When it comes to picking the best brokers or investment services - who better than our readers to tell us which firms they rate?
And we did exactly that, ask our readers to vote for the companies and services they believe are the best.
Following on from the success of our very first Readers’ Choice Awards last year, we are once again pleased to announce the winners for 2025. This year saw more than 3,000 responses from MoneyWeek readers, giving us their opinions on brokers’ costs, breadth of service, ease of use and customer support.
Try 6 free issues of MoneyWeek today
Get unparalleled financial insight, analysis and expert opinion you can profit from.
Sign up for MoneyWeek’s free twice-daily newsletter.
Join more than 165,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with latest financial news, insights and expert analysis to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
Join more than 165,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with latest financial news, insights and expert analysis to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
The investment industry does not tend to change very quickly, and so it is not surprising that several of the top-scoring firms are similar from year to year.
But, there are clear trends in your voting and feedback that brokers would be well advised to keep in mind. Investors rightly care about costs, but they also want to see brokers continuing to invest in improving their technology – websites, apps and behind-the-scenes systems to deliver efficient processing of trades and corporate actions. There is diminishing willingness to put up with clunky, outdated interfaces when the newer generation of brokers are showing how it can be done better.
This year, we split the broker category up into more sections. Several popular brokers have different fees for different types of investment, and the range of options that they offer sometimes vary as well. We think doing this gives a better sense of which firms stand out.
We treat the individual savings account (ISA) as the standard type of account in most cases. Changes to dividend taxes and capital gains taxes in recent years mean that this will be the better choice even for investors with relatively small portfolios, compared with taxable accounts. Pensions are more complicated to compare, but we split them into “simple” and “full” as a starting point to reflect the trade-off between costs and choice.
MoneyWeek Readers' Choice Awards 2025 winners
Best broker for shares and investment trusts: AJ Bell
Winner: AJ Bell
For shares and investment trusts, we would expect the winner to be a strong all-rounder, with a good service covering both UK-listed stocks and a range of international markets - AJ Bell topped the table here, doing well on all our criteria.
“Good value for money, excellent platform and app,” one reader stated. The strongest suggestion for improvement was that foreign-exchange (FX) margins should be lower for overseas shares. While AJ Bell’s FX charges are lower than some peers, these costs generally remain too high among UK brokers and stronger competition is required.
Among less widely used services, iWeb scored well, albeit with some feedback about its “basic” interface. This is one of three brands used by Lloyds for its sharedealing service (the others being Lloyds and Halifax). The underlying service is the same in each case, but the fees vary considerably and iWeb’s low-cost proposition (no account fees and £5 per trade) can offer a very good deal for some investors who are happy with its limitations.
Best low-cost broker: Trading 212
The top-scoring firm on costs was Trading 212, just as it was last year.
While many of the low-cost brokers tend to offer a restricted range of investments, Trading 212 has a broader service. It uses US brokerage giant Interactive Brokers for some of its execution and custody which gives it access to a good range of international exchanges.
Users could go with Interactive Brokers directly, but one of Trading 212’s key selling points is the simplicity of its website and app.
“As a new investor, Trading 212 has made the experience an understandable and enjoyable one,” says a reader.
Trading 212 does not offer everything available on Interactive Brokers, but for those markets that are provided, it can be cheaper since it currently has no dealing or account fees. Instead, the firm aims to make money from services such as contracts for difference trading or securities lending.
Best broker for open-ended funds: interactive investor
Fees for investing in and holding open-ended investment companies (OEICs) and unit trusts are different from share-trading charges at many brokers.
In particular, where brokers charge a percentage of the value of your investments as an account fee, this is often capped at a much higher level when holding open-ended funds. Consequently, the best-value platform for holding funds may not be the same as for shares or investment trusts. In addition, open-ended funds trade and settle in a different way from securities listed on the stock exchange, so the range of funds available can vary more between providers (and some low-cost services have little or no options for trading these open-end funds).
Of the firms with a large number of votes, interactive investor came top this year, edging out last year’s winner, AJ Bell, by a hair.
“Much better than AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown for Oeics as fees much lower for large fund portfolios,” says one reader, referring to II’s flat-fee account charges, which are compellingly cheap compared with percentage-based fees for larger holdings. iWeb again scored strongly here (from a limited number of votes), due to the absence of any account fees.
Best broker for ETFs: InvestEngine
We split exchange-traded funds (ETFs) off as a separate category from shares and investment trusts this year, even though they are listed on the stock exchange and trade in a similar way.
That is because a few brokers focus in particular on ETFs, or offer different fees or services for them. For example, InvestEngine is built to be an extremely cheap platform for investing in ETFs.
At present, it has no trading or account fees for do-it-yourself investors – it charges for its managed/robo-adviser service.
“New baseline for ETF trading,” says one reader. “Despite only having ETFs, this is fine for most passive investors and with zero fees it is unbeatable. Only negative is trades are scheduled, not instant.”
Among brokers that offer ETFs and other investments, there were strong scores for Trading 212, AJ Bell and interactive investor.
Best broker for bonds: AJ Bell
This was a new category this year. We know that direct investment into bonds – as opposed to buying bond funds and bond ETFs – tends to be less common among our readers, but demand is growing and brokers have been improving their service.
While at many brokers bonds often still need to be traded over the phone, online access has improved in recent years. This was another win for AJ Bell.
“Orders… executed well, many bonds available.” Interactive Investor also scored strongly and Hargreaves Lansdown received some praise for its bond service on everything other than its costs (see below).
Best trading service: IG
Leveraged trading instruments – such as contracts for difference (CFDs), spread betting and trading foreign exchange (forex) – have very different requirements from investing. Users will need to consider policies on leverage or how tight spreads are.
IG remains the most popular choice among MoneyWeek readers and scored well on everything from costs to customer service.
“Easy to use and good range of instruments and indicators.” Unlike several other trading firms, IG also offers share-dealing services and some users may find it convenient to be able to hold their accounts on the same platform. “Good flexible Isa with live data,” notes one reader.
Best simple pension: InvestEngine
Personal pensions cover a very wide range of products, from simple products – often from insurance companies – with a very limited range of funds to self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) that let you hold a full range of investments.
Last year, the winning pension for a restricted range of investments was Vanguard, but it scored less well this year, largely due to its fee change a few months ago. Charging a minimum annual fee made it less attractive for customers with smaller pensions.
By contrast, InvestEngine won praise both for costs and ease of use and could be a strong choice for anybody who is happy to build their pension with ETFs.
“InvestEngine is a great platform to get started with investing – would highly recommend.” The main call for improvements – aside from continuing to broaden the range of investments available – was to enhance options for transferring in old pensions from other providers.
Best full pension: AJ Bell
When it comes to pensions with a wider choice of investments, AJ Bell and Interactive Investor topped the polling.
AJ Bell scored slightly more strongly this year, although the exact split of your portfolio between different types of investment will affect which is most cost-effective.
“Good experience overall – solid, reliable, well priced.” One of the most frustrating shortcomings of both firms is again, excessively high currency charges.
“FX and international share dealing is extremely poor value,” says one reader who otherwise gives AJ Bell good scores. “FX charge on foreign equity holdings too large,” says another of Interactive Investor.
However, Interactive Investor at least lets users hold foreign-currency balances in their SIPP (outdated regulations prohibit this in ISAs), while AJ Bell doesn’t.
Best junior investment ISA: Hargreaves Lansdown
If one comment about Hargreaves Lansdown stands out across all categories, it is that readers believe the firm’s charges are now too high relative to peers. It is still the largest investment platform in the UK, and it gets decent scores overall for its range of investments and its customer service, but it is clear that many of you think it needs to overhaul its fees to remain competitive.
However, junior investment ISAs are an example of where it is as competitive – there are no account fees and no dealing fees – and it topped the voting this year.
“Easy to use, good website and wide range of options, both funds and shares. Dividends invested automatically and simple to amend payments to the ISA.”
Interactive Investor, AJ Bell and Fidelity also had relatively good scores. Vanguard, which did well in this category last year, has slipped a bit, though this was not related to its unpopular minimum account fee as it does not apply to junior ISAs.
Best robo-adviser: InvestEngine
Robo-advisers are services that allocate you to a ready-made or managed portfolio based on your investment goals and appetite for risks.
InvestEngine again scored very strongly in this category against rivals such as Nutmeg and Wealthify. Some of you will be using it purely as a zero-cost ETF investment platform, but it is also clear from your comments that the ability to have both DIY and robo-adviser options on the same platform is an additional draw for those who want to try out robo-investing.
“Found the whole experience excellent. They are easy to set up, manage and interact with… very low cost and plenty of choice, from ETFs available to portfolios.”
Best investment data or software provider: Stockopedia
For the second year, Stockopedia was a strong winner in this category, with high praise both for its range of data and the way that its screening tools can be used to generate investment ideas.
“Totally changed my performance from poor to way above average using stocks I would never have heard of without the screening Stockopedia performance rankings,” went one especially enthusiastic comment.
There was plenty of positive feedback for the platform’s ease of use, customer service, webinars and the community in its discussion forms.
No other providers received the same volume of votes, although it is clear that its main rival Sharescope/SharePad also has fervent supporters who praise its flexibility. “Sharescope is the core and centre of my investing process”, says one reader.
Best investments and savings app: Moneybox
The arrival of investment services designed to satisfy a new cohort of customers who prefer to transact through apps is shaking the market up.
Several firms that have won awards in our other categories also gain plaudits for their apps, such as Trading 212 and InvestEngine.
Many of the older platforms are steadily improving their tools. Meanwhile, apps such as Chip, Moneybox, Plum and Raisin aim to provide a simple way to manage savings and investments in one place, especially for users with less financial experience.
It's not possible to compare all the products directly, but Moneybox is a decent starting point for beginners – albeit there are cheaper investment services once you are more experienced.
“Spot on – very easy to use for somebody who doesn’t fully know the ins and outs of investing.”
Join more than 165,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with the latest financial news, insights and expert analysis to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
MoneyWeek is written by a team of experienced and award-winning journalists, plus expert columnists. As well as daily digital news and features, MoneyWeek also publishes a weekly magazine, covering investing and personal finance. From share tips, pensions, gold to practical investment tips - we provide a round-up to help you make money and keep it.