To be fair you were never able to input a number of shares on the buy screen. the only difference now is instead of getting some change left over you get a fraction of a share
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I think the issue is around how people were using it. I think Freetrade had a clear vision for people allocating funds but many users simply worked around to buy a specific number of shares (I know I did). This meant that what Freetrade thought was a simple evolution was a major step change for many users.
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I think it depends who Freetrade wants to appeal to, but I believe it would be limiting their customer base by only offering one or the other. Surely evolution and progression should include both?
The other thing is that the mantra of Freetrade is to get people investing. A complete novice will probably not understand why when buying a UK share it is whole shares, but then buying a US share suddenly it is up to 7 or 8 decimal places!
Other platforms have the option (invest by monetary amount or by a number or fraction of share), I really hope Freetrade will follow / improve on that.
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A complete novice probably doesnât care. All they care about is they have ÂŁ100 to invest. And they want to invest ÂŁ20 in 5 companies. Theyâre not interested in how many shares they own. As it is meaningless.
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Some maybe, but I am a complete novice. I only started on this journey a couple of months ago.
Now as an example I might have had say ÂŁ500 there, Iâd go and pick a company I wanted to invest and see what I could get for my ÂŁ500. I didnât (& doesnât) bother me if that then means for arguements sake, I can only get 4 shares because they are ÂŁ110 each, leaving me with ÂŁ60 (ish) Part of this adventure I have been enjoying is then thinking right, I have ÂŁ60 left to invest, lets go and see what else I can invest in.
It is by doing the above I was left with a small amount to invest into Greatland gold 
My ÂŁ6.52 bought me 85 shares !
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At some point, fractionals will be rolled out to UK shares, so both UK and US shares will be to 7 or 8 decimal places.
I expect Freetrade will have fixed the order flow before then.
Thankfully not that many decimal places! Flutter at about ÂŁ103 is the most expensive FTSE 350 share (I believe). With ÂŁ2 minimum spend you only need a few decimal places.
Though Iâd be happy if Freetrade added LTI as a fractional. Itâs a mere ÂŁ1200 per share. Or Lindt.
Same. - Freetrade mentions that this is another reason they implemented fractional shares, as we can invest all our money. However, currently that money is then invested in that one stock, whereas before you could pick up some other penny stocks with the remainder.
For me its an issue of personal choice, and i believe consumers should have choice where possible. There is also talk about the change being made to attract more of Freetradeâs target audience, so the rest of us donât really matter then?
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You can still do that though, you can decide exactly how much you want to put into your first choice and how much you want to put into penny stocks or other interesting stocks
I agree it would be better to have the choice, but the more I think about it the more I think the objections to fractionals donât make sense
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May be the discussion on this specific question can be closed (buying whole shares)?
If I am not mistaken during one of the AMAs FTâs team that the ability to buy by the number of shares will be added in the future
I guess all threads about the European expansion and the new batch of stocks to be added should be closed too then, right?
I donât think there is a problem with people discussing the issue and FT shaping the delivery of this feature based on what is raised here.
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Hey Scott, have you actually used the product?
It has always been buy for amount of cash in the Freetrade app. Previously, we had to round to full shares to fill the desired cash amount (and still do for UK shares). Now, we can be more precise for US shares and fill the order to 4 decimal places.
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I think this issue stems from how people actually used this function. I canât speak for everyone but it is clear from this thread that a reasonable number of people simply adjusted amounts invested to ensure a specific number of shares were purchased (I know I did for one) as opposed to investing a specific amount. As such, to these people this change represents a significant shift in mindset rather than just a finesse of an already existing feature.
EDIT: Please donât think Iâm critiquing the vision etc. the idea of investing by amount is much cleaner. I just feel there has been more of a gap than perhaps realised.
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I agree, maybe Iâm just in the older demographic & not as adaptable as the youth of today which I am sure Freetrade is aimed at! I just hope the option to do either is implemented, rather than having to do just one way or the highway!
I can see the proâs & conâs of both, and I am definitely not saying fractional are a bad idea. Shares such as Amazon are not cheap, so for someone to be able to put a bit away a month so that over time they can build it up is great.
But for me, when I tried to buy 1 share in Alphabet, and to end up with 1.0012035 just doesnât sit right. 
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Not sure you read my message correctly, as you more or less agreed with me. I said you can only input a cash amount. My point was that we want to be able to define a number of shares to buy on the buy screen instead of only being able to input a cash amount. You canât select the value of the âNo. of sharesâ and change it and have the cost calculated. You can only enter the value of âAmountâ (cash) which will in turn calculate a number of shares you can buy with said cash.
Iâm fine with you adding fractionals as long as you make the âNo. of sharesâ value changeable on the buy screen. It seems intuitive to me that you should be able to define either value directly and have the other update accordingly.
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I guess my point is that âbuy by number of sharesâ is not a feature weâve ever had in the app. It has always been buy by amount of cash, sell by no of shares. Not ideal.
Giving the user an option to buy by no of shares or cash, and being able to sell by no of shares or cash, would be a new feature to the app. I think it is something you will see in the not too distant future though, along with more order types 
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Ah okay, that makes sense. I apologise for any misunderstanding on my part.
Thank you for the updates too, both sound super exciting particularly more order types!
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So a checkbox of âBuy whole shares onlyâ when putting in the cash amount.
And having it work exactly as previous versions of Freetrade when this is enabled, would be ideal.
No need to even add buying by No. of shares (although this would also be useful too).
Buying
Fractional shares = good
Whole shares = good
Removing one fully functional option for another in an update = bad
Edit : Having [DEBUNKED] in thread title, doesnât seem useful.
Also closing this thread as someone suggested, also doesnât seem useful (as not everyone visiting this forum will know the answer to this question).
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I think weâre splitting hairs again, as he said, that wasnât technically ever the option, just how people used it. I would generally decide to get ÂŁ100 of shares, the app would round to ÂŁ96 then I would type in 103, 104, 105 etc just to see where the next boundary was, and either go for it or spend the ÂŁ4 on penny shares (GGP). Now I wouldnât have this problem.
So I wasnât âbuying by number of sharesâ but I thought of it like that.