Hi everyone,
As my first post on medium I decided to review freetrade (Iāve been a member for a while but new to the community here).
Let me know your thoughts - totally open to feedback!
Thanks
The review seems pretty fair. Just FYI youāve left the # of VUSA shares you hold in a screenshot, making hiding the price a bit redundant.
Nice catch! Fixed that 
Sadly once you start doing UAT you never stop doing UAT
3 Likes
The costs are a little misleading: everyone (including Trading 212 customers) will pay the 0.5% stamp duty and the ETF charges - the article reads as if only Freetrade customers pay such fees, yet these are charged by the government and the ETF companies respectively and in the latter case, the charges are wrapped into the share price of the ETF.
7 Likes
Hey! Welcome to the community.
This might provide some explanation.
You can type the title of the article in Google to bypass the FTās paywall
Also plenty of additional info can be found by searching this community forum.
On a side note, also check out the costs charged by the industry leader - HL. Hopefully, you donāt get a heart attack 
3 Likes
Itās a trade off and down to investorās personal preferences. Ive always thought, and correct me if anything I say is wrong, that the difference between the two platforms is that freetrade have tried to develop their backend first (stuff that investors donāt see) and Trade 212 focused on providing new features (which investors do see).
There isnāt anything wrong with this, but Freetrade worked on Invest by Freetrade before introducing new features and I personally think it makes them more reliable. If anything goes wrong, Freetrade would be able to fix any problems in their system faster and easier as it is theirs.
I think T212 use a third party, which there isnāt anything wrong with. But when I was considering using them (for general investing and their pie feature), I wondered what would happen if interactive investors had a major problem with their system. I also remembered reading a story about the problems that Robinhood had in the US with their systems. They had great features, but their system couldnāt cope with extra stress and this (alongside other reasons) put me off using T212.
7 Likes
Thanks for all the feedback! I updated the review.
Thatās interesting perspective, about them owning their own tech! Iāve been using Freetrade about a year as it was the first app Iād heard of that brought to the UK what RobinHood was doing in the USA - trading without those very expensive fees. Iāve been really enjoying it!
That said Iāve been using it long enough now that I realised I should have tried out the alternatives sooner, for comparison. I tried 212 myself for the first time this week, spent Ā£20-Ā£30 on a few UK and US shares to see the difference in costs and interface, if any.
Iāll be honest, at first I was a bit dismayed at how much I love the features in 212 that I canāt seem to find in Freetrade, like the detailed stats for stocks, the ability to buy shares either by investment amount or shares purchased, the āmaxā graph that goes back further in time it seems.
And I hear there are lots of stocks in 212 that arenāt in Freetrade but I honestly didnāt explore enough to see if thereās anything I want that I canāt get in FT.
Plenty that I donāt understand enough to play with too, like the more complex buy/sell orders that I understand you have to pay for with Freetrade. So I donāt think Iām missing out by not paying for Plus, I just buy stocks and keep them long term really, Iām nowhere near experienced enough to get any cleverer than that!
Realistically, though, I guess I donāt really see a huge practical difference between the two. And I like Freetradeās brand, the āfeelā of their app, the fact they own their own tech, and I understand that they are still growing.
I would really love to have those detailed stats, though.
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.