Freetrade Plus: Costs ÂŁ10p/m. Need to maintain ÂŁ4k to have this pay for itself. Access to more shares, access to limit orders. Still need to pay FX fees.
Trading 212: No fees, no FX fees, free limit orders, access to all shares PLUS European shares (not on Freetrade).
What am I missing, wouldn’t abandoning FX fees make Plus much more attractive considering the competition?
Share ownership, share lending, aim execution, among other things. 212 isn’t free
Thanks. How do the two platforms treat share ownership and lending differently?
Freetrade don’t do share lending.
For share ownership the FCA handbook says shares must be held with a nominee account with a few stated exceptions one of these is if you give consent to give up this rule. This is what you do by agreeing to the 212 terms and conditions where you give them the right to hold shares directly in their own name rather than in a nominee account.
because of the FX fees on Usd trades I use brokers that allow holding money in USd, so I only pay a small % when I completely exit USD cash (which is like never).
Because Fx on freetrade is a percentage, it’s not a great looking tax when you trade $ 000s in and out.
like pension funds and large buy-and-HODLer asset managrs, i personally dont care if my shares are lent. i think @fab is asking good questions because they’re about the customers bottom line and £120 a year vs competitors. there’re just many brokers out there. i stopped using de giro (they keep money in the Eu) but they provide a ton of info on the screens
Re: share custody, this does not appear to be true.
From Freetrade T&Cs here:
The Custodian that holds Securities that you have acquired through our Services will have legal title to those Securities and will hold those Securities in its name – in other words, the Custodian’s name will appear on all registers, etc. that show who the owner of those Securities is. However, you will be the beneficial owner of those Securities – in other words, as between you, us and the Custodian, you are the ultimate owner of those Securities.
It seems to be that both Freetrade and Trading212 hold shares in our custody with the investor named as the benficial owner. Happy to be corrected here if I’m missing anything.
Re:share lending: Shares held in Trading212 ISA accounts are not lent out. Source: https://helpcentre.trading212.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010945917-What-about-ISAs-
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an investor in Freetrade and love the product, but as a user I’m struggling to find a compelling reason to stay considering the difference in FX and subscription fees?
You’re incorrect. Freetrade do, 212 you agree to allow them to hold them in their own name as well, forfeiting the guarantee they will be held in a nominee. 13.5 of the share dealing terms
Shares in ISAs are not allowed to be leant out as i understand.
Their CEO is not talking to customers on the forum.
You get in their free package messed up stock splits, unreliable execution, close outs of customer positions with a 1 day notice to begin with. The list goes on.
There is also a trust argument which has been beaten to death but remains important.
Yes but Freetrade has a pink icon so it evens things out.
Tbh, this is the only thing that bothers me about the platform as of this moment. I would prefer all access to be free, and the fees to be for the extras like the limit orders and the interest on cash.
Of course, I don’t really know the background reasoning for the Plus restriction of certain shares as I’m new here as well. 
Its a good question, it was put to management at the last zoom call if you want to see their answer. Re the shares FT have said they want ALL shares on there one day, and they have made decent progress with this. Seems like european expansion has taken precedence though but more markets will make the difference. RE the cost, this is where T212 making profits from CFDs comes in, FT plus and FX fees are what bankroll FT and they’re not likely to change until other revenue streams can take over. T212 took 15 years to get here, the difference FT has made year to year is phenomenal but there’s QoL upgrades that need to come. Plus of course, you can always have more than one broker 
actually this bit isnot comparable bcause we didnt have a lot of the apis, android+ios 15 years ago. but t212 benefited from the ride like schwab/td ameritrade/etc and they seemed to have moved fast.
i noticed on Reddit people were hopping between apps during GME2THEMOON tryin to buy certain stonks (Amc etc) at one point. if its cheaper at X and not Y they’ll do it at X while keepin the accounts open at both.
is there finally an office or something? that’d be great news!!
Update:
i have revolut and their choice of stonks is bad, despite bein from Drivewealth. they offer USd accounts though only for stonks + crypto (!) which is perhaps what sets them aside ((I dont care about their silver/gold investin offering))
i believe this is how they make their money… but i must admit, it’s pretty underwhelming considering the difference between the “free” version and the “plus” version.
I’m not seeing much of a benefit from plus at the moment (i upgraded from the ISA account) to be honest i only got the ISA account to support FT… i don’t hold a lot of cash in there to warrant it… limit orders etc are nice to have but without more upto date / live pricing i see them as pointless. in fact on a couple of orders i can see (according to freetrade graph) the price was met but the order not executed… as in sitting in the queue. stop losses should be a standard option full stop if they truely care about protecting their customers. - i tried it that actually worked ok… but the price was bombing anyway.
i see a lot of fanboys claiming it’s not a day trading platform so… not too sure what the point of the limit orders are if a) we’re not seeing the live prices b) the orders are not being executed properly anyway and c) buying stocks is a “long term” investment as i keep reading on here, an individual can track them manually.
Scroll back a few hundred posts on here and you’ll find a lot of detailed discussion (gets quite heated in places). I think tbh don’t bother with plus if you don’t see the value, wait and see if they add to it in future.
I completely agree with you that the number of features that come with Plus are still slightly underwhelming (although the interest is genius) and I hope that Freetrade will continue to add more in the next few months.
However, I don’t understand your comment on limit orders in relation to live prices. I actually believe that the limit orders are even more important in the absence of live prices. Also, limit orders allow me to buy when the price unexpectedly dips. I’m not a trader and generally hold long, but it still makes sense to buy at good prices or add to my holding when a price dips, for example SPACs that pull back close to NAV. So far I had no issues at all with my limit orders.
i agree, i’m trialling it for a couple of months … if i still think it’s not worth it i may come back to it at a later stage when it’s a more grown up product… FT still has a bit of a way before it’s the market leader… but if it gets it’s stuff sorted and improves on performance (i’m talking perfromance of data and execution times) people will flock to it… everyone wants everything yesterday these days.especially with mobile apps.
the interest is by the by - with 4k in there you’d make more than 3% on investments (or i’d hope you would)
so my train of thought behind the live pricing is that, for the backend to be able to execute the orders it needs to have access to live pricing… if it just works of 15 minute delayed pricing and the price drops below your order in that 15 minutes… but keeps dropping FT will sell at their closest pricing (as far as i understand it)
…else they HAVE to be using live pricing for all the instruments in order to ensure that the limit / stops as executed at the correct price.
now it could be that they cannot show the live pricing to us because it’s too expensive for them to do so (which if thats the case - sounds like we will never get it) - the more eyes on the prices the more you pay.
or they are purely working of 15 minute delayed pricing… so there is no gurantee that orders / stop losses get executed at the price you’ve put down… unless they are willing to cover the cost of a larger loss… for example if you set a stop loss at £30 for the price, but in the 15 minutes it drops to £20 - by the time you’ve seen it on the app it’s too late… so does your stop get executed at £30 or £20 because by definition FT will only see the price when it updates after 15 mins… so technically you execution will be at £20.
…hope i’m making sense
No they buy/sell off live pricing, of course they do. Showing live pricing to users (UK) is what costs £4 a person so not viable. I think US pricing is only a couple of minutes delayed but I haven’t checked.
There never is, that’s not how limit orders work. Your not setting an order to sell at a specific price, you setting an instruction to place an order at the next best price above or below the trigger price.
Sad to see people go, but please remember to read the terms of service carefully at your next broker if you do.