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If you're new to investing, the best investment apps should offer low fees and access to the types of accounts and investment products you care about most.
The app you choose should suit your investment style and offer the tools you need (such as educational guides and/or courses, human advisor access, and strong customer support) to achieve your financial goals.
Best Investment Apps for Beginners
- SoFi Invest®: Best overall investment app for beginners
- Acorns Invest: Best automated investment app for beginners
- Ally Invest: Best overall runner-up investment app for beginners
- TD Ameritrade: Best active trading investment app for beginners
- Public Investing: Best socially responsible investment app for beginners
- Stockpile: Best kids investment app for beginners
Compare the Top Investment Apps for Beginners
The best investment apps for beginners are easy-to-use platforms with simple trading, helpful tools, personalized portfolios, and commission-free trades on assets like stocks or ETFs. These apps also offer learning tools like webinars and blog posts.
Here are the best investment apps for beginners as picked by Business Insider editors in 2024.
SoFi Invest
SoFi is a top investment app for beginners thanks to an easy-to-use interface paired with rock-bottom pricing. You can get started at SoFi Invest with just $1, and there are no commissions for trades and no recurring account fees. Even the managed portfolio product, SoFi automated investing, where your ETFs are all picked and managed for you, is free to use.
You can easily browse potential investment opportunities by sorting through categorized stocks and ETFs. Complimentary financial planning is available for all SoFi members outside of the app, alongside additional benefits. Work with certified financial planners (CFPs) who can help you reach your goals.
If you are a beginner and want help putting an investment strategy together, SoFi is an ideal place to start.
What to look out for: SoFi doesn't offer automatic tax-loss harvesting.
Acorns Invest
Acorns is an investment app for people who know they should be investing but don't have or want to spend the time to manage it themselves. For $3 per month, Acorns will take care of everything. That includes automatic spare change investing through transaction round-ups, automated transfers, retirement account savings, banking perks, and a fully automated investment plan.
Invest in a diversified portfolio of low-cost ETFs based on your risk tolerance, goals, and time horizon. You can choose to invest in Acorn's Core portfolios or ESG portfolios.
The big upside of Acorns is that it's so easy to use. The big downside is that there's a fee no matter what. This is arguably better than asset-based fee deductions, which fluctuate as your balance grows. With the monthly fee, you'll pay the same amount every year. For additional accounts and features, including investment accounts for children, you'll have to pay $9 per month.
What to look out for: You won't be able to choose individual investments with Acorns unless you pay extra.
Ally Invest
Beginners often do well with straightforward investment platforms. Ally Invest offers just that through its mobile app investment app best for beginners. You can trade stocks, ETFs, and options with no commissions.
Plus, if you prefer the robo-advisor route, Ally Invest Robo Portfolios creates a personalized portfolio of ETFs for you. The app offers two robo-portfolio options: the cash-enhanced portfolio or the market-focused portfolio. Ally Invest's app is easy to navigate with a handful of accessible investment features like market screeners, performance charts, stock analytics, and a Smart Score ranking.
For no advisory fee, cash-enhanced portfolios set aside 30% of your asset allocations as an interest-earning cash buffer. Market-focused portfolios only use about 2% of your portfolio as a cash buffer with a 0.30% advisory fee.
If you prefer a more hands-on approach to investing, beginners can open a self-directed trading account for no account minimum and 24/7 market access. Customize your portfolio with hand-picked stocks, ETFs, options, bonds, mutual funds, and low-priced securities.
What to look out for: Ally Invest offers wealth management services, but you'll need at least $100,000 to get started.
TD Ameritrade
If you are new to the markets and plan to get into active trading, TD Ameritrade is a good place to start. It charges no commissions for stock or ETF trades and offers multiple account platforms that align with various investment styles and goals.
When you're just starting, you'll probably feel most comfortable in the main TD Ameritrade app. As your investment skills grow, you can upgrade to thinkorswim, the premier active trading platform from TD Ameritrade. It has tons of useful features for active traders. Important for beginners, there's a feature to chat with an expert trader inside of thinkorswim.
What to look out for: Charles Schwab acquired TD Ameritrade in 2020. However, Schwab has announced it plans to keep TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim in its product lineup going forward. TD Ameritrade's managed accounts (Essential Portfolios, Selective Portfolios, and Personalized Portfolios) are also no longer available to new clients. Still, prospective investors can alternatively invest in managed accounts through its partner, Charles Schwab.
Public
When you're a beginner in the stock market, it can feel intimidating to research and choose stocks and other investments. Public combines features from social networks like Facebook and Twitter with traditional brokerage features. That makes an investment app ideal for beginners learning their way around the markets.
You can learn from the portfolios of other experts by following their posts in the Public feed or creating group chats with other users and participating in live investing events and conversations. Invest in over two dozen cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, dogecoin, and ether.
With fractional shares starting, you can buy into many supported companies without putting up enough cash for a full share. Alternative assets include art, NFTs, collectibles, and more for 2.5% per transaction.
What to look out for: While it doesn't offer every popular type of investment, Public covers stocks and ETFs in a great way for newer or experienced investors looking to improve their investment strategy.
Stockpile
Stockpile offers commission-free stock and ETF trades, providing unique features that complement its $o commission fee structure. It also offers crypto investing. Stockpile allows fractional share investing and supports the gift of stock through gift cards, which makes it perfect for the youngest investors.
If you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or relative who wants to help a child learn how the stock market works, Stockpile is perfect for your needs. It makes it easy to gift stock and keep tabs on the account of a minor. It also makes it fun to navigate through supported stocks while educating users through "mini-lessons" that teach how to invest.
A Stockpile membership gets you access to one adult account, five kids accounts, 4000+ stocks and ETFs, and more for $4.95 per month. You can opt-in for the 30-day free trial to see if Stockpile fits your family.
What to look out for: Stockpile only offers stocks, ETFs, and crypto, so you'll need to consider other platforms if you'd like to invest in additional asset types.
Introduction to Investment Apps for Beginners
Beginner-friendly investment apps make participating in the stock market more accessible and less intimidating than traditional trading platforms. Investment apps typically have user-friendly interfaces, low trading fees, and a library of educational content so consumers can learn while investing their money.
Simple and affordable portfolio diversification is a huge appeal of investment apps for beginners. Many investment apps have mobile and web platforms. Some apps may have a separate advanced platform consisting of personalized dashboards, riskier investment options, and other charting tools suitable for sophisticated investors.
Beginner Investment Apps FAQs
Beginners can start investing through an investment app for beginners or a beginner-friendly brokerage account. Investment apps for novices are generally low-cost, such as robo-advisors, which mainly trade low-cost ETFs.
Investments best for beginners include exchange-traded funds (ETFs), low-cost index funds, and a blend of corporate bonds and other fixed-income securities. The best investments for you can differ depending on your age, proximity to retirement, and risk tolerance.
You don't need much money to start investing with top trading platforms. Some investment platforms let you invest in fractional shares of stocks with only $1 such as SoFi Invest.
Why You Should Trust Us: Our Methodology
Choosing an investment app that combines low costs with the features you care about most is important for beginners. Whether you're looking to build a passive portfolio of funds, an active portfolio of stocks, or any other investment strategy, a brokerage and investment app is designed to meet your needs. Investment platforms are given a rating between 0 and 5.
To make our selections, we used Business Insider's methodology for rating investing platforms to focus on costs and fees, app features, types of accounts available, investment products available, and beginner-friendly features to manage your investment account on the go.
