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Halifax Review
Vanguard ReviewHalifax Share Dealing Review
Written by Elizabeth Anderson
Fact-checked by Steven Hatzakis
Edited by Carolyn Kimball, Jeff Anberg
Your capital is at risk.
Halifax Share Dealing is typically used by people who are already Halifax banking customers. The main selling point of Halifax Share Dealing is its fixed low annual management charge of £36 for ISAs and general investment accounts, which is beneficial if you have a large investment portfolio compared to another platform that charges percentage fees. SIPP charges are capped at £198 a year.
However, the platform is not very modern and offers very limited tools and materials. Dealing fees are on the high end for share and fund trading. There may be a better platform for you that is cheaper and easier to open, depending on how often you invest.
-
Minimum Deposit:
£0 -
ISA:
Yes -
SIPP:
Yes
| Investment Choices | |
| Charges & Fees | |
| Website | |
| Education | |
| Mobile App | |
| Ease of Use |
Check out UK.StockBrokers.com's picks for the best investment platforms in 2025.
| 2025 | #19 |
| 2024 | #15 |
| 2020 | #9 |
Table of Contents
Pros & cons
Pros
- Transparent pricing with no inactivity fees.
- Free monthly investing for regular contributions.
- No admin fee for investors aged 18 to 25.
Cons
- Limited tools and research for informed decision-making.
- Mobile app feels dated and lacks key functions.
- Onboarding is slow if you're not a Halifax customer.
Halifax fees
Halifax Share Dealing charges are on the high side at £9.50 per transaction. Halifax also charges this fee for funds, which are free to trade on many other platforms. However, Halifax offers free regular dealing, meaning there are no trading charges if you commit to buying the same investment each month through direct debit.
An upside of Halifax is that you don’t need a significant lump sum to start investing. You can either pay in an amount of your choosing upfront, or you can set up regular dealing from £20 a month.
Halifax also offers Commission Countdowns a few times a month, where dealing commission for U.K. stocks is reduced to £3.50 over a two-hour time period.
Another bonus is that Halifax does not charge for international investment trades such as buying U.S. stocks, although a currency conversion fee of 1.25% is applied. This 1.25% is on the high side, as other platforms typically charge 1% or less. However, unless you are trading a large amount, this shouldn’t make a significant difference.
There is an annual management charge of £36 to hold an ISA or general investment account with Halifax, which is lower than the £40 charged on the sister platform Lloyds.
Flat fees versus fees by percentage
The annual management charges at Halifax can work out to be very cheap for people with large portfolios. For example, if you held £100,000 in funds in the Halifax ISA, you’d pay a flat £36 a year in management charges to Halifax (although separate fund manager fees apply). In comparison, if you held £100,000 with Hargreaves Lansdown, which charges a 0.45% annual management fee for mutual funds, you’d pay management fees of £450.
The fee for holding a SIPP with Halifax rose in 2024, although can still work out very cost efficient. The charge is 0.25% or capped at £16.50 a month, whichever is lower, which effectively means management fees are capped at £198 a year.
Halifax is also attempting to appeal to younger investors by offering no admin fee for those aged 18 to 25, although regular dealing fees apply.
Scenario pricing: When calculating annual share dealing costs, trading frequency and account balance are the two most important factors to consider. Assuming a £30,000 portfolio in a traditional, taxable share dealing account, here are five scenarios of how much Halifax would cost based on trade frequency:
- 5 trades per year = £83.50
- 12 trades per year = £150
- 36 trades per year = £378
- 120 trades per year = £1,176
- 3 fund trades per year = £64.50
| Feature |
 Halifax
|
|---|---|
| Minimum Deposit | £0 |
| Share Trading: 0-9 Deals/ Month | £9.50 |
| Share Trading: 10-19 Deals/ Month | £9.50 |
| Share Trading: 20+ Deals/ Month | £9.50 |
| Annual Custody Fee: £0 - £250,000 | £36 |
| Annual Custody Fee: £250K-£500K | £36 |
| Annual Custody Fee: £500,000 - £1m | £36 |
| Annual Custody Fee: £1m and over | £36 |
| Bonds - Corporate - Fee | £9.5 |
| Bonds - Government (Gilts) - Fee | £9.5 |
| ETFs - Fee | £9.5 |
| Investment Trusts - Fee | £9.5 |
| Telephone Dealing Fee | £25 |
What type of trader are you?
New to the world of investing? See my picks for the best UK trading platforms for beginners. More experienced traders should check out my guide to the best UK Trading Platforms for Active Traders. If you're looking to trade shares on the go, read my guide to the best UK stock trading apps.
Range of investments
Halifax offers a choice of more than 8,000 investments. You can invest in bonds, ETFs, funds, and either U.K. or international stocks — all the main asset classes an everyday investor would ever likely want or need.
Halifax has partnered with research firm FE fundinfo to design a shortlist of 63 mutual funds, which investors should find useful rather than having to trawl through 2,500 funds. Halifax also offers an ETF Quicklist, which lists 14 U.K. ETFs based on themes such as clean energy or AI to make it easier to get started with fund investing.
Halifax also offers a "Ready Made Investment Account" or ISA for people who don’t want to pick their own investments. Investors have to commit to paying £50 a month or a £500 lump sum for a ready-made option. There are three options to choose from: Cautious, Balanced, or Progressive, each geared to those risk levels. The fees for the ready-made investments are £3 per month plus ongoing charges of around 0.23% and transaction costs of 0.11%.
Additionally, if you prefer tailored investment advice and have £100,000 in savings, investments, or income, then Halifax has partnered with Schroders Personal Wealth to offer financial planning.
| Feature |
Halifax
|
|---|---|
| Share Trading | No |
| CFD Trading | No |
| ETFs | Yes |
| Funds | Yes |
| Bonds - Corporate | Yes |
| Bonds - Government (Gilts) | Yes |
| Investment Trusts | Yes |
| Spread Betting | No |
| Crypto Trading | No |
| Advisor Services | Yes |
Mobile trading app
The Halifax share dealing app is fairly basic but it’s easy enough to buy shares, funds and investment trusts through the app. However, there are no chart tools or research reports available through the app, so you’ll need to go through the main website or the websites of other platforms if you want more information about potential investments.
You need to have registered for online banking first before logging into the mobile app, although you don’t need to have a bank account with Halifax. Registering for online banking may involve creating a separate password and username as some special characters are recognised in the Share Dealing service but not the banking app, so it can get confusing.
Your Halifax Share Dealing account also needs to have been funded (have money put in) before it will show through the app. It can sometimes take a couple of days for your account to show up. Opening an account through Halifax can be frustrating if you are looking to trade quickly.
Because Halifax Share Dealing and Lloyds Share Dealing are part of Lloyds Banking Group, you can also see your Lloyds Share Dealing account through the Halifax app’s new Save & Invest page. However, you can’t manage your Lloyds account through the Halifax app.
There is also a new save and invest calculator offered by Halifax in the app, which shows you what your money could be worth in the future by investing. It’s also easier for users to see the seven account options offered by Halifax, including the share dealing account, SIPP, or ready-made investments.
Trading platforms
The website for Halifax share dealing feels quite old-fashioned and looks like a banking platform in the way it is laid out.
When you log in, you’ll see the overall value of your account and how much cash is available to invest. You’ll also be given the date of the next Commission Countdown when trading fees are reduced to £3.50 over a two-hour window.
Investment information and news are not featured on the home page and it’s not easy to search for stocks by index or market. You have to put in the company name or stock ticker directly. It means you have to know what you are searching for and it’s difficult to get inspiration for new investments.
Elizabeth's take:
"In my experience, the website is prone to crashes and error messages, particularly when setting up an account."
Research is not available through your Halifax Share Dealing account, but you are directed to the general Halifax website for key financial information about particular companies or funds. There appear to be no chart tools. You can view the historical price of a company's share price but cannot overlay different companies or annotate a chart. There is an option for ‘advanced chart’ but this doesn’t seem to be working on either the desktop website or mobile website.
For investors who wish to share trade via the web or active traders looking for more tools and research, I would recommend either Interactive Brokers or IG.
Education
The educational materials available at Halifax are not as extensive as those offered by other platforms. However, Halifax offers good basic articles on its website around how investments including ETFs, trusts, funds, and shares work. As an example, Halifax provides a YouTube video demonstrating how the Share Dealing platform works.
In my view, Halifax could improve the educational resources on its app as currently there are none. It would be useful to get investment inspiration or to read guides about how investing works. Currently these are only available on the website.
» New to investing? See our guide to the best U.K. trading platforms for beginner investors, based on weeks of hands-on testing and analysis.
| Feature |
Halifax
|
|---|---|
| Education (Share Trading) | No |
| Education (Funds) | No |
| Education (Retirement) | No |
| Client Webinars | No |
| Client Webinars (Archived) | No |
Final thoughts
Halifax Share Dealing may be worth considering if you already have a current savings account with the bank. However, if you aren’t already a Halifax customer, then other platforms — such as Hargreaves Lansdown, Trading 212, or AJ Bell — are much simpler to register with. Other platforms also have cheaper trading fees, particularly if you trade irregularly or have a small amount to invest.
The best feature about Halifax Share Dealing is its low annual management charges of £36 for an ISA or up to £198 for a SIPP, which makes the platform very economical for those with a large investment portfolio. Some other platforms charge percentage fees instead, which can end up more costly.
Halifax Star Ratings
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Halifax
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| Overall Rating |
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| Charges & Fees |
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| Investment Choices |
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| Mobile App |
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| Website |
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| Ease of Use |
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Our testing
Why you should trust us
Elizabeth Anderson has been a financial journalist for more than a decade. She’s written for major national newspapers, contributed to corporate reports and research, and reviewed dozens of share dealing platforms, SIPP providers, ISAs, and brokerage firms. Elizabeth started her career at Bloomberg and has worked for the BBC, The Telegraph, The Times and the i newspaper. She is passionate about helping people understand finance and investing. A keen investor herself, Elizabeth invests through general dealing accounts, ISAs and several SIPPs.
All content on UK.StockBrokers.com is handwritten by a writer, fact-checked by a member of our research team, and edited and published by an editor. Our ratings, rankings, and opinions are entirely our own, and the result of our extensive research and decades of collective experience covering the U.K. brokerage industry.
Ultimately, our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .1% each year, providing site visitors with quality data they can trust. Click here to learn more about how we test.
How we tested
At UK.StockBrokers.com, our online broker reviews are based on our collected quantitative data as well as the observations and qualified opinions of our expert researchers. Each year we publish tens of thousands of words of research and collect hundreds of data points while testing brokerage firms, share dealing platforms, SIPP providers, ISA providers, and other financial service providers relevant to U.K. investors.
Mobile testing is conducted on modern devices that run the most up-to-date operating systems available:
- For Apple, we use MacBook Pro laptops running the latest version of and the iPhone 15 running the latest version of iOS.
- For Android, we use the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra devices running Android OS 14.
All websites and web-based platforms are tested using the latest version of the Google Chrome browser.
Our researchers thoroughly test a wide range of key features, such as the availability and quality of trading platforms for web, desktop, and mobile, charting, real-time and streaming quotes, and educational resources – among other important variables. We also evaluate the overall design of the mobile experience, and look for a fluid user experience moving between mobile and desktop platforms.
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About Halifax
The Halifax share dealing account is run by Halifax, a major U.K. bank. Halifax bank dates back to 1852, initially launching as a building society. Its investment arm Halifax Share Dealing launched in 1996. It is now part of Lloyds Banking Group, which also owns the Lloyds Bank and Scottish Widows brands, among others. Being owned by Lloyds Banking Group, Halifax is among the five largest banks in the U.K. with the group having around 27 million customers.
About the Editorial Team
Elizabeth Anderson, lead writer and researcher, has been a financial journalist for more than a decade. In addition to her work with UK.StockBrokers.com, she has written extensively for major publications including BBC, The Times and Bloomberg. A keen investor herself, she is passionate about helping people understand finance and investing.
Steven Hatzakis is the Global Director of Online Broker Research for UK.StockBrokers.com and ForexBrokers.com. Steven previously served as an Editor for Finance Magnates, where he authored over 1,000 published articles about the online finance industry. Steven is an active fintech and crypto industry researcher and advises blockchain companies at the board level. Over the past 20 years, Steven has held numerous positions within the international forex markets, from writing to consulting to serving as a registered commodity futures representative.
Carolyn Kimball is a former managing editor for Reink Media and former lead editor for the StockBrokers.com Annual Review. Carolyn has more than 20 years of writing and editing experience at major media outlets including NerdWallet, the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose Mercury News. She specializes in coverage of personal financial products and services, wielding her editing skills to clarify complex (some might say befuddling) topics to help consumers make informed decisions about their money.
Jeff Anberg is a Senior Editor at UK.StockBrokers.com. Along with years of experience in media distribution at a global newsroom, Jeff has a versatile knowledge base encompassing the technology and financial markets. He is a long-time active investor and engages in research on emerging markets like cryptocurrency. Jeff holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature with a minor in Philosophy from San Francisco State University.