11 Best Investment Apps of May 2022
Investment apps allow you to manage your portfolio and buy or sell investments via mobile app. Here are NerdWallet's top picks for the best investing apps.
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You can do just about anything on your phone — including invest, thanks to an increasing number of high-quality investment apps.
All of the brokers on our list of the best brokers have well-reviewed investment apps that are suitable for beginners and advanced investors alike. But if investing on the go is most important to you, we've narrowed down that list to the below picks for the best investing apps — in addition to factors like user reviews of these apps, we've also considered investment costs, account fees, account minimum to invest and customer service options.
» Looking to trade stocks or options? Consult our list of the best stock apps instead.
You can do just about anything on your phone — including invest, thanks to an increasing number of high-quality investment apps.
All of the brokers on our list of the best brokers have well-reviewed investment apps that are suitable for beginners and advanced investors alike. But if investing on the go is most important to you, we've narrowed down that list to the below picks for the best investing apps — in addition to factors like user reviews of these apps, we've also considered investment costs, account fees, account minimum to invest and customer service options.
» Looking to trade stocks or options? Consult our list of the best stock apps instead.
Best Investment Apps
| Broker | NerdWallet Rating | Fees | Account minimum | Promotion | Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Merrill Edge Learn more on Merrill Edge's website | $0 per trade | $0 | Up to $600 when you invest in a new Merrill Edge® Self-Directed account. | Learn more on Merrill Edge's website | |
 Vanguard Learn more on Vanguard's website | $0 per trade | $0 | None no promotion available at this time | Learn more on Vanguard's website | |
 Fidelity Learn more on Fidelity's website | $0 per trade for online U.S. stocks and ETFs | $0 | Get $100 when you open a new, eligible Fidelity account with $50 or more. Use code FIDELITY100. Limited time offer. Terms apply. | Learn more on Fidelity's website | |
 TD Ameritrade Learn more on TD Ameritrade's website | $0 per trade | $0 | None no promotion available at this time | Learn more on TD Ameritrade's website | |
 SoFi Active Investing Learn more on SoFi Invest's website | $0 per trade | $0 | $5 to $1,000 in free stock for users who sign up via mobile app | Learn more on SoFi Invest's website |
on Merrill Edge's website
Merrill Edge
Fees
$0per trade
Account minimum
$0Promotion
Up to $600when you invest in a new Merrill Edge® Self-Directed account.
on Merrill Edge's website
on Vanguard's website
Vanguard
Fees
$0per trade
Account minimum
$0Promotion
Noneno promotion available at this time
on Vanguard's website
on Fidelity's website
Fidelity
Fees
$0per trade for online U.S. stocks and ETFs
Account minimum
$0Promotion
Get $100when you open a new, eligible Fidelity account with $50 or more. Use code FIDELITY100. Limited time offer. Terms apply.
on Fidelity's website
on TD Ameritrade's website
TD Ameritrade
Fees
$0per trade
Account minimum
$0Promotion
Noneno promotion available at this time
on TD Ameritrade's website
on SoFi Invest's website
SoFi Active Investing
Fees
$0per trade
Account minimum
$0Promotion
$5 to $1,000in free stock for users who sign up via mobile app
on SoFi Invest's website
on E*TRADE's website
E*TRADE
Fees
$0per trade
Account minimum
$0Promotion
Get up to $600 or morewhen you open and fund an E*TRADE account
on E*TRADE's website
on Ally Invest's website
Ally Invest
Fees
$0per trade (on eligible US securities)
Account minimum
$0Promotion
$100-in cash bonus with qualifying deposit.
on Ally Invest's website
on J.P. Morgan's website
J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing
Fees
$0per trade
Account minimum
$0Promotion
Get up to $625when you open and fund a J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing account with qualifying new money
on J.P. Morgan's website
on Acorns's website
Acorns
Fees
$3 -per month
Account minimum
$0Promotion
$10 Sign Up Bonuson Acorns's website
Want to compare more options? Here are our other top picks:
More about the best investing apps
The star ratings above represent the provider's overall score across a variety of categories. Below, we've included more detail about how we rated these providers specifically for their mobile apps. Our mobile app analysis heavily weighs factors like customer experience (mobile app store ratings), account fees and customer support.
Merrill Edge
Merrill Edge’s investing app is highly rated among iOS users for its customer support and is integrated with Bank of America for a seamless investing and banking experience. It offers robust research and a library of educational content to help you find the right investment. The broker’s Idea Builder tool helps newer investors find the right investment, including environmental and social investors.
Merrill Edge’s mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Vanguard
Vanguard's mobile apps cater to the retirement investors Vanguard aims to attract, and they provide all the functionality needed by those account holders: Trade capabilities for stocks, ETFs and mutual funds, plus the ability to monitor account and investment performance. Users rate Vanguard's apps highly.
Vanguard's mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Fidelity
Fidelity's mobile apps are highly rated by users, and offer real-time quotes, advanced options trading strategies and streamlined access to investment research. Fidelity also offers a customized app experience for its Youth Account, with in-app educational resources.
Fidelity's mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
TD Ameritrade
TD Ameritrade is known for its powerful trading platforms, and that extends to its mobile apps: The broker's highly-rated thinkorswim app is a solid companion to the desktop platform, offering many of the same capabilities. Traders can place simple to complex stock, ETF, options, futures and forex trades.
TD Ameritrade's mobile app rating: 4 out of 5 stars
SoFi Active Investing
SoFi's two mobile apps are streamlined and likely to appeal to the broker's audience of beginner investors and traders. Because of that, the broker gets high scores from app users on both Android and iOS. Investors can place trades, track performance and get real-time quotes on mobile.
SoFi Active investing's mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
E*TRADE
E*TRADE offers two free mobile apps that allow you to not only manage your account and place trades, but also access real-time quotes, as well as stock and ETF screeners. The broker's Power E*TRADE app can be used for trading complex strategies, including four-legged option spreads. It also offers access to popular technical studies, charts and streaming quotes.
E*TRADE's mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Ally Invest
Ally’s investing app offers competitive pricing that appeals to beginner investors and advanced stock traders alike. Commission-free trades, an easy-to-use platform and investing tools make it simple to get started. Ally also offers robust research and free screening tools, charting and real-time data. For more advanced trading, investors can access Ally’s suite of tools for technical investors, including forex trading. The drawbacks: Ally doesn’t offer no-transaction-fee mutual funds, which can be helpful in diversifying your portfolio.
Ally’s Invest mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
J.P. Morgan
J.P. Morgan’s mobile app offers a way to begin investing and managing your portfolio. The Self Directed Investing app connects to Chase accounts, creating a seamless and streamlined experience for Chase customers to easily trade stocks, ETFs, options, bonds and mutual funds. However, J.P. Morgan’s additional investment products, such as the Portfolio Builder tool, require a $2,500 minimum that could be prohibitive to some investors. Self-Directed Investing also doesn’t allow investing in futures, forex or cryptocurrencies, nor does it offer fractional shares.
JP Morgan’s mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Acorns
Acorns offers socially responsible investment options, access to a diversified portfolio and investment options for individuals and families who start investing small with spare change.
Acorns allows investors to automatically invest spare change by rounding up credit and debit purchases and investing that change in a financial portfolio. Acorns mobile offerings also include Acorns Early custodial accounts for kids. Parents can invest on behalf of a child, and when the child reaches an age of transfer, they can take ownership of the account.
Acorns fees depend on the account balance, and may be prohibitive for investors with an account balance with less than $5,000. Acorns offers more limited customer support and no tax strategy as compared to other investment apps.
Acorn’s mobile app rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Firstrade
Firstrade offers a highly rated mobile app for iOS and Android. Investors have access to commission-free trades across stocks, ETFs and mutual funds, as well as $0 contract fee for options trading. Firstrade may be attractive to international consumers: It is available in Chinese, and open to international investors.
First Trade’s mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Charles Schwab
With no account minimum or annual fee, the Schwab mobile apps are easy to use for investors both new and experienced. Schwab mobile and StreetSmart mobile apps allow commission-free trades across a wide selection of stock, options, and ETFs, and the broker provides access to over 4,000 no-transaction fee mutual funds. Schwab is also highly rated for its research, including Schwab’s own equity ratings and analysis from 14 providers including Morningstar, Credit Suisse and Thompson Reuters.
Schwab’s mobile app rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Last updated on May 4, 2022
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Methodology
NerdWallet’s comprehensive review process evaluates and ranks the largest U.S. brokers by assets under management, along with emerging industry players. Our aim is to provide an independent assessment of providers to help arm you with information to make sound, informed judgements on which ones will best meet your needs. We adhere to strict guidelines for editorial integrity.
We collect data directly from providers through detailed questionnaires, and conduct first-hand testing and observation through provider demonstrations. The questionnaire answers, combined with demonstrations, interviews of personnel at the providers and our specialists’ hands-on research, fuel our proprietary assessment process that scores each provider’s performance across more than 20 factors. The final output produces star ratings from poor (one star) to excellent (five stars). Ratings are rounded to the nearest half-star.
For more details about the categories considered when rating brokers and our process, read our full methodology.
To recap our selections...
NerdWallet's Best Investment Apps of May 2022
Frequently asked questions
Shockingly little. Thanks to micro-investing apps like Acorns and Stash, you can kick-start an investment portfolio with small amounts of money — just your spare change, in fact. Acorns, for example, sweeps a linked credit or debit card account, rounds up purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the change. Stash offers a similar opt-in feature that rounds up purchases to deposit money in a user's account.
Beyond the micro-investing apps, the amount of money you’ll need to begin investing after you open your account depends on the assets you intend to buy. Individual stock shares range from as little as a few dollars to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per share. Mutual funds often have minimums of $1,000 or more, but exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are essentially mutual funds that trade like a stock, and they can often be purchased for less than many mutual funds. Don’t forget, too, that some brokers charge trading fees every time you buy or sell an investment. The good news there is that many brokers now offer free trades.
Many of NerdWallet’s picks for best apps have account minimums of $5 or less, so you can open an account right away and over the internet. Here’s more on what a brokerage account is and how to open one.
The apps above are good choices for stock traders, but to see a narrower list focused specifically on trading, check out our picks for the best stock apps.
For new investors, working with a robo-advisor is a nice solution. Robo-advisors, like Acorns, build and manage portfolios for you so you don't have to choose any investments yourself.
While the idea of buying individual stocks might be exciting, building a portfolio of stocks requires a fair amount of research and discipline. ETFs offer instant diversification in that they contain shares of multiple companies (dozens, even) like a mutual fund, but trade like individual stocks. (Check out this full explainer on ETFs.)
If buying individual shares of companies is something you’d like to do, see our guide on how to buy stocks.
The mobile trading experience varies by broker — and so do the range of available assets. Among the picks for best apps, Acorns offers only ETFs, while TD Ameritrade’s offerings include individual stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, bonds, options and currency (or forex).
Just as FDIC insurance insures bank accounts, SIPC insurance insures the money you have in your brokerage account (or robo-advisor account) up to $500,000. $250,000 of that total can be applied to protect cash that you haven’t yet invested. All of NerdWallet’s picks for best apps are members of the SIPC.
However, it’s important to note that investments you make in your account can potentially fall in value or even decrease to zero, and investment losses are not covered by any type of insurance. (Here’s more on SIPC insurance and what it does and doesn’t protect.)
