Low cost platform for S&S ISA: Vanguard vs Freetrade

Albermarle

It looks like Freetrade are launching a Plus version for £10 a month . I wonder how long it will be before the ' non plus ' version becomes more and more basic . It will be like Spotify , the free version slowly got less user friendly in favour of the paid for version.
Still better than Robinhood and Trading 212 , whose business model seems to be offer something for free in the hope the punter is lured into trading in CFD's or similar .

tlck9

But at a basic level, I wanted to check my logic on cost comparison: with Vanguard charging 0.15% platform fees and Freetrade £36 a year (£3/month), I make it that the breakeven is £24k invested

so does this mean that if you were looking to start out with investing £100 a month you would be losing money? Sorry for a newbie question.

JakeHyde

Copperbark said:

I'm considering low-cost stocks and shares ISA platforms, Vanguard and Freetrade in particular. 
I know they're different beasts (more on that in a bit).

But at a basic level, I wanted to check my logic on cost comparison: with Vanguard charging 0.15% platform fees and Freetrade £36 a year (£3/month), I make it that the breakeven is £24k invested (£36/0.15%=£24k)  Below that, Vanguard is cheaper and above it you're better off with Freetrade.  Does that look right?

Now the other considerations are cost to trade and the fact that you can only hold Vanguard products on them as a platform.  Personally those aren't big concerns for me as I'm looking (at most) at monthly purchases of low-cost ETFs (which Vanguard do a good job of).  But the fact that Freetrade would allow instant trades for free rather than "next trade point" with Vanguard would be attractive.  What else is there to consider?  I'm sure I've missed something ... 

And if anyone knows of other platforms that would challenge these two for low cost, I'd be interested to hear.

Thanks for this O.P. 
I’m currently looking at these two platforms.
I see loads of youtubers mention, Freetrade, Vanguard, Plum etc...

I got hooked on the idea of investing after watching Mark Tilbury. He would always plug Freetrade and offer a code, but when he did an investing demo he did it on the actual Vanguard website.

I honestly didn’t even know you could invest in Vanguard via Freetrade.
I’m a total Newbie to investing, but I want to drop some savings into the SNP 500 Index Fund.

So if I invest over £24k, you reckon Freetrade is the way to go?
...but from within Freetrade I can invest in the Vanguard SNP 500?  

Inception 🤯

maxsteam

Freetrade.io is a very amateurish platform. Personally I put in a tenner to see how it works but I would not use it for £000s.

Some low cost platforms worth considering, IMHO, are x-o, Degiro, Fineco and, if you can wait until it is launched, Dodl. Degiro do not offer ISAs.

wmb194

JakeHyde said:

Copperbark said:

I'm considering low-cost stocks and shares ISA platforms, Vanguard and Freetrade in particular. 
I know they're different beasts (more on that in a bit).

But at a basic level, I wanted to check my logic on cost comparison: with Vanguard charging 0.15% platform fees and Freetrade £36 a year (£3/month), I make it that the breakeven is £24k invested (£36/0.15%=£24k)  Below that, Vanguard is cheaper and above it you're better off with Freetrade.  Does that look right?

Now the other considerations are cost to trade and the fact that you can only hold Vanguard products on them as a platform.  Personally those aren't big concerns for me as I'm looking (at most) at monthly purchases of low-cost ETFs (which Vanguard do a good job of).  But the fact that Freetrade would allow instant trades for free rather than "next trade point" with Vanguard would be attractive.  What else is there to consider?  I'm sure I've missed something ... 

And if anyone knows of other platforms that would challenge these two for low cost, I'd be interested to hear.

Thanks for this O.P. 
I’m currently looking at these two platforms.
I see loads of youtubers mention, Freetrade, Vanguard, Plum etc...

I got hooked on the idea of investing after watching Mark Tilbury. He would always plug Freetrade and offer a code, but when he did an investing demo he did it on the actual Vanguard website.

I honestly didn’t even know you could invest in Vanguard via Freetrade.
I’m a total Newbie to investing, but I want to drop some savings into the SNP 500 Index Fund.

So if I invest over £24k, you reckon Freetrade is the way to go?
...but from within Freetrade I can invest in the Vanguard SNP 500?  

Inception 🤯

*S&P500. You're necro-posting; this is an old thread. Freetrade's fine and very low cost for its free GIA but which broker or fund platform is best for you really depends on what you want to do and how much you're investing. Besides, you don't even have to restrict yourself to just one anyway. I use different brokers for different things.

Freetrade's website gives the details of what it currently offers. Search for 'Vanguard' in the following link and it'll show you the ETFs it currently offers.

https://freetrade.io/etfs#find-etfs

AlanP_2

JakeHyde said:

Copperbark said:

I'm considering low-cost stocks and shares ISA platforms, Vanguard and Freetrade in particular. 
I know they're different beasts (more on that in a bit).

But at a basic level, I wanted to check my logic on cost comparison: with Vanguard charging 0.15% platform fees and Freetrade £36 a year (£3/month), I make it that the breakeven is £24k invested (£36/0.15%=£24k)  Below that, Vanguard is cheaper and above it you're better off with Freetrade.  Does that look right?

Now the other considerations are cost to trade and the fact that you can only hold Vanguard products on them as a platform.  Personally those aren't big concerns for me as I'm looking (at most) at monthly purchases of low-cost ETFs (which Vanguard do a good job of).  But the fact that Freetrade would allow instant trades for free rather than "next trade point" with Vanguard would be attractive.  What else is there to consider?  I'm sure I've missed something ... 

And if anyone knows of other platforms that would challenge these two for low cost, I'd be interested to hear.

I honestly didn’t even know you could invest in Vanguard via Freetrade.
I’m a total Newbie to investing, but I want to drop some savings into the SNP 500 Index Fund.

Why the S&P 500 and not any of the other 30k+ options available across all the platforms you could use?

A genuine question as the majority of experienced UK based investors would be very wary of putting all their money in one market, the US in your case, and ignoring the rest of the world entirely.

You will be 100% exposed to £ / $ currency movements which can either increase or decrease your returns irrespective of how well the underlying investments perform. Take a look at the performance chart for an S&P 500 tracker and see what it did in 2016 after the Brexit vote and the £ fell steeply in value, and if you can find it look at a similar chart on a US site.

Is your You Tube trader an American by any chance, as £ / $ considerations will be irrelevant to him if he invests in the S&P 500?

By choosing the S&P 500 you are not just betting on US companies, but then narrowing that down to the largest 500 of those companies. The S&P 500 index has done fantastically well over the last few years but the vast majority of that growth has come from the big well known names such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple and Tesla

A single sector investment in the S&P 500 is in reality an investment in a small number (6-8) large US based companies that are predominantly in the tech space with a side dish of "hope exchange rates don't hurt me".

Please don't take this the wrong way, it may well prove to be a very successful investment, but as a "Total Newbie" you may not have considered some of the less obvious aspects that (surprise, surprise) You Tubers who are probably earning a fee from product endorsements etc. (they are sales people after all) fail to mention.