AJ Bell Junior ISA Review July 2026: Two Rivals Charge Nothing. AJ Bell Charges £30 a Year. Here's When You Pay It Anyway.

AJ Bell publishes its Junior ISA charges in a clean two-part split: platform charges (what you pay to hold investments) and dealing charges (what you pay to buy and sell).

The platform charge is 0.25% a year on the value held. On shares — including ETFs, investment trusts, gilts, and bonds — that 0.25% is capped at £2.50 a month, or £30 a year. On funds — unit trusts and OEICs — the 0.25% is uncapped at the JISA tier. This distinction is the single most important thing to understand about AJ Bell's pricing, because it quietly makes a shares-heavy or ETF-heavy JISA far cheaper than a funds-heavy one at the same balance.

Dealing charges: £5.00 per online share trade, dropping to £3.50 if you placed 10 or more share deals across all your AJ Bell accounts in the previous calendar month. Fund trades cost £1.50. Regular investing — a monthly direct debit from £25 into a chosen investment — is free, which is how most JISA contributors should be operating anyway. Withdrawals at 18 are free. Transfers in and out are free.

There is also a government tax to watch: UK stamp duty at 0.5% on share purchases, which applies across all platforms equally — it's not an AJ Bell charge, but it shows up on your contract note.

On a £20,000 JISA: the 100%-shares row is £30 because it hits the £2.50/month cap. The 50/50 row is £30 on the shares side plus £25 on £10,000 of funds at 0.25%, giving £55. The 100%-funds row is £50. The cap is doing real work here — and it only benefits portfolios with a meaningful allocation to shares, ETFs, or investment trusts.

AJ Bell's adult ISA uses the same 0.25% platform rate but caps shares at £3.50 a month. The Junior ISA cap is £2.50 — a 29% reduction that AJ Bell does not exactly shout about.

In absolute terms the gap is £12 over a full tax year. Over 18 years of a growing JISA, the cumulative saving versus paying the adult cap is around £216. That's modest — but it's also one of the only places in UK personal finance where a child gets a structurally better price than an adult on the same platform.

The cap's real significance is how it changes the effective fee as the pot compounds. A £12,000 JISA entirely in shares hits the cap: £30/year is 0.25%. At £50,000, the effective rate drops to 0.06%. At £100,000, it's 0.03% — vanishingly small. The percentage drag shrinks every year the JISA grows. For a deeper comparison of how this cap plays across different account types, see our breakdown of AJ Bell's 0.25% fee cap and what it actually costs.

Funds-heavy JISAs get none of this benefit. If you intend to hold AJ Bell's Ready-Made Portfolios or third-party active funds, the 0.25% scales in a straight line. A £100,000 funds-only JISA pays £250 a year — and at that point you really should be asking why you're not at Hargreaves or Fidelity, where the platform line reads £0.

The platform fee is only one line on the bill. Every fund inside the JISA carries an Ongoing Charges Figure (OCF) charged by the fund manager, typically 0.10%–0.25% for a global equity tracker and 0.50%–0.95% for an actively managed fund. Add the OCF to the platform fee to see the true annual drag.

Hargreaves Lansdown charges 0% annual account charge on its Junior ISA, with zero online dealing fees. Fidelity charges no service fee. AJ Bell is the only one of the three with a platform fee — though the £2.50/month cap on shares keeps the absolute number modest.

Here's the maths on a £20,000 JISA in a global equity index tracker (OCF 0.20%):

• Hargreaves Lansdown: £0 platform + £40 OCF = £40/year (0.20% all-in)
• Fidelity (funds only): £0 platform + £40 OCF = £40/year (0.20% all-in)
• AJ Bell: £30 platform (capped) + £40 OCF = £70/year (0.35% all-in)

The £30 gap is real but not dramatic. At £20,000, you're paying an extra £2.50 a month for the AJ Bell wrapper.

Now the same exercise on an £80,000 JISA in an actively-managed multi-asset fund (OCF 0.75%):

• Hargreaves Lansdown: £0 + £600 OCF = £600/year (0.75%)
• Fidelity: £0 + £600 OCF = £600/year (0.75%)
• AJ Bell: £200 platform + £600 OCF = £800/year (1.00%)

The funds-only scenario is where AJ Bell's uncapped 0.25% really hurts. The £200 gap at £80,000 compounds to several thousand pounds over an 18-year holding period — money that leaves the wrapper and never comes back.

The pattern is unambiguous: Hargreaves Lansdown is the headline winner on price because it combines a 0% account charge with the full investment range — funds, shares, ETFs, investment trusts, bonds, gilts. Fidelity matches on price but, as the next section explains, restricts what you can actually hold. AJ Bell loses on price. The question is whether anything else tips the scales.

Four scenarios make the £30/year defensible. Outside these, you're paying for nothing.

1. You're already an AJ Bell customer for your own ISA or SIPP. Consolidation has real value — one login, one interface, one set of annual statements, one customer service number. AJ Bell customers who add a JISA for a child or grandchild keep everything inside the same ecosystem. The Ready-Made Portfolios work identically across adult and JISA accounts. For the wider platform picture, see our AJ Bell platform review.

2. You actively prefer AJ Bell's service quality. AJ Bell is the only investment platform to be Which? Recommended for eight consecutive years (2019–2026). It serves over 723,000 customers, is FTSE 250-listed, and is FCA-regulated. If you've used Hargreaves and found the interface dated, or tried Fidelity and felt constrained by the fund-only universe, AJ Bell sits comfortably in the middle — good range, good service, modest price.

3. You want full investment breadth and you cannot use Hargreaves. Some people have a prior bad experience with HL — poor customer service, account closure friction, or they simply dislike the brand. If HL is off the table for reasons other than price, AJ Bell becomes the default full-breadth option at a £30 premium. That is a reasonable price to pay for not using a platform you distrust.

4. The child's JISA is likely to reach six figures. At £100,000 in shares, AJ Bell's effective fee is 0.03%. At that scale, the £30 cap is so small relative to the pot that platform choice should be driven by service and features, not price. The cap is an insurance policy against the JISA growing big — you know the platform fee will never exceed £30 in the shares portion.

When AJ Bell is the wrong call: If you're opening a JISA for the first time, have no existing AJ Bell relationship, and plan to hold a single global equity index fund for 18 years. In that scenario, Hargreaves does exactly the same job for £0. There is no feature, no fund, and no tax advantage that makes AJ Bell's £30 worth paying. Fidelity also works if you accept funds-only — and for the single-index-fund strategy, that's perfectly adequate.

For the full Hargreaves proposition, see our Hargreaves Lansdown platform review. For Fidelity, see our Fidelity ISA and SIPP fees breakdown.

The investment universe matters because it determines which providers can even be on your shortlist. AJ Bell's JISA accepts:

• Funds — over 4,000 unit trusts and OEICs, including every major index fund and multi-asset range
• Shares — UK and international equities across 24 exchanges, including individual FTSE 100 stocks
• ETFs — passive index trackers like Vanguard FTSE All-World or iShares Core MSCI World, the default JISA core holding for most parents
• Investment trusts — closed-ended funds like Scottish Mortgage or City of London, often cheaper than equivalent OEICs
• Gilts and bonds — useful for derisking as the child approaches 18
• AJ Bell own-brand funds — including Ready-Made Portfolios at 0.31% OCF and the Favourite Funds curated list

Fidelity's JISA, by contrast, does not allow direct ETF or individual share dealing. It is funds and investment trusts only — a narrower universe. Hargreaves matches AJ Bell's full breadth at zero account fee, which is why the price-vs-range comparison consistently favours HL.

For the typical JISA strategy — a single global equity index fund or ETF held for 18 years — the breadth question is academic. Any of the three providers handles that. Breadth only matters if you actively want to mix asset types (some active funds, some ETFs, some investment trusts, some gilts for derisking near age 18), and even then Hargreaves does the same job at £0.

One thing AJ Bell explicitly does not offer: a Cash JISA. The wrapper is Stocks & Shares only. If you want both — perhaps a Cash JISA for near-18 derisking alongside the S&S JISA for growth — you'll need to open the Cash JISA with a building society like Coventry, Yorkshire, or Skipton, while keeping the S&S JISA at AJ Bell. Combined contributions across both must stay within the £9,000 annual cap.

The JISA's structural advantage is the time horizon: 18 unbroken years of tax-free compounding inside a wrapper the child cannot touch until their 18th birthday. That is longer than most adult ISAs survive before being raided for a house deposit, a wedding, or a car.

The £9,000 annual JISA allowance has been frozen since 2020/21. With UK CPI per the ONS having run roughly 25% cumulatively over that period, today's £9,000 buys what £7,200 did when the freeze started. The allowance shrinks in real terms every year — which makes using it fully, early, and consistently the single most important decision, far outweighing which platform you pick.

These are projections, not promises. The 6% real return assumption is a conservative long-run global equity estimate; some 18-year windows have delivered substantially more, others meaningfully less. Use the GiltEdge ISA calculator to model your own contribution level and return assumptions.

On AJ Bell specifically: even at the worst case of a fully-funds JISA paying the uncapped 0.25%, the cumulative platform cost over 18 years on a typical growth trajectory runs to a few thousand pounds. At Hargreaves or Fidelity the same costs £0. The difference is not catastrophic — on a six-figure JISA it's a rounding error — but it is real, avoidable, and worth factoring into the decision. For a deeper look at JISA strategy, see our piece on £9,000 a year tax-free compounding.

Only a parent or legal guardian can open a Junior ISA. The child must be UK-resident and under 18, and cannot already hold a Child Trust Fund (CTFs can be transferred in — the two wrappers cannot coexist).

The AJ Bell process is entirely online, takes about 10 minutes, and requires the child's date of birth and National Insurance number (if they have one — most under-16s won't). You'll also need the child's birth certificate or passport details. Once open, the account belongs to the child but is managed by the named contact (you) until age 16, after which the child can take over administrative control. Withdrawals remain blocked until 18, at which point the JISA converts to an adult Stocks & Shares ISA automatically.

Funding points that apply regardless of provider:

• Set up regular investing from £25/month — it removes the timing decision and the dealing fee. Pick a single global equity index fund or ETF with a low OCF for the core.
• Time lump sums to the start of the tax year (6 April) — gives the contribution the maximum possible time to compound inside the tax wrapper.
• Grandparent contributions are tax-efficient — anyone can contribute, as long as the £9,000 total across all sources isn't breached. Grandparent gifts can fall within the £3,000 annual IHT gift exemption. AJ Bell provides a link-generation tool for the registered contact to share with family members who want to contribute.
• Verify contributions from other sources — if the child has a Cash JISA elsewhere, contributions to both wrappers combined must not exceed £9,000 in a single tax year. Transfers between JISA providers do not count toward the allowance.
• If the child has a Child Trust Fund, you'll need to complete AJ Bell's CTF-to-JISA transfer form — the process is free but requires a paper form.

AJ Bell does not charge for transfers in or out and does not levy an exit fee. If you decide after two years that Hargreaves or Fidelity is a better fit, moving the JISA costs nothing.