Best junior stocks and shares ISA platforms
A junior stocks and shares ISA is a great way to save for a child tax-efficiently. But, it can be tricky deciding which investment platform to use. We reveal some of the best junior stocks and shares ISA providers
Junior ISAs are a great way to save for children – if you open a JISA as soon as your child is born, they could be hundreds of thousands of pounds better off by the time they gain access to it at age 18.
Only parents can open a junior ISA for a child. But once it’s been opened, parents, relatives and friends can contribute a total of £9,000 into the account each tax year, and any interest and investment gains are tax-free.
Junior ISAs have grown in popularity since launching in 2011. There are two types of junior ISA: cash ISAs and stocks and shares ISAs.
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Around 1.37 million junior ISA accounts were subscribed to in 2023/24, the twelfth full financial year since the scheme was launched, up from 1.25 million in 2022/23.
Also in 2023/24, £1.8 billion was subscribed to junior ISAs, around 36.4% of which was in cash. The average subscription that tax year increased to £1,347, an increase of 10.4% on the 2022/23 figure.
Junior stocks and shares ISAs are often a better choice than their cash counterpart, especially if the child is young.
This is because shares almost always beat cash over long time periods. Parents can open a junior ISA for a baby, and the money can’t be withdrawn until the child turns 18 – giving you a lengthy timeframe. So, you should have time for your child’s savings to ride out any market downturns and benefit from upswings, and the gains remain tax-free in the JISA wrapper.
But, it can feel overwhelming trying to work out which junior stocks and shares ISA to open. There are lots of investment platforms to choose from, all with their own pros and cons. Some are particularly cheap, while others may offer more investment choice, or, say, an easy-to-use app or better customer service.
We list the top junior stocks and shares ISA platforms to help you choose a product that is easy to use and should build up a decent nest egg for your child.
Top junior ISA providers for low fees
There are two key things to remember when it comes to investing in a junior ISA – you are probably investing for the long term (more than 10 years) and while returns aren’t guaranteed, fees are a certainty. Over the long term, fees add up. You can reduce the impact of fees eating into your returns by choosing a product with low charges.
The cheapest junior ISA will depend on how you want to use it: how much money are you planning to pay in? Do you want to buy funds or shares, and how often do you want to trade them?
To give a flavour of how the costs stack up, we asked Justin Modray, founder of Candid Financial Advice and Compare Fund Platforms, to crunch the numbers for a £5,000 junior ISA containing five funds. Here’s how the annual costs compare for six low-cost junior ISAs (excluding fees for the underlying funds):
Platform |
Annual cost |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
Fidelity |
£0.00 |
No junior ISA annual platform fee. £1.50 for deals as part of a regular savings or withdrawal plan, or for reinvestment of income or a dividend; £7.50 for each deal placed online; phone trades are £30 each |
Hargreaves Lansdown |
£0.00 |
No junior ISA platform fee or online dealing charges. For share trades over the phone or by post there is a 1% fee (minimum £20, maximum £50), plus foreign exchange conversion fees for overseas shares |
Charles Stanley Direct |
£15.00 |
0.3% annual platform fee (min £5, max £50 per month). £4 per fund deal and £10 per share deal, which can be offset against a twice-yearly trading credit of £50 |
AJ Bell |
£20.00 |
0.25% annual platform charge (max £2.50 for shares), £1.50 per fund deal, £5 per share deal (including investment trusts and ETFs) |
Bestinvest |
£20.00 |
0.4% annual platform charge, no fund dealing fees. Annual platform fee falls to 0.2% if using a "ready-made portfolio". Share dealing is £4.95 a trade |
Willis Owen |
£20.00 |
0.4% annual platform charge (falling to 0.15% for large portfolios of £250,000+), no fund dealing fees, £7.50 per share deal (including investment trusts and ETFs) |
Fidelity and Hargreaves Lansdown are the cheapest in terms of having no annual platform fee (you will need to pay fees on the underlying investments, as you would with most providers). Watch out for fees if buying or selling investments over the phone or by post.
Hargreaves Lansdown previously charged an annual fee for its junior ISA, but slashed it to zero in 2023, in a bid to draw in younger investors.
According to Modray, the key for parents when choosing a junior ISA platform is low platform charges along with decent investment choice. It’s also worth checking there are no fees to move the account elsewhere in future.
For example, Charles Stanley Direct charges £10 per investment to transfer the junior ISA “as is” (compared to liquidating the investments and transferring the account as cash).
Modray tells MoneyWeek: “Using a junior stocks and shares ISA can be an excellent way to invest for your child’s future. Just be careful to select appropriate investments and keep an eye on charges. If you’re unsure where to invest, low-cost index-tracking funds covering mainstream stock markets would be a sensible starting point.”
Award-winning junior ISAs
While fees are important, you also need to be comfortable with other aspects, such as customer service, and ease of use if you're not an expert investor. Review sites and awards are also a good way of judging junior ISAs before you actually open one.
The Good Money Guide Awards, for example, aim to “champion financial services firms that excel in innovation, product, and customer service”. Each year, thousands of financial services’ clients tell the Good Money Guide Awards’ judges what they think to help others make smarter decisions about how to manage their money. The awards also provide financial service providers with valuable feedback to improve their services.
Hargreaves Lansdown won Best Junior ISA at the Good Money Guide Awards 2025. Judges praised it for having no account costs, having recently removed its junior ISA fees, making it now one of the cheapest ways to invest for your children, and for the fact you also get the widest selection of UK and international shares as well as bonds, ETFs, VCTs, gilts and bonds.
Beanstalk and GoHenry, app-based JISA accounts, came as runners up in the Good Money Guide Awards 2025.
Beanstalk is particularly good for other family members to contribute to a child’s junior ISA. Its invite tool lets you invite family and friends and they will be linked to your children’s accounts in their app so they can use all the Beanstalk tools to pay in. You can set permissions so you control what each linked donor sees.
Beanstalk’s junior ISA costs an annual fee of 0.5% of the total investment value, making it one of the lower-cost options. There are no sign-up, transfer, or contribution fees. The funds within the account have an additional management fee of 0.12% to 0.15%. The app is free to download and allows for minimum contributions of £10.
GoHenry, alternatively, comes with a prepaid debit card for your child to use and in-app learning tools, as well as the junior ISA (which they can’t touch until they are 18). You get 30 days free to try the app out, then plan fees start from £3.99 a month.
How much could a junior ISA give my child at age 18?
Children receiving these junior ISAs will be grateful for any head start. But the real secret to building a substantial junior ISA is starting early and setting up regular monthly payments.
If you set up a direct debit to come out of your account and go directly into the junior ISA, you’ll never forget to invest, and you’ll build up a nest egg without really noticing. Regular savings have built some astonishing junior ISA portfolios. More than a third of Hargreaves Lansdown’s JISAs have regular payments going into them every month, for example – and the platform’s largest junior ISA built through regular savings alone is worth an impressive £249,000.
But you don’t need to go large on regular savings, you can start with as little as £25 a month and top up with lump sums when it makes sense for your circumstances. The combination of little and often, combined with one-off payments, can generate some huge results. The biggest Hargreaves Lansdown junior ISA that combined regular monthly payments from day one with lump sum top ups is worth £350,900. That’s enough to buy the average property outright – with plenty left over for the rest of life’s milestones.
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Clearly, to reach these stratospheric levels they have contributed significant sums for well over a decade and have taken a higher risk strategy than most people are comfortable with, including single company investments. This isn’t going to suit everyone, and runs a bigger risk of losses, but you don’t need to take higher risks in order to see robust growth – a balanced approach over the long term will enable children to get rich slowly.”
You can use Hargreaves Lansdown’s junior ISA calculator to see how much regular monthly contributions could amount to over time.
What are the main junior ISA rules?
To open a junior ISA on behalf of your child, they must be aged under 18 and living in the UK.
If you’ve set up a junior ISA and want to switch to a competitor – perhaps to reduce the fees, or get a better user experience or investment range – go for it.
Parents are allowed to move their child’s junior ISA to a different provider, just watch out for any exit fees (there could be a charge to transfer a stocks and shares account “in-specie”, in which case consider converting to cash first).
You can also move a child trust fund (CTF) into a junior ISA, which could significantly cut your fees and increase your investment choice, as CTFs are now considered old, legacy products. Note that you cannot have a junior ISA as well as a CTF.
The annual allowance is £9,000, and you can split this across a cash junior ISA and stocks and shares junior ISA. So, you could contribute £2,000 to a cash junior ISA, and still put up to £7,000 into a tax-free stocks and shares account, in a single tax year.
Bear in mind that a child can only hold one cash junior ISA and one stocks and shares junior ISA at any one time.
The £9,000 limit is on top of the £20,000 allowance that adults have for their own ISAs.
The cash inside the junior ISA belongs to the child and cannot be withdrawn until they turn 18, although teenagers can take control of the account from age 16.
Children aged 16 and 17 can also open their own junior ISA.
At age 18, the junior ISA passes automatically to the teenager, meaning they can spend, save or invest it as they please.
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Ruth is an award-winning financial journalist with more than 15 years' experience of working on national newspapers, websites and specialist magazines.
She is passionate about helping people feel more confident about their finances. She was previously editor of Times Money Mentor, and prior to that was deputy Money editor at The Sunday Times.
A multi-award winning journalist, Ruth started her career on a pensions magazine at the FT Group, and has also worked at Money Observer and Money Advice Service.
Outside of work, she is a mum to two young children, while also serving as a magistrate and an NHS volunteer.