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Where do I put my money?
Hello there! We wrote this article in 2025. Platform fees in the UK have changed a lot since then! Look out for an updated article coming soon…..
With such a confusing array of platforms, funds and fee structures how do you ever decide where to put your money? In our first article, we covered what you need to think about when deciding on a platform. Read that first if you haven’t already.
In this article we go deep exploring the best options and the providers that have ended up on our naughty list this year.
Choosing the right platform is critical to your long term investing success and could cost you hundreds of thousands in fees alone if you make the wrong choice!
When Katie first started investing she chose The Penny Group (or rather they chose us). If we had stayed with them, this one choice would have made us worse off to the tune of over £1,000,000.
Yes you read that right.
ONE MILLION SMACKEROONIES!
You can read all about it here if you’re interested!
It would have destroyed our finances and we wouldn’t be financially independent now. Luckily we found the financial independence community and changed strategy and platform!
We want to help you avoid the pitfalls we fell into and to maximise your own investments over time so you can have a comfortable retirement and live life to the full!
WARNING! This is not a quick read. Grab a cup of tea and sit down and go through the article slowly and systematically. After all you are making a hugely important decision in your financial life of where to invest your money and you don’t want to rush that and make sub-optimal decision. Put the kettle on and let’s go through this one step at a time!
Criteria for evaluation
On Rebel Finance School Katie and I are always saying “let’s do the maths and work out what to do”. In investing there are some simple sums you can do to work out where you would be better off investing. We are going to use 4 criteria for making our platform evaluations:
| Fees | In our first article we explained all the different fees you will face when investing and the importance of them. This is one of the most critical factors when investing and will significantly affect your long term results. |
| Fund Availability | Make sure you can access low-cost index funds or ETFs like the Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap. |
| Account Availability | Not all providers have all types of accounts. If you want a LISA versus SIPP or Stocks and Shares ISA you may need different platforms. |
| Trustworthiness and Customer Service | You’re investing your money with these platforms. You want to be sure they have good customer service, you can trust their platform and they are going to be around for the long haul. You don’t want to be moving SIPP providers every year for the best deal as you will lose a fortune being out of the market whilst you move providers! |
We are looking for the very best platforms that are available that give you all of these things. Low cost, access to good funds, great customer service and all the tax advantaged accounts we can ever need!
This article is very important to us as well. Currently we have a small amount with Vanguard, most of our dosh is with Halifax and Katie has an old Deloitte company pension and we have realised we are over paying in fees. The outcome of this article is going to direct where we invest our money in the future too! Exciting.
LISA accounts
We won’t be covering LISA accounts in this article as we already did a YouTube series and we will work on a separate look at those platforms as not everyone does LISAs before the next course. If you want to learn about LISAs watch the series to the right.
Vanguard fee increase
From end of February 2025, Vanguard are increasing their fees for investors with smaller pots by setting a minimum platform fee of £4 a month (read about it here).
In fact, their fee changes are what’s prompted this platform review. You asked for guidance as to whether Vanguard is still a good option.
Vanguard have taken a bit of a bashing for this in the Rebel Finance School Facebook group recently! Pitch forks were at the ready. Katie and I were definitely a bit annoyed with Vanguard for increasing their fees. Do they deserve to be vilified?
Actually we are quite impressed with Vanguard for the transparency of their fees. Other platforms increase their charges periodically and it flies discreetly under the radar. Vanguard’s February 2025 fee increase has been discussed at length online. Other platforms have swooped in to snap up the investors with smaller pots who are tempted to ditch Vanguard.
At Rebel Finance School, we bang on about fees and the importance of minimising them. So with Vanguard’s increase in fees, is it time to jump ship?
There are zero fee platforms so why pay when you can get it for free?! Let’s look into this…
Zero-fee platforms
The two platforms that people ask us about a lot that give you accounts for no platform fees whatsoever are
FOR FREE! WOO! Neither of them have any dealing fees, meaning you can get invested for nothing (other than the management fee of the fund).
So you should just go with them right? Free is best if we’re looking at reducing fees?
Well hold on a second, let’s look into this. Let’s go through the criteria we have for evaluating platforms…
1. Fees Neither InvestEngine or Trading 212 have platform fees. HAPPY DAYS!
2. Fund availability You can’t buy index funds with either InvestEngine or Trading 212 BUT they have low fee, broad based Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) like the Vanguard ones. So there are good investment options. But there’s also a lot of distractions that people can be sucked into, like buying individual company shares. Big negative in our book, especially if you’re easily distracted.
3. Accounts availability Trading 212 doesn’t have a SIPP right now. They both have ISAs.
4. Trustworthiness and customer service
We were super curious about InvestEngine. So we Googled them. What we found made us quite nervous about investing with them. In the last financial year, they made a loss of £5.0m. Quoting from their company accounts…
“The loss for the year of £5.0m was anticipated as the Company is in a growth phase and reflects the significant outlays required in building a high quality investment platform for a significant and rapidly growing number of clients”
They lost £4.8m in the previous year.
Our concern with InvestEngine is that they’re buying up market share by offering free accounts. Is this sustainable? We have seen this many times in the tech and fin-tech area where companies buy market share to get customers and then increase prices over time.
We put more about Invest Engine and how they make money in our first How to Choose an Investment Platform Article.
If you are already with InvestEngine that is great, just keep an eye on them for fee increases. No need to move at all. Free is wonderful.
Trading 212 appears to be a very profitable company making £30M net-profit last year and having 918 employees around the world. Very different to a team of 23 at InvestEngine who are losing a fortune each year.
We hear good reports about T212 and their platform. Ninja Martin uses them for a cash ISA and I know Ninja Dom is a big fan.
The distinction we are trying to make is that it is important to look beyond the big neon free sign they stick on some of their products. It is so easy to get caught up in the free without checking the company financials, understanding more about the platform and then make up your own mind whether to trust them.
As you get further into your journey the numbers get exponentially bigger and trust and customer service becomes a bigger and bigger priority.
If I was starting out I might take a risk with a few thousand but later in the journey when the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands or millions I wouldn’t take the risk to save a few pounds.
Read on as we have compared prices and the long term impact on your portfolios.
Top Platforms
Let’s get into the meat of the review looking at individual platforms.
We ran a poll in the Rebel Finance School Facebook group to ask you which platforms you wanted us to review. We had over 2,000 votes. Wowsers.
We can’t cover all of the platforms you asked us about or this page would be as long as a novel but we’ll make sure we cover the top 10 you asked about!
Poll results
Here’s the top 10 platforms you asked us to cover:
| Platforms | % of Votes |
|---|---|
| Vanguard | 22% |
| Trading 212 | 17% |
| Interactive Investor (ii) | 14% |
| Hargreaves Lansdown | 9% |
| InvestEngine | 7% |
| Fidelity | 5% |
| AJ Bell – Youinvest | 5% |
| MoneyBox | 3% |
| Halifax | 2% |
| Dodl | 2% |
This makes up 86% of all the votes for different platforms. We are going to comment on these 10.
If we haven’t covered a platform you’re invested in or interested in, our first article How to Choose an Investment Platform and a little section at the end of this article about how to choose will help you decide if the one we missed for you is actually any good.
Chances are if it didn’t make it into the top 10 list then it probably isn’t any good but there are always new options coming out. If there is something you really want us to look at put it in the comments at the end of the article.
Removed from the Top 10
A couple of the platforms that you want us to review can be struck off our top 10 list immediately as they have a terrible selection of funds available.
Dodl
If you can’t invest in a simple low cost broad based index fund like the ones we discuss on Rebel Finance School (RFS) then we would NEVER use that platform. It might be a cheap platform but the fund choice will destroy your financial future even more than fees! The worst platforms are the ones that have high fees and poor fund choice like Wealthify!
Dodl are one of the platforms that sell to you by telling you they’re going to make your life easy. They say “Get to know the seven ready-made investment portfolios available with Dodl, each built and managed by the AJ Bell experts – leaving you to get on with more important things!”
They only offer 7 funds. The only one that at first glance might fit the RFS criteria for a good fund is the High Growth Global Fund.
To understand what the fund is I have been working through their fund fact sheet. The first thing I discovered was that the fund Benchmark is MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI). This is good as it is a broad based global fund! YAY.
The fund fee is 0.31% which is very high for this type of fund. BOOO.
One reason I hate these types of platforms is you can’t actually find out what is in your fund from their site or how well it is doing! I couldn’t find the information on their site about performance and what actually makes up the fund. I had to go to the Financial Times to find the data.
Here is what I discovered:
- Heavy Home Country Bias with 22% of your money invested in the UK
- Even though this is a global equity fund, 6.63% of your money is invested in bonds. Why? This is damaging performance.
- 50% invested in emerging markets. This is hugely overweighted to emerging markets and shocked me. We can’t even be clear if this is the amount invested in emerging markets as they were doubling counting parts of emerging markets and their list of regions added up to more than 100%. The opaqueness alone of this puts me off
- 9.93% USA stocks. This is massively underweighted. USA makes up 67.4% of the Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Fund. The underweighting shocked me and I would never have this little in the USA, I want to mirror the globe!
Just based on these few details I would NEVER invest in this fund.
There is a way to invest in a low cost tracker on Dodl. It is just hidden under thematic funds with a bunch of stuff we would avoid at all costs! They have a S&P500 (the 500 biggest companies in the USA) on their site that is cheap. They do have a global fund under thematic investments hidden away.
There is a way to invest on Dodl similar to our strategies but it is hidden and for everyone we have met they end up going with one of their main funds and not understanding the other funds.
We have removed Dodl from the next part of the review the main funds they push are terrible and they make it hard to find a global tracker fund. I just can’t put them on the good list as it is too difficult to end up in a good fund.
MoneyBox
The next platform that caught our eye for the wrong reasons is MoneBox. They offer 3 simple investments for you to choose from, Cautious, Balanced and Adventurous! Sounds fun doesn’t it!
Who wouldn’t want a bit of adventure in their lives?
If you are in the asset assembling phase of life, i.e. earning money and not ready to retire yet, then the words balanced and cautious should strike fear into your heart. What these words mean is that you probably have a bunch of bonds and other random investments thrown into your funds to make it less volatile. In general when you reduce volatility you actually reduce long term growth and these funds make you worse off over time. Read our thoughts on volatility here.
Is the adventurous fund any good? Can we find one fund on this platform we would invest in?
The Adventurous fund is made up of:
- 80% Global Shares Fidelity
- 15% Global Property Shares ESG by BlackRock
- 5% Overseas Government Bonds by BlackRock
The global shares fund tracks the MSCI World Index and is passive so that is awesome and has a fund fee of 0.12% which is also excellent.
But only 80% of your money is going there. Katie and I would not want 5% of our money going to bonds that won’t grow much.
We would NEVER go with MoneyBox because of this not ideal fund choice and their platform fee of 0.45% (which is triple Vanguard).
Yes they have all over their site that they won awards. well done MoneyBox. It says they were awarded Best Investment Provider 2023 and 2024 by Smart Money People. Who the heck are Smart Money People? We would NEVER invest in this platform and yet they are winning all the awards! Steer clear.
Removed from the Platform Review
We are removing Dodl and MoneyBox from the platform review as they fail on so many major things we think they are unfit for purpose.
We are left, in no particular order, with Vanguard, Trading 212, AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown (HL), Fidelity, Interactive Investor (ii), InvestEngine and Halifax.
Different Platforms for Different Stages
Where it gets challenging for us all is that there are different platforms for different stages. It’s cheaper to go with a percentage based platform when you are starting out and then that shifts to being far cheaper to go with a flat fee platform later on in you journey.
As we started to analyse the data as to which platform had the best fees we realised that there were several factors that changed the cost of investing massively:
- The size of your investment pot
- How regularly you are investing
- Are you buying ETFs or Index Funds
This means we need to develop different scenarios to test the platform prices at different levels and frequencies of investing. You might be wondering why? In our Rebel Finance School group we have everyone from people trying to get out of debt and build their first emergency fund to multi-millionaires wondering if they have enough to retire yet.
This makes it a challenge for us to create a course or write an article that caters to you all. But it is possible. How are we going to tackle this?
We are going to use 3 different size pots and then 2 styles of investing to give you an idea of the fees for each different circumstance.
Pot Size
The three pot sizes we’ve considered are:
- Small: £10,000
- Medium: £75,000
- Large: £150,000
Reminder: don’t compare your pineapples. If you have your first £1,000 invested then that is an incredible achievement and you are headed in the right direction.
You might be thinking “well I only have £5,000 or I have £15,000”. The precise fees will be slightly different based on what you have. You should take our examples as an indication for your size of pot. The results will be similar for you if you are near these pot sizes but you need to do the maths yourself.
Broadly speaking, if you are £1,000 – £25,000 you are in the small bracket. If you are £30,000 – £100,000 you are in the medium bracket and above that you fit into the large portfolio bracket.
This gives you a good start to see what the fees might be for you BUT make sure you do the maths for your particular situation! We taught you how to do the maths in the How to Choose an Investment Platform article. Check that out if you need help.
Investing Frequency
There are 2 main frequencies of investing and they normally correlate (not always) with whether you are employed or self-employed.
- Employed, regular investor: you know what your gap is and you invest £XXX every month. We have assumed a regular investor is investing monthly.
- Self-Employed, irregular investor: Your income is lumpier and so you invest less frequently as you don’t entirely know what you are going to earn each month. For the sakes of the examples, we have assumed an irregular investor is investing 4 times a year. Again, your situation will be specific to you so you’ll need to do the maths to work out your particular situation.
We have a friend who has full time employment but invests irregularly. She likes to let the money build up in her account and then swish it into investments when she is sat on the couch at night looking at her accounts.
This isn’t ideal as time in the market is so important. Getting your money working earlier is better but we acknowledge we all have different ways of doing things! Whilst we wished everyone was 29% more Vulcan and did the most logical thing we know this won’t happen!
Which one are you?
Are you an investor with a small pot and you put your money in monthly? Are you an investor with a medium size pot and you put your money in irregularly 3-4 times a year?
Work out which one you are and then that will help you work out which platform is best going to suit you.
Ignoring fund fees
Ignoring fund fees Donegans? Well that got your attention didn’t it?!
Fund fees are incredibly important and can massively eat into the growth of your pot. We explain more about this in the first article, How to Choose an Investment Platform.
For the rest of this review and comparison, we are assuming that the fund fees are the same for the fund you’re going to invest in within the different platforms you’re considering. Fund fees are the same for the same fund and are collected by the fund provider NOT by the platform provider.
So for the sakes of the comparison and review we are going to exclude them since we’ve assumed they’re the same across all platforms.
In the examples we give below, we are just looking at the annual platform fee you are charged by the platform. It does not include the fund fee.
SIPP: Small Pot
For the first scenario we are going to look at a small pot (£10,000) in a SIPP and where it is best to have you money based on fees alone. We will cover customer service and trustworthiness later.
If you are not a small pot SIPP investor still read this section as it will explain our thinking and then you can apply that to your situation.
The amazing Rebel Ninjas Martin and Lisa created us a spreadsheet that analysed the different fees on the fund and then Katie started to build visualisations on top of this.
This next chart shows you the annual platform fees you would pay for each platform you wanted us to review based on a small pot size and regular monthly investments.
We have split out ETFs and Index Funds for AJ Bell and HL because they have different fee structures depending on which one you’re invested in. Read on for a little bit more on this.
Here, and throughout the article, we’re using the new Vanguard fees that Vanguard are implementing from end of February 2025.
We marked Vanguard in yellow because their fee increase sparked this platform review and we wanted you to see who was more and less expensive. The green bars / platforms are all cheaper than Vanguard and the red are all more expensive than Vanguard.
There is a clear winner on price, InvestEngine, as their SIPP is free! woohoo! If you were investing just on cost of platform you would go with them immediately!
Halifax is the second cheapest at £25 a year for their SIPP and then finally you have the mid-table performers AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown (ETFs and Index Funds) and Vanguard.
The most expensive platforms for regular investors with a small pot are Fidelity, Interactive Investor and AJ Bell if you invest in ETFs
ETF v Index Funds – why the difference?
Why have we split AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) out into ETFs and index funds? Because they have different charges, fees and caps depending on whether you buy ETFs or index funds. This makes it super annoying and confusing to compare it and build comparisons. It also makes it far easier to end up overpaying in fees.
You can see in our analysis above that with AJ Bell, if you buy ETFs your platform fee would be double what it would be if you invested in index funds.
For investing, it doesn’t really matter which you choose except the impact it makes on platform fees and this is critical to know.
For example, if you have index funds in a SIPP with HL, the fees are as follows.
- 0.45% up to £250,000
- 0.25% between £250,000 and £1m
- 0.1% between £1m and £2m
- 0% above £2m
So there’s a cap on the annual fees but it only hits when you have £2m invested at which point you’re paying £4,000 in fees a year. Compare this to Vanguard’s cap of £375 a year which hits at £250,000 invested.
If you invest in ETFs in a SIPP with HL as your platform, your fees are 0.45%, capped at £200 a year.
This makes is super tricky and confusing to compare and you have to pay close attention to the details of the charges for both HL and AJ Bell. Way to make it overcomplicated HL and AJ Bell!
Irregular versus regular investors
Here is the bit of the comparison where you get to see the impact of your investing style on the fees you would pay. A lot of the platforms reward regular investors with zero or low fees and you pay more to be an irregular investor. Let’s look at the two charts side by side. We’ve assumed an irregular investor is investing 4 times a year. Your answer will be different depending on how many times you invest.
Regular Investor
Irregular Investor
As you can see from the irregular investor chart, Halifax has gone from being the second cheapest to nearly tripling its cost and being more expensive than Vanguard (reflecting the new fees).
Your investment style will absolutely affect the fees you pay so you need to know if you are someone who will put your money in regularly by direct debit or whether you will want to make top ups and lump sum investments.
The great thing about platforms like AJ Bell Index Funds, Hargreaves Lansdown ETFs and Vanguard (all funds) is that they don’t charge you extra for putting more money in when you want to. There are no extra sneaky transaction costs to look out for.
And yes this will affect your behaviour. It is still affecting our behaviour to this day. We have a Halifax account and if we make a sale or put money in it costs us £9.50 every time we trade.
This week Katie and I were selling off some units in our ISA to live off and we chose to sell it within our Vanguard accounts as it didn’t have dealing fees.
These fees subtly change your behaviour and it is very difficult to stop them from doing so. It is very easy to get caught up in doing something to save a tenner which costs you a lot more in a different way.
Halifax
As we are on the topic of Halifax and they are showing up as one of the cheapest platforms for a small pot; are they worth considering?
Katie and I went with Halifax in the early days as they were clearly the cheapest platform back when we started. They had a fixed fee so as our money grew our platform fees wouldn’t and they have served us well over the years. However their customer service is terrible. Their SIPP Service is administered by AJ Bell so in reality you are getting AJ Bell underneath the hood and our experience of them has been less than good.
Just last week I rung up to try and get a statement sent to me and they wanted to charge me £12.95 to post a statement to me and just tried to get rid of me on the phone. I don’t enjoy their service at all.
Halifax’s app is pretty slick and easy to use and their digital service is good but AJ Bell are hideous to work with and I have ended up emailing their CEO complaining many times. This is not a company I want to work with any more and one of the main reasons we are shuffling about and moving platforms.
Knowing what I know now, would I choose Halifax again from the start?
No.
Small Pot SIPP Conclusion
The question we have started to ask ourselves is what would we, the Donegans, do if we were starting again now?
If we were starting out putting our money in fresh with a small pot and building up which SIPP provider would we choose?
It would be so hard to resist the free platform fees from InvestEngine but after checking their company out I would be nervous using them and I would be looking for a long term platform I could stay with.
After that the 2nd cheapest is Halifax. We are about to move away from them and pay more for better service, but could I resist the value of their platform when I was starting out and every penny was critical?
If I had the knowledge I had now I would not go with Halifax because of the 1 off fees. Even if I was a regular investor, which is free, if I was to want to put anything extra in the £9.50 fees mount up quickly. You get a bonus, you get some Christmas money and you want to put it in the market and you have to pay a tenner to get it in? This will change your behaviour and slow your investing down. So my answer is I would not go with Halifax knowing what I know how.
Let’s have a look at the two charts again
Regular Investor
Irregular Investor
I have ruled out the 2 cheapest options and AJ Bell (because they are Halifax’s administrator and I hate their customer service). Now we are left with the mid table offerings Hargreaves Lansdown at £45 a year and Vanguard at £48 a year.
You could go with either of these and be happy. The questions I would then start to ask to choose between these two options would be:
- How long am I going to be a small pot investor and is the platform I am choosing any good at the mid level? I don’t want to be changing platforms all the time so would rather choose one that would last for a few years at least.
- Am I just going for a SIPP or do I want a Stocks and Shares ISA as well? This affects the fees you are going to pay as some of the platforms have cheaper fees when you have both account types
I think Alan from 15 years ago when we started investing would have found it hard to turn down the InvestEngine free SIPP and he might have taken it even knowing about how much money (or not!) InvestEngine was making. It is difficult to know and I can’t say with 100% certainty what I would have done back then.
As we were working through this project Ninja Martin asked me a great question “would you be willing to pay £4 a month for better customer service?”
£4 a month is the price of an expensive coffee, half what the basic Netflix Subscription is or a tenth of a mid size Lego set?
Vanguard UK alone have 900 staff compared to the 23 at InvestEngine.
Before we come to a conclusion let’s explore what would happen if you want to have both a Stocks and Shares (S&S) ISA as well…
ISA & SIPP- small pot
What about if you wanted a stocks and shares ISA (S&S ISA) and a SIPP and you have small pots for both? Does that affect your decision as to which platform to go with? Let’s look at the fees for the different platforms and the different investment styles.
Regular Investors – ISA and SIPP on the same platform
Let’s say you want both a S&S ISA and a SIPP on the same platform. Katie created a table for you to see the impact on the annual platform fees for the different pot sizes if you are a regular investor.
We have said that a small pot is £10,000 in a SIPP and £10,000 in an ISA making a combined total of £20,000. Some of you will have smaller than this, some will have larger. We had to pick a number for comparison and as we picked £10,000 for each type before we just put them together for this part of the review.
Most platforms charge you a separate fee for S&S ISA and a separate fee for SIPP and how the amount you have one of the accounts doesn’t impact how much you pay in fees for the other account and vice versa. So in the table below, we’ve just added together the platform fee for your SIPP and the platform fee for your ISA.
There are two exceptions to this… Vanguard and Interactive Investor (ii).
Vanguard. They charge based on how much you have in all accounts with them (SIPP and S&S ISA and General Investment Account if you have one). It’s 0.15% a year of everything you have with them, with a minimum of £48 a year and a maximum of £375 a year.
Interactive Investor. They also look at how much you have across all accounts with them. If you have up to £75,000 with them they charge you £9.99 a month (£119.88 a year) and if you have more than this they charge you £21.99 a month (£263.88 a year).
Ok, back to the table…
The cheapest platform is at the top and as you go down the table, the platforms get more and more expensive.
The left hand column is small pots, the middle medium pots and the right large pots. The platforms change position and cost with the size of your pot changing.
You can see Vanguard in the yellow as the comparison point.
At all levels InvestEngine wins as they are FREE! Crazy. You already know my concerns with this platform and even though it is free we won’t be moving our money over to them.
Interestingly, looking at SIPP and ISA combined on the same platform, Vanguard still comes out cheapest (after InvestEngine) at the small pot level. It is then narrowly moved to third by Halifax in the medium level but then becomes more expensive as you get to a large pot.
Have a look through the chart and see where the platforms you have been considering end up. How does the platform compare for the different pot sizes?
Irregular Investors – ISA & SIPP on the same platform
How about if you are an irregular / lump sum investor? Does that change things up fee wise? What happens to the numbers! It is exciting isn’t it! Let’s go the table and find out.
Remember this is assuming you invest 4 times a year in each of SIPP and ISA (so 8 times a year in total). The answer will be different if you invest a different number of times.
For SIPP and ISA on the same platform it doesn’t really change things very much if you are a regular or irregular investor. At the larger pot sizes it makes the other providers a bit more expensive bringing them closer to Vanguard’s fees.
Of course you don’t have to have your ISA and SIPP with the same platform…
ISA and SIPP on different platforms
Katie and I are more and more interested in simplicity as we get older. We have changed! When we first started out, we were way more up for hustling and willing to put up with more hassle. We would have looked to see the price of different accounts at different providers. Now we’re happy to have it all in one place.
But in service to you and all the people that are like past Katie and past Alan, let’s look at what would happen if you were looking to minimise fees across SIPP and ISA and were ok with having different platforms.
This is where Trading 212 puts its hat in the ring…
Trading 212: free S&S ISA
Trading 212 offer a free ISA! Is it too good to be true? should we be wary? How does it affect our fees if we have a ISA for free with T212 and then a SIPP elsewhere?
If you went solely in fees then this would be the option to go for! Free!
But as we know fees are just one of the criteria for evaluating a good platform. Let’s look at them all systematically.
| Fees | The ISA is free! Doesn’t get any cheaper than that. |
| Funds available | You can’t get either of the two index funds we talk about on T212 but that doesn’t matter as you can get Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF (VWRL for income or VWRP for accumulation) which is a great fund + plus there are other great ETFs there for you |
| Accounts available | ISA Yes GIA Yes LISA No SIPP NoWe have heard lots of positive comments about their high interest account which comes as part of the package. |
| Trustworthiness and customer service | T212 are a profitable company with good fundamentals. They have been around for a while and we hear good things about their customer service. |
Mixing and matching platforms
Katie and I were debating again what we would do if we were starting out again. Would we go with the Free ISA and mix it with a Paid for SIPP (we have already ruled out Invest Engine)?
I think younger Alan would have found it very hard to pass up a free Stocks and Shares ISA and probably would have found the cheapest SIPP for his stage and then had the T212 ISA as well.
How about current Alan? Current Alan is a little less militant, a lover of simplicity about ease of managing money.
Current Alan would prefer to have all his investments on one platform to make life easier and simple. Ways this helps me now:
- Less Friction – If I am selling off money from a general account and then reinvesting in my ISA and SIPP each year (as we do currently) I would much prefer them to be on the same platform. This reduces time out of the market and time/hassle moving money around
- Easier to manage – having all my accounts in one place is just easier to manage, see what I have and make changes if I need to
- Unified Reporting – you get one report style from the platform which gives you the tax certificates and information about trading that you need easily in one place
- Customer Service – dealing with one platform is enough sometimes! It makes it easier to deal with one customer service team when moving and doing things with your accounts.
The question for all of you is are you happy to do the extra management to save the money by having 2 platforms instead of one. If you have a LISA as well you might end up with 3 platforms. Katie and I currently have 5 platforms and it is TOO much, we are simplifying down!
Do I think the T212 ISA is a great deal? YES! 100%
Would I go for it? No because I want one platform for the reasons above. My reasoning above my or may not be relevant for you and you need to consider your own reasons and choices here. The purpose of this article and the How to choose a Platform Article is to share our thinking and help you to make your own mind up!
Goal: Lowest Fees
If your goal is to go with the lowest fee provider there is a super easy choice. Invest Engine SIPP and Trading 212 ISA.
We won’t be doing this as that is no longer our only goal. We want simplicity, customer service and low fees (just doesn’t have to be zero!)
Fee Tables
Here are all the different tables Katie generated to show you the fees at different pot sizes and different investment frequencies.
You scroll along to find the table that fits you. Just select whether you are looking for ISA, SIPP or ISA and SIPP and then whether you are a regular investor or an irregular investor and then find your table.
The table will show you, based solely on fees who is cheapest. Invest Engine win every SIPP category and Trading 212 win every category on price alone.
We think what is interesting in these tables is how close the split of the mid pack platforms are. You will see different results for each pot size, account type and investing style.
Here is where you ask yourself some questions:
- Which pot size am I at now and how soon will I be moving up brackets?
- Do I want a SIPP and ISA together or separately? Or do I need only one of them?
- Do I want to invest in Index Funds or ETFs? For us it doesn’t matter but the fees are vastly different on some platforms
Have a look through the tables that are relevant to you and let us know what you spot and what you think!
ISA Table for Regular Investors
ISA Table for Irregular Investors
SIPP Table for Regular Investors
SIPP Table for Irregular Investors
SIPP and ISA Table for Regular Investors
SIPP and ISA Table for Irregular Investors
SIPP Table for Regular Investors
ISA Table for Irregular Investors
Is Vanguard still a good option?
Short answer: Yes
Why? Let’s look at the criteria we’re evaluating all the platforms by…
| Fees | Yes, they’ve increased their platform fees. But it’s still very reasonable at 0.15% overall with a minimum of £48 a year (£4 a month) and a maximum of £375 a year. And that’s across all accounts you have with them (S&S ISA, SIPP and general account if you have one). They still have zero dealing fees when buying and selling funds. This is a big bonus. It’s super confusing to work out the impact of dealing fees with other providers. And you might be tempted to hold off buying because of the dealing fee with other platforms. There’s none of that with Vanguard, it’s SUPER easy to understand what’s going on and what you’ll pay (zero!) Have a play with the Impact of Fees tool to see the impact on your portfolio over the long term of Vanguard changing their fees |
| Funds available | It’s often listed as a limitation that you can only buy Vanguard funds. I see that as a positive. No distractions. Although Vanguard now do offer active managed funds (what are you playing at Vanguard?? – this is against the whole philosophy of founder Jack Bogle!). But you can’t be tempted into buying individual company shares because they only offer their own funds. It’s like going to a supermarket and only being able to buy own brand products. No Kelloggs or Walkers Crisps. |
| Accounts available | They do ISAs, SIPPs and general accounts. No Lifetime ISAs or plans to (disappointing!) |
| Trustworthiness and customer service | We trust Vanguard because of their original investing philosophy and that their founder Jack Bogle came up with low cost index funds. Yes, they’ve strayed from that original philosophy but still feels like a good bet. They have a strong track record. And their customer service has been excellent in our experience. |
So what does it boil down to when it comes to Vanguard versus the zero-fee platforms…
Vanguard vs young upstarts
In the reeeeeed corner we have Vanguard. In the blue corner we have InvestEngine and Trading 212… the young FinTech contenders.
We think it boils down to…
- Customer service
- Track Record
- Cost
- Do you want more than one platform?
Knowing what we know now about moving money around, BED and ISA and the ease of using one platform for doing this we would want only one platform.
What is Bed and ISA?
Bed and ISA is a way to move your investments into a tax-free account called an ISA (Individual Savings Account). Here’s how it works:
Sell: You sell your investments that are in a regular brokerage account.
Buy: You immediately buy the same investments back, but this time in an ISA.
This helps because any future growth or income from these investments in the ISA won’t be taxed. It’s a handy way to make the most of your annual ISA allowance, which is £20,000
One Platform
Are we willing to pay £4 to have all our accounts in one place and the knowledge that we know the customer service is good?
Yes we are and that is what we are going to do to consolidate our funds. We wouldn’t want it any other way but we are going to vote with our Great British Pounds and move our investments to Vanguard even though we will pay more than Halifax (where we are now) or Trading 212 or Invest Engine.
That is our decision. What will you do?
Do you prefer to pay no fees and to be on your own a little bit more? Are you ok with the risk of a hike in fees if the zero-fee business model fails?
If yes, the zero-fee platforms could be a good option for you!
I feel like you know enough now with all the analysis, information and questions in this article to make a decision.
But before we do this we need to look at…
Can you resist?
Some of the more modern platforms like T212 talk a lot on their sites about investing in individual shares. The image to the right shows you a screen shot from their home page where they show you how easy it is to buy your favourite company in seconds.
The Rebel Finance Philosophy is built on buying 1 index fund and avoiding trading.
We see trading stocks and shares as gambling and as speculation in most instances. As such we want to stay away from it.
Can you resist the marketing and stay away from trading, buying individual stocks and shares and tampering with your portfolio. If you can then choose any platform. If you can’t stay away from the trading platforms.
One of the benefits of Vanguard is they don’t mention trading. They only offer their range of funds. Yes some of them are actively managed and you need to avoid those but there is a LOT less temptation on other platforms that aren’t trying to get you to trader so that you incur more fees.
The Naughty List
Every year Santa makes a naughty list and those that end up on only receive coal for Christmas. Christmas has gone but these platforms have ended up on our naughty list and we believe we should all stay clear and maybe save a few people from ending up in the wrong platform!
| Platform | Reasons |
|---|---|
| St James’s Place (SJP) | Outrageous Fees. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) research shows that the initial fees are around 2.4%, with total ongoing fees around the 2% mark. Plus from the many reviews of people’s accounts we have done they underperform the market massively. This is a company full of sharks and should be avoided at all costs! #naughty |
| Quilter | You might be wondering why Quilter are here with their relatively low platform fees. It is not the platform fees that kill you but the bad performance, fund fees and IFAs!
We received this message from one Quilter customer that shocked us “We have £30,000 invested in personal pension plan, for last 17 years and it’s only made £700 in all that time.” #niceontheoutsidenaughtyinthemiddle |
| Wealthify | 0.6% platform fees and terrible funds with terrible performance. For a full Wealthify review read our article. #naughtybutlookmodern |
| Pension Bee | High fees ( from 0.50% to 0.95% annually) and a poor range of funds. #naughty |
| Nutmeg | High fees and terrible performance. On their investment page nutmeg shout loudly that they have beaten their peers returning 87.9% on your money over 10 years. Sounds amazing doesn’t it? They beat their peers by 25.9% as well! Wow. Who are these peers that they have trounced? Other high fee platforms? Compare them to the Vanguard FTSE Developed World EX UK fund which has returned 332% over the same time frame? Which one would you prefer? |
| Monzo | Monzo? Why are Monzo on here? people love Monzo and we get asked all the time, I love their banking and now they do investments should I use them? They are triple the price of Vanguard with a 0.45% fee and no cap! Plus their only global fund is actively managed. I had to dig through a lot of T&Cs and details to find this little gem from the fund manager Blackrock “The Fund is actively managed without reference to a benchmark, meaning the IM has absolute discretion to select the Fund’s investments and is not constrained by any target, comparator or performance benchmark. The Fund’s carbon emission intensity score is measured against the Index.” High fees and actively managed? Come on Monzo we thought you were better than this. Don’t buy into the fintech hype and slick marketing! Always check the details. |
There are so many more platforms that belong on the naughty list! Maybe we should produce an annual list and give out awards to these companies?
Remember just because a company isn’t on the naughty list doesn’t mean they are any good.
Our advice (not)
It’s a trap. We can’t give advice because we aren’t financial advisors and don’t pretend to be so on the internet. We are just a random British couple that wanted to master finances and get to financial independence and then we’ve shared what we’ve learned.
Small Pot
If we were starting again what would we do? I think it is a toss up between:
- Get a free ISA at Trading 212 and a free SIPP at Invest Engine. Being honest with ourselves at the beginning of our journey we were SO focused on fees that this might have been what we would have done.
- Go with Vanguard for all accounts. Yes Vanguard charge a minimum of £4 a month (price of a large coffee) but for the advantages, customer service and platform we think it is worth it. Would you be willing to pay £4 a month for this?
If we were starting again and had the experience we have now we would go with Vanguard and move on with life.
Medium Pot
In a lot of the scenarios we ran at the mid sized pot level, Vanguard came out one of the cheapest platforms.
Yes you could save £100 a year by going free. You have read all our reservations about this above.
We think we would stay with Vanguard as a platform given all the reasons above about having one platform, customer service and the fact that you don’t have to move platforms often.
One of the things that has bitten us in the bottom a few times is time out of the market as we move money between accounts.
What does time out of the market mean?
This is a period of time when an investor is not invested in the stock market. This can happen if you sell your investments and hold cash instead. Or you have to sell investments on one platform and then transfer the money to another then reinvest the money. You can end up with a week or two out of the market!
During time out of the market you risk missing out on potential gains if the market goes up. And in general the market always goes up. Essentially, it’s the risk of missing profitable opportunities by not being invested.
This has happened to Katie and I as we have moved money about many times over our investing life.
£100 in yearly fees versus time out of the market is a not a real decision for us from the experiences we have had over the years. You could lose thousands with time out of the market. How did I reach this decision?
I am not going with Invest Engine because of the reasons above. I don’t want 2 platforms so that rules out Trading 212 + other and the the next cheapest at this level is Vanguard.
I have found this fascinating writing this article as when we started writing it I had no idea what the answer was going to come out as. Were we going to go to a new platform, stick with Halifax or move to Vanguard?
At the mid level pot size Donegans would go for Vanguard
Large Pot
At this level it is a lot more competitive in terms of fees. The free platforms are still free and because Vanguard’s cap is fairly high at £375 the other platforms get a little bit cheaper.
For most larger pots it is cheaper with Interactive Investor (depending on how many trades you do in a year)
I have seen how a trading or transaction fee can change our behaviour even when it is a tiny percentage of the money you are moving. Just this week we sold some of our units to live off and we chose to do that from my Vanguard ISA as there was no fee. With Halifax I would have paid £9.50 to trade.
Katie and I are large pot holders and we are in the process of making this decision right now. We started this whole journey into reviewing platforms with our own money in mind as much as yours.
These things are all personal choice and interactive Investor have quite a complex pricing model with different levels with different numbers of trades for free. I don’t like having to work this out all the time and the simplicity of a capped platform fee with vanguard and no other hidden fees is more attractive to me at this stage of my investment journey.
Interactive Investor has good customer service from what I have been told and people speak highly of this platform in the FI world. I think it is a great choice. As with a lot of things there is an element of personal choice.
Katie and I are going to choose to pay a little more to go with Vanguard for the reasons above.
We believe the large pot choice comes down to Interactive Investor and Vanguard. Both are fab choices.
Switching platforms for incentives
Some of the platforms offer you incentives, cash etc. to swap to their platform. Before you do this please consider some important things.
Firstly can you transfer your funds without selling them, transferring in cash and then rebuying the same funds or other funds?
As discussed earlier time out of the market where your money is in cash can really work against you and should be avoided. Especially if you are doing it for £100 or a small incentive. You could easily lose more than that just being out of the market.
Secondly don’t let incentives sway you for a short term gain. We are all in this for the long run, multi-decades and that should be the focus.
These kind of incentives are great on savings accounts and banks but have far greater complications on your investment accounts. Keep your eye on the long term prize!
TLDR: Conclusion
There was a lot in this article. We wanted to make sure we shared our thinking so we could help you think about the best option for you. Everything we do is about empowering you to be able to understand the options, the maths and make your own decisions. Here are the key points from the article for you:
- At the small-pot level it is a toss up between two free platforms (Trading 212 & InvestEngine) and Vanguard. Current Donegans would go for Vanguard.
- At the mid-sized pot level the Donegans would go for Vanguard for the advantages of customer service and being on one platform
- At the large pot-size level you could move to interactive investor to save £100 a year or so. The Donegans would stick with Vanguard at this level as we don’t like trading / transaction fees as it changes our behaviour and the fees at Interactive investor are just harder to understand.
There is no right answer to all this stuff and you need to make your own mind up. Having reviewed all the options out there we would be confident sticking with or starting with Vanguard.
What about Platform XYZ?!
There’s bound to be a platform we haven’t mentioned here. Our aim is that we’ve taught you how to think about different platforms…
Read How to Choose an Investment platform for more detail on each of these points.
| Fees | What are the fees? Vanguard’s 0.15% (min £48, max £375) is a good benchmark. |
| Funds available | Can you buy low cost broad based global index funds or ETFs? |
| Accounts available | Can you invest in a tax efficient way in Stocks & Shares ISAs and SIPPs? |
| Trustworthiness and customer service | Trustworthiness – how long has the company been around? Is their business model sound? If they are offering you something for free how are they making ends meet, keeping the lights on and paying the staff? Customer service – how easy is it to contact the company and get your questions answered? One way of testing this is to try and contact them before you open an account to ask a question about how their service works and see the quality of the response you get! |
You should be equipped to think through the platforms you are considering now but if there are any you really want us to include next time put them in the comments!
What are you going to do?
Time for action or in-action. Are you staying where you are? Changing platforms? What do you think of the article? We would love to know what you are planning. Please leave us a comment below as it fills our hearts with joy hearing from you all!
Livestream Q&A
We know you might have lots of questions so we are organising a livestream Q&A to help. If you have missed it live you can watch it here on catch up and I bet you someone else has asked the question you have! Tune in Monday 3rd February 2025 8pm UK time if you want to join us.
You can hit notify on YouTube to get a notification when it goes live.
What are the Donegans going to do?
All this analysis and looking at fees and spreadsheets wasn’t just for you! We had been procrastinating for a couple of years about consolidating our platforms. We have been inspired by all of this and a question Martin (Rebel Ninja) asked us!
We currently have Halifax, Vanguard, Hargreaves Lansdown (LISA) and Standard Life as our platform providers. We are over paying by having multiple providers! booo.
We are going to consolidate our Halifax accounts into Vanguard and move all our investments there. We still have a bit more research to do about how it works with standard life and we may or may not move that one but this has inspired us to get it done, consolidate and move everything to Vanguard.
Vanguard do not have a LISA account and as such we will leave that with Hargreaves Lansdown. It is on our list to review all the LISA providers again before Rebel Finance School this summer so look out for that.
What a journey this has been working on this article. Thank you Martin, Lisa and all the Ninjas that helped make this as good as it could be.
Sending you lots of happiness.
Thanks for reading and hope to see you at the next meetup or RFS event.
Coming soon
There is so much going on at the moment. here is a quick sneak peak for what we have planned for you:
- Tour of the UK
- A live Extraordinary Event in London, maybe Manchester too…
- The release of the Rebel Guide to Financial Freedom our first book
- The release of the world’s first Financial Freedom Music Album
- and so much more
We LOVE creating for you and working with you all. Thank you for being part of the gang and hanging out with us. Let’s all sort our finances together and have fun making extraordinary things happen!
Disclaimer
As always, none of this is financial advice, we’re not financial advisers, we’re just here to talk about our experiences and how we’d go about making some of these decisions, so you can understand how to make a choice for yourself. Full disclaimer
Platforms regularly change their fees (which is what prompted this comparison), please make sure to check their sites for the most up to date fees before making any decisions.
Thank you
This article would not have happened with out the incredible Rebel Finance School Ninjas and people who helped check the article. Thank you Martin and Lisa. Thank you Steve and Judith for working on the table formatting and so much more. We love you. Thank you Ruth, Caroline and Maxine for checking the article. This truly is an incredible community and team. We are lucky to have you all.
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Thank you so much Alan and Katie and the Ninjas! So much hard work has gone into this and it is much appreciated, the presentation of information makes it easy to read and understand and from there make informed choices rather than worrying and/or burying my head in the sand. So glad I found you guys and joined your courses 3 years ago, Thanks again
Sharon your reply made our day! Thank you so much! It is comments like yours that keep us going. Thank you. Alan and Katie
What an incredible read thankyou! I’ve just signed up for everything!!
You have helped me sleep better at night from financial anxiety.
Julie, you made my day. THANK YOU. We worked so hard on that one. Thank you for replying. Alan
Fantastic thank you. I’m not sure if this is niche advice but it might be worth mentioning that if you are a Ltd Company Director and you pay employ*ER* contributions to your own SIPP from company profits (it counts as a legitimate business expense) Vanguard does not allow a monthly direct debit to be set up – you have to pay manually with a company card. Whereas Interactive Investor allows for employer contributions via direct debit. For me that was the deal breaker and I moved my SIPP from Vanguard to Interactive Investor. I would also like to mention that Vanguard were extremely slow and inefficient and doing the transfer which took several months and many chase up emails to complete. I am now happy with Interactive Investor.
Stephen, this is super important and you are right. I forgot to add this in! will update tomorrow and add in. That is a bonus. Thank you so much for replying. Alan
Also, to add to this if I may, Vanguard don’t accept salary sacrifice payments from employer. I moved from Vanguard to Interactive Investor some time back because of this. Maybe Vanguard, do now (haven’t checked). If they did, i’d probably switch back as my GIA & ISA is there and I too am a huge advocate of simplicity! Also, with II, you have to fill in a form (electronically) for each employer contribution to facilitate payment. Kind of annoying and i’d happily do away with this.
Hey Gary, Vanguard don’t do this yet you are right. You can pay in if you are the company director only. So annoying and II enables that. Good shout. Thank you
Thanks all ❤️ for the above info filled articles and the great insights into all platforms and associated details of each. Myself, 🤔 sticking with Vanguard on my medium sized pot, ISA only. Thanks again 😘
Ian thank you for replying. it makes writing the articles worth while! YAY. Sending you massive happiness
I’m new to RFS but have worked in the financial services industry for over 20 years. Everything I’ve read or watched in the past month has given me at least one “light bulb” moment. I’m soaking it up like a sponge as I head into retirement. THANK YOU !
Caroline this made my day reading this! wow. Katie worked as an Actuary and we learnt so much creating all the content and working on our finances too! THANK YOU for commenting and sharing your thoughts. You are awesome. Let us know how you get on and hope to meet you when we get back to the UK!
Wow! Exhausted just to read this article! Thanks SO much, it reads like a discussion, so helpful! I know exactly what we’ll do now.
Josie :)
YES! that was the purpose to help people make decisions and move on. I think the article was discussion we had over about a week and a half writing it. We would write, go for a run and end up discussion it all the way and then come home and write what we discussed and do more research and build more! it was fun. THANK YOU for commenting. Let us know how you get on! Alan and Katie
Great article, really clear and very helpful for informing me of what I want to do with my large pot, leave it with Vanguard as I have been impressed with them since I opened my account and moved from SJP in October.
I am supporting my daughter to move her first pension from Scottish widows and her ISA from Foresters and will advise her to use Vanguard also. She has a small pot which I hope she will begin to add to over time. She’s only 20 so I’m trying to encourage her to start early. Thanks to you all for all your time and effort pulling all this together. 🙌🙌🙌
Shirley that is awesome. Great work changing from SJP and I am so glad Vanguard have looked after you. That is so exciting that your daughter is only 20 and you are helping her with this! wow. the compounding years that are on her side is so exciting. WOW. It is our pleasure. We loved writing it and it really stretched our thinking and made us think about all the elements. THANK YOU so much for replying! sending happiness. A&K
Thanks so much for the hard work that has gone into writing this article. It is super useful. After doing the course last year, I opened an ISA with HL. Still a very small pot so I will leave it there for the moment. Thank you for all your brilliant research and findings.
Hey Sandra, YAY! we are so glad it helped and % based fees are great at lower rates. Keep an eye on it as it grows and watch out for the ETF versus index fund thing and how that effects you in latter stages. Thank you so much for replying. You are awesome. Alan and Katie
Brilliant break down! So easy to make a decision when you lay the facts out in a calm methodical format, excellent job guys!! Happy investing peeps 👍👌😊📉📉📊
Thank you so much for this insight, I did a similar exercise to you but your graphs are way more colourful. As a new investor the one part I had missing was reputation as I’m still not familiar with the company’s, so that part was very interesting for me. Your information has also given me confidence in my decision. Thank you 🙏
Tracy thank you for replying and I love that it helped you make a decision! It is interesting. We would have made all our decisions in the early stages on just fees but we have become wiser to some of the other elements now! Thank you for replying. Sending happiness. A&K
Also I love Katie’s colourful graphs too! Alan
This article is absolute gold!!
I’m about to invest my life cash savings into a isa and a sipp and wasn’t going to do it without some research on the impact of fees,hidden charges and trust worthiness of the platform!
Your article covers it all and written in plain English as well !
It would have taken me weeks to find out all this information(thats if I was able to find it out at all !)
Thank you so much for all your work with this and Rebel finance school, you have opened my eyes and made the complex world of investing accessible and easily to understand empowering my family for generations.
Thankyou Alan,Katie and the rebel ninjas 💪❤ you are all real life super heroes!
Paula it is our pleasure. Thank you for commenting. Sometimes I am not so clam as I write the naughty list! lol. We had fun and learnt so much working through the article and I am so glad it helped! Happy Investing! sending happiness. A&K
Having finished your course in the last couple of days, I was ready to take action but wanted to wait until I read your review….thankyou so much for all your hard work and such detailed information – it has really helped!
Tomorrow is the start of my investing journey & I can’t wait! 👏🏻🍍💷🏝️
Becky, this is so EXCITING! did you do it? did you open an account? I am pumped for you. and I am so happy the article helped. That was a mammoth job putting that together but we learnt so much in the process of doing it! Your reply really made us happy. A&K
This has confirmed choice to keep with one provider so transfer my Moneybox Cash ISA £22K to Vanguard S&S ISA and start a SIPP with £10K that has been sitting in my current account. Was considering T212 for S&S ISA and looking at different SIPP providers before your review. Thank you !
Lynne great work making the decision. That is awesome and I love that the article helped confirm your thinking. It was fascinating for us working through all the ideas and the article as we had to make some big decisions too! Thank you so much for replying. Sending happiness A&K
Thank you for this and all the work and effort you have put into the RFS. Where previously I just left my investments to run their course, I have now done the the RFS courses and am reviewing my investments and the platforms where they reside. I am finding the information given invaluable – the community is great!
Thank you again.
Derek you made my day! this is so cool. YAY. And yes it is so important to review that stuff from time to time. Nice work getting on top of it and check how much the differences will be with the fees tool! This message made us feel so happy that we helped! THANK YOU. Alan and Katie
Great comparisons, a lot of work has gone into this, thank you Katie, Alan and the Ninjas. I can now check my maths and make the right decision for me. So pleased I found the group from asking a random question on another Face Book group on Sunday. Loved the RFS course, simple, effective and brilliant. Thank you
Maggie you have made me smile! YAY! I can’t believe you found us by asking a question in another group! what did you ask? YAY to maths and making informed decisions! sending you happiness. Alan and Katie
Do you guys have any view on the service provided by Alan Miller at SCM Direct?
hey Robert, I have just googled them. There fees are on average 0.92%. This is triple what we pay. They are a wealth management company so active and will probably underperform the market. There fund seems to have grown 140% in 13 years. Strange time frame they showed (difficult to compare). In ten years the Vanguard FTSE Dev World has grown 331%. From a quick glance they tick all the boxes as everything we say steer clear of completely! My personal opinion is I would NEVER let them near my cash!. Sending you happiness and sorry for my directness, companies like that take advantage of people who don’t know any better! Alan
Thank you to you and the team. Really helped clarify things for an older person who struggles with investment. While due to life changing circumstances I am starting from scratch financially. I’m not sure at this point how far I’ll be in a better financial position but at least I’ll make a start.
Shailesh, I am sorry circumstances have been challenging. I love your attitude and energy just to improve things and anything you do will improve your situation starting from scratch. We don’t know how far you will get either but we know with 100% confidence that you will make progress. Thank you so much for replying! Alan and Katie
Thank you so much for taking the time to put this all together! It is so helpful! With my medium pot I’ll be sticking with Vanguard as it gets up to Large level, rather than thinking about switching. I’m going to share this article with my friends and family and check they are on a good path with low fees.
hey Steph
It’s our pleasure! We love doing all the analysis and figuring out how to make the article flow and tell a story of our investigations! Thank you for sharing the article with your friends and family! Thank you for spreading the word :)
Katie
The large pot at £100k sways towards Vanguard.. but over £115k the costs is £375 vanguard and ii £156. So certainly more than your £100..
Far more choice with ii. Including gilts.
Hey Carl
Thank you for the comment!
ii seems like a great choice for a lot of people. Have you factored in the dealing costs? And their packages seem to vary depending which combo of accounts you have with them
Curious why you need gilts? My other thought is that you don’t really need that much choice as long as you have access to a low cost global index fund!
Thank you for taking the time to comment :)
Katie
What a lot of work you both, and the Ninjas, have put into this excellent article. Thank you to all! I won’t be changing my provider, but this has confirmed I am happy with my choice. I have large pots in S&S ISAs, SIPP & GIA, all with Interactive Investor. Already retired and investing irregularly. So happy with low fees, which I find easy to understand , but also website & app & responsive customer service.
A curiosity is your analysis of fees. I pay £11.99 pm in total for all 3 (not £21), and get a free trade per month, so only invest when it’s free. Not sure why.
Other question is why are the fees so much less for ETF’s than funds with the likes of HL? (who I used to be with, also excellent but too expensive for large pot).
Once again, thank you so much for all your hard work – trying to get younger family members to join in who are in less favourable positions!
hey Wendy. It’s our pleasure! It has been a gargantuan effort and we love helping and we couldn’t do it without the support of the Ninjas!
yeah Interactive Investor seem to have different fee packages depending what combo of accounts you have with them (ISA, SIPP, GIA) and Ninja Martin had to do some spreadsheet wizardry to model and understand them! Interesting one! So tricky to model and that’s what makes this so tricky to compare across providers
You also asked… why are the fees different for ETFs and Index Funds with HL and AJ Bell? We have been scratching our heads about this one! What’s particularly confusing is that it’s not like it’s always that platform fees for ETFs are cheaper than index funds or vice versa. It’s a bit baffling! There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason. Maybe they’re doing it to attract a particular type of investor?! Alan says maybe we can email them and ask them!
Thank you for your lovely comment and we love having you in the Rebel gang!
Katie
Wow, what a tremendous amount of work you’ve done and helping us think through different criteria and scenarios which is so much more useful than just comparing their fee structures, which other articles do.
One way I would suggest improving this is to write a section that compares the different platforms from a Rebel Pinneapple user perspective. In the previous article I saw, you already elude to this in the two phases Asset Assembler and Prosperity Protector. I’d also add Asset Rebalancer and Asset Accessor phases, which broadly aligns to the lifecycle that all Rebels will be going through and fits into the structure of your course. As a Rebel, each phase would involve a different set of thinking (you’ve given us so many resources to help us do this!) and also a different set of transactions that we want the use the platform(s) for. For example, Asset Rebalancer would involve switching funds that involves minimum 2 trades. I think that looking at how a Rebel uses the platforms based on the lifecycle of your course is a lot more useful than comparing pot sizes which is quite static. That’s not to say that pot sizes is not useful, but i think how we use the platform over time is also useful. Hope this makes sense. Thank you for doing so much work and providing us the knowledge and power to make informed decisions.
hey Man Tai. Wow this is such a great idea! I love what you’re saying about it being more relevant to the phase that you’re in. And thank you for the ideas of other phases, it’s something that we have recently come up with so are developing as we speak. Your input is so useful! I LOVE LOVE LOVE this and you’re right that the size of the pot changes quite quickly so the phases is a really useful lense to view it through. THANK YOU for taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. I’m going to discuss this with Alan! :)
For being “just a random British Couple,” this article is worthy of Forbes or similar investment journals! While being informative, it also entertained – as the Donegans typically do. I’m an American, but principal concepts like fees, customer service, incentives, and lost market opportunities during transfers are globally applied. Impressive article; worth the read!
hey Jason. One half of a “random British couple” here. What a lovely glowing comment. Thank you. Love your positivity and thank you for being part of the Rebel gang. So lovely to have you and your enthusiasm :)
A brilliant article. So user friendly, intuitive and easy to read, follow and understand. Thank you so much. I’ll be switching fell HL for both ISA and SIPP to Vanguard – I also like things all in one place! Do you have any idea on how the transfer will work – ie do I have to set up a vanguard sipp first and then sell my funds in HL before transferring it in to Vanguard? And if so would I be out of the market for a long time?
Carrie, do you have vanguard funds in your HL account? if so Vanguard can just take them over and you won’t have any time out of the market at all. Or another idea is to switch in HL (depending on fees) to a Vanguard fund you would want the other side and then transfer. On the Vanguard Platform there is a big button that says transfer in and you click that and give them the details. You are right to think about time out of the market. Did this help? Alan
Great article and spot on for me. In researching an S&S ISA for my offspring I came across the fact that for 18-25 year olds the Halifax S&S ISA is free and free trades with regular investing (from 20 per month). So for now I’ve encouraged them to go with the Halifax. The same does not seem to be true of their SIPP. Are their any age incentives from any of the other platforms? Totally agree with the simplicity and will ultimately encourage a move to Vanguard and into SIPP when appropriate.
Hi Katie and Alan, thanks so much for the hugely helpful article. I am now in ‘action’ mode! I was interested in your comment “We still have a bit more research to do about how it works with standard life and we may or may not move that one” as I have a pension from a previous employer with SL which I was planning to move across to Vanguard as the SL fees are higher but now I’m wondering if this isn’t something I can do?
Hey Kristy, how much higher are your fees than the platform you are moving to?
Colossal amount of your time and Rebel Ninjas has gone in to this, THANK YOU for taking the time to do it. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👌🏻 I’m with ii for S&S ISA, SIPP and JISA’s for my son’s.
I started dabbling two years ago on Freetrade with a GIA, stock picking, but have since stopped after doing most of your superb RFS videos – mostly late at night on my iPhone when my children are asleep and my husband is snoring his head off! 😆 You and Katie make EVERYTHING so clear and simple to understand. THANKS A MILLION! ☺️
Cleo, What an awesome message. Love that you did the course after the kids were asleep! That made us both smile. Brilliant. It is our pleasure doing the work. Comments like yours are the ones that keep us going and working on it. Thank you. And good work on the strategies you have developed. Amazing!
Thanks for this really helpful article
Thanks Rosemary! we had fun writing. Thanks for replying!
Thanks for the article.
Can you check your numbers for a large pot with Fidelity (£300,000 ISA & SIPP Regular) or breakdown how you got the figure.
Over £250,000 the rate drops to 0.20 %, and my understanding is that they also charge this over the full amount invested similar to Vanguard and ii.
The figures you have are 3 times the amount Vanguard charges but at 0.2 I get it to be less than double at £600, summing my own monthly charges and multiplying by 12 confirms this.
I get that it still a higher figure, and as the pot grows it will only get higher, but almost £500 a year lower than what you have in the chart and not as big a difference as it first appears.
Hey Kerry, we will have a look and get back to you.
Alan and Katie, absolutely brilliant – well structured to make a very complex decision making process as simple as it can be. Thank you so much!
Mike
Thanks Mike. That was a LOT of thinking to work through all those bits! Appreciate your reply. Alan
Thank you both for sharing your knowledge and delivering the RBS course! I’ve attended twice and will do so again this year because it’s GREAT! And a refresher is always good. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t know how to even begin choosing investment funds (I have a S&S ISA and a LISA). I’m reviewing my LISA (not many providers to chose from which is a shame), I have found a well known platform (decent management fee 0.15%, no cap though unlike Vanguard but c’est la vie Vanguard don’t do LISA’s) and scrolled to find a low cost global index fund (tick – 0.13%) though the platform provider was a bit coy with the details – I managed to find that HSBC are the fund provider and locate the name and number of the fund on HSBC’s website to find the fund fact sheet and other details! Long story short – I know how to find low cost global investments! Yay me! Thanks to you! All the best! Rebel Padwan ✌️
Thanks so much for sharing this! What I’m wondering is how this works for people like me, who aren’t UK citizens? ie. I’m an EU citizen (and resident). How does that change things?
Hey Candice, Are you living in the UK? Or are you living in the EU? There will be different platforms and tax rules in the EU but I know it exists. I have met some of the FI community in Germany, Belgium and Poland.
One additional consideration is the security of apps. Both T212 and InvestEngine have mobile phone apps and the snatch thefts which are still on the increase means the thief can get an unlocked phone. Investengine is not too bad and follows the main banks in that the app requires a fresh authorisation to open (face or finger), however, T212 is terrible. Once you have opened the app it will show all details to whoever has the phone. Even if you close the app down, whenh re-opening it, it will still be logged in. The only way to secure T212 is to log out (which itself is not that easy to find!!).
Rob that is fascinating and an angel we had not considered. Wow. Interesting differences too. Have you hear stories about this? How do you know? I am really curious as this is important to highlight. no point building up wealth if it can be snatched!
You both are truly amazing and wonderful human beats. You do not have to do this but choose to do it to help others. At the risk of sounding too soppy…I love you guys and appreciate all you have and are doing! Your funny, delivery and great way of making everything easy to understand is an added bonus.
Thank you so much! I have learnt so much and started investing at a stressful time in my life due to you.
Protect Katie and Alan at all times!! x
Darcy what a lovely message. and it is messages like yours that keep us going and working on this stuff! Thank you. Sending love right back at you. You made us both emotional reading your message. And congratulations on getting your money invested. This is a AWESOME achievement. Wow. I love it. A&K
Worth noting that with ii, you can avoid dealing fees/commission by using the ‘Extra Investment This month’ feature under the Free Regular Investing tab.
Thanks David, there was different packages with ii that included different numbers of trades you are right. Thanks for commenting
Hey Katie and Alan, what a fantastic article! You guys are so dedicated to researching all the details and explaining everything so clearly and helpfully! Thank you so much and I’m really looking forward to meeting you on your UK tour this year! Sending love and pineapples! 🍍
Richard. We do get a bit geeky about all this stuff. The details matter over time and small amounts can make a big difference. Thank you so much for replying. Comments like yours keep us going! Cant wait to see you on the tour. it is going to be epic and fun. Peace and Pineapples back at you! Alan and Katie
Such a good read. Thank you. Just working through your course at the moment and am on week 7. I was wondering if you have any views/opinions on eToro? It is a platform my husband uses and I was wondering how it compares?
Hey Natalie, you are fab. We have looked at eToro. It was so about trading, crypto, cdfs and more we left it off our list as it is the opposite of what we talk about. The fees are also in USD and there is currency exchange rates depending on what you get.
Withdrawal Fee: There is a $5 USD fee for all withdrawal requests
Inactivity Fee: If there is no login activity for 12 months, a $10 USD monthly inactivity fee is charged
Conversion Fee: This applies to non-USD deposits and withdrawals
Commission Fee: Since August 2024, a fee of $1 or $2 may apply when investing in stocks, depending on your country and the stock exchange
Spread Fee: This is a markup added by eToro to the market spread of certain asset types
Overnight Fee: A payment for holding a CFD position overnight
They charge you if you are inactive because they rely on your trading to make money which is the opposite of what we talk about. We would not use them.
Does that help. Sorry I wasn’t more positive about them. Alan
Thank you for this. I’m still deliberating on a platform! I can’t help but think that as Vanguard have introduced fees then others may follow suit so I’m tempted to go with Vanguard rather than T212. One thing I’m not quite clear on is that the £48 is across all accounts but if I also opened a JISA for our daughter would that account be included or would I have to pay £48 twice? I’m just thinking it will make things easier if everything is in one place.
Vanessa, I think annoyingly it is separate. It is across all your accounts but I “think” that they will charge your daughter as it is her account. Can you give them a call and confirm for us all?
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Hi Alan and Katie, amazing article as usual – I am exactly at the point of deciding wich platform to choose to start my self managed S&S ISA journey for the first time, this article is bang on!
I still have two doubts and I can’t get my head around them:
– if Trading 212 allow you to buy just fractional shares within ISAs, isn’t this illegitimate and challenged by HMRC? Is there a risk that the ISA is voided and all returns become taxable? This scares me a lot.
– Also, from my understanding Trading212 doesn’t allow to transfer out, you have to sell and if you want to switch to a different platform. Am I correct or am I understanding everything wrong?
Thank you very much for all your hard work, keep going!
Thank you for this. This review simplifies the process of choosing a UK investment platform by clearly comparing fees and features. It’s a helpful guide for anyone looking to make informed investment decisions.
Josh, thank you. this comment made my day. We worked hard on this one!
Considering first time investing in ISA on T 212 platform. Small pot to start with but a regular investor. Have read all articles on this website and watched all possible videos I could find.
What is the recommended fund to start with? Looking at various analyses there are some amazing returns over last 5 years. Some up to 42%. Sure they all have higher fees but still this is very tempting.
However this article recommended Vanguards all world ETF fund for those investing via T 212..
Any advice?
Hey Martin, we can’t give advice as we aren’t financial advisors. The funds we invest in are the vanguard FTSE Developed World ex UK or the Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap. Have you done the Rebel Finance School? Do you know the difference Fees make? This might help as a start: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/investing/impact-of-fees/ and come on Rebel Finance School this year starting 2nd June. Alan
Last November my 21yr old opened a SIPP with Vanguard on their FTSE Global All Cap fund with just £500, her intention being to invest regularly once she gains employment after graduating this year. Would she be wise to move platform to say, IE, in view of the Vanguard fees eating away at her tiny pot right at the start of her journey? I’ve done the course, but I’m also a newbie to all of this so still finding it a bit overwhelming to advise her.
Hey Sarah, good questions. The Vanguard Fees are £4 a month. With as a percentage is high when you are starting out but as a amount it is £4 a month. You could absolutely change to another platform to get slight cheaper fees. Or you could be happy with paying £4 a month to get the ability to call them and chat to them. It is not going to mortally damage her future and when the fees are this low in general there isn’t that much in it. . You would probably be better off moving to start with depending on the speed with which she is going to start investing. Has she got that role yet? Could you cove the £4 a month for her? Alan
My husband has a large pot in a Standard Life SIPP (says employer insists it’s Standard life) but the platform fee is 0.45% which is high as he has a large pot. Can his employer dictate where he has his SIPP?
Also, is Vanguard’s ‘pension’ a SIPP or something different?
Hey Dawn, The employer can’t dictate where your husband has a SIPP but they can choose which employer pensions they will pay into and they don’t have to pay into a SIPP if they don’t want to. One way around this is to do partial transfers if you want to move. So you could transfer out most of the money to your own SIPP and leave the Standard Life open to collect the contributions and more that out each year. Does that help? A SIPP is a type of pension, A self-invested Personal Pension.
So I’ve just opened a very small SIPP with Invest Engine and wonder if I’d pay fees to move it to Vanguard. I’d prefer a company with more grounding. (The SIPP is one of their products).
Hey Claire, generally there are no fees for moving a SIPP with the platforms we talk about at all. The platform fee with Vanguard for a SIPP would be £4 a month after moving but no moving fee. Alan
Hello, thanks for all the information so far. Just a couple of questions.
Can you move a cash Isa with another provider if maxed this tax year and then transfer this money to a new stocks and shares Isa with vanguard? Or do I need to wait until a new tax allowance next year?
Also, if I have used my tax allowance for an ISA this year, and am over 50, but have a small amount to move to start investing, would it be a SIPP I would open or would it be a general fund with Vanguard that is recommended? I have a pension with Aviva through work and this is who the company use to pay into, so not sure if I can move this as I contribute monthly and so does my employer. So unsure whether to start a SIPP or just start with a general index fund as you advise or to set up and use a SIPP as it is tax free? Assume all are not managed funds from your advice? Thanks again.
Dave, Thanks for commenting.
1. you can transfer your cash isa and don’t need to wait for a new tax year! YAY
2. SIPP is way more tax efficient than a General investment account. The tax benefits are huge and even better than ISA. Are you a higher rate tax payer?
3. we can’t recommend anything as we aren’t financial advisors! Just checking you know and have done your own research
4. We go through all this stuff weeks 6-8 on the course and I would suggest just coming to those bits. Are you on this years course?
Thanks for writing. Alan
Hi Alan
Thanks for the response. Can I ask which SIPP fund you currently invest in with Vanguard? As I see you mention you have a SIPP with Halifax, but assume from one of your comments you might or have already moved them to Vanguard.
Yes, I am on the course this year, thanks again.
Also, yes I am a 42% taxpayer and live in Scotland. So was unsure about setting up the general account versus a SIpp, as I assume I cannot take money out of a Sipp but can the general fund. Although that is not the intention to take it out but build it up.
Alan and Katie, and the Ninjas! THANK YOU, learning a great deal. I am on the Rebel Finance School 2025. Moving/in process my ISA to Vanguard,
Have an exit fee for my SIPP, wish to move to Vanguard ASAP too(Excessive fees), the sooner the better, to recuperate return erosion for years, but don’t want to pay it – should I take this hit/loss £833?
Hey Vichi, what is the fee? Are you with SJP. In general the rule is now you know switch as soon as possible. Also exit fees in the UK are being clamped down on and you can argue them and not always have to pay them. Did you hear Mark on Week 6 Q&A talking about his SJP experience, exit fees and how to get out? Sending love and happiness. ALan
Please also compare Freetrade (as used by Gary Stevenson and James Shack). Annual fee £120 which includes birth SIPP and ISA, no trading fees and they now offer the Vanguard global index you recommend.
Hey Andy, interesting. Can you tell me what a “birth” SIPP is? I haven’t come across that. Will have a look at them. Alan
Hi Alan/Katie,
Following up a comment over on the annual performance review, was interested that you were allocating your assets across several funds rather than a single global(ish) index tracker. My view is that is a very comparable to what the robo-advisors do, just that they charge for the service.
Put it another way you could recreate the Vanguard Developed World Ex-UK index fund by making allocations in the appropriate proportions to the Vanguard US, Europe, and Japan funds. And you could add some of the Emerging stock fund and the UK fund on top and recreate the Global All Cap fund. I’d have to check but I think the weighted average OCFs would even be pretty comparable to just investing in the single global(ish) tracker instead. So if you’re mixing your funds across DevEx-UK (appx 85%), US (10%), GlobalAllCap (5%) then you’re creating your own basket which compared to the FTSE Global All Cap Index is a bit overweight US and a bit underweight UK and Emerging. Your choice, and at least it’s not costing you anything (much?) extra in fees to try to outperform.
The Wealthify/Moneyfarm/Nutmeg’s of the world do the same and charge you for the privilege. In old terminology they’re funds of funds. They invest into index funds in the same way you do but try and allocate more to the funds/sectors/whatever they think will overperform the global all cap index (or whatever), and underallocate to what they think will underperform. Can’t share the data on a comment but there is reams of performance data available if you’d like it (and some other financial education sites out there do more direct comparisons – within this group of 3 Nutmeg tend to come out best, but I think you’ve already laid out how all of these 3 compare to the direct approach – more below!).
To take 2 examples :
1) On calander year performance Nutmeg’s best performing fund (this is on the lower fee level) has been in existence for 4 full years and beaten the Vanguard GlobalAllCap in 2 of those years. It’s not beaten the DevWorldEx-UK in that time. A longer running strategy has been going for 8 years and beaten the GlobalAllCap in the same 2 years (2021 and 2023), and again it’s not beaten the DevWorldEx-UK in that time.
2) Allocation to countries/companies makes obvious why. Comparing DevWorldEx-UK to Nutmeg’s best performing fund at the current time Vanguard has 20% higher allocation to the US (73% vs 53%) mostly by having (almost but not quite) 0% in the UK vs 19% in the UK in the Nutmeg fund. At the company level DevWorldEx-UK has 10 shareholdings above 1% of the fund total size (largest 4.9% Nvidia, total for those 10 holdings 25.2%), and only the smallest isn’t a US tech stock, whereas Nutmeg has only 8 holdings over 1% (largest 3.2% Apple, total of those 8 holdings 16.5%) and 3 of those aren’t US tech stocks.
The Nutmeg attempt to outperform appears to have led them to underallocate to US tech stocks which have obviously been on quite a tear for the past decade or two. So QED the global indices have done better.
If you want to try and outperform a global benchmark either a) have an incredibly strong conviction about what will outperform and put your money where your brains are (not really the rebel approach), or b) pay someone to allocate for you (but they may underperform or overperform, but will definitely take some of your money whether they succeed or not), or c) just play with the allocations yourself (then at least you may under or overperform, but it’s cost you nothing on top of that over/under performance).
Note – you might have thought you could pay these sort of manages to reduce your risk whilst maintaining a high return. But the Vanguard funds actually had smaller drawdowns during this years Trump tariffs spat than the Nutmeg world. So what are you actually paying for?
Now I do have experience of a world where money managers only get paid (well) if they overperform a benchmark. If only that existed in this space!
All the best.
Hey Tom
Thanks for such a thoughtful and detailed comment – love how deep you’ve gone here!
Just to clarify a few things from our side:
We’re not trying to build a portfolio – we’re just buying the world.
About 90% of our investments are in the Vanguard Developed World ex-UK fund, which was the best “buy the world” option available when we started. The Global All Cap fund didn’t exist back then, and while we’ve debated switching to it (many times!), inertia and simplicity have kept us where we are for now.
We don’t believe we can beat the market – and we don’t try.
Our philosophy is simple: most people who try to outsmart the market end up underperforming. We’re not smarter than the market, and we’re not pretending to be. That’s why we stick to index investing – it’s boring, effective, and historically hard to beat over the long term.
DIY portfolios don’t auto-rebalance – and that’s a big deal.
One of the hidden superpowers of a single global fund is automatic rebalancing. If you’re building your own mix of funds, you’ve got to manually rebalance – and let’s be honest, most people don’t. That can leave you unintentionally overweight in areas that have done well recently (hello, recency bias!) and underweight in others. A global fund quietly handles all that in the background.
So while we love the idea of being “rebels,” when it comes to investing, we’re pretty vanilla. Low-cost, globally diversified, and as hands-off as possible.
Thanks again for the great comment – it’s sparked some good dinner table debate here at Donegan HQ!
Cheers,
Alan
Amazing info and review, a bit puzzled as now i have a small pot with T212 ISA SS and another one SIPP small with Vanguard. Is it worth moving all to one platform or safe leave it as it is ?
Great question – and you’re already doing awesome things by having both an ISA and a SIPP! 🎉
T212’s ISA is fee-free, which is a big win. No platform fees = more of your money working for you. 💸
You could combine everything on one platform for simplicity (fewer logins, easier tracking, smoother rebalancing), but what you’ve got is already solid. If you’re happy with the funds and the setup, no need to rush to change.
Keep asking questions – you’re building financial muscle and we’re cheering you on! 💪📈 Alan
Quick question re choice of platform – free vs fee (S&S ISA) .
Would the choice of platform be influenced by the AMOUNT one is able to invest per month. For example if someone was to start with transferring in previous year/years cash isa contributions as a lump sum eg£20-30k and then they were investing £500-£1000 monthly (=Max £12k per a year investment into S&S ISA ) why would they choose to pay £4 per month for V platform as opposed to going to a free T212 platform provider please ? ( Pension is with employer matched contribution+local government pension pot from previous employer )
Hey Martina, great questions. Either platform works. T212 is used by a lot of people. Vanguard has some features and a level of phone customer service that is not reflected at T212 and some people choose to pay the fees to get the phone customer service and other support. You could absolutely use either. Starting out we would have probably gone free if it existed when we started. Now paying a small amount to us and getting phone customer service is a good thing. Does this help? ALan
Hi – thanks for this course, it’s amazing so far. QQ – any views on the platform Prosper – they offer free platform fees (for existing customers), plenty of fund choice, and even refund fees on some of ETFs and funds?
Best,
Simon
Simon, we spoke to them and they didn’t know how long it would remain free and we didn’t feel the confidence to be able to recommend them as the pricing might change, you could go with them if it is free but then be prepared to move if they introduce fees at a point in the future? Does that help? Alan
what about a comparison of GIAs? I thought you were doing that too, from your introduction, but it didn’t come.
Hey Nikki, in general you get a GIA free with the other accounts so it didn’t make any difference. If you go with Vanguard you get one and all the other platforms. Does that help? Alan
Hi Donegans! I’m working through your course and have just finished week 7 (so many notes). I use the Plum app for pretty small scale investing (pushing towards £5k slowly slowly) as a trusted friend recommended it, and I do like it and by happenstance I have gone down the broader funds options, although not as broad as those you’ve covered. They also have some Vanguard accounts which I have invested in too. Is this an app that you’ve come across and what are your thoughts?
It is a fixed fee app so it started out that fees were about 0.725% but are now down to 0.06% of my current investment total (like Katie I love a spreadsheet), so given this week’s tips on fees it seems to be in the right fees ballpark.
Hey Sam, nice work going through the course. That is awesome. I have just revied Plums fees and discovered this:
An annual management fee is equal to 0.45% of the value of each of your ISA/GIA Platform Products. The fee is broken down as follows: 0.35% is the Plum ongoing administration charge and 0.10% is for the provision of custody services, levied by our custody provider.
Subscribers of the Plum Premium subscription plan benefit from a 0.30% Management Fee reimbursement, per calendar month where they have been a Plum Premium subscriber for the entire time period i.e. the calendar month. This benefit is given back as a reimbursement into the users’ Plum Primary pocket in the month following the calculation of the fee. https://withplum.com/legal/fees
So even with the premium subscription you are paying £120 a year and then 0.3% platform fee which is double Vanguard.
Sorry to tell you but their fees are high and I would move from Plum as you can get cheaper investments!
Does that help? Alan
Well, those extras got sneaked in there! After a bit of digging through all of the information in the app, those extras only seem to be showing up in my quarterly statements which I have to download separately and not in the app itself. Sneaky porkchops they are.
Thanks Alan, I know what I’m doing next (Vanguard all the way!)
Sam good work finding that. it is so annoying when they hide that stuff! AWESOME WORK!
Great article.
The only thing I would challenge is the AJ Bell Dodl for small to mid pots.
The fees are less than vanguard and the do offer a passive index fund in which is reportedly the best on the market
HSBC FTSE all world `acc C .
Added bonus sits also cheaper than Vaftgag & Vwrp
Great article.
The only thing I would challenge is the AJ Bell Dodl for small to mid pots.
The fees are less than vanguard and the do offer a passive index fund in which is reportedly the best on the market
HSBC FTSE all world `acc C .
Added bonus sits also cheaper than Vaftgag & Vwrp
Thanks Paul, that is super helpful. We will hve a good look at that for the next time we update things. Thank you. Alan
Me and my wife both have a LISA and SIPP with Dodl, and all are 100% invested in the HSBC all-world. It’s doing great so far! On a very niche point, I was able to transfer a really old cash LISA to a Dodl S&S LISA, and as I’m over 40 it was my only chance. I’m self employed so it was a massive win!!!
Hey John, that is a great tip. Love it. And the allworld seems to be agreat fund too! Nice work!
Hi Alan & Katie, do you have any opinions on Prudential? I have a Bond 32 pension with them. It has a GMP. The gmp is small £4200pa. But i need to take/pay for advise to move it. It matures july 2027 when im 65. There is £182,000 in there so it seems to have performed ok but I’ve heard alot of bad things. My plan was to wait and see what the final bonus was and what they offer and take it from there??
Hey Gary is this a defined benefit pension? If it is a DC pension you don’t need advice to move it hence which I am assuming it is DB? the Guaranteed minimum payment GMP is 4200. Have you done the sums to see if you are better off moving or not? We did an example of this in our financial forecasting workshop. Please check if there are other benefits worth staying for too! https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/fire/forecasting/
I’ve completed the course and now making my way through all the bonus courses – so much to learn and still learn!! I initially opened an S&S ISA with Invest Engine (initiated the transferring of a £15k cash isa into IE) and also my small pension from Standard Life (around £40k). Then I read this article and said “whoa…hold your horses Pamela!” From what you have said Alan, I am beginning to think that IE is not the way to progress….. So I have now contacted IE and cancelled the transactions (only initiated a day or two ago, so hopeful that nothing has transferred yet).
Much as I hate paying fees, I am considering Vanguard as an option now (or maybe T212). I am hoping to invest around £500 per month into SIPP and S&S Isa. My company pays into a Nest pension – so again, looking to see if I can transfer a portion of that out into a SIPP if possible plus a further £7k from another cash ISA. I would welcome your thoughts on this please?
Hey Pamela,
Invest Engine would be a fab place to start. Zero fees is amazing. go with invest Engine and then when your pot has grown a bit have a look at transferring it later. I don’t think you want to be in drawdown with invest engine yet. I would say go with what you have got and reassess in a year or so. The market change quite rapidly.
Nest is a pain in the ass. You can’t move a pension to a SIPP with them whilst it is active, i.e. your employer is paying into it. Optimise the fund and then move it as soon as you move jobs…
Does that help at all Pamela?
Sending you lots of happiness. Happy New Year.
Alan
Hi Alan & Kate. Do you have any experience with Interactive Brokers. IBKR. It’s where the majority of my investments are held ATM but am wondering after doing your course whether I should change to a different platform?
hey Huw we have been doing some research into them and their fee structure is super complex and we can’t quite figure out if they are expensive or not. Have you worked out what you are paying in fees? Seems the benefit of IBKR is that they are more cross border and for people living round the world. Are you moving round? Plans to live elsewhere? The key thing is fees, maybe you can get AI to read your statements and do a comparison to ii or Vanguard? Alan
We were ex pats but now we are back in the UK. Having read through this guide again and having some investments already with Vanguard I think I’m going to move it all into Vanguard.
Huw, thanks for commenting. Sounds like a great idea to me and welcome back to the UK!
Hi Katie and Alan- I am so thrilled to have discovered you and completed the rebel finance course in 2024. It empowered me and educated me on what to do with my money following divorce when I do not have a pension. I’m 58 now and am invested in both of the vanguard passive index funds that you recommend. As I am 58 should I look towards bonds now as I approach retirement and if so which one please ?
Hey Sarah, how long have you got left at work? Have you run the numbers? I would suggest watching week 10 of this year again to see the tools you have to deal with sequence of returns risk… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuEv9jzlqgw
I stumbled upon RFS through Martin Lewis FB page. Just finished week 7 and trying to read all articles as well. This one is absolutely fab!
We invested in BTL properties first, then decided to go with Killik (3% fees, yikes) to start investing in stocks & shares. After 6 months, I opened Freetrade account and did so much better stock picking that we ditched Killik shortly after.
We are still with Freetrade, but are now in large bracket of your tables. We pay £120 per annum, forex frees are high 0.39% when you buy US stocks and 0.39% when you sell them. No fees for ETFs or Index funds except fund fees. They even have Vanguard funds which I started buying after watching your videos. All good so far…
My question is, do you know if Freetrade is any good and if it is the right choice for a large ISA and SIPP funds? We are planning to sell BTL properties and want to choose the best platform first. Freetrade is rarely mentioned in discussions, which makes me think they are just too small. Thank you for any insights you can provide (and thank you for being so awesome, you helped us a lot to get our head around our investments).
Mirjana, welcome to the group. Martin Lewis is great with his content too!
Interesting about freetrade. I have been googling them and they do a free ISA and SIPP. Wow that is cool. I asked AI to analyse it for me and this is what came back, see below. It seems like a pretty good platform and one we need to add to our platform review this year!
Just check you can get the ETFs or Index funds without the FX fee which is high!
Alan, I’ll analyse **Freetrade as a platform through the Rebel Finance School (RFS) lens** rather than as a generic broker review. That means we care less about bells and whistles, and more about **cost, behaviour, simplicity, tax efficiency, and long-term wealth building**.
I’ve reviewed the current Freetrade offering (including the page you linked) and recent independent reviews and changes through early 2026.
***
## The Rebel Finance School principles (quick reminder)
RFS investing principles, distilled:
1. **Costs matter enormously** (fees, FX drag, behavioural costs)
2. **Simple beats clever** (few funds, boring, repeatable)
3. **Long-term, not trading**
4. **Use tax shelters first** (ISA, SIPP)
5. **Diversify globally**
6. **Design for good behaviour** (automation, friction against tinkering)
7. **Safety and regulation matter**
Let’s test Freetrade against each one.
***
## 1. Costs: is Freetrade genuinely “free”?
### The good
* **£0 dealing commissions** on shares, ETFs and investment trusts [\[freetrade.io\]](https://freetrade.io/compare-plans)
* **Stocks & Shares ISA is now free on the Basic plan** since September 2025, which is a big positive shift [\[moneytothemasses.com\]](https://moneytothemasses.com/news/freetrade-scraps-isa-fees)
* **No percentage platform fee**, which matters hugely once portfolios get large
For someone investing £50k–£500k over decades, a flat-fee or zero-fee structure is very aligned with RFS thinking.
### The hidden cost (important)
* **FX fees**:
* Basic: **0.99%**
* Standard: **0.59%**
* Plus: **0.39%** [\[freetrade.io\]](https://freetrade.io/compare-plans)
This matters because most global equity ETFs and US stocks trade in USD. A 0.99% FX fee is effectively a **stealth ongoing cost** if you invest regularly.
**RFS verdict on costs:**
✅ Excellent for UK-only assets
⚠️ Fine for global investing *if* you’re aware of FX drag
⚠️ Not the absolute cheapest for frequent US trades
***
## 2. Simplicity: does it encourage boring, repeatable investing?
This is one of Freetrade’s strongest areas.
* Clean, minimalist interface
* No CFDs, leverage, spread betting, or casino-style prompts
* Limited “noise” compared to trading-heavy apps
* Very clear what you own and why
Independent reviewers consistently note that Freetrade is **designed for long-term investors, not traders**. [\[thisismoney.co.uk\]](https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/diyinvesting/article-15234461/freetrade-review-investing-platform.html)
**RFS verdict on simplicity:**
✅ Strongly aligned
✅ Very beginner-friendly
✅ Low cognitive load
***
## 3. Long-term focus vs trading temptation
Freetrade:
* Does **not** push day trading
* Does **not** offer leverage or CFDs
* Does allow recurring orders and automation on ETFs [\[moneytothemasses.com\]](https://moneytothemasses.com/news/freetrade-scraps-isa-fees)
This reduces the “do something” itch that destroys returns.
**RFS verdict on behaviour:**
✅ Actively discourages bad behaviour
✅ Good “boring by default” design
***
## 4. Tax efficiency: ISA and SIPP support
As of late 2025 / early 2026:
* ✅ **Stocks & Shares ISA** on the free Basic plan [\[moneytothemasses.com\]](https://moneytothemasses.com/news/freetrade-scraps-isa-fees)
* ✅ **SIPP available** (now also free of platform fees) [\[thisismoney.co.uk\]](https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/diyinvesting/article-15234461/freetrade-review-investing-platform.html)
* ❌ No Lifetime ISA
* ❌ No Junior ISA
For most RFS participants, **ISA + SIPP covers 95% of needs**.
**RFS verdict on tax wrappers:**
✅ ISA: excellent
✅ SIPP: very competitive
⚠️ Limited if you need LISA or Junior products
***
## 5. Diversification: can you build a proper global portfolio?
You can access:
* Global equity ETFs
* UK, US, and European stocks
* Investment trusts
* Gilts and Treasury bills
* Mutual funds (now available even on the free plan) [\[thisismoney.co.uk\]](https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/diyinvesting/article-15234461/freetrade-review-investing-platform.html)
You can absolutely build a **1–3 fund global portfolio** on Freetrade.
The limitation:
* ETF universe is good, but not as broad as Vanguard or AJ Bell
* No direct Vanguard platform funds (though ETFs cover the same exposure)
**RFS verdict on diversification:**
✅ Totally sufficient
✅ No structural blocker to global indexing
***
## 6. Safety, regulation, and “sleep-at-night” factor
Freetrade is:
* **FCA regulated**
* Assets held in nominee accounts
* **FSCS protected up to £85,000** for investments
* Owned by **IG Group (FTSE 250)** since 2025, improving balance-sheet strength [\[freetrade.io\]](https://freetrade.io/keeping-you-safe)
This fully clears the RFS safety bar.
**RFS verdict on safety:**
✅ Yes, tick
✅ No red flags
***
## 7. The big RFS question: “Is it good enough to stick with for 20 years?”
### Yes, if:
* You want **simple, low-cost, long-term investing**
* You mostly buy **ETFs and hold**
* You value **behavioural protection** over fancy tools
* You’re happy managing FX costs consciously
### Maybe not, if:
* You want the absolute **cheapest FX rates**
* You need **LISA or Junior ISAs**
* You want a one-provider-for-everything setup
* You obsess over marginal basis-point optimisation
***
## Final Rebel Finance School verdict
**Is Freetrade a good platform to use?**
### ✅ RFS-approved for most people
**Scorecard (RFS lens):**
| Principle | Verdict |
| ——————- | ———————- |
| Costs | ✅ Very good (watch FX) |
| Simplicity | ✅ Excellent |
| Long-term alignment | ✅ Excellent |
| Tax efficiency | ✅ Strong |
| Diversification | ✅ Sufficient |
| Behavioural design | ✅ Excellent |
| Safety | ✅ Excellent |
**Bottom line:**
> *Freetrade is a very solid “set-and-forget” platform that aligns well with Rebel Finance School principles, provided you understand the FX fees and don’t overtrade.*
At least this is what AI thinks and it might occasionally make shit up! It gave me enough to know I think this could be good and I would want to check the details. Alan
Hi both, thanks for your amazing content, you guys are national heroes & have got me started & very enthusiastic on my investing journey!
Just to mention with regards to DODL, they do offer the HSBC FTSE All-World index fund with an ocf of 0.13% plus their 0.15% platform fee. See link here: https://dodl.co.uk/investments/themed & click on “On top of the world”.
This appears to be a pretty good global index fund with 3697 stocks (not as good as VAFTGAG admittedly but it has around 8% EM markets exposure, a 61% US weighting & aims to track the FTSE ALL WORLD index covering 90-95% of the global stock market. I could be wrong of course so always open to correction but with this in mind, DODL looks like a pretty good option for low cost investing, especially for those starting out? Maybe check it out as it could change your review of DODL?
Hey Tim, thanks for that. Must have been a newish development as when we originally looked they were only doing the funds based on risk level and not great ones so I am super happy to hear this and will bear it in mind for this year’s review!
You get a year free currently too! wow.
The fees are the same as Vanguard overall and it seems like a good fund you have found! Alan
Hi both, amazing content having gone through the 2025 course and working through some of your articles and blog posts. The forecasting spreadsheet is especially good! I am 53 and now looking at what investments we have and how I can work towards a consolidation plan without missing too much time in the market. Already have an emergency fund in place in a cash ISA with Chip – also have a small S&S ISA with them and am putting funds into FTSE Global All Cap – fees are reasonable for a small investor but time out of the market waiting on trades is painful! I have started a T212 ISA also with the idea of potentially transferring over to free fees.
My workplace pension is with L&G so top that up to get NI benefit over a SIPP and just looking at available funds as we have a limited choice, they have an all world equity index fund which is designed to track the FTSE all world index. I just have to get the nerve to move away from the lifestyle to drawdown and move everything into the different pot.
Now I am looking at the future and potentially consolidating by moving pension to SIPP once I finish work (next year looks like the year to come out of corporate workplace and do something a bit more relaxed to maintain some income) and move all ISAs into once place. Investment size at this time suggests Vanguard or II will be the choice.
Now to work on documenting some of this for the family and showing them the information says I can stop work next year (still finding this hard to believe) .
Thanks again!! Paul
Paul, what an awesome comment. Congratulations for thinking all this through. WOW. I know how big of a project it can be and how exciting that next year might be the year to have some more time and do something different. WOW. Congratulations. I am so excited for you. This is utterly amazing. Please keep us up to date and we hope to meet you somewhere around the world… Sending happiness Alan
Firstly, I’m doing the rebel finance course at the moment, and it’s great – I’m getting so much out of it, so thank you!
What are your thoughts about the potential risk of holding all your SIPP in one platform such as Vanguard? I currently have my SIPP spread around 4 different platforms, so obviously I have 4 lots of platform fees (not great), but equally, if a platform goes bust, or gets hacked (probably more likely), I have less to lose… Am I worrying unnecessarily and just wasting money on fees?
hey Gareth, four lots of fees isn’t good! lol. We have our SIPP with one platform and are not worried about this because the FCA Protection you are talking aobut doesn’t protect investments and the SIPP provider doesn’t actually have your money. Vanguard wrote a great article about it: https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/need-help/answer/what-happens-to-my-money-if-vanguard-become-insolvent In my mind you are over paying for a protection that won’t help you anyway! sending you happiness. Alan
Great detailed comparison of investment platforms and the importance of keeping fees and fund selection in mind. I also think understanding broad market indices can help investors put individual investments and portfolio performance into better perspective, particularly when assessing long-term market trends.
Hey Eliza, we need to update this post soon for 2026. A LOT has changed. And we don’t really talk about assessing long-term market trends as we just talk about buying one global index fund, owning the market and letting it grow over time. Alan