Comparison of the 9 Best Brokers in the UK: Which One to Choose in 2026

Quick broker comparison

The table lists 9 brokers that are the most popular in the UK and that between them cover all the main investing and trading styles.

Pepperstone is the only one of our three picks that offers nothing but leveraged products.

If you want real shares held in your name, ideally inside an ISA, XTB and eToro are the two to look at.

Comparing broker fees

Fees decide how much of your return you actually keep. A few tenths of a percent a year look harmless, yet over 15 or 20 years they add up to thousands of pounds on an ordinary portfolio. And part of the cost never appears in the adverts.

The table below brings together what you pay at each broker, from placing an order to taking your money out.

The big fee table

* Currency conversion = the fee charged when you trade assets in a currency other than the one your trading account is held in. You can avoid it by holding several accounts in different currencies with the broker. Not every broker offers this. Of the brokers in the table, XTB, eToro, Trading 212, Interactive Brokers and IG do. For the others, we couldn’t find this information.

** At XTB, the inactivity fee only applies to an account with no trade in the last 12 months and no deposit in the last 90 days. It is never charged on the XTB ISA.

Dealing charges on shares and ETFs

The UK market has changed fast. A few years ago, £10 or more per deal was normal at the big platforms, and today several brokers charge nothing at all on shares and ETFs.

XTB comes out on top here. Buying and selling real shares and ETFs costs nothing up to €100,000 of turnover a month, and the same rule applies inside the XTB ISA. Above that, the commission is 0.2%, with a minimum of £10. A private investor will almost never get near the threshold.

eToro doesn’t charge UK clients commission on shares or ETFs. Clients in EU countries pay $1 to open and $1 to close a share position, or $2 on the Australian, Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Tokyo exchanges, but this fee doesn’t apply in the UK. The cost sits in the spread, the 0.75% conversion and, on UK shares, the 0.5% stamp duty. Since 29 July 2026 its Stocks and Shares ISA, run with Moneyfarm, has also dropped dealing commission and the annual custody fee, although FX charges of 0.70% still apply on assets that aren’t in pounds.

Trading 212, Freetrade and IG don’t charge commission either. At Freetrade, the plan you choose decides the FX fee.

The traditional platforms are a different story. Hargreaves Lansdown cut its online share deal from £11.95 to £6.95 in March 2026 (£3.95 after more than 20 deals in the previous month) and lowered its ISA account charge from 0.45% to 0.35%, but it also started charging £1.95 per fund deal. AJ Bell asks £5 per share deal, or £3.50 after 10 or more deals in the previous month, and 0.25% a year in custody, capped at £3.50 a month for shares. For someone buying a little every month, both remain clearly more expensive than the commission-free brokers.

Interactive Brokers charges 0.05% on UK shares with a £3 minimum.

Currency conversion fees

Many of the most followed shares and ETFs trade in dollars. If your account is in pounds, the broker converts the money on every buy and every sell.

That costs money.

Trading 212 is the cheapest here at 0.15%, and it also lets you hold several currencies. XTB charges 0.5% but offers sub-accounts in GBP, EUR and USD. IG takes 0.7%, AJ Bell up to 0.75%, and Hargreaves Lansdown 0.99% on the first £10,000 of a trade. Interactive Brokers starts at 0.2 basis points (0.002%), with a minimum of $2 per conversion, so on small amounts the minimum matters more than the percentage.

eToro charges 0.75% whenever money moves between the pound and the dollar, for example when you buy a US share from your GBP account. Club members pay less: 20% off at Silver and Gold, 40% at Platinum and Platinum+, 80% at Diamond. Bronze gets no discount. Deposits and withdrawals on the GBP account aren’t converted at all.

You can avoid a large part of this cost. Change your pounds in advance through a multi-currency account at a good rate, then send the broker the currency you plan to invest in. We describe how in our article on depositing to XTB via Revolut.

Spreads at CFD brokers

With CFDs, the main cost is the spread, the gap between the buying and the selling price. The tighter it is, the less you pay when you open a position.

On EUR/USD, the most traded currency pair, it looks like this:

Pepperstone’s Razor account offers raw spreads from 0.0 pip, with a commission from £2.25 per lot per side. The Standard account has no commission, with the cost built into the spread. UK clients also get a spread betting account, where the stake is in pounds per point.

XTB shows an EUR/USD spread of around 0.8 pip in its own comparison, with no commission.

IG starts at 0.6 pip. eToro starts at 1 pip, again with no separate commission, so the cost per lot is a little higher than at the other two.

Interactive Brokers and Trading 212 offer CFDs too, but neither was built around this kind of trading first, and we don’t recommend them for it.

Funding rates change often, so we don’t quote them here. Check the current figure on the platform before holding a position for more than a day.

Tax: what the broker does and doesn’t do for you

The best tax tool in the UK is the ISA. You can put up to £20,000 a year into ISAs, split across several accounts if you like, and gains and dividends inside them are tax-free. XTB, eToro, Trading 212, Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, Freetrade, Interactive Brokers and IG all offer a Stocks and Shares ISA. Pepperstone doesn’t.

Outside an ISA, the 2026/27 rules look like this. Capital gains above the £3,000 annual allowance are taxed at 18% within the basic rate band and 24% above it. Dividends above the £500 allowance are taxed at 10.75%, 35.75% or 39.35%, depending on your income band.

Two more costs catch people out. Buying UK shares carries 0.5% stamp duty, whichever broker you use, while ETFs are exempt. And for US shares, filling in the W-8BEN form with your broker cuts the US withholding tax on dividends from 30% to 15%.

Spread betting profits are currently exempt from capital gains tax, whereas CFD profits are not. Pepperstone itself notes that the tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change.

All the brokers here run their UK business through an FCA-authorised firm, so there’s no foreign account to report. None of them, as far as we could establish, does your Self Assessment for you. These rules change often and depend on your personal situation, so before you file, have them checked by a tax adviser or directly with HMRC.

The best brokers for shares and ETFs

If you want to buy shares or ETFs regularly and hold them for years, the shortlist gets short quickly. You need low fees and, ideally, an ISA to keep the taxman out of your returns.

XTB: our first choice for UK investors

UK clients sign with XTB Limited, which the FCA authorises under firm reference number 522157. The parent company, XTB S.A., is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

Commission-free shares and ETFs up to €100,000 a month, free withdrawals, fractional shares from £1 and a flexible Stocks and Shares ISA on the same terms: no other broker in this comparison puts all of that together. Uninvested cash in the ISA can earn interest, and XTB doesn’t charge custody fees up to €250,000 of holdings. The Investment Plans feature lets you set up regular purchases of ETFs automatically.

What convinced us less is the 0.5% conversion fee. It still beats the exchange rate at most high-street banks, and you can avoid it by sending dollars straight to a USD sub-account.

New clients can currently receive free ETF shares under the conditions described in our article on the XTB referral code.

eToro: the pick for copy trading and crypto

eToro says it has more than 40 million users worldwide. UK clients sign with eToro (UK) Ltd, which is authorised by the FCA under firm reference number 583263.

Its main draw is CopyTrader. The feature automatically mirrors the portfolio of an investor you pick, and nobody else in the table offers anything comparable. UK clients pay no commission on shares and ETFs, unlike clients in the EU, who pay $1 per trade. Crypto is the real asset, not just a CFD.

A GBP account is available, and withdrawals from it are free. Every withdrawal from the USD account costs $5.

Two things didn’t convince us. The ISA runs on Moneyfarm’s platform rather than in the main eToro app, and the 0.75% conversion between pounds and dollars is pricier than at XTB until you reach a higher Club tier. For a UK investor buying mostly US shares, the second point adds up.

New clients can receive free shares depending on the size of their first deposit, as we explain in our article on the eToro welcome offer.

Trading 212: cheap, but with limits

Trading 212 UK Ltd, authorised by the FCA, has won a big following in Britain with a simple offer: no commission, a 0.15% FX fee and an ISA in the same app. Pies make regular investing easy, and multi-currency support lets you dodge most of the FX cost.

The app is very clean. For a first ETF, that’s pleasant. But the research tools are thin, and the separate CFD side sits uneasily next to an app aimed at beginners. That’s why it isn’t among our main recommendations.

Interactive Brokers: for advanced investors

If you invest larger sums or want less common markets, Interactive Brokers gives access to over 90 market centres, along with options, futures and bonds. UK clients sign with Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited, which is authorised by the FCA, and an ISA is available too.

I have to admit Trader Workstation put me off the first time I opened it. The web and mobile apps are far more approachable, but beginners still get lost easily.

Other options

Hargreaves Lansdown is the biggest investment platform in the country and the name many Britons think of first. Its research, fund range and customer service are strong. The fees are the weak spot: even after the March 2026 changes, a share deal costs £6.95 and the ISA account charge is 0.35% a year, capped at £150 for shares.

A small aside. Many investors still compare platforms by the dealing charge alone, while for anyone holding funds the percentage account charge often weighs more over the years.

But back to the point.

AJ Bell is the cheaper of the two traditional platforms. A share deal costs £5, regular investing from £25 a month is free, and custody on shares is capped at £3.50 a month in the ISA.

Freetrade charges no commission and, since January 2026, includes the ISA in its free Basic plan. On that plan, though, the FX fee is 0.99%, one of the highest in this comparison.

IG combines commission-free investing, an ISA and one of the best-known spread betting and CFD platforms in the UK. With an FX fee of 0.7%, it isn’t the cheapest choice for US shares.

The best CFD brokers

XTB: the best CFD broker to start with

XTB shows an EUR/USD spread of around 0.8 pip, with no commission. The xStation platform is fast and easy to read, and you can place an order straight from the chart.

For a new trader, the difference comes from the learning material. XTB’s education section, the webinars and the daily market commentary are of a standard we didn’t find anywhere else in this comparison. The range covers CFDs on forex, indices, commodities, shares and crypto.

What’s missing is MetaTrader and algorithmic trading.

eToro: CFDs with copy trading

eToro offers CFDs on currencies, indices, commodities and shares, with an EUR/USD spread from 1 pip and no separate commission. On price alone, it’s a little more expensive than Pepperstone or XTB.

CopyTrader makes up for that. For someone new to CFDs, watching how an experienced trader handles positions in real time is worth more than a tenth of a pip.

Pepperstone: the best choice for active traders

Pepperstone is built around fast execution and tight costs. UK clients sign with Pepperstone Limited, authorised by the FCA under firm reference number 684312.

On the Razor account, spreads start at 0.0 pip and the commission starts at £2.25 per lot per side. There’s no inactivity fee. UK traders can also choose spread betting, where profits are currently free of capital gains tax.

This is where Pepperstone clearly pulls ahead. You can choose between MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader, TradingView and Pepperstone’s own platform, with advanced indicators, strategy testing and trading robots. For a trader who automates a strategy, nothing in this table comes close.

For a complete beginner, the offer fits less well. The learning material is thin, and without a clear strategy the Razor account brings no advantage.

The best broker for beginners

A beginner needs a platform they can find their way around without a manual, material they can actually learn from and fees they understand before placing the first order. What they want to buy decides the rest.

On those three points, XTB comes first. Its app is clear, the short market updates arrive daily and take a minute or two to read, and you can switch them off if they bother you. Add the ISA, and for someone who wants to understand what they’re buying, it’s the best starting point in this comparison.

eToro is just as easy to pick up. CopyTrader shows what a portfolio built by someone else looks like. But it’s a passive feature, and you learn little from watching the account value move.

Pepperstone isn’t one we’d recommend to a beginner.

Trading 212 and Freetrade are easy to start with, but they teach you little. Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell suit beginners who mainly want funds, as long as they accept higher fees.

For the first steps, our guide to investing for beginners covers the basics.

What to check before you choose

The right broker depends on how you want to invest. Look at these four points first:

1. Regulation. Every broker in this comparison serves UK clients through an FCA-authorised firm and keeps client money separate from its own. If such a firm fails, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) can pay up to £85,000 per person, per firm. It covers the broker’s failure, never investment losses.
2. All the fees, including conversion, account charges and withdrawals.
3. ISA or general account? Of the brokers here, only Pepperstone offers no ISA.
4. A demo at two or three brokers tells you more than hours of reading.

How we test brokers is described in our rating methodology.

Which broker suits whom: quick overview

The table sticks to our three recommendations. Interactive Brokers appears only once, for futures, bonds and less common markets that XTB, eToro and Pepperstone don’t cover.

Frequently asked questions

Which broker is cheapest for investing every month?

XTB, with commission-free shares and ETFs up to €100,000 of monthly turnover, ISA included.

Is my money safe with these brokers?

Yes, as long as the broker is authorised by the FCA, which all of the brokers in this comparison are for their UK business. Client money must be kept apart from the firm’s own funds. If the firm fails, the FSCS can pay up to £85,000 per person, per firm. That protection covers the broker’s failure, never the losses on your investments. You can check any firm yourself in the FCA register.

Can I open an ISA with XTB?

Yes, and shares and ETFs in it are commission-free up to €100,000 of monthly turnover, just like in the general account.

Which is better, XTB or eToro?

It depends on what you’re after. XTB is cheaper on conversion and has its ISA in the main app. eToro wins if copy trading or real crypto interests you.

Do I pay tax on CFD and spread betting profits?

CFD profits fall under capital gains tax, while spread betting profits are currently exempt, although that depends on your circumstances. Have your case confirmed by a tax adviser, because the rules change.

Can I have accounts with several brokers?

Yes, and it often makes sense, for example an ISA at XTB for ETFs and an account at Pepperstone for CFD trading. Your £20,000 ISA allowance can be split across several ISAs in the same tax year.

What’s the difference between a share broker and a CFD broker?

With a share broker, you own the share, receive the dividends and can hold it for as long as you like. With a CFD, you only speculate on the price, without owning anything. XTB and eToro offer both. We cover the differences in our article on CFD shares vs real shares.