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Depending on if you want to invest generally, or save for retirement, there’s different types of robo-advisors. However, if you want to do both, check out Beach, it's an easy to use investment app where experts invest your money sensibly over time. Save within an Stocks & Shares ISA and/or pension pot. Learn more about robo-advisors and why to use them below.
Keen to start saving and investing your hard earned money? Great decision – your future self will really appreciate it. And using a robo-advisor is a great idea. Just in case you didn’t know, they’re not actually robots, there’s real expert investors looking after your cash – you just use a website or app to invest, and watch your money grow.
Anyway, without further ado, let’s run through the best UK robo-advisors – and then we’ll cover how we determined the best advisors, and how best to save and invest for your future.
Beach is an easy to use investment app where experts invest your money sensibly over time. Save within an Stocks & Shares ISA and/or pension pot.
Great app
A great and easy to use investing app. Add money from your bank or transfer your existing ISA, with the investments handled by experts. There’s a pension pot too.
The customer service is excellent, and has email and phone support based in the UK.
Beach is an easy to use investing app (and easy to set up), just add money and the experts handle everything. It’s all managed on your phone with a great app, and you can see your total savings whenever you like.
You’ll get an easy access pot (access money in around a week), which can be an ISA where all the money you make is tax-free (save up to £20,000 per tax year), and a standard account for those saving in addition to this (or who don’t want an ISA), where there’s no contribution limits (but also no tax-free benefits).
The investments are managed by experts from the largest investment company in the world (BlackRock). And they consider things like reducing climate change, meaning your savings could make the world a little better in future too.
There’s also an optional pension pot to save for retirement, so you can keep all your savings in one place, and if you’ve got lost or old pensions, Beach can also find them and move them over too.
Fees: a simple annual fee of up to 0.98% (minimum £4.99 per month).
Minimum deposit: £25
Customer service: excellent
Pros:
Cons:
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.
Pros
Cons
Beach is an easy to use investment app where experts invest your money sensibly over time. Save within an Stocks & Shares ISA and/or pension pot.
Beach is an easy to use investment app where experts invest your money sensibly over time. Save within an Stocks & Shares ISA and/or pension pot.
Get £50 added to your pension
PensionBee is our recommended provider – they’ve thought of everything.
Their 5 star rated app (and website) makes it easy to set up and use. You can open a brand new pension, or transfer your existing pensions across (they’ll handle all the paperwork).
Simply pick from an easy to understand range of pension plans, and that’s it, the experts manage everything from there.
It’s low cost, with one simple annual fee. The customer service is excellent, and you’ll get a dedicated account manager for any questions you might have.
And, when the time comes to retire, withdrawing from your pension is easy too.
You can also use them if you're self-employed or a company director.
Great app
A great and easy to use pension. Add money from your bank or combine old pensions into one, (they’ll find lost pensions too).
The customer service is excellent, and has email and phone support based in the UK.
Beach is an easy to use pension app (and easy to set up), where you just add money and the experts handle everything. It’s all managed on your phone with a great app, and you can see your total pension pot whenever you like.
If you’ve got lost or old pensions, Beach can also find them and move them over too, so you can keep all your retirement savings in one place, and never have to worry about losing them in future.
You’ll get an automatic 25% bonus on the money you add to your pension pot from your bank account (tax relief from the government), which refunds 20% tax on your income, and if you pay 40% or 45% tax, you’ll typically be able to claim the extra back too.
The pension plan (investments) are managed by experts, who are the largest investment company in the world (BlackRock). And they consider things like reducing climate change, meaning your savings could make the world a little better in future too.
You can also save and invest alongside your pension with an easy access pot (access money in around a week), designed for general savings, with the investments managed sensibly by experts too. And money made can be tax-free within an ISA.
Fees: a simple annual fee of up to 0.98% (minimum £4.99 per month).
Minimum deposit: £25
Customer service: excellent
Pros:
Cons:
Beach is an easy to use investment app where experts invest your money sensibly over time. Save within an Stocks & Shares ISA and/or pension pot.
Savings rate 4.7% - plus a 25% bonus
Saving for your first home? Moneybox could be for you.
Moneybox is the go-to place for Lifetime ISAs – it’s easy to use, and you’ll be able to manage everything on a great mobile app.
You can either pick from saving cash (Cash Lifetime ISA), and benefit from a great savings rate of 5.0% AER (variable). And there’s no fee for saving cash.
Or, you can make your own investments (Stocks and Shares Lifetime ISA), and pick from a range of investment options (including individual US shares such as Apple and Amazon). Fees will apply.
Moneybox will handle everything behind the scenes, and collect your 25% government bonus and automatically add it to your account.
Overall, it’s low cost overall, and the customer service is excellent.
Note: don’t wait to get started, as you’ll need to wait 12 months before you can use your LISA to buy a home – all you need to do is add £1.
Savings rate 4.6% - plus a 25% bonus
Tembo is one of the best Lifetime ISAs out there – it’s got one of the best interest rates out there, and it’s easy to use, with a great app on your phone, packed with tools to help you save more.
They’ll also transfer your existing Lifetime ISA over if you have one too (they’ll handle everything).
There’s two options, a Cash LISA (with the top interest rate), or a Stocks and Shares LISA, where you can simply let the experts handle things, and aim to grow your money more over time).
They'll also be able to help you with the mortgage when the time comes to buy your first home – and help you borrow more if you need to.
The customer service is top notch too.
There’s a fair few robo-advisors (investment apps) out there in the UK, which is great. The more choice you have, the better it is for you – they’ll compete with lower fees, easier to use websites and apps and better investment options.
To determine the best, here’s the 5 criteria we’ve used:
The robo-advisors we’ve listed above are the ones we’re happy to recommend, and use ourselves here at Nuts About Money. They’re all pretty great, and you can’t go wrong with any of them, they’re all super easy to use and will help grow your savings and investments over time.
However, if you’re not quite sure which to use, our top picks are Beach¹ for investing, and PensionBee¹ is great for just pensions – they’ve both got low fees and a great record of growing money over time (plus easy to use).
We’ll run through investing and pensions below too, so you know when you use each – and of course you can (and should) save in both types of accounts!
Not quite sure what a robo-advisor actually is? No worries. We’ll run through it.
A robo-advisor isn’t actually anything to do with robots – that’s actually a reference to the technology used, which is a website and/or phone app to get started with investing, and to manage your money over time.
So, you can use a phone app to sign up, deposit money, select which investment option you’d like (don’t worry, it’s all explained), and then view your investments and manage your money whenever you like – for instance add more, or withdraw it. Pretty simple right?
The advisor in ‘robo-advisor’ is where the experts look after your money and grow it safely and sensibly over time, according to the investment option you choose (we’ll cover those in a bit more detail below).
It’s a reference to human financial advisors – who would traditionally look after people’s money for them and help them make the right investment decisions. They still exist, and are a great idea, but more suited to those with a fair bit in savings. You can find the best financial advisor for you with Unbiased¹.
So, there you have it, basically a financial advisor using technology, a robo-advisor!
Using a robo-advisor, or more specifically, letting the experts handle your investments (and pension) is highly recommended. And combined with a great website or phone app to view your investments (your investment portfolio) is a great idea.
The experts know how to grow money over time, and they’re very good at it. They’ll decide the right mix of investments to build the right investment portfolio suited to your goals – which can be simple things like saving for retirement, or a big purchase.
The investments they’ll buy can be a wide range of investments, which we’ll cover below in more detail.
It’s very hard to do this yourself, and can take years to learn – for most people it’s often simply not worth it. Even the professionals leave most of their money to the experts (also called fund managers).
A great option for long-term saving and investing is to use a robo-advisor for the majority of your savings – within a Stocks and Shares ISA or personal pension (both have great tax-free benefits – more on those later), and then make your own investments alongside this, if you want to, which you can do on a self-managed investment platform, also called a stock broker.
Stocks and shares are where you own a part of the company, you own a share of the company (the business). And these can go up in value if the company does well, or down in value if the company doesn’t do so well. Companies can also pay out their profits to shareholders, which are called dividends.
ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, are groups of investments all pooled together into a single investment – so it’s much easier to buy and sell. Often, these are groups of shares, but they can be anything. And often, these are groups of similar things (themes), such as electric car companies, or green energy companies.
ETFs can be bought and sold on a stock exchange (just like shares) – they’re the most popular type of investment fund (group of investments).
Bonds are where you essentially loan your money to a government or large corporation in return for interest payments. These are often seen as lower risk.
This is typically commercial property, such as offices and shops, that pay rent and so provide an income.
If you’re asking yourself this, the answer is almost definitely yes! A Stocks and Shares ISA is an investment account where everything you make is completely tax-free, forever.
That means you won’t pay any Capital Gains Tax, Income Tax or Dividend Tax on any of your investments. If you were investing outside of this, for instance in a General Investment Account (GIA), you may have to pay some taxes if you start making a fair bit of cash each year (profit).
For instance, if you made over £3,000 in profit from your investments (when you sell), within a tax year (April 6th to April 5th the following year), you might have to pay Capital Gains Tax.
Capital Gains Tax is 18% if you’re a basic rate taxpayer (earn less than £50,270 per year in income, e.g. your salary), and 24% if you’re a higher rate taxpayer (earn more than £50,270 per year).
The downsides are that there’s a limit of £20,000 per year (although this is very high for most), and you can only pay into one Stocks and Shares ISA per year – so pick wisely!
This isn’t your only option though, you can still invest outside of a Stocks and Shares ISA, with a General Investment Account (GIA)...
If you already have a Stocks and Shares ISA, it’s not the end of the world investing outside of one – remember you’ll only pay tax on your profit when you sell your investments.
A General Investment Account is a great option to invest with outside of your ISA, and for trying out new investment platforms and robo-advisors before you want to commit to getting an ISA with them.
You can have as many GIA’s as you like, with as many investment platforms as you choose.
A Lifetime ISA is an investment account that helps you save for your first home. You’ll be able to save completely tax-free, and you’ll even get a 25% bonus from the government on everything you put in. Pretty great right?
You can save up to £4,000 per year (so up to £1,000 free each year), and you can only pay into one Lifetime Stocks and Shares ISA per tax year.
If you don’t use it for your first home, you’ll have to pay a fairly hefty fee of 20% to get your cash out (which works out as more than the free cash), or wait until you are 60 years old.
A personal pension is a great way of saving for your future and retirement. In fact, you can’t really beat it.
A personal pension is a type of private pension – that’s a pension that’s all in your name, and you choose how much you want to pay into it. Another type of private pension is a workplace pension – automatically set up by your employer if you’re employed.
There’s also the State Pension (government pension), which you’ll get at State Retirement age (66), if you’ve paid enough National Insurance contributions (at least 10 years, but 35 years to get the full amount).
Personal pensions are great additions to these pensions – and will seriously boost your total pension pot and retirement income later in life. Highly recommended!
Why? Your money will grow tax-free, and you’ll also get a 25% bonus from the government on everything you save. Yep, we’re not joking! And it’s all automatically added to your pension as you save.
And if you’re a higher rate taxpayer (40%) or additional rate taxpayer (45%), you can claim some of this tax back too – all done on your Self Assessment tax return.
You can save as much as £60,000 per year, or as much as your total income (e.g. your salary), whichever is lower.
You won’t be able to withdraw your cash before you turn 55 (57 from 2028), however it's not recommended that you do, as it's for your retirement!
When you do want to start withdrawing cash from your pension, the first 25% will be completely tax-free, and you can take this as a tax-free lump sum if you like. The remaining 75% will be liable for Income Tax, just like your salary now, and how much tax you’ll pay will depend on how much your income is at the time.
If you’re not already, we highly recommend saving for your retirement. Here’s how much you should be paying into your pension, and here’s the best pension providers to get you started.
If you’ve got kids, you can also save for their future with our recommended robo-advisors. Just open a Junior ISA, you can save completely tax-free, all in their name – they’ll be able to access it when they turn 18.
Note: you can save as much as £9,000 per tax year too. Separate to your own £20,000 ISA allowance.
If you’re not quite sure about investing, and it’s all going over your head a bit – don’t worry. That’s exactly what robo-advisors are for!
However some are a bit more simple than others. For beginners, check out Beach¹, they offer a tax-free Stocks & Shares ISA¹ managed by a team of experts and you can even set up a pension pot¹ too. It's also easy to use with a great app. Here’s our Beach review to learn more.
If you just want to save within a pension, you could also check out PensionBee¹ – it’s super easy to use and get started, and they’ll take care of everything for you.
With most UK robo-advisor investment platforms, the minimum investment you can start with is normally £500. This is quite a lot if you’re just starting out, so if you want to invest less than this, again, check out Beach¹, you can start with just £25.
The key is to start investing as soon as you can. It really will add up over time, and have a huge impact on your financial future!
Although generally UK robo-advisor platforms are much cheaper than human financial advisors (experts who give advice on your money and often look after your investments too), the price (fees) can vary across platforms, although not often by too much.
It’s not necessary the best idea to simply go with the cheapest – go with the one you think suits you best. Whether that’s experts on hand to guide you through the process and answer any questions you have, or one that has the type of investments you might want, such as socially responsible investments (e.g. no fossil fuels).
Having said that, the cheapest is InvestEngine¹ – it’s so cheap, there’s actually no fees to make your own investments, and for their experts to manage things for you it’s only 0.25% per year (of your total investments).
That’s super low, in comparison with most other robo-advisor platform fees (which are also still low cost), expect to pay around 0.75%-1.3% per year as an annual fee.
Yep! It’s perfectly safe to invest with a robo-investor in the UK. Every financial services firm has to be reviewed and approved by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), before they can start accepting customers. They’re the people who make sure that your money and investments are properly looked after.
You can also check if they’re FCA approved by checking the FCA register.
It also means you are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). That means if something happens to your robo-advisor, such as going out of business (highly unlikely), you’ll get up to £85,000 back.
However, you have more protection than that – as your money and investments are always held with a large bank, rather than the robo-advisor themselves, and the investments are held all in your name, and can only be returned to you.
A managed investment portfolio is simple where the experts handle things – they’ll build a portfolio of investments to suit a goal, such as grow your money over time, or build a big pension pot, or simply provide an income (income portfolios). The experts manage things, rather than you.
Managed portfolios are effectively the investments behind most robo-advisors, but they aren’t necessarily exclusive to robo-advisors – there’s lots of managed portfolios out there which you can invest in via a self-managed investment platform or a stock broker. These are often called ready-made portfolios, managed portfolios, or smart portfolios too.
And there we have it – the best robo-advisors in the UK. There’s lots of different robo-advisors and we recommend different ones depending on if you want to invest generally (within a Stocks and Shares ISA), or invest for your retirement via a pension.
It really will make a big difference to your financial future if you can start saving as early as possible, and keep saving regularly. Over time, small amounts can turn into very large amounts!
And that’s all there is to it. All the best saving, your future self will really thank you.
We’d love to hear from you, and it will help others too.
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.
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Beach is an easy to use investment app where experts invest your money sensibly over time. Save within an Stocks & Shares ISA and/or pension pot.