from a simple range of investment options, all managed by experts.
You aren’t able to save cash for interest, it’s for investing only, but a good option.
Learn more on the Nutmeg website¹.
Cash Lifetime ISA: no
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: yes
Transfer in other ISAs: no
Minimum investment: £100
Stocks and Shares ISA cost: average
Hargreaves Lansdown is the largest investment platform in the UK, with a solid reputation, and very well established, with over 1.5 million customers.
They offer a Lifetime ISA, where you can invest in a huge range of investment options – and they’ve reduced the fees for the LISA compared to their other investing products, such as a normal Stocks and Shares ISA – making it one of the lowest cost options.
If you’re an experienced investor, or keen to learn, Hargreaves Lansdown is a great option for your Stocks and Shares LISA.
To learn more, head over to the Hargreaves Lansdown website¹.
Cash Lifetime ISA: no
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: yes
Transfer in other ISAs: yes (but not LISAs)
Minimum investment: £100
Stocks and Shares LISA cost: low
AJ Bell is the second most popular investment platform in the UK, and it’s pretty great.
There’s a huge range of investment options, and it’s low cost overall. Another great option for experienced investors, or those keen to learn.
Visit the AJ Bell¹ website to learn more.
Cash Lifetime ISA: no
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: yes
Transfer in other ISAs: yes
Minimum investment: £500
Stocks and Shares LISA cost: low
OneFamily is a company that offers investing accounts for all the family, and one of those include a Lifetime ISA.
You can’t save cash, only make investments, and you can pick from two simple investment options that also help fight climate change.
To learn more, visit the OneFamily website.
Cash Lifetime ISA: no
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: yes
Transfer in other ISAs: yes
Minimum investment: £250
Stocks and Shares LISA cost: average
EQi is a fairly low cost option to invest within a Lifetime ISA, as long as you don’t make lots of investments (as there’s a high fee to buy and sell investments).
There’s a good range of investment options, although not huge.
To learn more, visit the EQi website.
Cash Lifetime ISA: no
Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA: yes
Transfer in other ISAs: yes
Minimum investment: £1
Stocks and Shares LISA cost: low
That’s our pick of the top 10 – and there’s some pretty great ones at the very top.
Tembo¹ steals the show with their top interest rate that doesn’t drop after the first year. If you want to invest your money, rather than save it as cash (to earn interest), they’ve got a great option where the experts can handle things.
The app itself is great, packed with features to help you save more, and gives you an idea of how much you might want to be saving for the home of your dreams.
Plus, you’ll be able to use Tembo for your actual mortgage when the time comes – Tembo are an award-winning mortgage broker (someone who finds the best mortgage for you), and has unique options to increase how much you can borrow (so you might be able to buy your dream home overall, or potentially buy a home sooner than you thought).
Nuts About Money tip: you might not be familiar with mortgages just yet, it’s highly recommended to use a mortgage broker when the time comes (like Tembo). They’ll be able to search all the mortgages out there to find the right one for you (there’s 1,000s) – you could end up saving £100s per month. It’s often not a good idea to ask your bank for a mortgage, as you won’t typically get a good deal. Learn more with our guide to the best mortgage brokers.
There’s a fair few Lifetime ISA providers out there, and they all offer something a bit different, so to narrow it down to the very best, and our top 10, we looked at the most important factors, which are:
We’ve looked at all the ins-and-outs of both Cash Lifetime ISAs and Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISAs too.
Whichever Lifetime ISA you pick from our list of top 10, you can be confident you’re picking one of the very best LISAs out there, and they’re all trustworthy and safe to save your hard earned cash. The top ones we often recommend to our friends and family too.
Nuts About Money tip: if you’re keen to learn more, check out our guide to the best Lifetime ISAs.
A Lifetime ISA (Individual Savings Account), also called a LISA, is a great option to help save for your first home, with everything you save, you’ll get a massive 25% bonus from the government – it’s a scheme to help you save (as it’s pretty difficult these days).
Your government bonus will simply turn up in your account after a few weeks (sometimes a few months).
And, you could even use a LISA to save for retirement, although you may want to opt for a private pension for that. Learn more with our guide to a Lifetime ISA vs pension.
You’re able to save up to £4,000 per tax year (April 6th to April 5th the following year), and all your savings will be completely tax-free – so no tax to worry about when you withdraw it later, and your money can grow much quicker, as you’re not paying tax along the way!
You can open a LISA as long as you’re under 40 (and over 18), and can keep paying into it until you’re 50.
There is a catch though, and that’s if you don’t use it for your first home, and want to withdraw the cash before the age of 60, you’ll have to pay a fee of 25% of the whole amount…
This works out to be more than the 25% government bonus you got in the first place (it seems odd by the maths works out), so you could end up losing a bit of your original savings.
And, to use it for your first home, the property value needs to be lower than £450,000 – which when the LISA was first created back in 2017 was quite a lot for a first home, but these days, property prices are pretty pricey, and some first time buyers are buying homes worth more than that, and not able to use their LISA at all.
You’ll also need to be a first time buyer, which is someone who’s never bought property before.
You can also use it together with a partner’s LISA (if you’re both first time buyers), to boost your total deposit even more.
And, you’ll need to have your LISA account open for at least 12 months before you can use it – so get cracking and open yours now, just add £1 if you’re not ready to save, so the clock starts ticking.
If you’re not sure where to get started, check out Tembo¹, it’s one of the highest rates out there, easy to use, and they can help with the mortgage when the time comes. Here’s our Tembo review to learn more about their mortgage services.
Let’s recap all that so you can make sure you’re able to open and save into a LISA. To open, and later use your LISA, here’s the Lifetime ISA rules:
There’s two types of Lifetime ISAs, a Cash Lifetime ISA and a Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA…
A Cash Lifetime ISA is just like a regular savings account you might be familiar with from your bank. You simply add money and earn interest (more money) in return.
Although with a Cash Lifetime ISA, you get that juicy 25% bonus from the government too!
The interest rates can be pretty great as well (as long as you pick a great provider, such as our top 10 above).
A Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA is a bit different. Instead of earning interest on your cash, your money will be invested, with the intention of growing it more over time. Over a longer period of time, your money could grow much more than saving cash (typically over 5 years or more).
You’ve got two options here, you could let the experts handle things (recommended), and they’ll put their expertise to work and manage all the investments on your behalf, aiming to grow them over time (recommended for most people). An example of this is again, our top pick, Tembo¹.
Or, if you’re more experienced in investing, you could make your own investments. You can pick from a huge range of investment options with Hargreaves Lansdown¹, whilst also saving within a LISA.
Nuts About Money tip: learn more with our guide to the best Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISAs.
If you’ve already got a LISA, but you’ve now realised there’s some better providers out there, don’t worry – you can simply transfer your LISA to another provider, and it’s really easy to do.
Don’t open a new LISA if you’ve already saved into your LISA this tax year (April 6th to April 5th the following year).
Instead, during the sign up process with the new LISA provider select that you want to transfer an existing LISA over – this way there’s no complications (as you’re only allowed to save into one LISA per tax year).
They’ll handle the whole transfer process, and the money in your old LISA will simply turn up in your new LISA accounts after a few weeks. You can then continue to pay into your new LISA, just the same as before.
If there’s any bonuses from the government still to add, your new LISA provider will sort that too.
If you’ve got a different type of ISA, such as a Cash ISA (to save cash), or Stocks and Shares ISA (for investing), you can transfer these to a LISA too (depending on if the provider accepts them).
As your yearly savings limit is £4,000 within a LISA, you’ll only be able to transfer £4,000 per tax year too.
There we have it for our top 10 LISA providers. There’s some pretty great ones there, particularly Tembo¹ who tops the list with their top interest rate and great app.
Moneybox¹ is great too, and has a high interest rate – but reduces after 12 months.
If you’re looking to make your own investments, check out Hargreaves Lansdown¹, there’s a huge range of investment options, and it’s low cost for a LISA.
Don’t delay in setting up your LISA, as you’ll need it open for at least 12 months before you can use it – just add £1 if you’re not ready to start saving, so the timer starts.
And that’s it! All the best saving!
Check out Tembo, it has one of the highest interest rates, and it’s easy to use.
Check out Tembo, it has one of the highest interest rates, and it’s easy to use.
Check out Tembo, it has one of the highest interest rates, and it’s easy to use.
Check out Tembo, it has one of the highest interest rates, and it’s easy to use.
Edward Savage is a leading expert on money, with a background of 8 years working in financial services in London, has a business, accounting and finance degree, runs an investing community, and teaches people about money. He writes about all aspects of personal finance, including pensions, investing, mortgages and insurance.
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 savings, with many years of combined experience writing and talking about savings (and ISAs). Some of our team were top financial advisors. We understand the ins and outs of planning your finances well, how to communicate savings in an easy to understand way (we hope you agree), and of course, how to get the best savings rate for you.
More than 20 years of combined experience researching and writing about savings
Qualified team (APFS - Advanced Diploma in Financial Planning)
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Check out Tembo, it has one of the highest interest rates, and it’s easy to use.