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The best Trading 212 alternatives are eToro and Lightyear for low cost stocks and shares trading, and InvestEngine for investing in ETFs within an ISA. For CFD trading, it’s eToro and XTB. And if you prefer the experts to handle things, Moneyfarm tops the list.
Trading 212 is a great investment platform and stock broker, but since you’re reading this, we guess you’re not keen. No problem! There’s lots of options out there – and we’ve researched and used almost all of them.
Here’s the best Trading 212 alternatives. (By the way, we’ll cover ISA alternatives below.)
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.
eToro is one of the best investment platforms out there - and is by far the most popular, with over 30 million customers.
Why? eToro is very low cost (commission-free stocks), easy to use, and has lots of awesome trading features. There's also a community of other traders to learn from and even copy.
It’s also got the largest range of assets to trade and invest in – including stocks, ETFs, crypto, CFDs, currencies and commodities (such as gold).
AJ Bell is well established, with a good reputation.
It's one of the cheapest traditional stock brokers out there (charging a low annual fee).
There's a huge range of investment options – pretty much every investment out there (including both funds and shares).
The customer service is great too.
Overall, it's one of the best options.
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.
eToro is great. It's an easy to use, low cost, trading platform, with a huge range of investment options. It's crazy popular, with a huge community you can get involved in, learn from and copy their trades!
It’s also got the largest range of assets to trade, including stocks, ETFs, crypto, CFDs, currencies and commodities (such as gold).
Highly recommended for beginners to get started, and there's great features for more experienced traders too (such as margin trading).
Platform experience: great
Device options: website & phone app
Support: 24/5
Stocks & Shares ISA: no
Pension (SIPP): no
Range of investments: huge
Stocks: yes
ETFs: yes
Fractional shares: yes
Crypto: yes
CFDs: yes
Forex: yes
Spread fees: yes (low)
Currency conversion fee: 0.50% on non-USD deposits
• Very easy to use
• Low trading fees (commission-free stocks)
• Awesome trading software
• Good range of investment options
• Offers CFD trading (alongside regular investing)
• Available on desktop, tablet and mobile
• 24/5 support
• Demo account
• No 3rd party integrations
Plus500 is one of the top trading platforms in the world. It’s well established, secure, and super popular – there's over 24 million users across the world.
The platform is user friendly, packed with trading tools, and some great, unique features such as +Insights – where you get information (insights) based on other traders on the platform, such as what investments are trending, and which are most bought and sold etc – it's all very cool, and super useful.
It’s low cost too (commission-free), and the customer service is excellent. It's the go-to trading platform for most traders.
Platform experience: awesome
Device options: website, tablet and phone app
Support: 24/7
Stocks & Shares ISA: no
Pension (SIPP): no
Range of investments: large
Stocks: yes
ETFs: yes
Fractional shares: no
Crypto: yes (not UK)
CFDs: yes
Forex: yes (CFDs)
Account fee: free
Cost per trade: free
Spread fees: yes (low)
Currency conversion fee: 0.70%
• Great trading experience
• Great mobile app
• Unique insights from all trades on the platform
• Low cost overall
• Good range of investment options
• Excellent customer service
• Free and unlimited demo account
• Trustworthy and reliable
• No 3rd party integrations
• Inactivity fee
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.
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.
We think Trading 212 is a great investment platform (a place to buy and sell investments), it’s commission-free, and there’s no account fees. Plus it’s one of the lowest currency conversion fees out there (0.15%).
If you haven’t used Trading 212 yet, and want to learn more, here’s our Trading 212 review.
Anyway, let’s move on to the alternatives to Trading 212, and how we determined the best alternatives.
Trading 212 is popular because it’s super low cost and has a great range of investment options. So, it’s alternatives that need to be that too.
Here’s what we looked at:
Right, let’s dive into the details for each category!
The cheapest platforms for trading stocks are eToro¹ and Lightyear¹. Both investment platforms are low cost, and they’re great trading apps to rival Trading 212 for mobile trading (plus a web trading platform).
Lightyear has slightly lower currency conversion costs than eToro (the fee to exchange currencies to buy foreign stocks and shares), but the range of investments is a lot smaller.
InvestEngine¹ is very low cost too, but you can only buy exchange-traded funds (ETFs). ETFs are collections of lots of different investments, all pooled into a single investment, and great for building a diversified investment portfolio for long-term growth.
For instance, you could buy an ETF of the top 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), called the FTSE 100. Here’s where to learn more about how to invest in the FTSE 100.
However, with InvestEngine, you can’t trade individual stocks and shares – but if you’re only looking for ETFs, it’s great.
InvestEngine¹ is also the only option that has no account fees, and also offers an ISA (a tax-free way of saving). But again, you can only buy ETFs.
So, if you only want to invest within a Stocks and Shares ISA, and buy stocks and shares too, your best option is AJ Bell.
AJ Bell is a more traditional stock broker, and has a huge range of investment options to choose from.
The only downside is that you will pay an account fee, and a share dealing fee. The good news is that they’re one of the cheapest traditional brokers out there for those, so still a great choice to save and invest.
Here’s our AJ Bell review to learn more, or visit the AJ Bell website¹.
If you’re only looking to trade CFDs (Contract For Differences), you’ve got quite a few options out there, but it all comes down to the trading platform experience and fees.
By the way, if you’re not sure what CFDs are, instead of buying the asset directly (such as a share), you’ll instead trade the price of it. You’ll enter into an agreement (contract) with the CFD broker about the price in the future, and settle the difference when you close the trade, paying the difference, or receiving the difference back in profit. And so, you get a ‘Contract For Differences’.
They’re great for advanced traders and experienced investors as they’re typically lower cost overall, you can trade both price directions (and so trade the price down going down too, called going ‘short’, rather than ‘long’), and you can trade with borrowed money (called leverage trading or margin trading), which can amplify your profits (and losses), and can be high risk.
These best alternatives are eToro¹ and XTB¹ – they’ve all got awesome trading platforms, bespoke to them. So you don’t need to use any 3rd party trading software (such as MetaTrader 4). And the trade execution is fast – so you’ll get the price you see. What’s more, they all have great in-built trading tools.
Plus, the investment ranges are huge (including stocks, ETFs, and forex trading (foreign exchange)), and the fees are very low.
Nuts About Money tip: if you’re only looking to trade forex, check out the best forex trading apps.
Did you know that you can leave all your investing to the experts? They’ll grow your money in a safe and sensible way over time – you can just sit back and relax.
These are hugely popular, and often called a robo-advisor. All you need to do is select your account option (for instance an ISA or a pension), add your money, and they’ll handle everything else.
They’re a great alternative to making your own investment decisions, and often work out much better for long-term investing. Or, you could use one in addition to a self-managed investment platform, such as eToro¹ , and still make your own investments alongside it.
We highly recommend these as an option, and recommend Moneyfarm¹ – they’re the best performing Stocks and Shares ISA.
For pensions, we recommend PensionBee¹ – they’re got a great track record, have low fees and are super easy to use. You'll get a 25% bonus automatically added to your pension by the government on any money you add to a personal pension.
So, there we go. The best alternatives to Trading 212. Although we think Trading 212 is great, it’s not for everyone. There are great alternatives out there.
Your best options for low cost stock trading and investing are eToro¹ and Lightyear¹, and for ETFs within an ISA, it’s InvestEngine¹.
If you want to trade stocks and shares within an ISA, check out AJ Bell¹. It’s the best traditional stock broker, and has a huge range of investment options, with lots of shares and investment funds.
For CFD traders, eToro¹ and XTB¹ are great options. All with a huge range of investment options (assets) to trade, low cost and awesome trading platforms overall.
If you prefer to let the experts handle things for you, check out Moneyfarm¹ – it’s easy to use, has a great track record and low fees. And if you’re looking to save within a pension, check out PensionBee¹ too – for all the same reasons.
Happy investing!
This article was written by the team at Nuts About Money, and fact-checked by 2 independent reviewers. You’re in safe hands.
We recommend getting started with eToro, it’s easy to use and low cost.