InvestEngine

Every figure below comes from InvestEngine's costs page, with its comparison data stamped 07/07/26.

Platform fees — all zero:

• ISA: £0 — no account fee, setup fee or withdrawal fee. The gov.uk ISA rules allow up to £20,000 per tax year, and InvestEngine's ISA is flexible, so you can withdraw and replace within the year without burning allowance.
• SIPP: £0 — identical deal, for UK residents aged 18–75. Pension tax relief of 20%–45% applies on top of contributions.
• General Account: £0. Business Account: £0.
• DIY portfolios: £0 platform fee. Managed Portfolios: 0.25% per year — now open to new clients again.

Dealing fees: £0 on all trades. Commission-free, no minimum, no withdrawal or transfer charges.

The costs every platform has:

• ETF charges (the underlying funds): from 0.03% a year on DIY, depending on what you pick; average 0.12% a year on Managed and LifePlan portfolios.
• Market spread: averaging 0.07–0.08% a year on Managed portfolios — the gap between buy and sell prices.
• FX: InvestEngine charges no currency-conversion fee — its range is predominantly GBP-denominated ETFs, unlike Trading 212's 0.15% and Freetrade's 0.39–0.99%.

The hidden cost — uninvested cash:

InvestEngine does not pay interest on cash sitting in your account; it retains it. At a 3.75% base rate, £1,000 left idle for a month is roughly £3 in foregone interest, and £37.50 over a year. Trading 212 pays interest on uninvested cash and runs a Cash ISA at 3.60% AER; InvestEngine turns your idle balance into its business model instead. Activate AutoInvest or deploy cash promptly — with gilt yields above 5%, cash sitting anywhere idle is expensive.

Source: derived from InvestEngine's costs comparison, data as of 07/07/26. Fidelity at the 0.20% tier, Vanguard at £4/month, AJ Bell at 0.25%, HL at 0.35%, interactive investor at £5.99/month Core.

Platform fees are the one cost you can set to zero — and the one that compounds hardest. InvestEngine's own comparison puts the 20-year saving over AJ Bell at £14,405 and over Vanguard at £11,783 for a maxed ISA, assuming £1,666.67 a month into five UK ETFs at 7% growth.

Run that in reverse and you get the real message: a 0.25% platform fee looks trivial in year one and quietly deletes five figures from your pot by year 20. That's the entire InvestEngine pitch in a sentence, and it's arithmetic rather than marketing.

Source: InvestEngine costs comparison. Assumes £0 starting portfolio, £1,666.67/month into five UK ETFs, 7% annual growth, platform fees only — excludes underlying ETF charges.

The caveat is honest: this only holds if you invest the cash. Leave contributions sitting uninvested because you haven't set up AutoInvest, and the interest InvestEngine retains eats into the very fee saving you came for. The platform is free for the disciplined.

What you can invest in: ETFs only. Over 860 from 20+ providers — iShares (BlackRock), Vanguard, Invesco, Xtrackers, J.P. Morgan, Amundi, HSBC, L&G and more — filterable by asset class, provider, accumulating vs distributing, currency-hedged and ESG criteria. A small selection of Exchange Traded Commodities (ETCs) is also available. Fractional investing from £1 means genuine diversification is possible even with small sums.

The accounts: Stocks & Shares ISA, SIPP, General Account and Business Account. No Cash ISA, Lifetime ISA or Junior ISA — first-time buyers after the 25% bonus need to look elsewhere, and there's nowhere on-platform for an emergency fund.

Managed options — reopened. The big change since the last review: Managed Portfolios are accepting new clients again at 0.25% a year, alongside the risk-rated LifePlan portfolios (cautious to aggressive). The previous review flagged these as 'closed to new clients' — that's no longer the case. If you'd rather not pick your own ETFs, 0.25% for a managed, automatically rebalanced portfolio is roughly a third of what Nutmeg charges at 0.75% — and it sits inside the same £0 platform wrapper.

Savings Plans and AutoInvest: weekly, fortnightly or monthly automated investing, plus one-click rebalancing. This is the feature that makes the zero-fee model work — money that's invested automatically can't sit idle and leak interest to the platform.

vs Trading 212: both are £0 for DIY. Trading 212 offers thousands of individual shares and pays interest on cash; InvestEngine is ETFs-only but charges no FX and now matches Trading 212's free SIPP. If you want shares, Trading 212 wins. If you want a currency-clean, set-and-forget ETF portfolio, InvestEngine wins.

vs AJ Bell: 0.25% platform fee (capped at £3.50/month for shares) plus £3.50–£5 a trade, with a far broader range — shares, funds, investment trusts, bonds. Over 20 years InvestEngine saves £14,405 by its own comparison. For an ETF-only portfolio the cost case is overwhelming; for anything broader, AJ Bell's range justifies the fee.

vs Vanguard: Vanguard's £4/month (£48/year) flat fee up to £32,000, 0.15% beyond, capped at £375. Cheaper than the old 0.15% for small pots, pricier than £0 at every size. Vanguard's edge is its own-brand fund range and brand trust; on cost it now loses to InvestEngine by £11,783 over 20 years.

vs interactive investor: £5.99/month flat (£72/year), which can beat percentage platforms above £100k — but never beats £0 below it.

vs Fidelity: 0.20%–0.35% tiered, capped at £7.50/month, now £1.50–£7.50 a trade. More competitive than it was, still not free; the gap stands at £9,082 over 20 years.

The bottom line: for an ETF-focused ISA or SIPP, InvestEngine remains the default. The reopened Managed Portfolios mean it's no longer a DIY-only proposition — you can get guided investing at 0.25% inside a £0 wrapper, which undercuts every robo-adviser in the market.

Our Trading 212 vs InvestEngine ETF-only ISA comparison holds the portfolio constant before comparing product range and funding costs.

Open an account if:

• You want the cheapest possible ISA and SIPP for a passive ETF portfolio — £0 platform and dealing fees, no FX
• You'll use AutoInvest and Savings Plans so cash doesn't sit idle
• You want a managed option at 0.25% — now available again
• You're consolidating old pensions or ISAs — transfers are free, in-specie from most providers
• You value automation: one-click rebalancing, weekly/monthly drip-feeding

Look elsewhere if:

• You want individual shares, funds or investment trusts — Trading 212, AJ Bell or interactive investor
• You need a Cash ISA, Lifetime ISA or Junior ISA
• You want interest on uninvested cash — Trading 212 pays it, InvestEngine keeps it
• You need phone support or intraday order execution — InvestEngine batches orders once daily and offers email/contact-form support
• You know you'll leave cash sitting uninvested — the retained interest quietly becomes a fee

For the full landscape before you commit, start at the platform comparison hub, and check the pensions and ISA hubs for the wrapper details.

InvestEngine (UK) Limited is authorised and regulated by the FCA (FRN 801128). Client funds are held in segregated accounts at UK banks and custodians, and cash is covered by the FSCS — up to £85,000 for investments against firm failure, not market losses. Your investments themselves can fall as well as rise.

Three fine-print items worth knowing:

• Once-daily order execution (around a 14:00 working-day cut-off). Irrelevant for buy-and-hold, a deal-breaker for intraday.
• No interest on cash. InvestEngine discloses this openly — it's how they fund the £0 platform — but at a 3.75% base rate the stakes are higher than at 0.10%.
• Referral bonuses are now randomised — £20–£100 each for personal accounts, £100–£200 for business accounts. Don't plan your portfolio around a bonus amount that isn't guaranteed.

For independent guidance on investing and pensions, MoneyHelper is free and impartial.