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Interactive Investor Review

Written by Elizabeth Anderson, Blain Reinkensmeyer
Fact-checked by Steven Hatzakis
Edited by Jeff Anberg

November 21, 2025

Elizabeth Anderson

Elizabeth Anderson is the lead writer and researcher for UK.StockBrokers.com. She has been a financial journalist for more than a decade and has written for major publications including BBC, The Times, and Bloomberg.

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Blain Reinkensmeyer

Blain Reinkensmeyer heads research for all U.S.-based brokerages on StockBrokers.com. He has 20 years of trading experience and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes, among other media outlets.

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Your capital is at risk.

Interactive Investor (ii) is a top choice for UK investors who value cost transparency and a wide investment selection, thanks to its flat-fee model and robust research tools. The fixed monthly fee structure can offer excellent value for those with medium or larger portfolios, especially ISA and SIPP investors looking to avoid percentage-based platform charges.

With thousands of investments to choose from and a strong, research-rich web platform, ii suits investors who like to be hands-on with their portfolio and want the support of expert insights. While beginners with smaller portfolios may find cheaper options elsewhere, Interactive Investor remains one of the most comprehensive and cost-effective platforms for long-term, engaged investors.

verified#1 Overall U.K. Broker in 2025

Minimum Deposit: £1
ISA: Yes
SIPP: Yes

Ratings Awards Historical Ranking

4.5

OVERALL SCORE

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.

#1 Overall	Winner
#1 Website	Winner
#1 Research	Winner
#1 Flat-Fee Broker	Winner

2025	#1
2024	#1
2023	#13
2022	#11
2021	#11
2020	#3

Why you can trust us

Led by Elizabeth Anderson, Lead Writer and Researcher, the UK.StockBrokers.com research team collects data and tests products on an ongoing basis. We review the tools and features most important to U.K. investors – including beginners, casual investors, passive investors, and active traders.

We collect and track data on trading charges, fees, and interest rates to make it easier to understand the cost of investing in the U.K. We analyze a wide range of savings and investment offerings, like ISAs, SIPPs, investment portfolios, pensions, and active trading accounts. We hand-collect and audit data across more than 50 variables in our coverage of the best U.K. investment platforms.

Our researchers open personal brokerage accounts and test all available platforms on desktop, web, and mobile for each broker reviewed on UK.StockBrokers.com. Learn more about how we test.

Pros & Cons Fees Range Of Investments ISA Review Mobile Trading Apps Trading Platforms Education Final Thoughts Star Ratings FAQs

Pros & cons

thumb_up_off_alt Pros

Flat-fee pricing is cost-effective for larger portfolios.
Low fees for ISAs, SIPPs, and general accounts.
New managed ISA offers ready-made, diversified portfolios.
Research and education materials are excellent.

thumb_down_off_alt Cons

Charges £3.99 for mutual fund trades; these are often free on other platforms.
Can be pricey for small portfolios under £15,000.

My top takeaways for Interactive Investor in 2025:

Interactive Investor is best for cost-conscious investors with medium to large portfolios, thanks to its flat-fee pricing, which often works out cheaper than percentage-based ISA fees or SIPP fees on rival platforms.
The platform charges £4.99 per month for portfolios under £50,000 (Investor Essentials Plan) and £11.99 per month for portfolios above this level, covering both general accounts and ISA fees.
SIPP fees are a flat £5.99 or £12.99 per month, depending on portfolio size, making it a strong option for hands-on retirement investors who want predictable costs.
Interactive Investor offers over 17,000 UK and international investments across 17 global exchanges, including shares, ETFs, mutual funds, investment trusts, and bonds.
The website includes advanced charting tools, with over 100 indicators, drawing tools, and the ability to compare multiple companies on a single chart.
Research and educational content are industry-leading, making ii a strong fit for investors who value in-depth market insights and guidance.

Interactive Investor fees

Interactive Investor offers excellent value for investors with medium to large portfolios, thanks to its predictable flat-fee structure. Unlike percentage-based ISA fees or SIPP fees charged by many rivals, ii’s monthly plans can become significantly cheaper as your portfolio grows. However, ii is not the cheapest choice for beginners, as platforms like Trading 212, Freetrade, and eToro offer commission-free trading with no monthly subscription fees, making them better suited to smaller accounts.

Flat-fee pricing structure: Interactive Investor appeals to investors who prefer flat monthly fees rather than charges based on the size of their portfolio. Flat fees make long-term costs easier to predict and can be substantially cheaper once your account reaches around £30,000–£50,000.

ISA fees:

£4.99/month (Investor Essentials) for portfolios under £50,000
£11.99/month (Investor Plan) for portfolios over £50,000

These fees cover both the general trading account and Stocks and Shares ISA.

SIPP fees follow a similar flat-fee model:

£5.99/month for SIPPs under £50,000
£12.99/month for SIPPs over £50,000

This makes ii particularly competitive for retirement savers with larger balances, especially compared with platforms that charge percentage-based SIPP fees.

Trading fees: ii charges £3.99 per trade for funds, ETFs, U.K. shares, U.S. shares, and investment trusts.

With ii’s regular investing service, you can make up to 25 free monthly trades when contributing at least £25 per month, significantly reducing ongoing costs.

Dividend reinvestment costs £0.99, whereas some brokers (e.g., Hargreaves Lansdown) offer this for free.

International trading fees: Buying international shares outside the U.S. costs £5.99 or £9.99 per trade, depending on your plan.

FX fees are 1.5% on trades up to £25,000, gradually falling to 0.25% beyond £600,000.

These FX rates are higher than many competitors like Trading 212 that charges 0.15% or Interactive Brokers that charges 0.03%.

A £20,000 international trade would cost £300 in FX fees at ii, compared with £30 at Trading 212.

Real-time data costs: Real-time market data is not free. Users must pay extra for live prices, which can make pre-trade comparisons more difficult compared with platforms that include real-time pricing at no additional cost.

Feature	Interactive Investor
Minimum Deposit info	£1
Share Trading: 0-9 Deals/ Month info	£3.99
Share Trading: 10-19 Deals/ Month info	£3.99
Share Trading: 20+ Deals/ Month info	£3.99
Annual Platform Fee (Funds): £0 - £250,000 info	£59.88 / £143.88
Annual Platform Fee (Funds): £250K-£500K info	£143.88
Annual Platform Fee (Funds): £500,000 - £1m info	£143.88
Annual Platform Fee (Funds): £1m and over info	£143.88
Bonds - Corporate - Fee info	£3.99
Bonds - Government (Gilts) - Fee info	£3.99
ETFs - Fee info	£3.99
Investment Trusts - Fee info	£3.99
Telephone Dealing Fee info	£49

query_stats 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

Interactive Investor offers one of the strongest investment ranges of any U.K. platform, making it excellent for investors who want variety, depth, and flexibility. With access to thousands of global shares, ETFs, funds, investment trusts, and bonds, ii is well-suited to hands-on investors who want full control over their portfolios. The only notable omissions are cryptocurrency trading and CFDs, which means traders looking for high-risk products may prefer a different platform.

Interactive Investor offers more than 11,000 stocks, 3,400 mutual funds, 2,400 ETFs, and 265 investment trusts on its platform, as well as bonds and gilts. This broad market coverage makes ii suitable for nearly any investing style.

Interactive Investor has many materials to help people get started, including explainer articles and model portfolios. To help narrow down the wide list of funds, ii offers a Super 60 rated list, which incorporates funds, investment trusts, and ETFs, and ACE 40, a sustainable rated list that includes funds, investment trusts, self-employed pensions, and ETFs.

Interactive Investor's trade ticket presents clear order details before you place a trade.

SIPPs: Interactive Investor’s SIPP offers a vast selection of investment options, with access to the same assortment of equities and markets as its other account types. For those who prefer a hands-off approach, ready-made portfolios are also available.

Ready-made portfolios: Interactive Investor offers the Super 60 fund list, which contains simple, one-fund options picked by investment managers at ii. There is also the option to invest in ii's Managed ISA, where you can opt for ready-made portfolios tailored to your risk tolerance, and how you want to invest — whether you prefer active or passive investments. Fees are £5.99 monthly for an ISA plus 0.12% to 0.26% in ongoing annual charges, depending on the portfolio you choose. In total, there are 10 portfolios you can choose from. On a £20,000 investment in ii’s cheapest ready-made ISA portfolio, you’d pay total annual fees of £97.88. I think this is good value and becomes even better value the more money you have invested. On a £45,000 investment, for example, you’d pay a total annual fee of £130.38.

To invest in ii's Managed ISA you need to pay an initial lump sum of £250 or pay in increments of £50 a month until £250 is reached.

Feature	Interactive Investor
Share Trading info	Yes
CFD Trading info	No
ETFs info	Yes
Mutual Funds info	Yes
Bonds - Corporate info	Yes
Bonds - Government (Gilts) info	Yes
Investment Trusts info	Yes
Spread Betting info	No
Crypto Trading info	No
Advisor Services info	No

Interactive Investor ISA review

Interactive Investor’s stocks and shares ISA is best suited to those who prefer flat fees, and especially those with larger portfolios.

Pricing: The Interactive Investor (ii) stocks and shares ISA costs £4.99 a month for portfolios under £50,000 and £11.99 if you have more than that. Regular investing is free. Otherwise, trades cost £3.99 for U.K. and U.S. shares or funds, and £9.99 for other international shares.

The monthly fee can be cheaper than percentage-based platforms if you invest £30,000 or more. For example, Hargreaves Lansdown charges fees of 0.45% if you invest in mutual funds. On a portfolio of £30,000, for example, you’d pay annual platform charges of £135 compared with Interactive Investor’s charge of £59.88 (£4.99 a month). However, it’s worth pointing out that Hargreaves Lansdown annual platform fee is capped at £45 if you invest in shares or ETFs, so a shares-only portfolio could work out cheaper than Interactive Investor.

Some platforms, such as Freetrade, XTB, and Trading 212, have no platform charges for their ISAs. So if you're just starting out or only have a small amount to invest, Interactive Investor would likely work to be more expensive for you, especially when you could go with another platform that doesn't charge for its ISA.

With Interactive Investor’s £11.99 Investor plan (or £19.99 Super Investor plan), you can also open junior ISAs at no extra cost. This offers a good way to manage multiple accounts for your family.

Platform: Investment choice is broad. You can buy funds, shares, ETFs, investment trusts, and bonds. Or you can pick from 10 ready-made managed portfolios based on how much risk you want to take and whether your priority is sustainable investing. They invest in assets such as shares, bonds, and property.

Interactive Investor’s website and app are very user-friendly, and the customer service is reliable. I like the wide range of guides and other learning materials on the website.

Overall, ii’s ISA suits investors with larger portfolios looking for fixed, predictable fees. You’ll either pay £59.88 or £143.88 a year, depending on whether you have less or more than £50,000 invested. Regular investing avoids trading charges, keeping costs low as your investments grow.

Mobile trading apps

Interactive Investor’s mobile app is clean, reliable, and easy to use, but it is far more basic than the desktop experience. You can access your watchlists, find investments, view basic research, and see stock price and market movements through the app. Ideally, though, I’d like to see it offer more extensive charting features and more research to customers.

Interactive Investor also offers an ii Community mobile app, where you can discuss investments, stocks, and see the portfolios of other users. This is taking a similar approach to the likes of eToro, which already has an active social community. However, I think it’s a shame the community forum is not available in the main ii app. You have to download the separate ii Community app, which makes accessing it less convenient.

Overall, ii’s mobile experience is solid but simple. It’s ideal for investors who mainly check balances or place occasional trades on the go. However, active traders or investors who rely heavily on mobile charting may find the app lacks the depth offered by competitors.

Interactive Investor's community hub provides a space for investors to discuss markets and compare strategies.

Trading platforms

Interactive Investor’s web platform is one of the best in the U.K., offering powerful tools, excellent usability, and advanced charting features suited to both beginners and experienced traders. I found the website both easy to navigate and laid out to make it easy to understand Interactive Investor’s services and charges. Through the ii website, you can see an overview of your portfolio, set price alerts for up to 10 investments, search for investments, and create up to 10 watch lists. You can also hold up to nine international currencies in your account to avoid paying foreign exchange, or FX, fees on every overseas trade.

Elizabeth's take:

"I was pleased to find plentiful and useful guides explaining how to get the most from the platform – for example, explaining how to set up and manage a watch list. Interactive Investor is one of the easiest platforms to use and get to grips with, in my opinion, thanks to its focus on helping the customer as much as possible."

Elizabeth Anderson

The website offers a wide range of charting tools with more than 100 indicators available and a good number of drawing tools. These allow you to monitor simple moving averages and to use indicators such as the Relative Strength Index to help determine whether a stock has become overbought or oversold. These tools aren’t available on the mobile app and are probably not needed for most investors, but they are useful if you are a more hands-on trader and like to analyse market trends.

Interactive Investor's charting tools on its web platform provide a wide range of indicators and comparison features for research.

You can also compare the historical performance of stocks, and you can overlay one company over the other to draw better comparisons. This is a great feature not offered by all platforms.

The Interactive Investor web platform also offers a good way to sort and filter stocks, funds, and ETFs. You can narrow down the selection by filtering by sector, region, market cap, or dividend yield. However, for funds I think it would be good if Interactive Investor offered a way to filter by ongoing charges or by active or passive.

Feature	Interactive Investor
Web Platform info	Yes
iPhone App info	Yes
Android App info	Yes
Stock Alerts info	Yes
Charting - Indicators / Studies info	104
Charting - Drawing Tools info
Charting - Notes info	Yes
Charting - Display Corporate Events info	Yes
Charting - Stock Overlays info	Yes
Charting - Index Overlays info	No

Education

Interactive Investor excels in education, offering accessible content for beginners, advanced analysis for traders, and high-quality expert research. Its Learn hub features market insights, share tips, and articles from its own in-house experts and external contributors. ii also publishes detailed reports that look at the wider U.K. savings and pensions landscape to strive for change.

It’s clear that overall, ii believes it has a duty to provide the support, intelligence, and investment choices to help Britons make better financial decisions. It offers educational content that is detailed, easy to understand, and available in accessible formats, from articles to videos. Regular webinars are also on offer, including Lunchtime Live with Bloomberg columnist Merryn Somerset Webb, and the website has an area where you can watch previously recorded webinars.

Interactive Investor also has a partnership with Trading Central to showcase ‘market buzz’, giving real-time information on companies seeing a higher number of mentions on social media, news, and websites. Trading Central also offers other technical insights into specific companies, giving ratings for value, growth, quality, and an overall rating that reflects whether the general view is bullish or bearish. For those looking to invest in individual stocks, this offers a useful way to see the general prospects of a particular company, although, of course, returns are never guaranteed with investing.

There is also the ii community, which you can access when logged into the web platform. Here, you can see an overview of the recent performance of your portfolio and can discuss your investments, or ask questions to other ii users. There are groups you can join, such as novice investors, to get more tailored support from other users.

Interactive Investor has recently launched a new investment coach tool, where you complete a short quiz to determine your investor profile. You'll then get bespoke content, videos, and an outline of your next best actions to build confidence. It will be interesting to see whether this is picked up by users.

Feature	Interactive Investor
Education (Share Trading) info	Yes
Education (Funds) info	Yes
Education (Retirement) info	Yes
Client Webinars info	No
Client Webinars (Archived) info	No

Final thoughts

Interactive Investor is a great choice for people who like flat-fee costs — particularly those with a large investment portfolio of perhaps £70,000 or more, or in a SIPP. Investing comes with costs, and it can be hard to understand exactly what you'll end up paying using brokers that charge fees based on a percentage of your portfolio.

Interactive Investor does charge for mutual fund trades, which is one downside, and is unlike rivals that typically offer fund trades for free. However, if you invest monthly into the same fund, you’ll pay no buying charges.

The platform also charges £3.99 for U.K. and U.S. shares, and £9.99 for shares in other international markets. Some platforms, such as eToro, Trading 212, Freetrade, and CMC Invest, have no charges for these. But overall, ii is a very good platform and offers among the best value for investors. If you invest regularly each month, you’ll pay no trading charges at all when buying, although you'll pay trading fees when selling. Interactive Investor's SIPP can offer a particularly good value if you have a large amount invested, are engaged with your pension savings, and are happy to invest your own funds.

Interactive Investor Star Ratings

Feature	Interactive Investor
Overall Rating
Charges & Fees
Investment Choices
Mobile App
Website
Ease of Use
Education

FAQs

Is Interactive Investor good for beginners?

Interactive Investor is a good platform for any investor, although beginners with a small portfolio might find there are cheaper platforms to start with – such as Freetrade, Trading 212, or Hargreaves Lansdown if you want to invest in mutual funds. Interactive Investor has extensive educational articles and guides to help beginner investors, and also offers ready-made portfolios to help investors get started straight away.

How safe is my money with Interactive Investor?

Your money is very safe with Interactive Investor as the platform has been around for almost three decades. Like any legitimate financial services firm in the U.K., it is covered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), meaning customers are protected for up to £85,000 should the company go bust for any reason.

What types of ISAs does Interactive Investor offer?

Interactive Investor offers three types of ISAs, giving investors flexibility depending on their goals. Its core offering is the Stocks and Shares ISA, which provides access to a large investment universe including more than 11,000 shares, 3,400 funds, 2,400 ETFs, and a range of investment trusts, bonds, gilts, and ready-made Managed ISA portfolios. This account uses ii’s flat-fee structure (£4.99 or £11.99 a month depending on your portfolio size), which often becomes better value as your investments grow.

The platform also offers a Junior ISA, which can be opened at no extra cost if you subscribe to the £11.99 Investor plan or £19.99 Super Investor plan. The Junior ISA supports the same broad range of investments as the adult version, making it a strong option for parents who want to manage multiple family accounts cost-effectively.

Interactive Investor doesn't offer Cash ISAs or Lifetime ISAs.

What interest rate does Interactive Investor offer on uninvested cash?

Interactive Investor pays tiered interest depending on how much cash you hold on the platform and the account you have*:

Account type	Up to £10,000	£10,001 - £100,000	£100,000+
Trading account	0.75%	1.40%	2.30%
ISA / Junior ISA	1.25%	1.50%	2.40%
SIPP	1.90%	2.50%	2.75%

*Gross interest rate, Source: ii

What kind of customer service does Interactive Investor offer?

Interactive Investor allows you to contact ii by phone, with lines open between 07:45 and 17:30 Monday to Friday. There is no live chat in the app but you can send a message through the app for non urgent queries.

How does Interactive Investor compare to Trading 212?

Interactive Investor and Trading 212 are both strong platforms, but they cater to different types of investors. Interactive Investor is generally a better fit for those with medium to large portfolios, thanks to its flat-fee structure, which can dramatically reduce costs as your investments grow. It also offers a wider selection of assets, including investment trusts, bonds, gilts, and professionally managed portfolios, and provides far more advanced research, charting tools, and educational content. Investors managing SIPPs, Junior ISAs, or diversified long-term portfolios may find ii’s offering much more comprehensive.

Trading 212, however, excels in cost-efficiency. With no platform fees, no ISA fee, and free trading, it is typically cheaper for beginners and those with smaller portfolios. It also offers fractional shares, something ii does not, and provides a sleek, mobile-first design that appeals to newer investors. While Trading 212 lacks the depth of research and the breadth of investment options available on ii, it remains one of the most cost-effective routes into investing.

In short, Interactive Investor is best for long-term investors and larger portfolios, while Trading 212 is best for beginners or fee-sensitive investors focused on simplicity and free trading.

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.

More Guides

About Interactive Investor

Interactive Investor was founded in 1995 and has more than 400,000 customers — around the same as rival AJ Bell — who hold a total of around £55 billion through the platform. Its company mission is to offer transparent and fair fees to its customers. Interactive Investor was bought by institutional investor Abrdn in 2022.

Compare Interactive Investor

See how Interactive Investor stacks up against other brokers.

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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.

Blain Reinkensmeyer has 20 years of trading experience with over 2,500 trades placed during that time. He heads research for all U.S.-based brokerages on StockBrokers.com and is respected by executives as the leading expert covering the online broker industry. Blain’s insights have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Chicago Tribune, among other media outlets.

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.

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.