Could you be paying less for your stocks and shares Isa?

March 21, 2025

5 minutes read

If you haven’t recently taken a good look at the fees you’re paying on your stocks and shares, Isa, you could find you’ve been racking up an excessive amount in exchange for underwhelming service.

The new tax year is a good time to review your portfolio, and the investment platforms know it – you’ll see a barrage of offers, from fee reductions to vouchers, trying to win your business.

But it’s not always easy to work out which one deserves it. That’s why we’ve gathered the experiences of more than 3,000 investors and crunched the numbers on 350 fee scenarios to determine which stocks and shares Isas offer the best home for your investments.

Stocks and shares Isas: our recommended providers

In this year’s reviews, we’ve named two Which? Recommended Providers, AJ Bell and InvestEngine.

AJ Bell is a WRP for the seventh year in a row. It’s unparalleled in the range of investments on offer, with more than 24,000 assets, including funds, stocks, and bonds. You can also use the platform’s impressive offering of tools to find investments and monitor performance.

Although you have to pay £1.50 to trade funds – a charge which most platforms have dropped – you won’t pay over the odds to use AJ Bell. And for investing in shares and ETFs, especially with larger pots, it’s one of the cheapest.

This is also the second WRP nod for InvestEngine. It was one of only two brands to be rated a full five stars for value for money – understandably because it charges nothing in service fees. You’ll need to pay fund fees and the market spread (the difference between the buy and sell price), but you won’t pay any account or transaction costs.

InvestEngine only offers exchange-traded funds (ETFs), so it will not be suitable for those looking for a broader choice of investments.

Find out more: the full breakdown of the best stocks and shares Isas 2025

Which Isas offer the best value?

This year, for the first time, we’re endorsing Great Value stocks and shares Isas. These products aren’t always the best of the best like our Which? Recommended Providers, but they still got good customer scores and were the cheapest in our fees analysis.

This year, InvestEngine, iWeb, NatWest, Royal Bank Invest from the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Vanguard are all Great Value.

iWeb, like InvestEngine, charges no account fees. Each trade will set you back £5, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the cheapest options available.

NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland only offer five funds each, and their pricing is the lowest for smaller portfolios of funds and low across the board too. Investors with £5,000 in their Isa would pay just £8 each year in account fees. But you need to have a current account with them to open one of their Isas.

This year, for the first time since 2018, Vanguard isn’t a WRP as it didn’t make the highest bands of scores – the ones that stand out statistically from the rest.

In February, Vanguard introduced a £4 minimum monthly fee on its accounts, driving up fees for investors with less in their accounts. Investors with £5,000 in their Isa, for example, would have seen their annual fees rise from £7.50 to £48.

Despite the fee increase, Vanguard is still one of the best-value stocks and shares Isas available. Its low percentage fee and £375 yearly fee cap make it a highly competitive option for medium or larger portfolios.

Warning

Is a stocks and shares Isa ever really free?

One of the most significant changes to the stocks and shares Isa market is that you can now find platforms that charge no account or trading fees and instead make their money in other ways.

Some of the cheapest platforms, like InvestEngine and iWeb, keep the interest made on any uninvested cash in your account – although some of the providers who charge fees do the same.

For others, it’s about getting customers in the door with the intention of upgrading them to paid products. InvestEngine works in part in this way, as it offers a managed Isa, which carries a fee of 0.25%, while Freetrade and Plum require a monthly fee to use stocks and shares Isas instead of general investment accounts.

This strategy can have far more serious implications if the paid product in question is a contract for difference (CFD). Platforms can draw in consumers with fee-free investing and drive them towards investment into CFDs, which lose most investors their money.

We don’t include any platforms that offer CFDs in our reviews because it would skew the analysis and effectively punish the other platforms that don’t profit from your losses, which we don’t think is right.

How to find the right Isa for you

This year, all 25 Isa providers we reviewed scored well, with an average score of 73%.

But the right one for you depends on what type of investor you are.

A platform such as AJ Bell or Hargreaves Lansdown might be overwhelming for someone who has no idea what they want to invest in, while a platform with just three funds like Monzo or Virgin Money would be useless to a keen stock picker.

How to find the cheapest Isa for you

While some Isas are low-cost across the board (see Great Value endorsements), you might find the cheapest provider for you isn’t the cheapest for everyone.

Most platforms charge you as a proportion of your total investment, meaning that you’ll pay more in fees as your portfolio grows. A percentage fee like this is the best value for portfolios of £50,000 or less.

If you have a bigger pot to invest, say £100,000 or more, it’s often cheaper to invest with a platform that charges a fixed fee. Unlike a percentage fee, you’d always pay the same amount as a monthly or quarterly charge. This type of fee can also make it easier to keep track of what you’re paying.

Increasingly, platforms also take a mixed approach by charging a subscription fee as well as a percentage fee that can be lowered by upgrading to premium services. Digital-first platform Plum takes this approach.

Other platforms use a percentage fee but with a tapered structure that charges less for the largest portfolios or have a fixed minimum and maximum fee.

Find out more: investment platform fees and charges compared

How to switch your Isa

If the platform you’re with now doesn’t suit you, whether you’ve outgrown what it has to offer or you think you can get better value elsewhere, you can transfer your Isa to another provider.

Although the process can be marred by delays and opaque processes, most people will be able to transfer within 30 days without issue. You can contact your new provider and fill out an online or print form with your details and they’ll reach out to your current provider to move things across.

It’s usually best to do an ‘in-specie’ transfer, which keeps you invested throughout. You can lose money if you sell or buy back into the market at an awkward time in a cash transfer, although it can be faster.

But not all providers can facilitate in-specie transfers, and you can run into fees. Plum charges for in-specie transfers, and HSBC InvestDirect and Charles Stanley Direct charge exit fees.