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PensionBee wins here. It’s hard to beat to be honest. It’s great for pensions and is super easy to get started and use. It’s cheaper than Moneybox overall and the investment choices are easier to understand. With Moneybox, it’s more suited to saving for your first home than retirement. PensionBee is our winner.
Ready to save for retirement? Great decision, your future self will thank you for it!! PensionBee and Moneybox are both good options, but is one better than the other? Let’s find out.
We’re going to look at personal pensions, which is a pension you open and manage yourself, rather than a workplace pension which is one your employer opens for you.
Moneybox also offers a Lifetime ISA, which can be used for retirement savings, but we don’t recommend this, a personal pension is much better (you get the 25% bonus with a pension too). Use a Lifetime ISA only if you’re saving for your first home. Here’s where to learn more about a pension vs Lifetime ISA.
And if you’re not quite sure about personal pensions, here’s where to learn more and find all the best personal pensions.
Okay, back to it! Let’s compare them both.
When it comes to ease of use, you can’t really beat PensionBee!
PensionBee is designed to be super easy to use and super simple. And it is. It’s great. You can get up and running in less than 5 minutes too.
PensionBee is an app on your phone (but you can sign up on the PensionBee website¹), the app is rated highly – 4.7 out of 5 on Apple and 5 stars on Google Play store. We've reviewed a lot of companies and this score is hard to beat, and for good reason!
Moneybox¹ is also an app, and rated 4.8 out of 5 on Apple and 4.3 stars on the Google Play store, so slightly less than PensionBee if you combine their scores.
However, Moneybox doesn’t just offer pensions, but a Stocks and Shares ISA and a Lifetime ISA too (and a standard account too, called a General Investment Account).
So, you have to navigate your way to open a pension, and then decide an investment strategy from all of the investment options (more on those below).
If you’re not quite sure what you’re doing when it comes to investing, it’s a bit confusing. PensionBee is definitely easier.
Winner: PensionBee
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Let’s start by saying first, with PensionBee, there’s one simple fee, and that’s it. It starts at 0.50% of your pension balance per year. And depending on which pension plan choice you make, it can be 0.75%.
With Moneybox, it’s a bit more complicated. You first have to pay £1 per month as a subscription fee to open an account. You then have to pay an annual fee that’s based on the amount on your pension, so similar to PensionBee, and this is 0.45%. Then there's the investment fees, these can be between 0.15% to 0.58%.
So, adding all those together, that’s 0.45% for the ‘platform fee’, and then let’s use 0.37% for the investment fee (an average between the top and bottom fee). Then add the monthly £1 subscription. If you are just starting a pension and managed to save £1,000, to £1 would be 0.10%.
In total then, you are looking at 0.45% + 0.37% + 0.10% = 0.92%. And that percentage varies up or down depending on which investments you choose and if you have more saved up.
Sorry that was confusing! PensionBee's one simple fee is easier to understand and you have a better idea what price you are paying for their service.
Overall then, PensionBee is cheaper, and could be by quite a bit if you chose the lower cost pension option of 0.50%.
Winner: PensionBee
PensionBee is designed to be super simple, and that includes the investment options (choices). There’s a total of 7 to choose from, but most people choose from just the 3 main ones, which are:
With Moneybox, there’s a lot of decisions to make.
You need to choose from a range of funds, which are the investments themselves, and you can mix and match, if you want. But you need to know what you are doing when it comes to investing. These are super important decisions, after all it is your pension!
You’ll need to research which fund is best for you, along with the fees of the fund, and where your money is actually invested. However, they do offer ‘Starting Options’ if you’re not sure what to do and how to get started.
With that in mind, although having more options is good, we think PensionBee wins this for ‘normal’ people. Their experts manage everything for you and it’s super simple to decide on an investment option.
Winner: PensionBee
Customer service is always important when it comes to pensions, and to compare this we’re going to look at customer reviews on the popular reviews website, Trustpilot.
PensionBee has an excellent rating of 4.6 out of 5 from over 8,000 reviews. An incredible score! Lots of the reviews mention how simple everything is and the customer service (you get a dedicated account manager to help you).
With Moneybox, the rating is slightly less but still great, 4.5 out of 5 from over 1,000 reviews. However most of the reviews are around the Lifetime ISA rather than pensions. Generally customers are happy with the easy to use app rather than the service.
We’re giving this one to PensionBee, it’s a slightly higher rating, and from lots of more reviews. And the customer service is constantly praised.
Winner: PensionBee
When it comes to pensions, it’s hard to beat PensionBee – and they are the clear winners here!
Although Moneybox is great for savings and investing, it doesn’t quite compare with PensionBee for pensions. It’s more suited to general investing and very popular for Lifetime ISA and saving for your first home rather than retirement.
PensionBee is easier to get started and use the app. You can be set up and running in a few minutes, and they’ll even track down any old pensions you have too (if you want to move them over of course).
Overall it’s cheaper than Moneybox, with one simple fee. Moneybox fees are more complicated, with 3 different fees to combine, and these change depending on which investments you want.
And then when it comes to the investment choices, PensionBee has a few simple options to choose from, making it super easy. Whereas with Moneybox it’s all up to you. You need to research and decide which investments you want to make.
Finally, the customer reviews are better for PensionBee in terms of customer service – their account managers get lots of great feedback (they’re there whenever you need them).
And that’s it. PensionBee is our winner! If you want to learn more, check out our PensionBee review or visit the PensionBee website¹.
Is PensionBee for you? Get £50 for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
Is PensionBee for you? Get £50 for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
Is PensionBee for you? Get £50 for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
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 pensions, with many years of combined experience writing and talking about pensions and retirement, and some of our team were top financial advisors with professional pension qualifications. We love writing about pensions, they’re pretty much the best thing you can do for your future.
More than 20 years of combined experience researching and writing about pensions
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Is PensionBee for you? Get £50 for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
