Interactive Brokers vs Barclays 2024

Interactive Brokers is a sophisticated trading platform aimed at confident and institutional-grade investors. For newer investors, Interactive Brokers is more intimidating, though it's worth exploring the platform to see if you could save money or access more investments compared to other brokers.

Barclays Smart Investor offers a wide range of investments and accounts and is a good value for those with a midsize portolio who like flat fees. On the downside, it can be complicated to open an account as a non-Barclays bank customer, and you can’t buy or sell investments through the app if you don’t have a Barclays bank account.

Alongside the cost per trade, most UK online brokers also charge a monthly, quarterly, or annual management fee, which varies based on the account type and balance. Based on our thorough review, Interactive Brokers offers better pricing than Barclays for share dealing.

Assuming a £30,000 portfolio size, here are the total annual costs for share dealing with both brokers, given different monthly activity scenarios.

5 trades per year - Interactive Brokers would cost £15 per year, while Barclays would cost £105 per year.

12 trades per year - Interactive Brokers would cost £36 per year, while Barclays would cost £75 or £147 per year.

36 trades per year - Interactive Brokers would cost £108 per year, while Barclays would cost £75 or £291 per year.

120 trades per year - Interactive Brokers would cost £360 per year, while Barclays would cost £75 or £795 per year.

3 fund trades per year - Interactive Brokers would cost £0 per year, while Barclays would cost £0 per year.

Interactive Brokers requires a minimum deposit of £0, while Barclays requires a minimum deposit of £0. From our testing we found for accounts between £0 - £250,000 Interactive Brokers charges annual custody fees of 0, while Barclays charges annual custody fees of £0 - £525.

Interactive Brokers offers investors access to ISA, SIPP, Share Trading, CFD Trading, Funds, ETFs, Bonds - Corporate, Bonds - Government (Gilts) and Investment Trusts, while Barclays offers investors access to ISA, SIPP, Share Trading, Funds, ETFs, Bonds - Corporate, Bonds - Government (Gilts), Investment Trusts and Advisor Services. Neither have Spread Betting and Crypto Trading. Investing encompasses a wide variety of asset classes, so finding a broker that offers every investment type you are interested in is important.

Self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) and individual savings accounts (ISAs) are tax-advantaged savings accounts that are an important tool for many individual investors. You can read more about how these accounts operate at Gov.UK: Click here for SIPP information and here for ISA information. Our analysis finds that Both Interactive Brokers and Barclays offer SIPP and ISA accounts.

In our analysis of top brokers for share dealing in the U.K., we research whether each broker offers the ability to trade cash cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin and ethereum, which is still a somewhat rare offering amongst major U.K. brokers. Our review finds that neither Interactive Brokers nor Barclays offer crypto investing.

Our testing concluded that the website of Interactive Brokers is better than the website of Barclays. Interactive Brokers offers more functionality, is cleanly designed, and is, overall, easier to use for beginners and casual investors.

To compare the trading platforms of both Interactive Brokers and Barclays, we tested each broker's stock trading app. All features compared, our analysis finds that Interactive Brokers offers a better mobile app. Dive deeper: Best Stock Trading Apps UK.

Educational offerings are of particular importance to those who are newer to investing, and we examine the availability of several different types of educational materials in our analysis. Our research finds that Interactive Brokers offers traders access to Client Webinars, Client Webinars (Archived), Education (Share Trading), Education (Funds) and Education (Retirement), while Barclays offers access to Education (Share Trading), Education (Funds) and Education (Retirement).