11 Best Online Stock Brokers in the UK for 2024

The UK has witnessed a surge in the popularity of online stock brokers, which have made stock trading more accessible and affordable for a broader range of investors than before. Several factors have contributed to this trend: technological advancements that have made trading platforms more intuitive, mobile apps that make it easier to trade on the go, as well as reduced minimum deposits on these trading platforms and the ability to buy fractional shares.

On top of that, stocks and shares Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) in the UK have certain tax advantages that encourage investing in stocks and other financial instruments. Partly as a result of stock investments expanding, assets under management (AUM) in the investment industry rose to £9.1 trillion last year from £8.8 trillion in 2022, according to figures from the Investment Association.

We have analysed several UK online brokers based on the range of stocks they offer, their investment fees, minimum initial deposits and a range of other factors. We found that these 10 trading platforms below have the most to offer UK stock investors.

An in-depth look at the top-ranked UK online stock brokers

Discover the top-rated platforms for UK stock traders. Our rankings are based on a variety of factors, ensuring you find the ideal platform for your trading needs.

1. eToro: Intuitive interface, a good option for UK-based novice traders

eToro is a good option for beginners because of its easy-to-use interface and commission-free investing. eToro can be used for direct share buying, apart from trading contracts for difference (CFDs) on shares. Its stock ownership has some limitations, as eToro retains control of your shares. While adding the dividends the stocks pay to your account, it only gives you voting rights on US shares, and they’re not transferable to another broker.

eToro has multiple features that help out novice day traders. Its copy trader feature enables investors to copy the strategies of elite traders. There’s also a demo account with $100,000 in virtual money to practise trades. There’s quite a bit of social investing on the platform that can help traders as well. Two of the negatives for beginning investors is eToro requires a minimum deposit and it has an inactivity fee. 

It’s easy to open an account with eToro. The platform delivers more than 5,000 financial instruments to trade, including direct shares, plus CFD trading of stocks, forex, commodities, indices and crypto. It also has a Smart Portfolio that offers balanced and researched portfolios that can help those looking to invest in specific market segments.

_{Disclaimer: Your capital is at risk.}

2. XTB: Expanding beyond CFD trades to direct share investing

XTB, once known purely for CFD trading for stocks, indices, ETFs, commodities, forex and cryptocurrencies, began allowing direct share buying and direct ETF purchases without commission in 2023. While the platform is known as a boon for day traders because of its ability to quickly execute trades, it has a lot to offer for beginner investors who purely trade in stocks or ETFs.

Investors can trade in fractional shares, a good way to buy into quality stocks that are a little pricey. Traders, provided they have fewer than £100,000 a month in trades, don’t pay commission on ETFs and shares. If you’re a big trader, the commission would be a minimum of 2% above £100,000. XTB also has a free demo account with £85,000 in virtual funds and a copy trader option. 

Its knowledge centre includes a news feed, including upcoming dividend announcements, a calendar of economic news and a market sentiment indicator, as well as more than 1,000 articles and videos. It also pays, in the UK, up to 5.2% interest on uninvested funds held in the account. Its interface is easy to use and its home page shows what assets are doing at a glance, including indices, stocks, commodities and currencies. One negative is there are only a little more than 3,600 stocks available to trade. Also, if you don’t make any trades for a year, you will begin paying an inactivity fee of €10 a month.

3. AvaTrade: Online broker offering lot of share CFD tradable instruments

AvaTrade is designed for experienced traders, and only offers CFD trades for stocks. It has more than 19,000 financial instruments that you can trade, alongside features that could help traders, including social copy trading through its AvaSocial, ZuluTrade, and DupliTrade services.

Its AvaTrade Guardian Angel, available for MetaTrader 4 users, is a risk management tool that provides up-to-the minute feedback and alerts on stocks that you can customise. AvaTrade also has negative balance protection, which keeps traders from incurring debts beyond a certain limit. It also pays interest on uninvested funds in certain accounts, topping out at 2.5% in the UK.

The lack of direct share investing (as opposed to share CFD trading) is one negative. Two others are its £100 minimum deposit and an inactivity fee of £50. The platform’s trading fees are competitive, with no commission as the company primarily makes money off bid-ask spreads.  

It does well in technical analysis and has a push notification system that gives up-to-date information on market movements or account changes, allowing you to better time a buy. Its AvaAcademy section has a series of online tutorials that could prove useful to novice traders.

4. FP Markets: Stock broker with plenty of CFD share trade possibilities

FP Markets is for more advanced traders and its products are limited to forex and CFDs, including CFDs on more than 10,000 stocks. Investors can also trade CFDs on bonds, commodities and indices. To do CFD share trading, you can use the company’s IRESS platform, which offers more than 10,000 stock CFDs through its standard, platinum and premier accounts or sign up for its MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 platforms, which offer more than 1,000 stock CFDs.

One of the nice features of FP markets is it offers a demo training account with US $100,000 in virtual money, giving new investors a way to understand the markets better. It also has social trading features that allow you to mimic the moves of successful, experienced traders. It doesn’t have as many educational features as some competitors, however.

Two of the negatives for FP Markets are a lack of non-CFD shares trading and that it isn’t regulated by the FCA, though in Europe, it is regulated by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). At AU $100, the minimum deposit for opening an account is higher than many of its competitors.

5. Pepperstone: Plenty of technical analysis for share CFD trading

Pepperstone does not allow non-leveraged, traditional stock trading. Because the only share trading it offers is through CFDs, is probably best left to experienced traders. The company is known more for its forex trading than its share trading. Some of the pluses for Pepperstone is there’s no minimum deposit to open an account, no inactivity fee and the EDGE Standard doesn’t charge commission on trades. It’s important to understand, though, when buying or selling stocks through CFD, you are speculating on the price movements of shares without actually owning the underlying assets.

Pepperstone’s platforms include MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView, and the Pepperstone Trading Platform, most of which deliver advanced technical analysis and charting. It is relatively easy to set up an account with Pepperstone and the company is known for its quick order execution.

Pepperstone has one thing that novice investors might be able to use – a demo account. It lasts only 30 days, but it will help new investors better understand trading. Pepperstone doesn’t have copy trading or social trading though, and unless you are researching forex, its educational sources are lacking compared to some competitors.

Admiral Markets: Growing beyond CFD offerings into shares

Admiral Markets, once known primarily for its forex and CFD trading, has expanded its offerings to include direct share and ETF buying. The online broker offers more than 3,000 UK, European and US stocks for CFD trading and more than 300 ETFs for CFD trading. It also allows more than 4,300 stocks for direct share buying. It also offers fractional trading, so you can buy partial ownership of a stock or an ETF for as little as €1 and also, an auto-investing option.

Admirals doesn’t charge a commission on direct share buying and its fees for forex and CFD trading are around average for the industry. The company gets strong marks for its educational services, as it offers webinars, articles, tutorials, guides, a glossary of terms, e-books and online courses.

It does charge a minimum deposit and an inactivity fee, and it is still tailored more toward experienced investors because of its focus on CFD trading.

7. Trade Nation: UK stock broker offering low-cost CFD share trading

The platform limits share dealing to CFD stock purchases, but it still has a lot to offer as a stock trading platform. There’s no minimum deposit required to start an account, no inactivity fee and no commission on trades and the spreads on its CFD trades are low compared to some of Trade Nation’s competitors. It also allows you to, without signing up, to practise on a demo trader with up to US $10,000 in virtual funds.

Trade Nation has solid technical analysis through its advanced trading platforms of TN Trader, as well TradingView and MetaTrader 4. Some of the platforms’ other advantages for stock trading are its amount of educational materials as well as its copy trader program, TradeCopier, which allows you to automatically copy the trades of elite investors, but it is only available in MetaTrader 4. 

Trading is limited to CFD trading for forex, shares, indices, commodities, and cryptocurrencies, so you can’t own stock shares directly and CFD trading isn’t a great option for novice traders. That’s one negative for Trade Nation. Another is that its customer service has a phone number, a chatbot and email, but no live chat.

8. Saxo Bank: Stock broker with plenty of educational resources for new traders

Saxo Bank, founded in 1992, offers more than 23,500 stocks across more than 50 global markets. It offers three platforms suitable for stock trading in the UK: SaxoInvestor, SaxoTraderGo and SaxoTraderPro. 

SaxoInvestor is designed for novice stock traders and limits investments to the direct buying and selling of stocks, ETFs, mutual funds and bonds. The commission for trades begins at 0.08%, so if you put an order for £5,000 worth of shares, it would cost you £4 in commission. SaxoTraderGo is a user-friendly, mid-level platform that has various analysis tools, such as stock comparisons, news and expert research.

In terms of the costs of investing, there are no platform subscription fees. However, some features – such as level 2 market data – require a subscription. It includes everything SaxoInvestor does, plus CFD trading on stocks and forex, as well as commodities. SaxoTraderPro is a professional grade platform best used by high-volume traders. It includes advanced market analysis tools and customizable features. Some of its tools include an account shield, which acts as a stop-loss safeguard on your entire portfolio. If triggered, it liquidates all your open positions. You can also protect your positions, with trailing stops and stop-limit orders or cancel all your orders, with a few clicks.

Saxo Bank’s platforms get solid marks for its easy-to-use interface and customer service, with help available by phone, email or online chat. Saxo also has a nice, relatively safe way for investors to make money: stock lending. The way it works is that if you own a stock in demand, say Nvidia, Saxo Bank sets a borrow fee on Saxo Bank shares, for instance 24%. It then loans out your Nvidia shares to other investors, who would pay interest on the loan each month they’ve borrowed them. You would then get 50% of the interest paid (with Saxo Bank landing the rest), meaning you could earn 12% a year on your Nvidia shares.

9. Trading 212: Hub for passive income investment and diverse trading

Trading 212 stands out for passive investors, looking for set-it and forget-it style investing and is used by more than 3 million customers across Europe. Some of its key features include share lending, which allows you to earn interest on your stocks by lending them to other investors, as well as paying interest on uninvested funds in your account, with the rate currently 5.2% in the UK.

Some of the other factors that make Trading 212 beneficial to those investing in stocks include no commissions or custody fees and a user-friendly interface. Your choices for an account include an Invest Account, which delivers commission-free investing in stocks and ETFs or its CFD Account, useful for more advanced traders. It has a feature called automatic investing, which permits investors to schedule deposits and invest in a ready-made balanced ETF portfolio or one of their own choosing.

There’s no minimum deposit required, and it takes only €1 to trade in stocks or ETFs. It also allows investors to buy fractional shares. The company also has a savings plan, called AutoInvest which permits you to build a diversified portfolio and customise it to your needs.

Some of Trading 212’s downsides include an emphasis on CFD trading, customer support that doesn’t offer phone help and a limited menu of financial products. It also has high rates on forex conversion.

10. Freetrade: Great low-cost UK stock broker for beginners

Freetrade is a UK fintech that offers basic, standard and plus plans. The basic plan charges no commission for trades and allows trading in more than 6,200 global stocks and ETFs, but doesn’t offer an ISA. It also allows you to buy fractional shares of US stocks and pays 1% on up to £1,000 in uninvested cash. The standard and plus plans charge £4.99 and £9.99 a month, but allow trades in ISAs, more technical analysis and lower fees on currency conversion.

Freetrade’s positives include an easy to open account, a user-friendly mobile trading platform and a. Some of the negatives for Freetrade is it doesn’t have many of the features or non-shares investments other trading platforms offer and limits investments to UK, US, and European stocks, ETFs and investment trusts, as well as UK Treasury bills. You can begin trading for as little as £2.

Many investors who are not likely to get involved in complicated trading like Freetrade for its low costs, transparency and ease of use. It has more than 1.5 million users.

11. IG: Solid platform for frequent share dealing

IG offers more than 17,000 global shares to trade, including 12,000 shares, funds and investment trusts. It allows direct share, ETFs and CFD share trading, as well as forex, crypto, commodities and indices. It allows out-of-hours US share dealing (when the markets are closed) and has an intuitive interface and basic mobile app that is easy to use.It also has a stocks and shares ISA where you can trade shares or set up a pre-planned IG Smart Portfolio.

There are downsides to IG. It doesn’t allow copy trading and it has somewhat high share trading fees, though for more frequent traders, those fees drop. It also charges no commission on international stocks and UK stocks cost £8 per trade, but the commission drops to £3 if you make more than three trades per month. US stocks are more expensive at £10 per trade, but cost nothing if you make more than three trades a month. 

IG also charges a custody fee of £24 a month, but that goes away if you trade more than three times in a month. The custody fee also doesn’t apply if you have more than £15,000 in an IG Smart Portfolio account. On the positive side, there’s no minimum deposit to open an account in the UK.

How these UK online stock brokers stack up

Platform	Minimum deposit	Price to trade shares, ETFs	Inactivity fee	FCA protection	Trustpilot score
eToroUK	$50 after first deposit	No commission on stocks or ETFs (currency conversion fee applies)	$10 per month after one year of inactivity	Yes	4.2 out of 5 stars (24,286 reviews)
XTB	None	No commission on stocks or ETFs (up to $100,000 in trades a month)	€10 a month after 12 months of inactivity	Yes	3.5 out of 5 stars (1,181 reviews)
Saxo Bank	None. (Start trading with £1)	Between 0.03% and 0.08% (depending on the account)	None	Yes	3.7 out of 5 (3,166 reviews)
Trading 212	£1	Commission free on stock or ETF trades	None	Yes	4.8 out of 5 stars (32,706 reviews)
Freetrade	None	Commission free basic account (Monthly fee on other accounts)	None	Yes	4.0  out of 5 (4,073 reviews)
IG	No minimum on bank transfers £250 for PayPal or credit cards	£8 on UK stocks Or £3 (conditions apply)	£12 for accounts that have been inactive for 24 months	Yes	3.6 out of 5 stars (6,983 reviews)
Pepperstone	$0	Commission free (the price is built into the spreads)	None	Yes	4.4 out of 5 stars (2,544 reviews)
Admiral Markets	€100	Typical spreads of 0.8%	€10 a month after 24 months of inactivity	Yes	3.8 out of 5 (1,788 reviews)
Trade Nation	None	Commission free (the price is built into the spreads)	None	Yes	4.4 out of 5 (848 reviews)
FP Markets	AUD $100	Commission free on standard account (the price is built into the spreads)	None	No	4.8 out of 5 (6,717  reviews)
AvaTrade	£100	Commission free (the price is built into the spreads)	£50 after three months of inactivity	No	4.4 out of 5 (2,527 reviews)

Choosing the right stock broker for UK-based investors

The best online stock brokers in the UK offer an array of trading options, customised portfolios, market research, low fees, and access to beginner-friendly and advanced trading strategies. When selecting a stock trading app, consider the following:

• User Friendliness: The app should be intuitive and easy to navigate, with clear features and straightforward processes.
• Market Coverage: Ensure the app supports the markets and assets you want to trade, such as UK stocks, US stocks, forex, commodities, and indices.
• Trading Tools: Choose an app with tools that suit your trading style, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced trader.
• Fees and Costs: Compare fees from different brokers to minimise costs and maximise profits.
• Customer Service: Look for an app with reliable customer support, including live chat or phone assistance.
• Investing options: Some of the best apps offer a wide range of assets, including:

• Company Shares: Trade individual stocks, including both UK and US companies. In many cases, fractional shares are also available.
• Forex: Buy and sell international currencies.
• Commodities: Trade assets like gold, oil, wheat, and copper.
• Indices: Invest in market benchmarks like the FTSE 100.

What is the difference between shares and share CFDs?

Some brokers offer direct share investing while others only offer derivatives, such as CFDs. While they both involve putting money in the stock market, they have two distinct approaches.

Traditional stock trading involves direct ownership of assets, so when you buy shares, you become a part-owner in the company, complete with voting rights attached to your shares.

CFD trading happens via a derivative instrument that allows you to speculate on price movements without owning the underlying asset. They are usually used for short-term trading profit . You agree to exchange the difference in the price of a financial instrument at the beginning and end of the contract with your broker. In many cases, CFDs often allow you to trade with leverage, meaning you can control a larger position with a smaller initial investment. This can amplify both gains and losses.

Several of the best online stock brokers in the UK offer you both, so you can try your hands at both ways of earning money in the stock market.

Other ways of investing in stocks

Mutual funds pool money from multiple investors. These funds, managed by professional experts, invest in a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, or other assets. This diversification helps spread risk, so a poor performing investment doesn’t significantly impact the overall fund. Investors benefit from the fund manager’s expertise while gaining access to a wider range of opportunities with a smaller investment. Units can be easily bought and sold, but fees are involved to cover management and transaction costs.

Mutual funds come in various types, like equity funds (focused on stocks), bond funds, and mixed funds (combining stocks and bonds). Thematic funds target specific sectors, while index funds aim to mirror a particular market index’s performance.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offer a cost-effective way to invest in a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, or both. Unlike mutual funds, ETFs trade on stock exchanges, providing more flexibility and often lower fees.

ETFs can focus on specific sectors, asset classes, or investment strategies, making it easier to tailor your portfolio. They can also help mitigate market risk by offering exposure to a variety of assets.

Passively managed ETFs typically track an index and have lower fees than actively managed ones. While active management can potentially outperform, it also carries higher costs and may not always justify the expense.

Fractional shares involve buying or selling a portion of a single stock, rather than purchasing a whole share. It’s like owning a slice of a pie, rather than the entire pie.  Buying fractional shares is useful when the price of a stock is high, and you don’t have enough money to buy a whole share. It allows you to buy a smaller amount of a stock and still benefit from gains. The trading platforms in the UK that offer fractional shares are popular with beginner investors that have less funds available to spend.

What is a stocks and shares ISA?

An Individual Savings Account (ISA) is a tax-free savings or investment account for UK residents. You can contribute up to £20,000 annually (for the tax year ending April 5, 2025).

ISAs offer tax-free returns on a variety of investments, including stocks, investment funds, and bonds. The top online stock brokers in the UK cater to stock and shares ISA investors. We’ve also written a guide about the best stock and shares ISAs available currently in the UK.

Methodology of analysing the top UK online stock brokers

When evaluating the top UK online stockbrokers, we focused on several key factors:

• User Friendliness: A trading platform should be easy to navigate for traders of all skill levels. Simple account setup, efficient search functions, and a clear order execution process are essential.
• Market Offerings: A comprehensive platform should provide a wide range of investment options, including stocks, ETFs, CFDs, commodities, and even cryptocurrencies.
• Trading Tools: For advanced traders, features like copy trading, market analysis, and educational resources can significantly enhance the trading experience.
• Fees and Costs: Fees for buying, selling, depositing, and withdrawing funds are a major point of comparison among trading platforms.
• Customer Service: We assessed the quality and accessibility of customer support, including response times, available channels, and overall responsiveness.

FAQs