- Monevator - https://monevator.com -

Our updated guide to help you find the best online broker

Attention UK investors! Remember our massive broker comparison [1] table? Well, we’ve rolled up our sleeves and updated it again to help you find the best online broker for you.

Cutting the lawn with nail scissors would have been less tedious. But it would not have produced a quick and easy overview of all the main execution-only investment services.

Investment platforms, stock brokers, call ’em what you will… we’ve stripped ’em down to their undies for you to eyeball over a cup of tea and your favourite tranquillisers.

Online brokers laid bare in our comparison table [2]

What’s changed with this update?

Zero-fee platform Lightyear is in. It’s getting good reviews on Trustpilot. 

Chip has made the cut too. Have a shufty if you want an app that smites analysis paralysis by offering you simply ‘the best of three’ funds. 

Meanwhile table stalwarts X-O and Sharedeal Active are out. They’ve been hoovered up by Interactive Investor in its seemingly relentless quest for flat-fee broker dominance. 

Who’s the best broker?

It’s impossible to say. There are too many subtle differences in the offers. The UK’s brokers occupy more niches than the mammal family. And while I know which one is best for me, I can’t know which one is right for you.

What we have done is laser focus the comparison onto the most important factor in play: cost.

An execution-only broker is not on this Earth to hold anyone’s hand.

Yes, we want their websites to work. We’d prefer them to not screw us over, go bust, or send us to the seventh circle of call centre hell. These things we take for granted.

So customer service metrics are not included in this table. It’s purely a bare-knuckle contest of brute cost for services rendered.

On that basis we’ve updated our ‘Good for’ column as below.

Disclosure: Links to platforms may be affiliate links, where we may earn a small commission. It doesn’t affect the price you pay nor how we judge the brokers. This article and the comparison table are not personal financial advice. Your capital is at risk when you invest.

Beginners

These are zero-fee brokers [5]. It’s always worth looking at a zero-fee broker’s ‘How we make money’ page because – rest assured – they will be earning a buck, one way or another.

Just search that topic on their websites.

If zero-fee brokers make you feel queasy then stay under the FSCS £85,000 investor compensation limit [6] or use a broker that charges fees directly. You’ll find some very competitive offers in our table. 

Beginners who prefer direct fees

Established investors with portfolios worth £85,000+ / prefer to pay direct fees

The best choice for you depends on how often you trade, the value of your accounts, plus your personal priorities around customer service, family accounts, flexible ISAs, multi-currency accounts and so on.

Our ‘Good for’ choices are purely cost-based. We assume 12 buy and four sell trades per year. 

Using the full table

We divide the major UK brokers into four camps:

Our table [1] looks complex. But choosing the right broker [13] needn’t be any more painful than checking it offers the investments you want and running a few numbers [14] on your portfolio.

Help us find the best online broker for all of you

Our table’s ongoing vitality relies on crowd-sourcing.

We review the whole thing roughly every three months. But it can be kept permanently up-to-date if you contact us [15] or leave a comment every time you find an inaccuracy, fresh information, or a platform you think should be added.

Thanks to your efforts as much as ours, our broker comparison [1] table has become an invaluable resource for UK investors looking to find the best online broker.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator