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Stocks & Shares ISAs

Find the cheapest platform

stocks and shares isa
Amy Roberts
Amy Roberts and Eesha Mohindra
Updated 1 August 2018

This is a guide to getting the cheapest stocks & shares ISA. Every adult has a £20,000 allowance for 2018/19 – find out how to take full advantage.

This guide will help you decide whether you should use a stocks & shares ISA, tell you the cheapest way to get one depending on how much help you need or want, and give tips for those new to investing.

WARNING! There are no guarantees when you invest in the stock market, and your money can go up as well as down in value.

 

We can't tell you whether investing is right for you, but if you are going to do it, it's recommended you invest for at least five years as the longer you invest for, the longer you have to ride out any bumps along the way.

Best buys

In this guide

Other top ISA guides...

Cash ISAs: The best cash ISAs out there.
ISA Transfer: If you're looking to transfer old cash ISAs.
Full ISA: For everything you need to know about ISAs. 
Help to Buy ISA: Get up to £3,000 bonus if you're a first-time buyer. 
Lifetime ISAs: All the info on the ISAs for the under-40s.

Stocks & shares ISAs: Need-to-knows

  1. What is a stocks & shares ISA?

    Everyone in the UK over 18 has an annual £20,000 ISA allowance (for 2018/19). You can choose to use all of this for a stocks & shares ISA if you want, or you can split it between stocks & shares and any of the other types of ISA: Cash ISAs, Lifetime ISAs and innovative finance ISAs.

    It may still be called an ISA, but a stocks & shares ISA is very different to a cash ISA, which is simply a savings account you never pay tax on. With a stocks & shares ISA, you're investing.

    If this is your first experience of investing, it'll be worth reading our beginners' guide to investing to get a broader idea of what's involved.

    Quick questions

    • What can I invest in?

      There are many different types of investment. Here are some examples:
       

      • Corporate and government bonds. You basically lend your money to a company or a government in return for interest (don't confuse these with fixed-term bonds, which are basically savings accounts held for a certain period of time).

      • Shares. You invest in individual companies. Owning a share is like owning a brick in a house wall. If the price of the house (company) goes up, so does your brick (share), and vice versa.

      • Funds. Most people use funds when investing. These can include bonds, shares, a mixture of the two, or in some cases, cash. Most funds have a specific theme, around which all the investments are based.

    • What exactly are funds?

      A fund is simply another way to buy shares – but instead of you buying a slice of a company directly, you give your cash to a specialist manager who pools it with money from other investors (like you) to go and buy a job lot of shares in a stock market.

      Each fund is made up of 'units' so if you want to invest, you'll need to buy units – and these come at a cost which varies from day to day.

      The value of each unit will rise or fall (or stay the same, of course) depending on demand in the market for the fund. Say you want to invest £1,000 in a fund, if each fund unit costs £2, you can buy 500 units. Six months later, if each unit is now worth £2.50, your investment is worth £1,250.

      The fund's theme could be anything from geography (European, Japanese, emerging markets), industry (green companies, utility firms, industrial businesses), types of investment (shares, corporate bonds, gilts), to the size of the company.

      The combination gives you the risk factor. If the fund focuses on "fledgling biotech companies in emerging markets", all the elements involve a high degree of uncertainty. So if it goes well, you could be in for massive gains, and if it goes badly, massive losses.

      Alternatively, it could be a FTSE 100 tracker, where the fund simply invests in the UK's 100 biggest companies, and therefore is much more mainstream. While there can still be substantial ups and downs, the fluctuations are likely to be smaller.

      You can also leave your money as cash in a stocks & shares ISA, but you typically won't get a great return (often much less than in a cash ISA or savings account).

  2. Do I pay tax on a stocks & shares ISA?

    It's very important you understand what the tax breaks are and whether they really matter to you before you decide to use your ISA allowance for investing.

    • You don't pay capital gains tax (CGT) on gains made within an ISA – great if you exceed the £11,700 annual CGT allowance.

      CGT is a tax you'll have to pay on the gain you make when selling things such as shares, a second home (you don't pay capital gains on selling your first home) and jewellery.

      So if you buy shares at £1,000 and then sell them for £1,500, you've made a £500 gain. You might then have to pay tax on that. But it's important to understand that...

      You're allowed to make £11,700 of gains this tax year (2018/19) tax-free outside an ISA. So you would ONLY gain using a stocks & shares ISA in a year where you were making total gains over £11,700.

    • Dividends are tax-free under the new dividends allowance.

      There are two ways you make money from investing. One is when the shares increase in value and then you reap a nice little profit when you sell them. The other is when they pay dividends.

      Dividends are a bit like interest on a savings account. If a company makes a profit, it gives some of it back to you – it could be on a regular basis or as a one-off. And just as you have a personal savings allowance for interest on savings, you also have a dividends allowance each tax year where the first £2,000/year are tax-free.

      Any dividends received above this allowance will be taxed – at 7.5% for basic-rate taxpayers, 32.5% for higher-rate tax payers and 38.1% for additional-rate taxpayers.

      However, dividend income received on shares held in a stocks & shares ISA will be tax-free. (Older investors may remember when there was a 10% tax deducted from dividends at source which couldn't be reclaimed, which meant a stocks & shares ISA wasn't quite tax-free – this was abolished in April 2016.)

      If you're a higher or additional-rate taxpayer who receives taxable dividend income, then you must inform HMRC.

    • You don't pay any income tax on interest from corporate bonds in an ISA.

      With corporate bonds, instead of investing in a company's success, you're effectively lending money to it for a set time. In return, it'll have to pay you interest.

      You're taking the risk that it won't give you the money back, so it isn't risk-free. But the good news is...

      If you've got corporate bonds, or bond funds within an ISA that pays out interest, you don't have to pay any tax on it.

      If you're investing in corporate bonds outside a stocks & shares ISA, it'll fall under the remit of the personal savings allowance. This means basic-rate (20%) taxpayers – will be able to earn £1,000 interest with no tax while higher-rate (40%) taxpayers – will be able to earn £500 interest with no tax. Additional rate (45%) taxpayers don't get a tax-free allowance.

      Bear in mind that this allowance covers your normal savings interest in a bank as well as other forms of interest. As with the dividend allowance, you'll owe tax on any interest earned above its limit.

      Still not sure? It's time for a table on the tax benefits of a stocks & shares ISA...

      Will you benefit from using a stocks & shares ISA?

      TABLE_CELL_STYLE

      CAPITAL GAINS

      TAX < £11,700                         

      CAPITAL

      GAINS TAX > £11,700

      		 TAX ON DIVIDENDS              

      INCOME

      TAX ON BONDS

      TABLE_CELL_STYLE
      Non-taxpayer
      Basic-rate
      taxpayer (20%)
      Higher-rate
      taxpayer (40%)
      Additional-rate
      taxpayer (45%)

    Quick question:

    • How might CGT affect me?

      If you have other capital gains, such as you had a buy-to-let property and you've sold it, then if it made a profit, you could have used up your CGT allowance that tax year.

      Outside the ISA wrapper, you're able to make £11,700 per year without being taxed – any amount over £11,700 is taxed. The exact amount of tax you pay depends on your taxable income.

      If you're a basic-rate taxpayer, any gains between £11,700 and £34,500 are taxed at 18% on residential property, 10% on other assets. Any further gains that push you over £34,500 are taxed at the higher rate of 28% on residential property, 20% on other assets.

      It's worth remembering that if you filled up your funds each year so you had a couple of hundred thousand pounds, you are more likely to go over the threshold.

      But if you're unlikely to go over your annual CGT allowance, then the CGT benefits of putting money in a stocks & shares ISA are negligible.

  3. You should invest for at least five years

    Whether you should invest all depends on your personal circumstances and the amount of risk you're willing to take. But as a rule of thumb, you should invest for at least five years. This allows enough time to ride out any bumps in the market that might see you make a loss on your money.

    As such, if you're looking to use your money within the next couple of years, you should probably stick to cash savings such as a cash ISA. See the Top Savings and Top Cash ISA guide for more.

    It's very important to understand that there's no such thing as the best stocks and shares investment. Over the long run, historically stocks and shares have outperformed money in savings accounts. But that's no guarantee they'll do so in the future. Remember, investments can go down as well as up.

    • Always remember the five golden rules of investing:

      1. The greater return you want, the more risk you'll usually have to accept.
         

      2. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to diversify as much as you can to lower your risk exposure.
         

      3. If you're saving over the short-term, it's wise not to take too much of a risk. It's recommended you invest for at least five years. If you can't, cash is often best.
         

      4. Review your portfolio. A fund might be a dud, a fund manager might leave, or you might not be willing to take as many risks as you did before. If you don't review your portfolio regularly, you could end up with a stocks & shares ISA which loses money.
         

      5. Don't panic. Investments can go down as well as up. Don't be tempted to sell or buy funds just because everyone else is.

  4. Consider whether a cash ISA or stocks & shares ISA is best for you

    Whether a cash ISA or stocks & shares ISA is best for you depends on whether you gain from the tax breaks above and if you're willing to risk your money investing. In a nutshell:

    • If you're a basic-rate taxpayer, you'd need to do a comparison between the amount of tax you'd get charged on savings outside a cash ISA and the amount of tax on any investments held outside a stocks & shares ISA. If you're unsure, you could always stick to the previous ISA situation where you could only split the money between cash and investments 50/50.

    • Big investors, especially those putting money in corporate bonds, should ALWAYS max their stocks & shares ISAs (leaving no allowance for a cash ISA).

    • Only investing? ALWAYS max your stocks & shares ISA as it's often cheaper to invest within a stocks & shares ISA.

  5. Don't confuse choosing funds with where you can buy your ISA

    You can buy stocks & shares ISAs from different providers, but for the cheapest offers you want to do it through a website, often called a platform.

    Investing in a stocks & shares ISA is a two-stage process. First you need to pick which provider to buy your ISA from, then you need to decide what investments to put in it.

    It's like buying bread in a supermarket. You first need to pick where you want to buy the bread from (decide which platform to use), then choose what bread you want to buy from there (your funds).

    You'll be charged both for using the platform and buying the funds. To stretch the analogy somewhat, imagine each supermarket charges a different price for its shopping bags.

    Some supermarket bags are cheaper than others, but the ones that have the most expensive bags may be the ones that sell the bread the cheapest. So it's a combination of the two factors that needs to be taken into consideration.

    Note that while the platform fee is charged by the platform you choose, the company running the funds will be charging you for the funds.

  6. You can transfer your stocks & shares ISA into cash ISAs

    This may be useful for people coming up to retirement or anyone else who doesn't want to take a risk with their money.

    If you're going to do this you'll need to contact your new cash ISA provider and tell it you want to transfer money from your stocks & shares ISA. Never just withdraw the money – because if you do, you'll lose all the tax-free benefits.

    Once you've filled out any forms, the transfer may take a few weeks. If you're opening a cash ISA with a different provider to where your stocks & shares ISA was, then you'll likely pay a closing fee. If you're switching with the same provider, there won't be a fee.

  7. Drip-feeding money in over time reduces risk

    It's tempting to try to time the market, but it's almost impossible and even the most experienced investors get it wrong. By pulling out of the market as soon as a share dips or trying to second-guess when a share will reach its peak, you could lose out on sharp recoveries or see the price go down again.

    Instead, you should invest on a regular basis – in investment lingo this is called 'drip-feeding' – to smooth out any ups and downs. This will give you an added benefit of something called 'pound cost averaging'.

    • This is how it works...

      If you invested a £10,000 lump sum and bought shares valued at £10 each, you'd have 1,000 shares.

      If you bought £5,000 worth of the same shares per month over two months (amounting to 10,000 overall), you'd buy 500 shares in the first month.

      But if the share price went down to £9.50 in the second month, you'd be able to buy 526 shares, as the shares are at a lower price.

      So, rather than your full £10,000 investment being affected by the drop in share price, only half of your money drops in value.

      In this example, a lump sum of £10,000 buys 1,000 shares, while two payments of £5,000 buys 1,026 shares. Smaller investing on a regular basis means any drop in share price won't be too noticeable.

  8. Use your allowance by 5 April 2019 or lose it

    You must save or invest in your stocks & shares ISA by 5 April, the end of the tax year, for it to count for that year. Crucially, any unused allowance doesn't roll over – so if you don't use it, you lose it forever.

    Any savings or investments which stay within the tax-free ISA wrapper will continue to earn interest and reap the tax benefits until you withdraw the money.

    So it's possible to have substantial amounts invested within ISAs: well over £100,000 since ISAs began in 1999.

  9. There are different charges involved with a stocks & shares ISA

    Both the platform and the funds you invest in will cost you money. The main ones to look out for are:

    • Platform charge. 

      It's as if you have to buy a carrier bag from the supermarket: some charge you 50p for it and others charge you 10p. This can either be a flat fee (best for high investors) or a percentage of the value of your funds (the larger your funds, the more it'll cost you).
       

    • Fund manager charge (also known as annual management charge). 
      Then you'll also be charged for everything you put in that bag – the funds you invest in. This is the charge by the actual manager of the fund held within your stocks and your stocks & shares ISA. This is always a percentage and can typically vary from 0.1% to 1% per fund, depending on which fund you're investing in.

    • Selling/buying funds. 
      This is the cost every time you buy or sell a fund on the platform. These can be anything from £0 to £25. So if you're an active trader, looking for a low trading charge should be a high priority.

    • Transfer out fee. 
      The cost involved in moving your stocks & shares ISA from one platform (provider) to another. This is usually charged per fund, so the more funds you have within your stocks & shares ISA, the more it'll cost you. However, some platforms don't charge a fee for transferring out.

  10. Your current stocks & shares ISA provider could be overcharging you

    Once you've got your head around the various charges, it'll be easier to work out whether your current stocks & shares ISA provider is overcharging you.

    A platform might have been cheap at first, but new charging structures mean it may no longer be. Be sure to check any exit fees with your current provider, but if you won't take too much of a hit by leaving, then in the long run it'll likely be cheaper to switch provider to one with lower fees.

Best buys

Below we have divided the best buys into do-it-yourself, do-it-with-me and do-it-for-me platforms – depending on the level of service, help assessing your attitude to risk, and fund/portfolio choice you want.

Do-it-yourself platforms

This option really is best suited for those who know what they're doing. You need to be clear on why you're investing, what you want to achieve and, importantly, how long it will take to achieve it. There will be no help given in understanding your attitude to risk. You'll have to research your chosen investments, build your own portfolio and then keep track of it.

This doesn't mean you won't be given any help at all with these sorts of platforms – while you won't be directed to a choice of investments, there will still be information available to help you make a decision.

It may be the case that you already have a stocks & shares ISA you've been investing in and want to transfer to one of the platforms below to take advantage of the lower charges. If this is the case, make sure you take into consideration any exit fees from your existing platform before you transfer.

If you do want to switch to one of the platforms below, you'll have to do an ISA transfer. Be aware however that the new platform may not offer all the same investment options your previous platform did. So if there is a particular fund you like investing in, you'll have to weigh up whether it's better to stay with your existing platform that still offers it, or move to a new platform to take advantage of lower charges.

Quick question

  • How did you do your analysis?

    With do-it-yourself platforms, as you are executing everything yourself, you need to take all charges into account – including any platform fees, fund charges, trading charges and exit fees. For the best buys below, we have tried to do some of this work for you. However, we haven't taken fund charges into account as these will vary depending on which fund you pick – but should remain pretty constant between platforms.

    When looking at do-it-yourself platforms, we've assumed you want to do some trades yourself and have done our comparisons to show which are best for frequent or infrequent traders. We also assume most of your trades will be in funds and not other areas such as shares and ETFs – though we do note these often incur extra charges if you trade them.

    We know from experience at MSE that cheap isn't always what people are looking for when it comes to parting with their money, so we have also included a platform in this section which costs a bit more, but is a more comprehensive offering with an easier to use website.

    How much a platform will cost you will depend on how much money you have invested and how often you trade, so you may need to do some sums yourself as well.

    If you have a small amount to invest then it's likely you'll be drawn towards percentage-based charging – where you get charged a percentage of your total portfolio – whereas if you have lots of money invested then fixed fees will likely work out cheaper for you.

    For the sake of our best buys in this section, we looked at the different platforms' charges and trading costs. We then crosschecked this with specialist investment consultancy the lang cat's analysis, which assumes investment in funds and the cost of four ad-hoc fund transactions in the year, to confirm our choices.

Cavendish Online

Cheapest for frequent traders

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Cavendish Online doesn't charge you for buying and selling funds and has low percentage-based platform fees, so if you have a smallish amount of money (roughly under £25,000) to invest, or want to do a lot of fund trading, this would likely work out cheaper than iWeb below.

Cavendish offers a discounted route to one of the most popular fund platforms – Fidelity – which offers the same funds for a higher fee. So if you don't mind the no-frills approach Cavendish offers and want access to the funds Fidelity has, you'd be better off transferring to Cavendish to save on the platform fee.

Annual platform charge: 0.25% for under £200,000, 0.20% for above £200,000
Min ISA deposit: £0
Transfer out fee: £0
Fund dealing: £0 (£10 for ETFs)
No. of funds: 3,000
Account closure fee: £0

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iWeb

Cheaper option for larger portfolios

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No frills investment website iWeb, which is operated by Halifax Share Dealing, is one of the cheapest do-it-yourself platforms out there. There's a one-off account opening charge of £25, then it's £5 per trade after.

As there's no ongoing platform fee, if you have a large portfolio (roughly over £25,000) or you'll be trading infrequently, iWeb is likely a better option than Cavendish above.

It's not the most flashy website and doesn't offer a mobile app, so if this is something you're interested in, you could look at Interactive Investor below.

Platform charge: £25 (one-off)
Min ISA deposit: N/A
Transfer out fee: £25 per fund
Fund dealing: £5 per trade
No. of funds: 2,175
Account closure fee: £0

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Interactive Investor 

Not that cheap but more comprehensive offering

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If you want a more well-known platform to choose from with a more comprehensive offering and an easier to use website than the options above, then Interactive Investor might be a good option for you.

It has a fixed platform fee of £22.50 per quarter, which on the face of it seems expensive, but this is given to you in credit which you can use for trading and if you have a large pot of money to transfer, can work out a lot cheaper than a percentage-based charging model. You can accrue a maximum of £90 worth of credit at any one time.

Trades cost £10 each, though this is reduced to £6 for three months from account opening, and for any month when you've traded at least 10 times per month on average over the previous three months.

If this sounds complicated, an example should help. You pay your £22.50 fee, which gets added to your account as trading credit. If one month you did two trades, this would take £20 off your credit so you would have £2.50 left. Make one more trade next month and it would use the remaining £2.50 and charge you an extra £7.50.

It offers a mobile app and a wide range of funds to choose from, so if you want a diverse portfolio, and want to trade and check on your funds on the go, this is a good pick.

Platform charge: £22.50 per quarter – added as credit for fund dealing
Min ISA deposit: £100
Transfer out fee: Free within 1yr of opening, then £10 per fund (min £30 and max £250)
Fund dealing: £10 or £6 for frequent trading
No. of funds: 3,850+
Account closure fee: £50

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Do-it-with-me-platforms

This is the middle of the road option. Here, the investment decisions are yours to make, but there is help available. So a big list of funds may be narrowed down for you, but it is essentially still your decision which one you pick.
 

There may also be portfolios with different risk levels to choose from, but you don't get told which one to go for like you would with the do-it-for-me option below – instead it is up to you to make the decision. So if you don't know your attitude to risk, you may be better off looking at the do-it-for-me platforms which guide you through it.

A lot of the platforms in this section could also fall under the do-it-yourself category above, but they also offer you a helping hand if needed.

Quick question

  • How did you do your analysis?

    With do-it-with-me platforms, we assumed you won't be trading as you will stick with your original portfolio of investments. We looked at platforms which offer either a list of suggested funds, or a range of portfolios, and our top picks come with the lowest charges of the platforms we looked at.

    When looking at fund fees, we give an example of a mid-risk option from each platform to give you an idea of costs – but be aware, different funds may charge more.

    How much a platform will cost you will depend on how much money you have invested and how often you trade, so you may need to do some sums yourself as well.

    For the sake of our best buys in this section, we looked at the different platforms charges and charges for their suggested portfolios. We then crosschecked this with specialist investment consultancy the lang cat's analysis.

Cavendish Online

Small choice of ready-made portfolios

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Cavendish Online has low platform fees and also doesn't charge you for buying and selling funds. For the do-it-with-me option, Cavendish offers a range of 12 portfolios, with three risk grades (low, medium and high) and four underlying options (income, growth, ethical and tracker).

Cavendish offers a discounted route to one of the most popular fund platforms – Fidelity – which offers the same thing for a higher fee. So if you don't mind the no-frills approach Cavendish offers and want access to the funds Fidelity has, you'd be better off transferring to Cavendish to save on the platform fee.

Annual platform charge: 0.25% for under £200,000, 0.20% for above £200,000
Fund manager charge example: 0.15% (mid-risk tracker portfolio)
Fund dealing: £0 (£10 for ETFs)
Min ISA deposit: £0
Transfer out fee: £0
No. of funds: 3,000
Account closure fee: £0

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AJ Bell*

Choose between a hand-picked list of funds

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AJ Bell* has the same platform fees as Cavendish above of up to 0.25%, however it does charge £1.50 for buying and selling funds.

You've got two options for the do-it-with-me offering. Either you pick from any of 77 'favourite funds' which have been chosen by AJ Bell as good options, or you can choose from five passive funds with different risk levels. If you choose the second option, the platform fee is waived until January 2019, and overall charges are capped at 0.5% per fund per year.

If you were to transfer out to another provider in the future, there's a £25 transfer-out fee per fund – so if you have a lot of funds to transfer, this could leave a big dent in your wallet.

Annual platform charge: 0.25% for under £250,000, 0.1% for £250,000-£1 million, 0.05% for £1 million-£2 million, nothing above £2 million

Fund manager charge example: 0.5% (passive balanced fund)
Fund dealing: £1.50 (£9.95 a trade, reducing to £4.95 if there were 10 or more trades in the previous month for ETFs)
Min ISA deposit: £500, or £25/mth if regularly saving
Transfer out fee: £25 per fund
No. of funds: 4,700
Account closure fee: £0

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Vanguard

Cheapest platform overall but you can only invest in Vanguard funds

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Vanguard is a cheap way to invest in funds, charging the lowest percentage-based platform fee around of 0.15%. However, you can only invest in its own range of funds.

It has 71 to choose from, including its popular 'LifeStrategy' funds which let you choose between five options based on the level of risk you want to take and whether you have short- or long-term goals. However, if you want the diversity of some of the best buys above, then Vanguard isn't the right option for you.

Another good thing about Vanguard is it doesn't charge exit fees. So if you do decide to leave, you won't be landed with a big bill.

Annual platform charge: 0.15% (max £375)
Fund manager charge example: 0.22% (LifeStrategy 60%)
Fund dealing: £0
Min ISA deposit: £100/mth or £500 lump sum
Transfer out fee: £0
No. of funds: 71
Account closure fee: £0

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Do-it-for-me platforms

These platforms are best for those who want all the hard work done for them and don't want the responsibility of making any investment decisions.

Here, you will be asked some fact-finding questions with risk-profiling by the platform to help decide on an investment portfolio. It will be based on your attitude to risk, any investment goals and what you can afford to invest.

Perhaps confusingly, these platforms can sometimes work out the cheapest option, even though you're being given the most amount of help. This is purely based on the fact that the underlying investments in your portfolio will likely be exchange traded funds (ETFs), which typically are low-cost in nature.

Quick question

  • How did you do your analysis?

    With do-it-for-me we looked at the platform and average fund charges for several providers. We have also taken into account any special offers that are available such as fee reductions or cashback.

    Do note that with cashback offers, the bigger the investment, the less cashback will matter. If you invest more than the minimum needed to receive the cashback, or intend to invest for a long time, higher platform fees may mean over the long term an alternative platform could be better, despite the cashback deal.

    How much a platform will cost you will depend on how much money you have invested and for how long you want to invest for, so you may need to do some sums yourself as well.

    For the sake of our best buys in this section, we looked at the different platforms and portfolio charges. We then cross-checked this with analysis from specialist investment consultancy the lang cat.

Nutmeg*

No platform fee for a year

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If you're a new Nutmeg customer and you open an ISA account via our link* you'll pay no platform fees for the first year. After a year the fees will revert to 0.45% up to £100,000, and 0.25% after that for its fixed allocation portfolio – then making it more expensive than Evestor below.

However, if you want to move to another platform with cheaper fees after the fee-free deal has ended, you will most likely need to sell your investments and reinvest on the new platform. So be aware, in this instance if your investment has gone down, you could lose money.

In line with it being a do-it-for-me platform, you choose your goal, timeframe and an amount you'd like to invest. You select a risk level and you'll be shown the potential returns you might get based on that.

It does have a higher minimum investment than Evestor and Wealthify below to get the waived fees – either £5,000 upfront or £500 then a £100 monthly contribution.

Nutmeg also offers a fully managed option – which means your investments are monitored and changed by its investment team – or a socially responsible option – where you can invest in companies that have been highly rated for ethics and sustainability. These come at a cost and if you're happy to just pick your portfolio and let it do its thing, choosing its fixed allocation portfolio is a good option.

Annual platform charge: Free for year 1 for newbies via our link, then: Fixed portfolio: Up to £100,000 at 0.45%, £100,000+ at 0.25% Fully managed and Socially responsible portfolios: Up to £100,000 at 0.75%, £100,000+ at 0.35%
Fund manager charges (average): Fixed: 0.18% Fully managed: 0.19% Socially responsible: 0.33%
Effect of market spread (average): 0.08%
Min ISA deposit: £5,000, or £500 then a £100 monthly contribution, for the waived fees
Transfer out fee: £0

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Wealthify_Logo_Stacked

Wealthify*

No platform fee for a year

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If you're a new Wealthify* customer and open an ISA account via our link, you'll pay no platform fee for 12 months. After the first year, the fees will revert to 0.7% for £1-£15,000, 0.6% for £15,000-£50,000, 0.5% for £50,000-£100,000, and 0.4% for £100,000+, making it more expensive than Evestor below.

However, if you want to move to another platform with cheaper fees after the fee-free deal has ended, you will most likely need to sell your investments and reinvest on the new platform. So be aware, in this instance if your investment has gone down, you could lose money.

In line with it being a do-it-for-me platform, you let it know what type of investor you want to be – from cautious to adventurous, or somewhere in between – and it builds a plan based on this for you.

Annual platform charge: Free for year 1 for newbies via our link, then: £1-£15,000 at 0.7%, £15,000-£50,000 at 0.6%, £50,000-£100,000 at 0.5%, £100,000+ at 0.4%
Fund manager charges (average): 0.22%
Transaction costs (average): 0.11%
Min ISA deposit: £1
Transfer out fee: £0

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Evestor

Cheapest long-term platform

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You may not have heard of Evestor, but it has one of the lowest platform fees of the do-it-for-me offerings. On top of this, it also has one of the lowest investment charges at a max of 0.13% – this means if you're investing over a longer term, or if you've a large portfolio, it may work out cheaper than those above, even with our no-fee offers.

You can do a detailed questionnaire about your circumstances and financial goals, which will give you advice on what to invest in, or you can choose one of three risk levels and it will allocate your money to a portfolio, which matches your risk appetite.

Online advice is available, but you can also access a chartered financial adviser by phone or Skype for free.

Annual platform charge: 0.35% (0.25% Evestor fee + 0.10% product fee)
Annual transaction costs: 0.04%
Annual fund manager charges: 0.13% max
Min ISA deposit: £1
Transfer out fee: £0

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Get free research to help choose a fund

If you're new to investing and have decided to take the do-it-yourself or do-it-with-me route, then as well as the information which may be available on the website of the platform you have chosen, lots of the big providers have free detailed fund and stock market information on their websites that you can also use.

If you've jumped straight here, don't just dive in – it's worth going back to the start of this guide where we explain exactly how stocks & shares ISAs work and what a fund is.

Here are our top picks to get up-to-date, in-depth and easy-to-read information on funds, so that you can swot up before deciding where to invest your cash.

Hargreaves Lansdown*

Although Hargreaves Lansdown is one of the pricier platforms, it doesn't mean it's a no-go for investing. It provides a good and reputable service and has a very helpful and easy-to-navigate website jam-packed full of information about funds which you can make the most of whether you decide to use it or not.

The research team at Hargreaves Lansdown regularly runs a "Fund in focus"* feature to highlight one of the funds in the Wealth 150+ (Hargreaves Lansdown's selection of the best funds). Each focus gives detailed information about the fund's history and how it's performing, as well as the lowdown on any charges you'd have to pay on the fund.

Interactive Investor

Interactive Investor has a wide range of information, including beginner's guides on a range of investments and a glossary of terms you might come across while you're researching investments.

Interactive Investor's research team have also produced tables showing the top and bottom 10 funds and the 10 most traded funds on its website in each monthly period.

If you sign up for a free account, you'll also be able to access the more in-depth technical insight section. Here, once you're logged in, you'll be able to select specific funds and review performance, and see any patterns which have emerged over time.

Bestinvest*

Bestinvest's research team looks at more than 85,000 funds and compiles research on a monthly basis. The website has a huge range of guides available to download for free, covering everything from how to spot the worst performing funds, to the top rated funds and general information on how stocks & shares ISAs and other products work.

You'll also find stock market news and a tool which allows you to search for particular fund managers by their performance and track record.

Charles Stanley Direct*

If you don't need as much hand-holding, Charles Stanley Direct's website has a good round-up of what's going on in the markets.

The market data section of the website breaks down lists of FTSE companies and allows you to check performance for any time period from one day to three years. You can also check which companies have risen and fallen, or view any changes by whole industry sector. All the information is updated every 15 minutes, so you get a very accurate feel for what's going on in the market.

If you're not sure how to invest and what to invest in, seek independent financial advice. Read the Financial Advice guide for more information.

Cashback sites may pay you for signing up

As an extra boon, members of specialist cashback websites can be paid when they sign up to some financial products. Do check that it's exactly the same deal though, as terms can be different. And remember, the cashback is never 100% guaranteed until it's in your account.

Full help to take advantage of this and pros & cons are in our Top Cashback Sites guide.

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What the * means above

If a link has an * by it, that means it is an affiliated link and therefore it helps MoneySavingExpert stay free to use, as it is tracked to us. If you go through it, it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. It's worth noting this means the third party used may be named on any credit agreements.

You shouldn’t notice any difference and the link will never negatively impact the product. Plus the editorial line (the things we write) is NEVER impacted by these links. We aim to look at all available products. If it isn't possible to get an affiliate link for the top deal, it is still included in exactly the same way, just with a non-paying link. For more details, read How This Site Is Financed.

Duplicate links of the * links above for the sake of transparency, but this version doesn't help MoneySavingExpert.com: 

AJ Bell, Wealthify, Nutmeg, Hargreaves Lansdown, Bestinvest, Charles Stanley Direct

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