In truth, there is no such thing as ‘the best’ trading app – only the best one for you.
So, how do you find your match?
When it comes to selecting the right trading app, consider the following questions:
- What kind of account do you want to open?
Do you want to trade within a General investment account (GIA) is an account designed to provide access to investments. You may be liable for tax on any income or capital gains earned within a general investment account but this can be a useful vehicle for anyone who has maxed out their ISA allowancegeneral trading account
, a Sometimes called an investment ISA, a stocks and shares ISA is an individual savings account that allows you to invest in shares, unit trusts, investment funds, and bonds. You will not need to pay tax on any income or capital gains earned on investments within an ISAStocks and Shares ISA
, Lifetime ISAs (Individual Savings Accounts) (LISAs) are designed to help you save for your first home or retirement and come with an automatic 25% government bonus on all contributions up to the value of £4,000. There are stocks and shares LISAs – where you invest your savings – and cash LISAs – where you earn interest on your savings. You must be between 18 and 40 to open a LISA and all income, capital gains and interest earned within LISAs is tax-free, although these funds can only be used to purchase your first home or for retirement. Ensure you are familiar with the rules surrounding this account before utilising itLifetime ISA
, or a pension account? This will determine which platforms are available to you since very few offer all the various different account types.
This table gives a quick overview of which providers offer the different types of account:
As you can see, trading platforms generally have more limited product lines than investment platforms. Interactive Brokers offers a wider selection, however.
Some trading apps are tailored to the needs of those just starting out, while others are no-go-zones for beginners. I’ve grouped the platforms into the appropriate categories here:
When we talk about platforms being geared towards less experienced investors vs highly experienced investors, we’re usually talking about how easy or complex the user interfaces are to navigate, the number of tools and advanced features available, the number of different trading platforms available, and the provider’s education offering.
This is just a guide, however. You may feel your skillset in other areas of your life equips you to tackle a more advanced platform from the start. Equally, I know of very experienced traders who use platforms aimed at less experienced traders because of cost. So, it’s horses for courses.
- The assets and instruments you want to trade
As a rule of thumb, the more sophisticated the trading experience, the greater the number and range of assets and instruments available.
This comparison table gives some sense of the size of different platforms’ market offerings for retail traders. (Some instruments are available for professional traders only, in which case I haven’t included them here).
It might also be important to you that you have access to Fractional shares are portions of shares (or ETFs) that are smaller than one whole share. They are designed to make ownership of large, expensive shares more accessible. fractional shares
. If so, your shortlist can immediately be narrowed down to the following platforms:
Interactive Brokers
Trading 212
eToro
- Whether you want to manage your investments yourself or pay to have them managed for you
If you’re an active trader, or looking to become an active trader, then you’ll most likely want to pick and choose your own assets to trade. However, if you’re new to trading/investing, or you don’t feel you’ll have the time to research and keep on top of the management of your investments, then a product like a fully managed ISA could appeal. You’ll need to pay for the additional service (visit our Best stocks and shares ISA page to see cost comparisons if it’s an ISA you’re interested in), but it can free up your time and give you some reassurance that your investments are being managed by the professionals.
If you do choose the managed route, pay particular attention to the performance of each providers’ funds. While it’s important to remember that past performance does not guarantee future performance, you’ll see that there are big differences in the investment strategies used by different companies, which have resulted in very different returns for customers over the last few years. We’ve undertaken independent analysis on past performance data which you can view here.
Once you’ve asked yourself these five questions, you’re ready to choose a provider. And your thoughts are bound to turn to cost. So how do the platforms compare on fees?
Which trading platform offers the lowest fees?
Coming up with straightforward cost comparisons for trading platforms isn’t easy. While most platforms charge via some combination of platform fees, commission/spreads, and A foreign exchange (FX) fee is added to all trades involving foreign currencies. If you buy a stock that trades in US dollars, for example, and your home account is in GB pounds, you’ll need to pay an FX fee.FX fees
, costs can vary hugely depending on the size of your portfolio, the type of account you have, and the instrument or asset you’re trading.
So, to come to solid conclusions on which platforms offer the lower costs, I’ve compared fees for a few specific examples. As you can see, it shows a pattern around which are the most expensive, and which are the cheapest to trade with.
Scenario 1: I want to trade stocks within an ISA…
In this table, I’ve illustrated how we got to each calculation and provided the figure you’d end up paying for each provider. Although they’re strictly speaking investment platforms rather than trading platforms, I’ve included Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell and Freetrade to demonstrate how costs compare across the different types of platforms that offer stocks and shares ISAs.
As you can see, it’s the trading platforms that work out the cheapest. Within our featured trading platforms, IG works out as being the most expensive, then Saxo, Interactive Brokers and, cheapest of all in this scenario, Trading 212. (eToro isn’t included in this table as it doesn’t offer an ISA of its own – customers use Moneyfarm’s instead.)
Scenario 2: I want to trade GBP/USD forex…
For the next two scenarios, we’ve not included figures for the total you’d pay as figures are impossible without knowing the exact spread, and spreads change as the market moves. We’ve therefore given examples of the average added spreads/commission quoted by providers for the currency pair GBP/USD.
What’s interesting is that the same pattern forms in terms of which platforms’ fees are highest/lowest cost from our list:
Scenario 3: I want to trade CFDs…
Once again, fees are cheapest with Trading 212 and Interactive Brokers, with eToro and IG at the more expensive end of the spectrum.
It’s important to remember that low cost doesn’t equate to best platform. There are many more criteria which can play into a decision about what’s right for you, your risk profile, trading proficiency level and your trading strategy, than just keeping costs as low as possible.
Which platform is best for day trading?
Day trading is a short-term trading strategy that, as the name suggests, involves frequent buying and selling of securities during the day. Instead of waiting for the price of assets to rise over a long period of time, and benefiting from compound interest, the goal for day traders is to beat the market and generate immediate profits. Day traders attempt to do this by anticipating price changes that could happen within the trading day. Ideally, day traders want to have exited all their trades by the end of the day so they aren’t holding securities overnight (something which usually incurs an ‘overnight charge’).
This might sound like an exhilarating way to make a living – and for some people it certainly is – but day trading comes with high potential risks. For that reason, it takes someone with the appropriate appetite for risk as well as sufficient tolerance for risk, to make it work. It’s also a strategy that requires considerable experience and skill to master.
In the past, if you weren’t a professional trader you’d need to put a call into the dealing desk of your chosen brokerage to make a trade. Now, online trading platforms, and all the data we can consume at our fingertips, makes it possible for retail traders to execute trades themselves from the comfort of their own homes.
Interactive Brokers, Saxo Markets, IG, Trading 212 and eToro all offer excellent day trading experiences at reasonable prices. However, the platform you choose should be largely dictated by your experience level: less experienced traders will find eToro and Trading 212 offer a more gentle introduction with a great deal of support in the form of social trading features, copy trading options and a more user-friendly interface. The trade-off (excuse the pun) is that you’ll not have access to quite the scope of assets, tools and advanced trading features you’ll find on those platforms designed with the advanced and professional trader in mind, namely Saxo and Interactive Brokers. These two offer a serious trader greater possibilities and advantages, within platforms that may be too overwhelming for those still learning their craft.
IG is rare in that it offers something for both groups. It has an exceptional educational offering in the IG Academy and an emphasis on helping traders to grow their skills, but also world-class research and trading tools that mean you’ll never feel like you’re languishing on the nursery slopes.
Trading safely
At Investing Insiders, we make every effort to only recommend providers which have met stringent criteria set out by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to keep consumers safe. That means we only recommend providers that are authorised and regulated by the FCA.
The FCA is tasked with the responsibility of ensuring trading and investment platforms adhere to specific marketing and advertising rules about financial promotions, and that they conduct their business in accordance with regulatory standards.
It’s important to note that while being regulated by the FCA can ensure you are protected against bad practices, there is no protection available for poorly performing investments. Therefore, it is always possible to lose some or all of
your money when trading.
You should also be aware that some trading instruments come with exceptional, added risk. CFDs, for example, and spread betting, are particularly risky as you will be trading with leverage, which increases the amount of capital you can lose. All FCA-authorised trading platforms must advertise the percentage of customers who lose money when trading risky instruments with them. It’s not uncommon to see figures in the high 70-percent range.
What is trading with leverage?
Leverage is using borrowed money to gain exposure to larger trading positions. You’ll sometimes hear it referred to as ‘margin trading’. By trading with leverage you don’t need to pay the entire trade value upfront but can potentially make larger sums back on a trade. This is what makes it attractive. However, what makes it far more risky than trading without leverage is that, while gains can be magnified with leverage, so can losses.
Leverage is usually offered with certain derivative products such as CFDs, spread bets and rolling spot foreign exchange (FX), and can be used across a variety of different financial markets including forex, indices, stocks, A commodity is any basic raw material that can be bought and sold, for example, copper, silver, oil or coffee.commodities
, and ETFs.
You’ll find that leverage is calculated as a ratio. The maximum ratio UK providers are permitted to offer retail traders is 30:1. That’s a limit, though; you can also choose to trade with lower ratios of leverage if you wish to lower your risk level.
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