Review contents
Freetrade is a great, commission-free trading app that's easy to use. There’s a wide range of investment options, and you can invest in an ISA and a pension for a low, fixed monthly fee. 5 stars from us.
Freetrade is one of the most popular stock trading platforms in the UK. In fact, there’s over 1.5 million customers. It’s all down to being, you guessed it… free to trade. On top of this, there’s a great app that's simple to use, and a wide range of investments to invest in.
Although having said that, it’s not quite 100% free, it’s commission-free, so free to buy and sell investments – but you’ll need to pay a monthly fee to actually use Freetrade to its full potential (such as investing within an ISA or pension). We’ll cover this later.
Before the rise of commission-free investing, you’d typically have to pay anywhere from £3.99 to £11.95 per deal (buying and selling shares). Ouch. That’s on top of fees to hold the investments too. Can you see why Freetrade is so popular now?
There’s also a wide range of investments to trade, which includes stocks and shares, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), from the UK, US and Europe – we’ll cover those in detail below.
You’ll also be able to earn a bit of interest on your uninvested cash, and even invest in UK Treasury Bills for a high interest rate guaranteed by the government (which is loaning money to the government).
There's a few accounts to choose from, including a basic account, with no tax-free benefits, or a Stocks and Shares ISA (tax-free), or pension (SIPP). We’ll cover those later too.
The app itself is great, and highly rated, with a rating of 4.3 out of 5 on the Apple app store, but a slightly disappointing 3.9 on Google Play.
Right, if you’ve heard enough already, and keen to get started… get a free share worth up to £100 if you sign up with Nuts About Money. Simply download the Freetrade app¹.
Otherwise, let’s dive into the details.
Yep. It’s almost perfect for beginners.
You can get started completely for free (with the Freetrade basic account), and dip your toes into the big world of investing at your own pace.
The app is easy to use, and it's easy to search and find the companies you might want to invest in, with a load of information about the company provided in an easy to understand way.
There’s also great resources to help you learn on the Freetrade website, and which is pretty cool, a community forum where you can discuss (or just read about), every stock and investment on the app.
Get a share between £10 and £100 all for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
With Freetrade, it’s all managed on your phone by downloading the Freetrade app¹.
You can buy and sell any stocks in seconds (depending on the investment), and find them in your portfolio straight away.
Your portfolio shows all of your investments, and their past performance, plus your total profit or loss since you began investing within a great chart that you can customise for different date ranges.
You can also use the app to research companies you are interested in and track their share price performance by adding them to your watchlist.
There are over 6,500 companies and funds (a group of companies) listed, and there’s more added regularly. You can even request companies to get listed so you can invest in them – as long as they are trading on a stock exchange of course!
Once you start investing you’ll be able to see the mix of your investments across stocks, cash, bonds (used by companies to borrow money) and commodities (real things like silver, grain, coffee). And of course, always see how your investments are performing.
Freetrade offer 3 types of accounts, basic, standard and plus – and each have a few more features that the last.
This is a ‘normal’ account, where profit isn’t necessarily all tax-free (you’ll likely pay tax if your profit is over £3,000 per tax year, which runs from April 6th to April 5th the following year).
Technically, this is called a General Investment Account (GIA).
You won’t get the full range of investments to trade, but there’s a good range, over 4,700, and you’ll get fractional shares on US stocks (more on those later).
And, you’ll get a small amount of interest on your uninvested cash (up to £1,000).
There are fees to buy US and European stocks, which comes in the form of a foreign exchange fee, as you’ll need to swap your Pounds for the right currency (e.g. Dollars), in order to buy the investment. This comes in the form of a foreign exchange fee, which is 0.99% (quite high).
With a standard account, you’re able to upgrade to a Stocks and Shares ISA, where you can invest completely tax-free. And you can invest up to £20,000 per tax year.
You’ll also get access to the full range of investments (over 6,500).
Plus, you can make recurring orders, and set automatic orders (to buy investments at a price in the future).
You’ll also get a higher interest rate on cash (up to £2,000), and the foreign exchange fee reduces to 0.59%, making it more reasonable.
The plus account gives you access to invest within a pension (technically called a self-invested personal pension, or SIPP). You’ll also get all the benefits of standard (so an ISA too).
Personal pensions are a great option to save for your future. With a pension, you’ll get a massive 25% bonus on all the money you add, added automatically by the government. This is to refund the tax you’d paid on your income (e.g. salary). And if you pay 40% or 45% tax, you can claim some of that back too (on a Self Assessment tax return).
Your money will also grow tax-free, so it can grow much faster over time. When it comes to retirement, or after 55 years old (when you can withdraw your money), 25% of it will be completely tax-free. You might pay Income Tax on the remaining 75% depending on your income at the time.
With the Plus account, the foreign exchange fee also reduces further to 0.39%, so pretty handy if you’re a keen investor in US or European stocks.
Plus, you’ll get a higher interest rate on uninvested cash too (up to £4,000).
Finally, you’ll get priority customer service, and access to trade on their website too (rather than the app).
Nuts About Money tip: if you’re only keen on investing within a pension, check out all your options with the best SIPP providers. Or, if you’d prefer the experts to handle things, check out PensionBee¹, it’s easy to use, has low fees and a great record of growing pensions over time.
You could think of Freetrade as a bit more traditional when it comes to investing, it’s a stock broker first and foremost, so offers stocks and shares, and investment funds, rather than things like crypto, and foreign exchange.
Nuts About Money tip: if you are interested in trading crypto, check out the best crypto exchanges.
There’s over 6,000 shares to trade with Freetrade.
A share represents the ownership of a company, so you own part of a company, a ‘share’ of the company. All the shares combined equal the total value of the company, and if the company does well, the value of the company usually increases, and so the share price typically rises.
The shares on Freetrade come from the UK, US and Europe.
Freetrade also offers OTC stocks (over the counter), which is where instead of being listed on a stock exchange, they are traded directly (through a broker). Which means there’s a wider range of companies to invest in.
There’s a great range of ETFs too, over 500. ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, are a collection of lots of different investments (e.g. shares), all grouped together into a single investment, and easily bought and sold on stock exchanges.
They make it much easier and cheaper to invest in a range of things, such as whole industries (e.g. green energy, AI companies and electric vehicles).
Freetrade also offers investment trusts, which are just like ETFs, a group of lots of different investments, but often have an objective, and are managed by experts. For instance, long-term growth.
They’re typically seen as a great way of building a diversified portfolio (a range of investments), suited to achieving different financial goals, rather than making all the investment decisions yourself, as you can rely on the experts to handle things.
An awesome feature of Freetrade, and not very common at all on other trading platforms (or brokers), is the ability to buy and sell fractional shares. These are simply fractions of 1 share, so it’s less than 1 whole share, such as ¼ of a share or 25% of a share.
Why is this good? Well, some stocks in the US have super high prices. Let’s take Netflix as an example, the current price for 1 share is around $600. Now, some people simply aren’t going to have enough money in their account to buy it, or have a portfolio big enough to have a stock that expensive.
With fractional shares, you can simply decide how much you want to invest in Netflix, say $100, and buy ⅙ of a share instead (⅙ of a $600 is $100). It’s all worked out for you too, you don’t need to do any maths. Phew.
You can also invest your money directly in UK Treasury Bills, these are where you effectively lend your money to the UK government in return for interest payments.
The interest rates are typically very high, as they’re linked to the Bank of England base rate, and they’re guaranteed by the UK government too (so typically very low risk).
Learn more about these on the Freetrade app¹.
If you hadn’t realised yet, freetrade is commission-free!
That means there’s no fees to buy and sell investments directly (more traditional brokers often charge a fee every time you buy or sell an investment, which can cost up to £11.95).
However, it’s not entirely free. The main fee you’ll pay is if you want to invest within an ISA or a pension, or would like access to the full range of investing options (e.g. shares).
For that, you’ll need to upgrade to a monthly subscription…
To trade shares in the US and Europe, you’ll also need to convert your Pounds into the relevant currency (either Dollars or Euros), which all happens automatically when you invest, however a fee is charged for this, and is more expensive on the basic plan (free account), and less expensive on the plus account.
Here’s what you’ll pay:
Depending on how much you invest and how often you trade, these fees can add up, so it’s worth considering which account is right for you.
Yep. It’s perfectly safe to use Freetrade.
Freetrade is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – they’re the people who make sure financial services companies are looking after you and your money.
That also means you’re protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). Which means should anything happen to Freetrade, such as going out of business, and they are holding your cash, you’ll get up to £85,000 in compensation.
However, your money is typically in the investments themselves, and these are looked after by large banks, all in your name, and can only be returned to you.
To get a good idea of the customer service, we like to look at Trustpilot, the popular reviews website.
On Trustpilot, Freetrade has got a great score of 4.1 out of 5. That’s really good for a financial services company, who typically get low scores due to poor customer service.
Most reviews talk about the low prices and range of stocks, alongside great customer service and a great place to learn about investing.
Let’s take a quick recap and have a look at the pros and cons of Freetrade.
Freetrade really could be the future of investing, it seems pretty crazy now to use other brokers and pay close to £12 per trade when you can get it all for free – you can even get Freetrade Plus for less than that per month, and trade many times per day (and within an ISA and pension if you wanted).
The range of investments with Freetrade is great too, and the app itself is super easy to use and provides great insights into your investments.
We can see why it’s super popular, with over 1.5 million customers.
Whether you are new to investing or experienced and looking for a new broker and trading platform, really look no further, give Freetrade a try. It’s a solid 5 stars from us. Or, check out all your options with the best investment platforms.
To get started, download the Freetrade app¹, and you’ll get a free share worth up to £100 with Nuts About Money. Enjoy!
Yep! And it’s a great one for you.
Get a free share worth up to £100 when you sign up with Nuts About Money. All you need to do is download the Freetrade app¹.
Get a share between £10 and £100 all for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
Get a share between £10 and £100 all for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
Get a share between £10 and £100 all for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
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 money, with years of combined experience working in the finance industry and writing about money. We understand the ins and outs, how to get the best deals, save money, and how to communicate money in an easy to understand way (we hope you agree).
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Get a share between £10 and £100 all for free when you sign up with Nuts About Money.
