AJ Bell

AJ Bell charges 0.25% per year on everything — funds, shares, ETFs, bonds, and gilts. The rate applies identically across ISAs, SIPPs, Junior ISAs, and dealing accounts. And here's the part that matters: it's capped at £3.50/month per account — £42/year maximum. Once your portfolio crosses £16,800, your platform fee freezes. Every pound above that compounds uncapped.

That cap is what separates AJ Bell from Vanguard. Vanguard charges a lower headline rate at 0.15%, but its cap sits at £375/year. Here's what that means at scale:

Below £28,000, Vanguard is cheaper. Above it, the cap flips the equation permanently. The median Stocks & Shares ISA holds roughly £30,000–£40,000 — right at the crossover. Anyone beyond early accumulation who stays on Vanguard past £28,000 is paying more for less choice.

Current dealing charges at a glance:

• Regular monthly investing: £0 (free — was £1.50 before the upgrade)
• One-off online share deal: £5.00 (or £3.50 if you made 10+ deals the previous month)
• One-off fund deal: £5.00
• Foreign exchange: 0.75% (capped)

The frequent dealer discount is worth understanding: place 10+ online share deals in a calendar month and your dealing charge drops to £3.50 for the following month. It resets monthly — bulk your trading if you're active.

For context: Hargreaves Lansdown charges £1.95 for regular investing and £6.95 for one-off share deals. Interactive investor includes free regular investing across all plans but charges £4.99–£11.99/month flat. Trading 212 charges nothing for anything — but lacks a SIPP and restricts you to a narrow fund range.

For a granular breakdown of how the cap plays out across portfolio sizes, see our detailed AJ Bell fee analysis.

The SIPP is AJ Bell's most powerful argument. The pension annual allowance for 2026/27 is £60,000 including tax relief — and AJ Bell charges the same 0.25% platform fee, also capped at £42/year.

Here's what SIPP platform fees actually look like across the market:

At £250,000, Hargreaves Lansdown takes £1,000/year. AJ Bell takes £42. That's a £958 annual difference — and it compounds. Over 20 years on a £50,000 pot growing at 5%, the accumulated fee gap versus HL reaches roughly £7,935. That's not marginal. That's a year of retirement income you don't pay to a platform.

Even Vanguard, the supposed low-cost champion, charges nearly 9× AJ Bell's fee on a £250,000 SIPP. The 0.15% headline rate obscures the fact that Vanguard wants a piece of your compounding, forever. AJ Bell stops asking at £42.

Key SIPP features:

• 20% basic-rate tax relief added automatically at source — £1 costs you 80p
• Higher-rate (40%) and additional-rate (45%) taxpayers reclaim the rest through self-assessment
• 25% tax-free lump sum, subject to the £268,275 lump sum allowance
• Access from age 55, rising to 57 from 6 April 2028
• Free pension finder service to locate and consolidate old workplace pensions
• Minimum opening: £500 lump sum or £25/month regular

For the full SIPP cost breakdown across every portfolio size, see our AJ Bell SIPP fees analysis.

Here's what nobody tells you about platform fees: they're only half the equation. The other half is what your uninvested cash earns while it sits in your account. At a Bank Rate of 3.75%, idle cash is expensive — and platforms vary enormously in what they pass through.

AJ Bell's Cash Savings Hub pays variable interest on uninvested cash held within investment accounts. The rate isn't market-leading — and that matters. If you hold £2,000 in cash within your ISA (for fees, for opportunistic buying, for dividend accumulation), a 2% rate differential versus a top easy-access savings account costs you £40/year. That's nearly as much as the entire platform fee.

The fix is simple: don't hold significant cash with AJ Bell. Invest it. Use a separate savings account for your emergency fund. The Cash Savings Hub is a convenience feature, not a savings product — and treating it as one erodes the cost advantage the cap creates.

For comparison, Trading 212 pays interest on uninvested cash that tracks the central bank rate more closely. But Trading 212 doesn't offer a SIPP and its fund range is narrow. The platform you pick for cash interest is rarely the platform you want for long-term investing. Keep those decisions separate.

For investors worried about returns in a higher-rate environment, consider our guide to UK gilts — with 10-year yields at 4.94%, they're a credible alternative to holding cash within a platform.

AJ Bell's Junior ISA carries the same 0.25% platform fee, capped at £3.50/month, with free regular investing and access to the full investment range. The 2026/27 JISA allowance is £9,000 — tax-free and locked until 18.

Why fees matter more for a JISA than any other account: 18 years of compounding turns tiny differences into four-figure gaps. At £200/month and 5% annual growth:

Vanguard is cheapest — but only offers Vanguard funds. AJ Bell costs £420 more over 18 years and gives the child access to individual shares, investment trusts, ETFs, and third-party funds. At 16, when a child can start managing their own JISA, that flexibility turns the account into a genuine financial education tool, not just a pot.

See our Junior ISA guide for the full provider comparison.

AJ Bell wraps every major UK tax wrapper under one login. The completeness matters because it eliminates the friction of running ISAs, SIPPs, and GIAs across multiple providers — each with their own fee schedules, login credentials, and tax-year tracking.

Available accounts:

• Stocks & Shares ISA — £20,000 annual allowance for 2026/27, from £25/month
• Lifetime ISA — £4,000/year, 25% government bonus (up to £1,000/year)
• Junior ISA — £9,000/year, locked until 18
• SIPP — up to £60,000/year, access from 55 (57 from April 2028)
• Junior SIPP — up to £3,600/year including tax relief
• Ready-made Pension — managed portfolio for hands-off investors
• Dealing Account (GIA) — no wrapper, no limits
• Cash Savings Hub — variable interest on uninvested cash

Investment range:

• 4,000+ funds and ETFs across dozens of markets and sectors
• UK and international shares across 24 stock exchanges — US, Japan, Canada, Australia, and major European markets
• Bonds and gilts — corporate bonds and UK government gilts
• Investment trusts — listed closed-ended funds
• AJ Bell funds — own-brand, low-cost, managed in-house
• Favourite funds — analyst-curated shortlist

The 24-market international dealing separates AJ Bell from app-first competitors. Trading 212 and Freetrade mainly cover UK and US. AJ Bell gives you Tokyo, Toronto, Sydney, and most European exchanges.

One gap: no fractional shares. If you want exactly £100 of Apple, you need Trading 212 or Freetrade. For fund and ETF investors — the majority of AJ Bell's customer base — this is irrelevant.

See our ISA platform comparison for how AJ Bell stacks up against the full market.

AJ Bell is the right platform if:

• You have £15,000–£150,000 across ISAs and SIPPs and want a platform you won't outgrow
• You invest monthly and the free regular investing saves you meaningful money
• You hold or plan to open a SIPP — a £42/year cap versus uncapped competitors saves thousands
• You want ISA, SIPP, JISA, and GIA under one login with consistent fees
• You're consolidating old workplace pensions — the free pension finder is genuinely useful
• You invest primarily in funds but want the option to buy individual shares occasionally
• You're past the "beginner app" stage and ready for a full-featured platform

AJ Bell is not the right platform if:

• You're starting from scratch and want hand-holding — Dodl by AJ Bell or Moneybox are simpler on-ramps
• You only hold Vanguard index funds and your portfolio is under £28,000 — stay on Vanguard's platform
• You trade shares actively — £5/deal adds up; Trading 212 charges nothing
• You want fractional shares — AJ Bell doesn't offer them
• You hold large cash balances within your investment account — the Cash Savings Hub isn't competitive

The sweet spot: a mid-career professional salary-sacrificing into a workplace pension, building an ISA on the side, maybe funding a JISA. Monthly investor, fund-heavy, wants a platform that won't force a costly switch in five years.

For the competitor breakdown: against Hargreaves Lansdown, you get 90% of the capability at roughly 50% of the cost. Against interactive investor, ii wins above ~£60,000 on flat fees but AJ Bell is cheaper below that. Against Vanguard, the crossover is £28,000 — beyond that the cap decisively favours AJ Bell.

AJ Bell is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), listed on the FTSE 250, and has served retail investors for over 30 years. Client assets are held in a nominee company, segregated from AJ Bell's corporate balance sheet.

FSCS investment protection covers up to £85,000 per person for shortfalls if AJ Bell were to fail and client assets couldn't be fully returned. This is the standard investment platform limit — distinct from the £120,000 FSCS limit that applies to cash deposits at authorised banks.

With 723,000 customers, a market cap exceeding £1.5 billion, and the only eight-year Which? Recommended streak in the platform market (2019–2026), AJ Bell sits in the top tier of UK platforms for institutional stability. That matters less when markets are rising and more when you're trusting a single company with your ISA, SIPP, and children's JISA.