Trading212: an ultra-low-cost trading platform that’s hard to beat

Trading 212 is designed to be accessible and attuned to the needs of those just starting out in investing. Although the education offering is basic and shouldn’t be solely relied upon if you’re an investor in training, the social trading elements and simplicity of the features and design make it a welcome space for those who are still learning.

However, if you are a beginner, I would strongly urge you not to dive into the CFD section of the app/website mistaking it for an extension of the investment section. Trading CFDs is an extremely risky business – in fact, 77% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with Trading 212, so steer clear unless you have the relevant training and experience.

Trading 212 is also for those whose primary aim is to keep costs as low as possible. Its bargain-basement pricing is almost impossible to beat, the only potential exception being IBKR. (I explore IBKR vs Trading 212 further in my review.)

You must be comfortable choosing your own assets to trade with T212. Although there are opportunities to copy other traders, this is not something I’d necessarily recommend here. I explain why in the full review.

It’s not for those who want an advanced trading experience as you’ll likely find the trade execution and research tools far too basic. And it isn’t an option for those wanting to trade cryptocurrencies. (eToro would be my recommendation if you like the feel of T212 but want the crypto option.)

Trading 212 debit card

In March 2024, Trading 212 launched its flagship debit card. Benefits include:

• 5% APY on uninvested cash in your account
• Free ATM withdrawals up to £400 pm (1% ATM fee applies after that)
• It’s free to apply and hold the card
• 0.5% cashback on spending
• Can hold 13 major currencies
• 0.15% FX fee on the true interbank rate

Account types

With Trading 212 (T212), you can trade within a:

• General trading account
• Stocks and Shares ISA
• Cash ISA

Here’s how that measures up against other comparable trading platforms:

ISA

The T212 ISA is a flexible ISA. That means you can take money out of your ISA account and replace it within the same tax year without eating in to your annual ISA allowance, if that's helpful to you. With a standard stocks and shares ISA, that's not the case and means, if you take money out of your ISA for an emergency, you'll lose that chunk of the allowance for the year.

T212 is also fairly rare in offering fractional shares within an ISA. Some providers have steered clear of doing this because of the historical uncertainty about whether they qualified to be held in ISAs. However, HMRC has now confirmed that you can hold fractional shares within an ISA so T212's offering allows for you to hold small pieces of stocks with large price tags – great if you're just starting out.

Cash ISA

This is Trading 212's newest product offering.

A Cash ISA is a type of savings account that offers tax-free interest. There's no investing in the markets with a cash ISA – this is purely about getting the best interest rate possible on your savings.

In T212's case, that means you'll have access to their chart-topping 5.2% APY interest rate. It's simple to set up and, as a cash ISA, it's also FSCS-protected up to £85,000.

And as with every Trading 212 product, it is free to set up, and doesn't incur any account fees. T212's cash ISA is also a flexible ISA.

Assets

Trading 212 offers a decent selection of tradable assets:

• 13,000+ stocks and ETFs from the UK, US, Europe and the rest of the world
• 180+ forex pairs
• 29 commodities
• 36 indices

It’s not the widest choice on the market (Saxo offers 71k), but it’s still extensive, and if T212 covers what you’re looking for, then it’s not a problem.

However, if you’re looking for funds, you’ll find only ETFs, which rules a lot of popular funds such as Vanguard’s All-Cap and HSBC’s All-World Index Fund.

You also can’t trade individual bonds.

On the plus side, those who want to get a piece of big-ticket stocks without the big-ticket price tags can do so with fractional shares on T212.

CFDs

Trading 212 is essentially split between three different platforms:

• Trading 212 INVEST
• Trading 212 CFD
• Trading 212 ISA

On the CFDs platform, traders have the opportunity to trade long and short with leverage on stocks, forex, indices, commodities, bonds, and cryptocurrencies. (Note: you can’t directly buy and sell crypto, but you can trade crypto CFDs.)

You’ll need to pass the knowledge test while onboarding to access CFDs and leverage, however. This is a regulatory requirement as trading CFDs carries such high risks. 77% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

Ready-made options

T212 offers ‘Pies’. There are two main options:

• Ready-made pies
• Custom pies (not, as I continually want to call them, custard pies)

Ready-made pies can be selected from either ‘Model pies’ or ‘Community pies’. ‘Model pies’ are ETFs from WisdomTree containing a mixture of equity, bonds and commodities in different proportions. There’s the:

• WisdomTree Core (geared towards maintaining steady growth)
• WisdomTree Multi-Thematic (a mixture of 14 themes including AI, cloud computing, renewables, semiconductors, and more.)
• WisdomTree Tech (tech-focused themes invested 100% in stocks)
• WisdomTree Environmental (heavy exposure to environmental themes – 100% equities)

There are also ready-made ‘Community pies’ which are essentially copy-trading options. You pick the pie you like the look of, and opt to mirror it. eToro might have the largest social investing community in the market, but this is a smart tool and works similarly to eToro’s copy-trade function.

Custom pies

If you want to build a custom pie, you simply adopt a ‘pick n mix’ approach to choosing assets.

Unlike other platforms where the different assets and trading instruments form part of the same platform, things are more siloed with T212. There’s a platform for Trading 212 INVEST, Trading 212 CFDs, and Trading 212 ISA. The platforms look and work the same way, but are obviously tailored to the differing products and needs of different groups of traders.

Everything with T212 is designed with the user in mind – and it feels like it’s mostly a Millenial / Gen Z user that is in T212’s sights. Trading feels like a mixture between online shopping and a social media experience.

The interface is heavy on emojis and it’s clearly designed to feel fun. The whole experience has been gamified (you’ll find that across a few of the newer trading apps), so exercise caution if that’s something you want to avoid. It’s not hard to see how the fun element could mask the magnitude of the decisions being made. All trading is a risky business and you run the risk of losing many times your original deposit when trading complex instruments such as CFDs and leverage.

77% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

The well-designed and intuitive interface, however, helps to create a superb user experience. Powerful research tools and excellent trading features mean it’s still a platform for serious traders, even though it’ll definitely also appeal to those new to investing and keen to learn.

Mobile platform

Trading 212’s mobile trading app is available through the Apple App Store and Google Play. It has had more than 15m downloads globally, which makes it one of the most popular trading apps in the world. And, since 2016, Trading 212’s app has been the UK’s #1 trading app.

The app scores an impressive 4.7 stars from 148k reviews at the time of writing and reviews are overwhelmingly positive:

“Very good trading app. Uncluttered; enough bells and whistles but not so many you drown the two most important – buy and sell. News and insights are there if you need and the range of instruments is enough for your everyday retail investor or trader. There’s a pro version if you feel like Warren Buffet but the standard version is more than enough for me.”

Demo account

Trading 212 provides a demo account for both its Trading 212 INVEST platform and its Trading 212 CFD platform. I was given £5k of virtual GBPs to test out my strategies before risking real money.

A large part of Trading 212’s draw is its fees. Without a doubt, this platform is one of the cheapest in the market.
What you pay will depend on the products and services you use.

Trading 212 INVEST

If you want to invest in stocks, and ETFs (including in an ISA), here’s what you won’t pay:

Trading commission
Custody fees

Here’s what you will pay:

• FX fees

If you invest in non-GBP stocks and ETFs, you’ll pay currency conversion (FX) fees at 0.15%.

FX rates as low as 0.15% are rare, as you can see from this comparison table:

There’s more good news in that FX fees can technically be avoided with T212: Trading 212 Invest is a multi-currency account that allows you to hold money and trade in multiple currencies. This means, if you really don’t want to have to convert money and incur FX fees each time you trade in a different currency, you can do avoid it by holding money in different currencies. Of course, in reality, if you just want to spend you earnings in the UK, you’re probably not going to do this, but if you split your time between the UK and the US, for example, this works for you.

You’ll notice from the comparison table that Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is the only broker to offer lower FX fees as standard. If you’re weighing up the choice of IBKR vs Trading 212, there are two things to note:

To use IBKR, you’ll need to feel comfortable with a much more complex platform. Test it first using a demo account if you want to get a taste of how much more complex it is.
IBKR charges a commission on its trades, which T212 does not. Commission starts at 1% for fractional shares and 0.05% for whole shares. You may find it is still cheaper than Trading 212 if you’re factoring in FX fees, but both platforms are highly competitive and the differences may be marginal.

Let’s add a few other providers into the mix. Let’s imagine we bought 12 stocks over the course of one year, within an ISA, at each of these providers:

And the conclusion is… Trading 212 is cheap.

Trading 212 CFD

If you want to trade using CFDs on T212, here’s what you won’t pay:

Trading commission
Custody fees

Here’s what you will pay:

• The spread

Spreads are dynamic and change depending on the underlying market conditions.

Trading 212’s spreads are typically very low. Here are two examples of what you’d be paying at current rates on other platforms vs Trading 212:

Interactive Brokers is T212’s main competitor on price, with Saxo also in the mix. But T212’s 0.5% FX fees on forex and CFDs mean IBKR often comes out the cheapest.

• Overnight fees

Any CFD positions held in your account past 10 pm will incur an overnight holding fee. The fee can be positive or negative, depending on the direction of the trade and the product. You can find the fees for each instrument in the app, listed on its ‘Instrument details' page.

• FX (currency conversion) fees

As you may have spotted in the tables above, T212 charges a higher currency conversion rate of 0.5% for CFD trades.

You’ll only pay it on results, however, and there is that option to hold cash and trade in more than one currency with T212.

Withdrawal fees

It is free to withdraw funds from your T212 account.

Deposit fees

All bank transfers into T212 accounts are free.

There’s no charge for credit or debit card payments and Apple/Google Pay on transfers under £2,000. For figures over that, a 0.7% fee is applied.

Minimum deposit
£1.

Interest paid on cash

Trading 212’s big marketing push right now is around its 5.2% interest rate on uninvested cash. It’s certainly worth shouting about as it’s the highest I’ve found (unless you have more than $250k with eToro).

For comparison:

Research tools on T212 are mostly very good.

It has most of the fundamentals, charting tools, and key data retail traders are likely to want, and there are some nice, novel features such as the percentage split between those buying and selling an asset.

I particularly like the price alerts that are easy to toggle on and off and set at different levels. It’s clear user experience is a priority at T212.

I asked Investing Insiders’ Senior Equity Analyst to review his experiences using the research tools T212 offers.

When selecting a provider for your investments, it is very important to first ensure they meet certain minimum safety standards. We judge Trading 212 to meet the threshold for a ‘safe’ provider because:

• Trading 212 is regulated by the top-tier UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
• Investors are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) which protects investments up to a value of £85,000 in the event the company liquidates.
• They do not use any client funds for their own hedging or margin trading.
• T212 works with Interactive Brokers, one of the largest brokers in the world, to help safeguard assets.
• Trading 212 also offers indemnity insurance of up to EUR 1,000,000 per client, underwritten by Lloyds of London.

Some people are nervous about using a relatively new platform, and state that as T212 makes money from its CFD trading wing, this puts them at greater risk of financial collapse should regulations become tighter and CFD trading becomes not as profitable for providers, or disallowed altogether. There is nothing to suggest this is likely to happen in the current climate, however.

Account security

Trading 212 accounts can be secured using:

With T212, you are the beneficial owner of your shares. Although the registered owner may be Trading 212 or another intermediary entity, you retain the status of the beneficial owner.

Share lending

However, T212 operates an automatic share lending scheme. That means, that shares from your portfolio can be lent to reputable borrowers. In exchange, Trading 212 splits any interest earned on the loan, with you. (This does not apply to ISAs.)

Share lending doesn’t impact your position. You can close, modify, and add to a position even if your shares are lent, and, if you don’t like the idea of it, UK users have the option to disable the share lending feature.

Dividends

Dividends are paid on the payment date. Share lending doesn’t affect your status when it comes to dividends – you will still receive them.

Trading 212 includes a ‘Learn’ section on their website where you can “build the foundations of your financial journey”. You’ll find a library of articles on investing basics and topics of interest to traders. There is also a series of YouTube videos.

It’s ok-ish but it definitely isn’t the eToro Academy or the IG Academy. There are no courses or podcasts or live webinars, so if you’re brand new to investing, my advice would be to top up your knowledge elsewhere and not just rely on what you can find on T212.

Help can be accessed via:

• Email: info@trading212.com
• Click the ‘Chat with us’ button in the menu when logged in
• Contact form in the Help Centre

Customer service is hit-and-miss with Trading 212, as is often the case with free trading platforms.

T212 states that you can access “round-the-clock support” and that it has a 29-second average response time, which I feel is misleading if the response is coming from a chatbot and not a human. In my experience, that round-the-clock support isn’t always hugely helpful and you can be waiting a long time for responses in the middle of a conversation while I assume they interact with other users.

Trading 212 scores well on Trustpilot with an “excellent” rating of 4.6 from more than 25k reviews. However, many of the glowing reviews provide a link to use their code to sign up and receive free shares, so there’s a clear incentive to leave reviews and therefore the level of positive feedback may be skewed.

Opening an account

Opening a Trading 212 account is very straightforward: you’ll need to download the mobile app, or sign up online, and be asked to provide your National Insurance number. You’ll also need to verify your identity by taking a selfie and providing a picture of your passport or driving licence (or other government-issued photo ID).

The whole process took me less than 5 minutes.

If you want to trade CFDs, you’ll need to go through a suitability test to assess whether you have the required level of knowledge to use these complex instruments. It’s something laid down by the FCA and is standard on all regulated platforms.

Transferring an account

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to move an existing portfolio into my Trading 212 account as the portfolio transfer feature hasn’t been rolled out to all users yet. That’s disappointing as it meant I was limited in how much money I could invest since my funds are largely tied up in other platforms.

According to Trading 212, the service (which will include the ability to manage outward transfers of your portfolio too) is gradually being rolled out to more users. Currently, just 40% of users have the feature so it might still be a way off yet. It is, unsurprisingly, one of Trading 212’s most requested features.

Transfers will be free when it launches.

A couple of things to note for when it’s up and running; it will not be possible to transfer fractional shares either in or out. And you can only transfer within the same account type; so, ISA portfolios may only be transferred to ISAs, and general trading account portfolios can only transfer into another general trading account.

Additionally, Trading 212 has published a list of the brokers it will support transfers to/from and although it’s extensive, it’s not a comprehensive list of all competitors. It doesn’t, for example, include eToro, Plus 500, City Index or FX Pro. The current list may just be a starting point, however.

Closing an account

I’ve not yet closed my T212 account as I’m giving my investments some time in the market. However, T212 allows account deactivation to be self-managed and it looks to be a simple process: To do so, you can:

• Go to Menu
• Press Settings
• Go to ‘My account’, and access ‘Account details’
• Select ‘Close account’

Before closing your account, you will need to:

• Close open positions (CFD)/ Sell existing shares (Invest/ISA)
• Withdraw the remaining balance

Withdrawing money can also be self-managed from the account management menu. It takes up to three business days to receive the funds if you want it transferred straight into your bank account, or put onto a payment card, and you’ll receive an email and in-app notification when the money has been transferred. Three days isn’t instant (eToro Money allows instant withdrawals) but it’s not the longest I’ve had to wait either. Most other platforms have had a similar – or longer – turnaround time.

There is a quicker way to get paid though. If you have a PayPal account, you can opt to have your transfer made to that and your request will be executed in 10-15 minutes! That’s a great feature I’ve not seen elsewhere.

Trade execution is kept simple at Trading 212.

The trading ticket is clear and easy to understand but there’s still a good selection of order types to aid risk management.

Round-the-clock trading

Trading 212 is in the process of rolling out non-stop trading from Monday to Friday on US stocks. It’s the only platform in the UK to offer this.

If you enable 24/5 trading in your account, you can gain access to US stock trading through different sessions throughout the day:

08:00 – 13:30 (UK) Pre-market
13:30 – 20:00 (UK) Regular hours
20:00 – 00:00 (UK) After-hours
00:00 – 08:00 (UK) Overnight

This could be beneficial as it allows you to make trades as soon as news and events outside of regular market hours have happened.

While this sounds like a no-brainer, it’s important to remember that fewer people trade outside regular hours, so your orders may take longer to fill or may not fill at all due to lower liquidity. There’s also a risk of higher volatility as prices can change more quickly during extended hours sessions and the possibility of wider spreads.

But it’s a feature that will please many.

Order types

T212’s order ticket offers four different order types to allow traders to manage risk:

• Market order: Buy/Sell at the best price available now
• Stop orders: Instructs your broker to execute a trade if the stock price moves against you and hits a certain price, limiting your losses
• Limit orders: Specifies the price at which the trade will be executed
• Stop-limit order: Similar to a stop order but with an extra layer – a limit price.

Trading 212 does offer social trading. There’s a very active community forum online where you can ask your questions, gain inspiration and wisdom from the crowd, and make requests for new features or stocks to the T212 team.

The forum has been going for a few years, so there’s a wealth of resources and answers to pretty much any question you’re likely to have about the platform.

There’s also a social feed within the platform. You can customise your social feed to include content on the companies, asset types and sectors that interest you, and you can join specific communities. This is more like your average social network feed than a traditional forum.

Remember that tips, insights and ideas gained from a community forum do not constitute regulated, professional financial advice. You should consult an independent, qualified financial adviser if you are unsure what investment strategy could be right for your specific circumstances, goals and tolerance to risk.

Copy-trading

There is also a version of copy-trading on T212. It’s not at the scale you’ll find on eToro, but T212’s ‘Community pies’ allows T212 traders to pick a portfolio and copy it. It’s only for Invest and ISA customers though and there’s no CFD copy-trading.

It’s a feature that makes it easy to build a portfolio if you’re at the start of your trading journey – or just wanting to hitch your wagons to a successful trader, even if you’re far from a beginner.

To help you make an informed decision about whether it’s right for your investing strategy, there’s data on the composition of the portfolio/pie, the number of copy-traders who are onboard, AAR data, and community chat. The criticism I have, however, is that this is nowhere near enough data for me to assess whether this is a pie I should be copying.

With eToro, I can filter by the kind of returns I would like, the kind of assets I want to include, and the timeframe over which I’d like to gain returns. Once I’ve narrowed down my choices, I can view charts showing past performance, an average monthly risk score, number of profitable weeks, the average time copy-traders are staying invested, and records of trades.

You won’t find that with T212. So, for me, there’s not enough data to feel comfortable copying the trades of anyone on T212. AAR alone doesn’t give me enough data to make an adequate risk assessment.

You also won’t be able to monetise people copying your pie in the same way that you can monetise your copy-trade account on eToro.

And remember, past performance does not guarantee future performance.

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