Stocks and Shares ISA Charges Comparison

There is no single answer - it depends on your portfolio size, your fund/share mix and how often you trade. Trading 212 and InvestEngine charge 0% platform fee and 0% dealing fee but cannot hold OEIC/unit trust funds (InvestEngine is ETF-only). Among full-range platforms, AJ Bell's 0.25% fee (capped at £42/year on shares and ETFs) usually beats Hargreaves Lansdown's and Fidelity's 0.35% for portfolios under roughly £150,000-£200,000, where interactive investor's flat-fee plans start to win instead. Use the calculator above with your own numbers.

This is a long-standing structure across UK platforms: fund charges scale with value and are typically left uncapped, while share and ETF dealing is capped like a stockbroking service. Hargreaves Lansdown's cap on shares and ETFs rose from £45 to £150 a year from 1 March 2026; AJ Bell's is £42 a year; Fidelity's is £90 a year - all checked 2026-09-06.

Usually only once your portfolio is large enough that a percentage fee would exceed the flat monthly charge. On the Core plan (£5.99/month = £71.88/year, for portfolios up to £100,000), the break-even against AJ Bell's 0.25% is around £28,750 before dealing fees - below that AJ Bell is cheaper, above it interactive investor tends to win.

Yes, on Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, interactive investor and Fidelity - all four support OEIC/unit trust funds, individual shares, investment trusts and ETFs in one ISA. Vanguard Investor only offers its own funds and ETFs, InvestEngine is ETF-only, and Trading 212 offers shares and ETFs but not OEIC/unit trust funds.

Because Vanguard's platform only holds its own funds and its own ETFs, not other providers' OEIC funds and not individual company shares at all. The tool marks Vanguard incompatible whenever your funds or individual-shares figures are above zero. Even when eligible, it cannot confirm your ETFs are specifically Vanguard-branded - check Vanguard's own fund list.

£20,000 per tax year, shared across all adult ISA types you hold (cash, stocks and shares, innovative finance) - gov.uk, checked 2026-09-06. Paying into a Stocks and Shares ISA does not use a separate allowance from a Cash ISA; the two share the same £20,000 total.

Yes, especially for active traders on percentage-fee platforms. In this tool's worked example, Hargreaves Lansdown's dealing charges on 4 trades a year (£27.80) were nearly 40% of its total £97.80 annual cost - larger than the gap between the cheapest and most expensive eligible platform overall.

No. This tool compares published charges only - it does not score customer service, app quality, research tools, fund range, or transfer speed. A platform that costs £20-£30 a year more but has a feature you rely on may still be the right choice.

Request an ISA transfer through your new provider - never withdraw the money and pay it back in as a fresh deposit, which uses up your £20,000 annual allowance a second time and can lose the ISA's tax-free status on the withdrawn cash. See the switching timeline on this page for the typical steps and timings.

No, deliberately. Stamp Duty Reserve Tax (0.5% on UK share purchases over £1,000) is set by HMRC and applies identically regardless of platform, so including it would not change which platform is cheapest - it would add the same amount to every eligible row.

The two platforms simply price differently: AJ Bell's cap of £3.50/month (£42/year) has stayed fixed, while Hargreaves Lansdown raised its cap from £45 to £150 a year as part of a March 2026 repricing that also cut its underlying rate from 0.45% to 0.35% and its share dealing fee from £11.95 to £6.95.

The Junior ISA allowance for 2026/27 is £9,000, separate from the £20,000 adult allowance, and not every platform here offers a Junior ISA. The charges shown are for adult Stocks and Shares ISAs - check the same provider's Junior ISA charges page separately.

The tool applies the published tier boundaries exactly - for example, Hargreaves Lansdown's fund charge drops from 0.35% to 0.25% only on the portion above £250,000, not retroactively on the whole balance. Near a boundary, small value changes can shift which platform is cheapest, so it's worth rechecking periodically.

No - this comparison models Stocks and Shares ISA charges only. SIPP charges are broadly similar in structure at most of these platforms but often differ in the exact percentage or cap, and SIPPs carry pension-specific rules this tool does not cover.

Whenever your portfolio size changes materially, your fund/share mix shifts, or a platform announces a repricing - three of the seven platforms compared here repriced within the 12 months to September 2026.