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The best Trading 212 alternatives are eToro and Lightyear for low cost stocks and shares trading, and InvestEngine for investing in ETFs within an ISA. For CFD trading, it’s eToro and Plus500. And if you prefer the experts to handle things, Moneyfarm tops the list.
Trading 212 is a great investment platform and stock broker, but since you’re reading this, we guess you’re not keen. No problem! There’s lots of options out there – and we’ve researched and used almost all of them.
Here’s the best Trading 212 alternatives. (By the way, we’ll cover ISA alternatives below.)
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.
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.
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.
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
Plus500 is one of the top CFD trading platforms in the world. It’s well established, secure, and super popular – there's over 24 million users across the world.
The platform is user friendly, packed with trading tools, and some great, unique features such as +Insights – where you get information (insights) based on other traders on the platform, such as what investments are trending, and which are most bought and sold etc – it's all very cool, and super useful.
It’s low cost too (commission-free), and the customer service is excellent. It's the go-to trading platform for most traders.
Platform experience: awesome
Device options: website, tablet and phone app
Support: 24/7
Stocks & Shares ISA: no
Pension (SIPP): no
Range of investments: large
Stocks: yes
ETFs: yes
Fractional shares: no
Crypto: yes (not UK)
CFDs: yes
Forex: yes (CFDs)
Account fee: free
Cost per trade: free
Spread fees: yes (low)
Currency conversion fee: 0.70%
• Great trading experience
• Great mobile app
• Unique insights from all trades on the platform
• Low cost overall
• Good range of investment options
• Excellent customer service
• Free and unlimited demo account
• Trustworthy and reliable
• No 3rd party integrations
• Inactivity fee
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.
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.
We think Trading 212 is a great investment platform (a place to buy and sell investments), it’s low cost, and there’s no account fees. Plus it’s one of the lowest currency conversion fees out there (0.15%).
If you haven’t used Trading 212 yet, and want to learn more, here’s our Trading 212 review.
Anyway, let’s move on to the alternatives to Trading 212, and how we determined the best alternatives.
Trading 212 is popular because it’s super low cost and has a great range of investment options. So, it’s alternatives that need to be that too.
Here’s what we looked at:
Right, let’s dive into the details for each category!
Our recommended platforms for trading stocks are low cost, and they’re great trading apps to rival Trading 212 for mobile trading (plus a web trading platform).
You could also check out InvestEngine¹, it's very low cost, but you can only buy exchange-traded funds (ETFs). ETFs are collections of lots of different investments, all pooled into a single investment, and great for building a diversified investment portfolio for long-term growth.
For instance, you could buy an ETF of the top 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), called the FTSE 100. Here’s where to learn more about how to invest in the FTSE 100.
If you want an option that has no account fees, and also offers an ISA (a tax-free way of saving) check out InvestEngine¹. Note: you can only buy ETFs with InvestEngine.
And if you only want to invest within a Stocks and Shares ISA, and buy stocks and shares, check out our best Stocks and Shares ISAs.
If you want a traditional stock broker AJ Bell is a good option, and has a huge range of investment options to choose from.
The only downside is that you will pay an account fee, and a share dealing fee. The good news is that they’re one of the cheapest traditional brokers out there, so still a great choice to save and invest.
Here’s our AJ Bell review to learn more, or visit the AJ Bell website¹.
If you’re only looking to trade CFDs (Contract For Differences), you’ve got quite a few options out there, but it all comes down to the trading platform experience and fees.
By the way, if you’re not sure what CFDs are, instead of buying the asset directly (such as a share), you’ll instead trade the price of it. You’ll enter into an agreement (contract) with the CFD broker about the price in the future, and settle the difference when you close the trade, paying the difference, or receiving the difference back in profit. And so, you get a ‘Contract For Differences’.
They’re great for advanced traders and experienced investors as they’re typically lower cost overall, you can trade both price directions (and so trade the price down going down too, called going ‘short’, rather than ‘long’), and you can trade with borrowed money (called leverage trading or margin trading), which can amplify your profits (and losses), and can be high risk.
Our CFD recommendations are all awesome trading platforms, bespoke to them. So you don’t need to use any 3rd party trading software (such as MetaTrader 4). And the trade execution is fast – so you’ll get the price you see. What’s more, they all have great in-built trading tools.
Plus, the investment ranges are huge (including stocks, ETFs, and forex trading (foreign exchange)), and the fees are very low.
Nuts About Money tip: if you’re only looking to trade forex, check out the best forex trading apps.
Did you know that you can leave all your investing to the experts? They’ll grow your money in a safe and sensible way over time – you can just sit back and relax.
These are hugely popular, and often called a robo-advisor. All you need to do is select your account option (for instance an ISA or a pension), add your money, and they’ll handle everything else.
They’re a great alternative to making your own investment decisions, and often work out much better for long-term investing. Or, you could use one in addition to a self-managed investment platform, such as eToro¹ , and still make your own investments alongside it.
We highly recommend these as an option, and recommend Moneyfarm¹ – they’re the best performing Stocks and Shares ISA.
For pensions, we recommend PensionBee¹ – they’re got a great track record, have low fees and are super easy to use. You'll get a 25% bonus automatically added to your pension by the government on any money you add to a personal pension.
So, there we go. The best alternatives to Trading 212. Although we think Trading 212 is great, it’s not for everyone. There are great alternatives out there.
All the best options for low cost stock trading and investing are listed above.
If you want to trade stocks and shares within an ISA, check out our best Stocks and Shares ISAs.
We've also listed our top platforms for CFD traders, all with a huge range of investment options (assets) to trade, low cost and awesome trading platforms overall.
If you prefer to let the experts handle things for you, check out Moneyfarm¹ – it’s easy to use, has a great track record and a great app. And if you’re looking to save within a pension, check out PensionBee¹ too – for all the same reasons.
Happy investing!
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.
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Qualified team (APFS - Advanced Diploma in Financial Planning)
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We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.