Hey guys, it's sasha today, i'm going to go through my list of the best investing apps in the uk in 2022. There are a lot of investing apps out there and i went through all the ones that i could find to try and break down exactly what the best options are. They all have different pricing structures and work in slightly different ways. So i'll do my best to explain as much as i can.

I will put all of these apps in the description below with the links. Most of them will be affiliate links because pretty much every single investing app out there has an affiliate program. You can join, some of them are not affiliate links, but you can still find them down there in the description. This list is purely based on my opinion and numbers.

I have ordered these in terms of how much it will actually cost you to invest i'll also share some of the good and some of the bad things about each of these platforms, as i go along the way. Just a reminder: this is a rundown of the best investing apps available in uk for general investing accounts. If you're looking for a stocks and shares isa, i have a separate video that i will link in the description. There is less choice, but there's still some really good options there and another little disclaimer.

I am not your financial advisor. I am just a random guy in youtube, sharing my opinion, based on the research that i have done. Some of this may be inaccurate. Maybe it's going to be outdated by the time you're watching, but hey i'm just doing my best.

If you do need a financial advisor, please go and find the help of a suitably qualified professional okay. So, let's start with the easy bit: let's go through the list of the best, investing apps for those who want to buy etfs for most people just buying the total stock market index or the s p, 500 or the world stock market index. Or whatever is a much much better idea than picking stocks? 95 percent of actively managed funds lose to the stock market over the long term, and the vast majority of retail investors therefore probably will as well. I am guessing.

The number is very close to 100, so i'll quickly talk you through the best options for investing in etfs and then i'll cover the best apps for picking stocks. If you really want to do that, the two lists are really quite different. So so so let me let me go through this one first here are the three free, completely free options for investing in etfs available in the uk. The first one is invest engine.

This is a very new investing platform that is all about investing in etfs. That is their focus and if you go and set up a do-it-yourself portfolio with invest engine that you can go and invest in the s p 500 - the ftse 100, the total world stock market index, whichever one you like completely for free. There is literally nothing at all to pay to open the account deposit money. Buy the etfs hold them, then sell the etfs and get your money back out at the end and even better than free.

I actually do have an affiliate link for invest engine within the links below. If you open an account to make an initial deposit of at least 100 pounds, which is their minimum you'll get a pound bonus. Now the other platform where you can buy etfs completely for free is free trade. Their general investing account is completely free to open and set up.

You do not have to pay the three pounds per month that you have for to pay for their isa and there are no fees at all for buying and selling uk based etfs that are priced in pounds. So this is another option and all the main popular etfs are available on free trade as well, and the last free option in the uk for investing bts is trading one two. Now they are still not accepting new accounts onto the platform more than a year after they're closed to new applications, but apparently they're about to reopen and are currently working through their wait list, and you can go and sign up to that wait list. If you want to again the same story as with free trade, if you can get an account already have one, you can invest in pound denominated etfs completely for free without paying anything at all.

Now there is one other platform which is not free but can still be really quite cheap. So i thought i'd add it in here in case you prefer the layout or the look of the vibe or whatever, and that app is orca with the orca. You can invest in etfs by paying one pound per transaction up to a thousand pounds and that's it. So this is only really a good solution if you're making relatively large deposits and large transactions, if you invest 100 pounds for example, then you still have to pay the one pound fee, and that is one percent of the 100 pounds which is very expensive.

So you don't really want to do that, but if you invest a thousand pounds you still just pay that one pound fee, so that becomes 0.1, which is not free, like the apps i just mentioned, but it's still really pretty cheap. Just be careful. If you make a transaction of a thousand on one pounds with orca, you'll have to pay a two pound fee, because it's one pound per thousand pounds, but using the same logic, if you choose to invest two thousand pounds, it's still going to be just two pounds For that transaction hope that makes sense. Okay, now now that we've covered the etf side, which is really quite simple, let's talk about picking stocks, and this is a really complicated list.

It took me a long time to properly put together, and most of you watching will probably be investing in u.s stocks. So that's what i used as the basis for this comparison. Some of these platforms charge very different amounts, very different percentages and very different ways, and especially for other stock markets outside the us. So if you want to buy shares in other countries, then you'll have to go and unfortunately do your own research.

I can't cover every single eventuality in one video. Some of these fees will apply to stocks in the country as well, but some of them will be different, so just be careful make sure that you watch all the way through this list, because this isn't really a number one is the best and everyone else is Not as good, there are actually pros and cons for each of the apps that i'm going to be talking about and for different people, something else further down. The list will actually be better genuinely, depending on how much you invest. How often you invest and i'm going to try my best to explain it as accurately as possible? So number one on my list is light here.

This is a very new investing app in the uk and for anyone investing smaller amounts. This is the only app in the uk where you can invest in u.s stocks completely for free. You can convert up to 3 000 pounds per month into us dollars completely for free, and the best thing is that you can then keep the money on the platform. In dollars, unlike some of the other platforms, i'm gon na get to if you go and buy a stock on a platform and sell it later, you can keep the money in dollars and avoid having to pay anything in the future on foreign exchange and don't have To worry about going over the 3 000 monthly threshold, so you can go and sell out of your stock, buy a new one without having to ever pay exchange fees until you draw down some of these other platforms force you to convert between pounds and dollars for Every single transaction, so that is a big win.

Remember, though, that if you convert over 3 000 pounds per month, it costs 0.35 percent. So if you say use the platform for a few years and you deposit a chunk every single month and then at the end of that or you have a hundred thousand pounds sitting there in your portfolio and you decide to take it out of the platform for Whatever reason, maybe you want to buy a house it'll cost you 0.35 for 97, 000 out of that 100 000 pounds. So for a lot of people, you probably still will have to pay something at the point when you go and withdraw unless you only have three thousand pounds or less in your account or you split up your withdrawals into three thousand pound chunks with at least a Month between each withdrawal now light year at the moment, only really have us stocks available. So if you do open an account, you won't be able to use it to invest in other markets or into etfs, although i think they are planning to add all those at some point soon as well, and remember that i actually do have an affiliate link for Them in description as well - and that gives you a 10 bonus if you sign up and make a deposit of any amount with light year, so feel free to go and use it.

If you want to next on, my list is interactive brokers. This platform had a major change to their pricing structure last year, which made them incredibly competitive. Their pricing structure is really really quite cheap, but it's also really quite complicated. At the same time, i have a whole video where i go through all the specifics of how the pricing structure works.

I'm going to put it up here and in the description. So if you want all the details, go and watch that video now. In short, there are two things that you have to pay the foreign exchange fee and a transaction fee for most people who aren't depositing millions into the platform you're going to have to pay two dollars per conversion. It's only more than two dollars for very, very large amounts and like lightyear, you can keep your money in dollars on the platform after you've paid that foreign exchange fee.

So interactive brokers is not a good platform. If you just want to make small deposits of say, 50 pounds or 100 pounds a month into the platform to buy u.s stocks, because you're gon na have to pay that two dollar fee every time you do it and that's going to cost you a ridiculous amount. In fees, but if you deposit larger amounts - let's say you put in ten thousand dollars in one go that two dollar fee is still going to be, how much you pay to convert and that's ridiculously cheap. That's only not point not two percent of the ten thousand dollars, so you can see how the more you put in the cheaper it gets and if you're putting in a few thousand dollars in one go or a few thousand pounds, it is really really incredibly cheap.

The transaction fee is the other thing that you have to pay, and the transaction fee is quite complicated to explain. Remember to watch that video for the full, detailed exp description, but if, for example, you decide to buy four shares worth 25 each for 100 total that's going to cost you 36 cents remember you can make smaller transactions after you've converted the money into dollars, because the Foreign exchange fee and the transaction fee are separate, so 0.36 percent for 100 transaction is not too bad, it's more expensive than some of the other platforms, but it's not crazy expensive, but if you make larger transactions the pricing becomes really really cheap. For example, i'm gon na use some extreme numbers, so you can see the range here. If you buy a thousand shares at 25 each for 25 000, then the total cost for the transaction is going to be just five dollars using the fixed pricing structure and that's just not point not two percent of the total that is really really cheap.

For another example is, let's say: you're gon na buy ten dollars of tesla for eight thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars or whatever the share price is when you're watching this video, that transaction of ten thousand dollars is going to cost you 38 cents. That's not point not not four percent, that is completely ridiculous, pretty much free 38 cents to buy 10 dollars worth of shares. So the summary is this: interactive brokers is great. If you want to make larger transactions or, if you're, making transactions of at least a few hundred dollars, especially on the deposit front, it becomes really really cheap if you're making transactions in the thousands.

So if you want to make large deposits and larger transactions, interactive brokers is probably the best platform available out there. It is the main platform that i personally use for my investments outside of my isa. Interactive brokers has a big advantage over many of the other apps, in that it is also a huge global platform. It is available in pretty much every country in the world, including antarctica.

It is an extremely big, robust company with a huge balance sheet and you can trade pretty much whatever you want on the platform any shares pretty much on any markets. You really want to there's all kinds of things, there's even options and everything else available for anyone who really wants that the choice is definitely miles ahead of any other app on this list now. Next, up on my list are two platforms that cost almost the same and number three is stake. This is another new platform available in uk and this platform is the one that i'm using for my man versus the market series where i tried to beat the stock market over the long term.

Making trades on the platform is completely free, but you do have to pay a 0.5 for an exchange fee when you put money into the platform and then take it back out of the platform at the end. So not 0.5 is more than the platforms that i just talked about. So it is more expensive, but you only pay it. When you make deposits and withdrawals and for making transactions, you don't have to pay anything and you do have to pay something with interactive brokers.

So if you keep the money in the platform for many years, for example, everything you do in between the deposit and with the draw is free. So if you were to average that foreign exchange fee to try to compare stake to the other platforms, i'm going to be talking about over the long term, you can see that it's actually really quite good value. You pay that 0.5 fee twice when you deposit and then withdraw. So, let's call it one percent now it won't really be one percent because hopefully you're going to be selling for more than you were buying, because, hopefully your shares grew in the meantime.

But for the sake of argument, let's call it one percent: let's say you go and buy a stock on a company and then two years later the stock goes up and you decide to buy another company instead, so you sell out of your position and you buy Another one because there are no transaction costs, you're kind of splitting - that one percent total into two, so each buy and sell of that company in total cost 0.5 percent. So for each transaction for each buy and then each cell you basically just pay paying 0.25. Hopefully, that makes sense right. So if you keep the money longer and you cycle the same money more times by selling out of companies and investing in others over time, then maybe if you for example, do that five times on average over some number of years with the same money you're only Essentially, paying 0.1 percent per one of those transactions on the buy and sell, so that's actually becoming really quite cheap.

One caveat is that the foreign exchange fee has a minimum of two dollars, so you have to deposit at least 400 or about 310 pounds at the current exchange rate. Otherwise, you're gon na be still paying two dollars, even if you deposit less and so that fee will be more as a proportion of what you put in now. Stake also have an introductory bonus and i have an affiliate link in the description. You can get a free share if you sign up and make it a minimum deposit of at least 50 pounds or more and the free share will be worth up to 150 dollars.

So feel free to check it out in the description. Etoro is almost the same as stake in terms of pricing. You pay the same 0.5 percent foreign exchange fee when you load money into the platform and again when you draw it back down, and you also can keep money in dollars. In fact, you kind of have to keep money in dollars on both platforms.

You can't keep it in pounds, that's how both platforms work. The one minor difference is that etoro also charges you a flat five dollar per withdrawal fee, but most people probably are going to be doing very few withdrawals. Definitely a lot less frequently in the depositing. So in most cases it's only a very minor extra cost.

Now we totally do have some extra features on the platform. They do have stocks available in different markets, where stake is limited to just us. Stocks at the moment and etoro also offers cfds and crypto within the platform, and some people might think that's great. They want the choice.

They want to try different things out, but some other people probably not like that at all, because they don't want those options. They don't ever want to be tempted by them, so it kind of really depends on what kind of investor you are. Etoro's interface is very active, bright, colors, bright, red, bright, green. You know like price prices flashing, so it has a bit more of a trading feel to it a lot more active.

A lot more engaging steak, though, is really calm. Steak is actually probably my personal favorite interface of any investing app available in uk. It's just so clean and minimalist and really geared to long-term investors. Even the little things like the candle sticks on the grass having a five minute minimum, which is quite long, that'll, probably really annoy people who, like being really active and seeing exactly what's happening with their investments for trading.

But it's perfect. If your time horizon is longer than a few seconds perfect for people like me now next on my list is the jira. The giro is a european investing platform that is also available in the uk to uk investors. So it is a little bit odd and different to the others, because it works in euros and some of the fees are in euros as well.

The giro also lets you keep money on the platform in dollars. That's another benefit. If you choose uh to use them and they charge a foreign exchange fee of 0.25 percent, so you pay 0.25, when you deposit and again when you withdraw a bit like with the others, so the foreign exchange fee is cheaper than stake or etoro. It is half as much so.

On the one hand it is better and if you look at their pricing, it almost looks like the transactions are also free because u.s stocks cost zero euros per transaction. But if you then look on page seven of the pricing schedule, there is this little fee here of 50 euro cents per transaction to cover all the incidental, random small exchange fees that platforms do get charged for processing. So you will have to pay half a euro. Every time you transact, irrespective of how much it is that you transact.

So if you go investing companies for the long term and you're making larger transactions - and you don't make very many of them to rebalance your portfolio, the jira can be really really cheap. Just 0.25. For an exchange fee to pay and very minimal transaction costs and if you make very large transactions, it is also really cheap because once you've paid the foreign exchange fee, it's only 50 euro cents to make the transactions a fixed fee. So that's really good value.

But if you make smaller transactions, let's say a hundred dollars worth of shares. Then the transaction of 50 euro cents is more than 0.5 each time for every transaction, on top of those foreign exchange fees that you've paid. So that will make it quite a lot more complicated for people who want to invest smaller amounts to make things even more complicated. You have to pay 2 euros 50 per calendar year per exchange on which you trade, i know i know seriously complicated and probably unnecessary.

So if you're trading u.s stocks, you will probably trade on the nasdaq and the new york stock exchange, so you might, in that case, pay five euros per year for those two platforms every single year that you make trades on those platforms all right. Next on, my list is trading two one two and like i mentioned before, when i was talking about the ets trading 202, do not currently accept new customers, but apparently we'll start doing it soon. Now you could argue that trading 202 could be higher up on this list, because they only charge a foreign exchange fee of 0.15, and that is less than some of the options that were further up. The list that i just mentioned, but tradies want to charge that foreign exchange fee on every single transaction.

You cannot keep money in dollars on the platform, so you have to keep it in pounds, and that means over time every single time you make a transaction. You have to pay that fee and over time those fees will work out more expensive as a result. Every time you sell a stock, you pay 0.15 fee to put the money back into dollar into pounds from dollars, and then you pay another 0.15 percent. A few seconds later, when you buy a different company to convert your pounds back into dollars to buy the next stock and so on and so on.

Now, if you buy a company and hold it long term - and you know cash out 10 years later, then yeah - the 0.15 per transaction is not bad at all and if you hold the same stock for a really long time, that will be a really good price. For lower amounts, it is also really competitive because there's no minimums and there's no transaction fees so for lower amounts. 202 will be quite competitive. Even you know, with some of the better apps like like your interactive brokers, but for larger amounts, it will work out.

Quite a lot more expensive than interactive brokers, even if you're holding long term so because trading 212 charges the whole foreign exchange fee for every transaction. They unfortunately find themselves way down the list here and last on the list. Training, everybody by some margin is free trade, free trade, charge, 0.45 foreign exchange per transaction and again you have to keep money on the platform in pounds, so you have to pay the foreign exchange fee on every single transaction that you make when you trade, the u.s Stocks and 0.45 is three times as much as even trading to one two in the position above it and over time those zero point. Four five percent fees will really add up to quite a lot as you sell out of positions buy into other positions and so on in the future.

Now i didn't include any other companies in this list because i cut out everyone who charges 0.5 percent in foreign exchange fees per transaction or more many of the bigger more established companies like hudgery's landsdowne charge as much as one percent in foreign exchange fees, plus a Bunch of other stuff and given how many apps that i just talked about that are significantly cheaper and better value that just makes them really uncompetitive. So there we go. If you found this video useful, please don't forget to smash the like button for the youtube algorithm. Putting this together really did take me quite a while, and thank you so much for watching.

I really really appreciate it and, as always i'll see you guys later, you.