To help find you the best stocks and shares ISA, our team analyses 83 features and fees for each share trading platform we’ve reviewed on our site and 26 features and fees for each robo-advisor we’ve reviewed on our site.
We use this analysis to create our expert star ratings. Platforms that score well across the board are eligible to be included in our “best for” picks. These reflect the stand-out features of great platforms. We also survey hundreds of customers so you can find out about the service each platform provides, from the people who matter most. We’d love to hear from you if there’s a provider you’d like to see us review and score.
How we rate the apps depends on the type of provider they are. We’ve split them into share dealing apps and robo-advisors.
We compare share dealing platforms based on 9 key factors:
We compare robo-advisors on 7 key factors:
There’s no getting around the fact that a lot of share-trading platforms have a complicated fee structure.
The brokerage fee (sometimes called the commission) can depend on how often you trade each month, how much you spend per trade and which country the stocks you’re buying are from.
Broker fee structures differ across the board.
While some brokers charge a flat fee, others are “tiered”, meaning the more frequently you trade the lower your fee, or percentage-based, where the more you trade the more you pay.
Others are a combination of tiered, percentage-based and flat.
To allow you to compare fees, we calculate the total broker fees you’d pay if you made: less than 10 trades per month; 10 to 19 trades per month; or 20 or more trades a month. In some cases, such as for US shares, we’ve compared the standard fees and the best available fee.
Finally, we’ve compared the foreign exchange fee for buying overseas stocks and the phone dealing fee, if you choose to trade over the phone and factored these into our scoring.
For robo-advisors, we’ve compared the percentage fee each provider charges. In order to compare the fees with providers that charge flat fees, we’ve compared the fees changed annually to invest £10,000, £100,000 and £1 million.
Each factor in our scoring methodology is weighted.
Our experts base this on user and market research to ensure it reflects what’s important to you.
For instance, whether the platform has a desktop app is less important than whether it charges a hefty inactivity fee.
Our top picks are displayed across our investing and share-dealing content and feature four investing platforms that scored well across the board, have stand-out features and are among partner brands we work with.
We exclude providers known as “robo advisers” which do everything for you – with these, you’re not making your own investments directly in the stock market (examples are Nutmeg, Moneyfarm and Moneybox).
To qualify for “good for” status in a category the platform needs to be among partner brands we work with and rank between second and sixth for that category.
We review most of the UK’s popular and well-regarded online brokers and we’re adding more all the time.
You may have noticed that some of our share dealing pages, tables and provider reviews come with “Customers say” star ratings. These are customer satisfaction ratings, where we asked consumers to tell us whether a service they were receiving from that company was any good.
In December 2020, Finder ran an independent customer satisfaction survey about share dealing platforms. We polled 752 customers who told us how happy they were with a platform they had used within the previous 12 months. We then turned their answers into a rating of between one and five stars.
And here’s how we did it…
The survey asked respondents how satisfied they were with their share dealing provider on a scale from one to five, and also whether they would recommend that company to a friend or not.
We turned the answers into an overall star rating that takes into account:
The final rating was then rounded to the nearest half star, to give the following one to five customer satisfaction range:
★★★★★ – Excellent
★★★★★ – Good
★★★★★ – Average
★★★★★ – Subpar
★★★★★ – Poor
All investing should be regarded as longer term. The value of your investments can go up and down, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. If you’re not sure which investments are right for you, please seek out a financial adviser. Capital at risk.
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