I think this tweet sums it up nicely! Itās clear which product is the winner.
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I bet thereās a name for this but I wonder if all these minor fund based offerings will come back to bite the legacies like HSBC, as they will encourage new users to get involved in trading, read more about it and end up funneling into FT etc once they get a bit more confident. Maybe this is what AJ Bell is hoping for.
On the flip side this is why I hope FT are preparing more pro side features like graphs and order types to keep people from moving on when they get bored or more educated.
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Totally agree but I wouldnāt underestimate the power of a āsimpleā platform. These forums are full of people more into the markets than the vast majority of people who wouldnāt be interested to visit here and they will be the majority of FT customers.
Definitely need a few new features like graphs, sort by, LISA and some other things but also keeping the app clean and easy to use. It is a very hard balancing act for the FT team to manage but sure they will get there. 
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The nature of the market is changing in quite a lot of ways.
What is clear is that a strong focused proposition is necessary. And I would argue that Freetrade already has that. I am sure product management is wrestling with the age old problems of proposition creep and dilution of USP.
I obviously donāt know where Freetrade will land in this space. But I do know the competition is changing and will get more fierce. Itās not just about David and Goliath.
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So now there is no cheaper S&S ISA on the market right? While LISA is still not available on FT
From what Iāve read, Lydia is the French equivalent to freetrade
No cheaper than what?
Freetrade?
Yes is there cheaper alternative now on the market?
This turns out to be not so an easy question to answer. What is cheapest depends on your needs. Company X provides a service with a headline rate that is ācheapā ā¦ you bite ā¦ you then discover that you canāt do A, B and C?
Hypothetical? Not really. I suggested to a friend recently that he consider FT. But when he did his sums he realised that Barclays Bank gave him a better deal on a S&S ISA for his needs. He pointed out several other providers that might be notionally more expensive than FT but most of the time it was comparing apples with oranges. By the way if you want to transfer your ISA away from FT you canāt do a stock transfer ā¦ you have the sell the whole lot. The latter might change in the future but by the time it changes I am sure that there will other competitive offers in the market.
How Barclays can be cheaper? In case you are not plus member you have only Ā£36 fee. Or this portfolio was too small to cover this fee?
Also I donāt think you are right about fact that selling is required for transfer, at least transfer into FT can be done without selling stocks
As long as we have the stocks in our universe, you can transfer the stocks to us without selling.
Trading 212 is free although not accepting new users at the moment. How long that will last is anyoneās guess.
Platforms that are entirely based on percentage fees can be cheaper than Freetrade ISA - it depends on the portfolio value. For example Vanguard Investor (0.15% fee) is cheaper than Freetrade ISA for portfolios less than Ā£24K in value (Ā£36/0.0015 = Ā£24K). The downside with Vanguard Investor is you canāt pick individual company stocks and can only use Vanguardās own funds.
Even Hargreaves Lansdown (generally considered expensive with a 0.45% platform fee) can be cheaper than Freetrade ISA in certain circumstances. For example if you have a portfolio less than Ā£8K and are happy using OEIC funds (which have no trading fees on Hargreaves Lansdown) your platform fees will be lower than Freetrade ISA (Ā£36/0.0045 = Ā£8K). But if you start trading individual stocks or investment trusts on Hargreaves Lansdown you will be charged trading fees which will eclipse Ā£36/year.
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@o99 I donāt know the answer to this - does that Ā£36 get you all the plus shares?
No if you want the Plus shares you need to pay for Plus.
The Plus fee (Ā£120/year) includes ISA so there is no extra Ā£36 for the ISA in this case.
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@o99 Thanks. This makes the point very clear that trying to compare the Ā£36 ISA can be very misleading.
As you said in your previous and I said in mine one needs to look at oneās own needs to figure out what is actually ācheaperā or right for us.
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Its not looking well for Etoroā¦
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Sasha spouting lightyear now, and from the comments people seem to be jumping to it, others saying it has the same issues free trade has and thatās lack of tech analysis and tools.
Hopefully FT gets on with developing basic tos than expanding to keep people from jumping.
Aka I just learned last night Android users canāt see all their buy options on a single share, theyāre stuck showing the last 5 where as apple get to see all their previous buys? Pretty stupid that.
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Yep, the only way is to request all trades from support in xlsx, in very ugly format
Barclays share platform is horrific - donāt use it regardless of price
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Others would disagree - including those who awarded them the best stocks and share 2021 award. I have no opinion about it.
Anyway, the question that arose originally was about the cheapest platform. If the aim is to get the ācheapestā one will quickly discover that it is not so easy to calculate because the headline rates might not be what they seem. In the end there is no point in company X being ācheapestā if you canāt invest in what you want or if e.g. a ISA is required but is not provided and so on and so forth. And of course you might simply not like the platform for aesthetic reasons.
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