Freetrade

Freetrade's headline is simple and true: GBP 0 dealing commission, on every plan, on UK and US shares, ETFs and investment trusts alike. There is no custody fee, no platform fee and no inactivity fee. For a UK investor buying London-listed stocks and sterling ETFs, the account really can cost nothing.

The pricing is a three-tier subscription:

Two things deserve emphasis. First, the annual price is 17% below twelve monthly payments — GBP 59.88 a year works out at GBP 4.99 a month against the GBP 5.99 monthly rate — so the marketing numbers assume a year's commitment. Second, and far more important, the FX markup is the fee that actually matters.

At 0.99%, converting GBP 2,000 into dollars to buy a US share costs GBP 19.80. Do that ten times a year and the free plan has cost you GBP 198 — considerably more than a traditional flat-commission broker charging GBP 5 a trade. Upgrading to Plus costs GBP 119.88 a year and takes the same ten orders down to GBP 78 of conversion cost, so the upgrade only pays for itself at reasonably heavy US volume. The honest rule is: if you buy US shares more than occasionally, model the FX cost before you call this account free.

UK stamp reserve tax of 0.5% applies to most UK share purchases. That is a government levy every UK broker collects, not a Freetrade charge, and AIM shares and ETFs are exempt from it.

Freetrade Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 783189, and is registered in England and Wales as company number 09797821 with a registered office at 145 City Road, London EC1V 1AZ. Client money and client assets are held under the FCA's client asset rules, segregated from Freetrade's own balance sheet.

Eligible clients are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to GBP 85,000 per person. It is worth being precise about what that means: the FSCS pays out if Freetrade fails and your assets cannot be returned to you. It does not compensate you for a share that falls in value. Shares held in your name through a nominee arrangement are not Freetrade's property in an insolvency, so the FSCS is a backstop against administration shortfalls and fraud rather than the primary protection.

The structural change worth knowing about is ownership. Freetrade is now part of IG Group, a FTSE 100-listed company, following the 2025 acquisition. We record the broker as not publicly traded because Freetrade Limited itself is not listed — but the practical effect of the acquisition is a materially stronger balance sheet behind the entity, group-level audited accounts in the public domain, and the capital backing of one of the UK's largest listed retail brokers. For a business that spent its earlier years funded by crowdfunding rounds and running at a loss, that is a genuine improvement in the risk picture rather than a cosmetic one.

Freetrade offers no leverage and no margin, so there is no scenario in which an account goes negative. Scale gives some further comfort: roughly 720,000 customers and GBP 3.3 billion of assets under administration, as reported by IG Group — the customer count at the end of 2024, the assets figure at the acquisition in 2025. None of this makes any broker guaranteed safe, and it should not be read that way.

Freetrade was built as an app and the app is still the product. The order ticket is about as clean as retail investing gets: search a name, choose an amount in pounds or a number of shares, review, done. Fractional US shares mean a GBP 50 order into a USD 400 stock works exactly as you would expect rather than rounding down to nothing. Recurring orders let you automate a monthly contribution into a chosen list, and ready-made portfolios exist for people who do not want to pick anything at all. Extended-hours trading on US names is available.

The web client came later and is best understood as a companion rather than an equal. It handles trading, funding, portfolio review and account administration comfortably, and it is much easier to read a full holdings list on a laptop than a phone. But it is a port of a mobile experience, not a desktop platform: there is no multi-window layout, no depth of book, no advanced order routing and nothing resembling a professional terminal.

The order types are correspondingly basic. Market and limit orders are there; stop losses, conditional orders, trailing stops and anything multi-leg are not the point of this product. Charting is a price line with a handful of ranges, and the fundamentals pages give you the essentials — market cap, P/E, dividend history, a short business description — without ever becoming a research tool.

The correct framing is that Freetrade removed features on purpose. If your investing consists of buying a diversified set of shares and ETFs and holding them, nothing here is missing. If you want to screen 3,000 stocks on eight criteria or place a bracket order, this is the wrong app and no plan upgrade fixes it.

Freetrade's universe is 8,600+ instruments, and its composition matters more than its size. You get:

• UK equities across the main market and AIM, including the full FTSE 350 and a long tail of smaller listings
• US equities on NYSE and Nasdaq, with fractional dealing
• A smaller selection of European-listed shares, which is real but much thinner than the UK and US coverage
• ETFs, including sterling and GBP-hedged UCITS lines that sidestep the FX markup entirely
• Investment trusts and REITs — a genuine strength, and something several app competitors skip
• Mutual funds and gilts, plus UK Treasury bills, all available across the plans

What is absent is a long list: no listed options, no futures, no spot forex, no CFDs, no spread betting, no spot cryptocurrency, no corporate or overseas bonds, no warrants or certificates, and no margin. There is also no demo account — you learn on live money or not at all.

For a first portfolio this is close to sufficient. UK shares, global exposure through ETFs, income through investment trusts and a cash-like allocation through T-bills covers most of what a private investor genuinely needs. For anyone whose interests broaden — hedging with options, trading index futures, holding actual coins — Freetrade will not grow with you, and you will end up running a second account somewhere else. That ceiling is the single biggest structural criticism of the platform, and it is a design choice rather than an oversight.

In the UK, the equivalent of the German Abgeltungsteuer question — does the broker handle the tax for you? — is really the wrapper question, and here Freetrade is unusually generous.

All three plans include a stocks and shares ISA, a Junior stocks and shares ISA, a personal pension (SIPP) and a general investment account. That is notable: several UK app brokers put the ISA behind a paid tier and charge separately for a SIPP, so the free Basic plan giving you both is a real competitive advantage rather than marketing.

Inside an ISA there is no capital gains tax and no further income tax on dividends, and nothing to declare on a self-assessment return — the wrapper does the work, so there is no annual tax statement to reconcile. The annual ISA allowance is GBP 20,000 across all ISA types. Inside a SIPP, contributions attract tax relief at your marginal rate and growth is untaxed until you draw a pension, subject to the usual pension access rules.

Two details are worth knowing. US dividends are subject to US withholding tax, which a completed W-8BEN reduces from 30% to 15% for UK residents; Freetrade handles the W-8BEN as part of onboarding, and the reduced rate applies inside an ISA too, where it cannot be reclaimed. UK stamp duty of 0.5% on most UK share purchases is charged inside an ISA exactly as it is outside one.

In a general investment account you are back to normal self-assessment: capital gains above the annual exempt amount and dividends above the dividend allowance are yours to declare. Freetrade provides the statements; it does not file anything for you.

Opening an account is one of the fastest processes in this dataset. It happens entirely in the app, requires a UK address, a UK bank account and a photo ID, and most applicants are trading the same session — frequently in under ten minutes. There is no minimum deposit, so a GBP 20 first contribution is perfectly workable, and the appropriateness questionnaire is short because Freetrade offers no complex or leveraged products that would require a knowledge assessment.

The hard constraint is residency: Freetrade accepts UK residents only. It ran services in Sweden and the Netherlands earlier in its history and withdrew from both to concentrate on the UK, so a German, Austrian or Swiss investor cannot open an account here regardless of nationality. If you hold a Freetrade account and then move abroad, expect the account to be restricted — check before you relocate, not after.

Funding is sterling-only and free. Bank transfer is the default and usually credits within hours on a business day; debit card and Apple Pay top-ups are near-instant and are the sensible route for small regular contributions. There are no e-wallets, no PayPal and no cryptocurrency funding.

Withdrawals from the GIA or ISA return to a bank account in your own name and are free. Plus subscribers get same-day withdrawals: request one before 2 PM on a working day and the cash should arrive by the end of that day, provided your bank supports Faster Payments; after the cut-off, or at a weekend or on a bank holiday, it arrives by the end of the next working day. On Basic and Standard, Freetrade's help centre says withdrawals typically take two to three working days and up to five in some cases; its terms are more cautious still, at normally one to five working days but up to seven days. Same-day withdrawal is a modest but real perk of the Plus plan, and one of the few benefits that is not simply an FX discount.

This is where Freetrade is weakest, and it is fair to say the platform has never really claimed otherwise.

Research amounts to a company page per instrument: price chart, key ratios, dividend record, a short description, and analyst consensus where available. There is no screener worth the name, no proprietary analysis, no price targets and no research provider relationship of the kind Interactive Brokers or Saxo layer in. In practice, Freetrade users research elsewhere and execute here — which is fine, but it means the account is one part of a stack rather than a complete workspace.

Education is better than research but still light: a blog and learning hub covering ISAs, pensions, diversification and the mechanics of the platform, written clearly and aimed squarely at first-time investors. There are no webinars, no structured courses and no demo account, so there is no way to practise before committing real money.

Support is the sharper criticism. There is no telephone line. Everything runs through in-app chat and email during UK business hours, and priority routing is a Plus plan benefit — which means the free tier queues behind paying customers by design. For routine questions the help centre is comprehensive and usually faster than a human. For anything urgent or account-specific, the absence of a phone number is a genuine limitation, and it is the theme that dominates the negative end of public review sentiment despite an otherwise strong overall Trustpilot score in the low fours.

Judge this the way you would judge any low-cost service: the price reflects the staffing model. If you are self-sufficient, the trade is reasonable. If you want to speak to someone when something goes wrong with your pension, it is not.