Freetrade

Three subscription tiers, verified from Freetrade's pricing page on 13 May 2026:

Basic — £0/month

• Dealing commission: £0
• Account fees on ISA, Junior ISA, SIPP and GIA: £0
• FX fee: 0.99% on non-GBP trades
• Cash interest: 1% AER on up to £1,000
• Automated orders: not available
• Investment universe: 6,500+ instruments (down from 7,000+ in late 2025 as Freetrade trimmed low-volume listings post-acquisition)

Standard — £4.99/month (annual, £59.88/year) or £5.99/month (monthly)

• Dealing commission: £0
• FX fee: 0.59% on non-GBP trades
• Cash interest: 2.5% AER on up to £2,000
• Recurring orders, limit orders, stop-losses
• Annual billing saves 17%

Plus — £9.99/month (annual, £119.88/year) or £11.99/month (monthly)

• Dealing commission: £0
• FX fee: 0.39% on non-GBP trades
• Cash interest: 3.5% AER on up to £3,000
• Extended hours trading and priority support
• Enhanced stock fundamentals

The FX fee is the business model. Buy £5,000 of Apple on Basic, pay £49.50 in conversion before the share price moves. Sell, pay another £49.50. The headline commission-free claim is accurate — the FX fee does the earning.

Cash interest is the second revenue lever. With the Bank of England base rate at 3.75% — held at the 12 May 2026 MPC meeting against market pricing for further hikes — and SONIA at 3.73%, Freetrade earns close to the full money-market rate on every pound of idle client cash and pays back only what its plan caps allow. On Basic, that's 1% on £1,000 — a maximum of £10/year of interest passed to you on idle cash, regardless of how much you actually hold uninvested. The drag is real for investors who keep meaningful cash on platform.

Other charges that matter:

• ISA transfer out: £0 for cash and UK holdings, £17 per US holding
• SIPP UFPLS withdrawal: £240 each (significant if you plan multiple small drawdowns)
• Stamp duty: 0.5% on UK share purchases (a government tax, not a Freetrade fee)
• Mutual fund holding charge: £0 — rare at this price point
• Gilts and UK Treasury bills: no extra charge on any plan

Sources: Freetrade pricing, Freetrade SIPP page, FCA Register entry 771281.

IG Group acquired 100% of Freetrade in a £160 million all-cash deal announced 23 January 2025 and completed mid-2025. By February 2026 the platform reported 753,000 active customers and £19.5 billion in assets under administration — a near 8x jump in AUA versus the £2.5 billion Freetrade held standalone at end of 2024.

The surge isn't organic growth. IG migrated retail self-directed clients onto the Freetrade brand to consolidate its UK retail wing under a recognisable consumer name. Source: IG Group acquisition press release and UK Investor Magazine coverage of IG's customer numbers post-acquisition.

For a typical Freetrade customer, three things changed and three things didn't.

What changed:

1. Capital backing. Freetrade lost £39.8m on revenue of £15.6m in FY2022 and only hit positive EBITDA in Q4 2024. Pre-acquisition, the question "will my broker survive a recession?" was live. Post-acquisition, Freetrade sits inside IG Group plc — a profitable, dividend-paying FTSE 250 company that earned £1.12 billion of revenue in FY2025. The risk profile is now IG's risk profile.
2. Product roadmap pace. SIPP moved to all plans in late 2025 and Junior ISA was added the same year — two long-promised features that arrived only after IG's capital and engineering team. Expect more cross-pollination from IG's professional platform.
3. The independent voice. Pre-acquisition, Freetrade's marketing was openly hostile to legacy brokers ("Hargreaves Lansdown is fleecing you"). Post-acquisition, Freetrade is owned by a legacy broker. The marketing tone has softened. That is not an objective harm — it is a signal worth noting.

What didn't change:

1. Pricing. Plan structure, FX fees and cash interest rates have not been revised since the deal closed. Whether IG eventually rationalises pricing across its retail products is a forward question, not a current one.
2. FCA permissions. Freetrade Limited remains a separate authorised firm under FRN 771281. Client money is still held in nominee accounts ring-fenced from Freetrade's balance sheet. FSCS investment cover of £85,000 per person is unchanged.
3. The leadership team. Co-founder Viktor Nebehaj is still CEO. The published commitment from IG was to operate Freetrade as a commercially standalone brand with its existing management.

The practical question for users: is there now a reason to leave? The honest answer is no — not on the IG ownership alone. There may be reasons to leave because Trading 212 or Dodl better fits your portfolio. But the deal itself is closer to neutral than negative for ordinary Basic-tier users. It removes a small-broker survival risk; it does not erode the headline pricing; it might accelerate the long-promised LISA, though IG has not committed to one.

Two real product changes since our last review. The SIPP moved to all plans (it was Plus-only until late 2025). The Junior ISA arrived on Basic. Both responded directly to Dodl and Moneybox having JISAs and SIPPs that Freetrade couldn't match — a pre-IG product gap that IG's resources closed quickly.

Stocks & Shares ISA (all plans). Flexible. You can withdraw and replace within the tax year without losing your £20,000 allowance. Most platforms — InvestEngine, iWeb, Vanguard UK, Fidelity — operate non-flexible ISAs where withdrawn money is gone for the year. The flexibility is not a marketing flourish. See our flexible ISA guide for why this matters more than fee-comparison articles usually allow.

Junior Stocks & Shares ISA (all plans). Up to £9,000/year per child, tax-free to age 18. Freetrade was the last app-first broker to offer this. It now exists on every tier including the free one.

Self-Invested Personal Pension (all plans). Included on Basic since late 2025. HMRC basic-rate tax relief (20%) is claimed automatically and lands in your account in 6–11 weeks. Annual contribution limit: £60,000 or 100% of relevant earnings, whichever is lower. Access from age 55 — rising to 57 in 2028. One critical constraint: withdrawals are UFPLS only, no flexi-access drawdown. Each UFPLS costs £240. See our SIPP guide for how tax relief works in practice.

General Investment Account. No minimum, no fees. Subject to capital gains tax above the £3,000 annual exemption.

Still missing: no Lifetime ISA. No Cash ISA. The LISA is the structural gap. A 25% government bonus on up to £4,000/year, capped at £1,000 of bonus annually, worth £33,000+ by age 50 if used from 18. Freetrade does not offer one and has not committed to launching one — even after the IG deal. Dodl, AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown and Moneybox all do.

Investment universe — 6,500+ instruments in May 2026 (Freetrade trimmed lower-volume listings post-IG):

• Stocks and ETFs across the LSE, NYSE, NASDAQ and major European exchanges
• Mutual funds from Vanguard, Legal & General, BlackRock and others — zero platform holding charge
• UK gilts and UK Treasury bills, commission-free
• Investment trusts and REITs
• US fractional shares from £2
• Three ready-made portfolios graded by risk

That's not the 20,000+ instruments at Hargreaves Lansdown or Fidelity. It is every mainstream ETF, tracker, blue chip and UK government bond — which is what most retail investors actually buy.

Freetrade's original pitch was simple: free stocks and ETFs in an app. Three rivals have since carved that pitch into a defensible but specific strip.

Dodl (AJ Bell) owns the low-fee crown for portfolios under about £40,000 because of its Lifetime ISA. Dodl charges 0.15% (£1/month minimum on pension and GIA) and pays 3.80% AER on uninvested ISA and LISA cash. Critically, Dodl includes a Lifetime ISA. For a 22-year-old saving £4,000/year toward a first home, the £1,000/year government bonus is worth more than any platform fee difference Freetrade can offer. Note that Dodl's FX fee is now tiered — 0.75% on the first £10,000 of US trades, 0.50% on the next £10,000, 0.25% above £20,000 — so on small US trades Dodl is actually pricier than Freetrade Plus. The 12-month zero-fee promotion Dodl ran on new ISA and LISA deposits expired 30 April 2026 and has not been renewed. Source: Dodl charges.

Trading 212 attacks from the cost-of-trading angle. Its 0.15% FX fee versus Freetrade Basic's 0.99% is a 6.6x reduction. On a £5,000 US trade, that's £7.50 against £49.50 — £42 saved per one-way trade. Trading 212 also pays 3.85% AER variable on uninvested Invest-account cash and runs a Cash ISA at BoE base rate minus a small spread. The catches: no mutual funds, no gilts on the standard retail product, and the SIPP — launched 2025 — carries an annual Gaudi trustee fee of around £75–£100, which the headline "zero platform fee" framing tends to obscure. See our Trading 212 review.

InvestEngine is the third data point. Zero platform fee on DIY ISA, SIPP and GIA. ETF-only — no individual shares, no mutual funds, no gilts. For an investor who only wants to hold a handful of global index ETFs, InvestEngine is the cheapest option in the UK market. For anyone who wants individual UK stocks, mutual funds or gilts, it is not a substitute.

Freetrade's defensible niche, then, is narrow but real. It is for UK investors who want a free ISA-plus-SIPP combination, with mutual funds at zero holding charge, direct gilts and T-bills at zero commission (a feature that matters more at the current 5.08% 10-year yield than it did at 4% last summer), and who accept the 0.99% FX fee because their non-GBP exposure is either limited or routed through GBP-hedged ETFs. That investor exists. Just not in the same numbers Freetrade's marketing implies.

Zero fund-holding charges. This is the most under-discussed line in any Freetrade review. Most platforms charge 0.25%–0.45%/year just to hold mutual funds — layered on top of the fund's own OCF. On a £50,000 fund portfolio, that's £125–£225/year extracted from your returns in perpetuity. Over 20 years of 7% compounding, a 0.35% platform fee reduces your terminal wealth by roughly 7%. Freetrade charges nothing for holding funds. That gap, compounded across decades, dwarfs most other fee differences.

The flexible ISA is a genuine differentiator. Withdraw £5,000 in June; replace it by 5 April and your £20,000 allowance is intact. Most S&S ISA providers don't offer this — InvestEngine, Trading 212 (Invest), Vanguard UK, Fidelity and iWeb all use non-flexible ISAs. The shortlist of UK flexible S&S ISAs is short and Freetrade is on it. Our flexible ISA guide lists the complete set.

Direct gilt and T-bill access at zero commission. 10-year gilts touched 5.13% on 12 May 2026 — the highest since July 2008, settling at 5.08% the following session, with the 30-year hitting a 28-year peak of 5.80%. Treasury bills are tracking the BoE base rate of 3.75%. Direct access to government bonds through a commission-free platform is the kind of feature that quietly matters when yields are this generous — and especially when political instability is driving the curve higher faster than the MPC can respond. See our how to buy gilts guide for the mechanics. Most fund-first platforms either don't offer direct gilts at all or charge a dealing fee per trade.

App experience. Six consecutive British Bank Awards for best online trading platform isn't an accident. Trustpilot rates Freetrade 4.3/5 across 7,400+ reviews; 90% of customers surveyed in 2026 said they would recommend it. Anyone who has used Freetrade's iOS app alongside the apps from Hargreaves Lansdown or interactive investor knows the gap is real. The web platform is competent but less polished.

SIPP consolidation without account fees. Combining old workplace pensions into one Freetrade SIPP on the Basic plan costs nothing in ongoing account fees, against the 0.25%–0.45%/year levied at traditional SIPP providers. The constraint, again, is UFPLS-only withdrawals — fine for accumulation, limiting at retirement.

The FX fee. A round trip on a US stock costs nearly 2% in conversion alone on Basic. Even Plus at 0.39% is 2.6 times Trading 212's 0.15% and over ten times Interactive Brokers' spot rate (~0.03%). If more than 30% of your portfolio sits in US-listed equities or ETFs, the cost structure almost certainly favours a different platform. Our deep-dive on Freetrade's subscription maths breaks the trade-off down by portfolio profile.

No Lifetime ISA. This is the bigger structural gap. The LISA's 25% bonus on up to £4,000/year is the single best-return product in UK personal finance for under-50s saving for a first home or retirement. Freetrade does not offer one. If you want a LISA, you need a second platform — AJ Bell, Dodl or Moneybox. Our LISA vs pension debate covers when a LISA should be the priority.

SIPP withdrawals are UFPLS-only at £240 each. No flexi-access drawdown. Each UFPLS withdrawal triggers the Money Purchase Annual Allowance — a £10,000/year cap on future pension contributions, which makes phased retirement income effectively impossible through Freetrade. If you are within five years of taking pension income, transfer to a platform with proper drawdown before you need it. Interactive Investor and AJ Bell both offer flexi-access drawdown.

Cash interest caps are tight. Even on Plus, 3.5% AER applies only to the first £3,000 — a maximum of £105/year. A standalone savings account paying 4.0%+ with FSCS deposit protection up to £120,000 per provider is a different universe. With BoE base rate at 3.75% but markets pricing in further hikes, the gap between Freetrade's capped rate and what you can get on a Cash ISA elsewhere is the widest it has been at any point since 2023. See our best cash ISA rates guide for current options.

No automated orders on the free plan. Recurring orders, limit orders and stop-losses all require Standard (£4.99/month) or above. If you want to drip-feed £500 into VWRL every month without logging in, you are paying £59.88/year minimum.

Research depth is thin. Enhanced fundamentals on paid plans are a step up from nothing, but no analyst reports, no fund screeners, no portfolio analytics comparable to Hargreaves Lansdown or interactive investor. Freetrade assumes you do your research elsewhere.

Transfer-out friction for US holdings. £17 per US position on transfer out. A portfolio of 20 US stocks costs £340 to move. Build awareness of this cost before accumulating a large US holding on the platform.

Trustpilot's 13% bad reviews are mostly operational. The negative reviews skew toward two themes: occasional payment delays and difficulty re-authenticating on a new device after losing a phone. Neither is a financial integrity issue, but both are worth knowing if you rely on a single device for account access.

Headline monthly costs are misleading over long horizons because fees compound. A 0.35% platform fee on a £100,000 portfolio doesn't cost £350 once — it costs £350 in year one, more in every subsequent year as the portfolio grows, and crucially it reduces the compounded value of every future contribution.

The scenarios below model a 20-year hold on a UK-focused ETF portfolio at 7% gross annual return, ignoring FX (assume GBP-hedged or UK-only exposure — the territory where Freetrade Basic is designed to win). Starting balance £50,000, monthly contribution £500. Platform fees deducted annually from the balance.

Three platforms charge literally zero on this profile: Freetrade Basic, InvestEngine DIY and Trading 212. Dodl extracts roughly £8,050 over 20 years; AJ Bell around £9,850; Hargreaves Lansdown £13,790. Those numbers compound: the £13,790 at HL would translate to over £28,000 of foregone terminal wealth by year 20.

The picture flips once US exposure enters the portfolio. Assume the same portfolio is 40% US-listed (VUSA, VUAG or individual US stocks) and rebalances four times a year at £2,500 per US trade. On Freetrade Basic's 0.99% FX, that's roughly £200 of FX cost per year and £4,000 compounded over the hold.

That is before subscription fees. Standard at £59.88/year adds another £1,198 over 20 years; Plus at £119.88/year adds £2,398. The lesson is blunt: Freetrade's free tier is free for UK-only investors. For anyone with meaningful US exposure, the compounded FX cost is where the bill quietly lands. Run the maths for your specific allocation before committing to a single platform.

Four zero-or-near-zero fee platforms, each optimised for a different investor. The table below uses published cost data for realistic portfolio scenarios, cross-checked against each rival's website on 24 April 2026.

Reading the table:

• Trading 212 wins on raw cost and cash interest — zero platform fees on Invest/ISA, 0.15% FX, 3.85% on uninvested cash. The catches: no mutual funds, no gilts, the SIPP carries a £75–£100 Gaudi trustee fee separate from Trading 212's own £0 platform charge.
• InvestEngine wins for pure ETF investors. Zero fees across ISA, SIPP and GIA. ETF-only — no individual shares, no funds, no gilts.
• Dodl wins if you want a Lifetime ISA or prefer AJ Bell's curated fund list. The 0.15% charge has a £1/month floor that matters on small accounts; FX is tiered (0.75% / 0.50% / 0.25%) which is pricier than Freetrade Plus on small US trades.
• Freetrade wins on breadth-plus-cost for mixed portfolios — ETFs plus individual UK shares plus mutual funds (zero holding fee) plus gilts and T-bills plus flexible ISA plus SIPP on the free tier. No single rival matches that combination.

For a £50,000 mixed portfolio (40% funds, 40% UK shares, 20% gilts), held long-term with modest trading, Freetrade Standard at £59.88/year is the cheapest option that covers all four asset types. Trading 212 and InvestEngine are cheaper on paper but cannot hold the gilts or the mutual funds. Dodl is pricier on larger balances and does not do gilts either.

Sources: Freetrade pricing, Dodl charges, InvestEngine pricing.

Freetrade publishes a portfolio-cost calculator on its pricing page that compares total annual cost against Hargreaves Lansdown, Interactive Investor and AJ Bell across four portfolio sizes. The data is dated 24 March 2026 and uses each rival's official charges. It is unusual for a low-cost platform to publish a chart that includes every fee its rivals charge in one place. Worth borrowing, with the caveat that Freetrade picked the trade-count scenarios — light traders will see different numbers.

Each scenario assumes the same number of UK and US trades across all four platforms. Source: Freetrade pricing page.

The Basic-plan cost is almost entirely FX fees on the US trades. The HL, ii and AJ Bell figures are platform charges plus dealing commissions plus FX. The £1,048 annual gap between Freetrade and HL at the £250k portfolio level is a real number — £20,960 of extracted fees over 20 years, before you compound the foregone returns on those fees.

Three caveats from the small print:

1. Freetrade picked the scenarios. Light traders (one trade a month) and ETF-heavy investors will see the gap narrow against HL's £12.50/month cap. Heavy US traders will see it widen.
2. ii includes one free monthly trade credit at the larger portfolio sizes, which softens the dealing-commission line at the £250k tier.
3. Funds aren't in the picture. HL caps platform fees on funds at £45/year, so a £100k fund-heavy portfolio at HL costs less than the £933 shown above. The scenarios are share/ETF-heavy by design.

The table still wins the argument it sets out to win. For an active investor making more than four trades a month across multiple accounts, Freetrade Basic is cheaper than every traditional platform by a four-figure annual margin. Whether you are that active investor is a separate question — most retail investors trade fewer than ten times a year.

Best for:

• UK investors buying index funds, domestic stocks, ETFs and gilts — Basic is the cheapest credible platform for this exact profile
• Younger investors building a first portfolio where every £100 not paid in fees compounds to meaningful money over decades
• SIPP consolidators combining old workplace pensions into one low-cost pot — accumulation phase only
• Regular investors wanting automated monthly ISA or SIPP contributions via Direct Debit (Standard plan upwards)
• Fund investors escaping the 0.25%–0.45% annual holding charges at traditional brokers
• Parents opening a Junior ISA, now available on every plan including Basic

Look elsewhere if:

• Your portfolio is 40%+ US-listed — Trading 212's 0.15% FX fee or Interactive Brokers' near-spot conversion will save thousands over time
• You want a Lifetime ISA — Dodl, AJ Bell or Moneybox cover this; Freetrade does not
• You are within five years of taking pension income — Freetrade's UFPLS-only drawdown at £240 per withdrawal is inadequate; interactive investor and AJ Bell both offer full flexi-access drawdown
• You need research depth — analyst reports, fund screeners, portfolio analytics. Hargreaves Lansdown is the incumbent for that
• You only want ETFs and nothing else — InvestEngine is cheaper and narrower

Freetrade Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 771281). Registered in England and Wales (company no. 09797821). Member firm of the London Stock Exchange. Now a wholly owned subsidiary of IG Group Holdings plc following the £160m acquisition that completed mid-2025 — but a separately authorised entity in its own right.

Client investments are held in a nominee account legally separate from Freetrade's own assets. If the company failed, client holdings would be ring-fenced and returnable via the administrator. The IG ownership does not change this — IG cannot lend against client assets any more than Freetrade could.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme protects up to £85,000 per eligible person for investment claims. Note this is lower than the £120,000 FSCS limit for deposits at authorised UK banks (raised December 2025) — investments and deposits are covered separately under different limits. If you pair a Freetrade ISA with a cash account elsewhere, both covers apply independently.

Capital at risk. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The value of investments can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. You should seek independent financial advice before making any investment decisions.