Best Trading Platforms for Beginners: What They Really Charge (2026)

Every trading app you'll look at says the same thing on its home page: commission-free. Most of them mean it. The trade really does cost nothing, or close to nothing.

So we priced the thing a beginner outside the US actually does first. You live in the UK, you hold pounds, and you put £1,000 into a US stock. On four well-known platforms, that one buy cost anywhere from £1.50 to about £12. Almost all of that gap was the currency conversion.

The five things to check before you sign up

1. 1Is it regulated where you live? That decides who protects your money if the firm fails.
2. 2What does it charge to convert your currency? For anyone buying foreign shares, this is usually the biggest cost.
3. 3Is there a commission, and is there a minimum? A $1 minimum is nothing on $10,000 and a lot on $50.
4. 4Is there a yearly fee just for holding? It's called a custody or account fee, and it's charged whether you trade or not.
5. 5Does it also sell CFDs? Many platforms put them one tap away from real shares, and they're a very different product.

The rest of this article puts real numbers on points 2, 3 and 4, then comes back to points 1 and 5.

What £1,000 into a US stock actually costs

Here's the test. A UK investor funds the account in pounds and buys £1,000 of a US stock at $250 a share. The pound was worth $1.3226 on the day we checked. We used each platform's standard UK pricing, with no paid tier and no promotion.

On the same £1,000, eToro cost about 8 times what Trading 212 did. The commissions were all a pound or two at most. The conversion made the difference.

Now try it with £10,000

Percentage fees grow with the amount. Minimum fees don't. So the ranking changes once you put more in.

Interactive Brokers' price barely moved, because its $2 minimum conversion fee covers almost any amount a beginner will deposit. Trading 212's 0.15% went from £1.50 to £15.00. eToro cost £114.17, roughly 50 times Interactive Brokers.

One more thing the tables don't show. You'll usually pay the conversion again when you sell and bring the money back to pounds. On Interactive Brokers you can hold dollars and skip that. On Trading 212 the same 0.15% applies on the way out.

The four platforms, one at a time

Trading 212

No commission on stocks and ETFs in the Invest account, no account fee and no custody fee. The cost is 0.15% on every conversion. That makes it the cheapest of the four for small, regular buys. It's a simple app, and it's built for exactly that. It's regulated in the UK by the FCA (firm 609146).

Interactive Brokers

The most professional of the four. On its Pro fixed plan a US stock costs $0.005 a share, minimum $1, maximum 1% of the trade. Currency conversion is almost free, at 0.20 basis points, minimum $2 a conversion. The catch is the app. It's built for active traders, and there's a lot on screen. It's the cheapest option once you're putting in a few thousand at a time. The commission-free IBKR Lite plan is for US residents only.

Saxo

A bank-owned platform with a polished app. On the Classic tier, US and UK shares cost 0.08% of the trade, conversion is 0.60%, and there's a custody fee of 0.12% a year on stocks and ETFs. That custody fee is £1.20 a year on £1,000, every year you hold. Both fees are lower on its top tier, but you need a much bigger account to reach it.

eToro

Famous for copy trading, where you copy another user's trades. ETFs carry no commission, and stocks cost $1 or $2 to open and to close, by country and exchange. There's no inactivity fee. The expensive part is the money going in: 150 pips to turn pounds into dollars. That's £11.34 on every £1,000 you fund in pounds. Its account runs in dollars, so that cost hits anyone paying in from another currency.

Live in the US? Different list

If you're a US resident, you deposit dollars and buy dollar shares, so there's no conversion to pay. The big US brokers all charge $0 to trade, and the real differences are options fees, account fees and fractional shares. We compared Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab and Robinhood on exactly those in a separate article. Interactive Brokers' Lite plan and moomoo also offer $0 US stock trades to US residents.

The tab to stay away from: CFDs

All four platforms here also offer CFDs. A CFD isn't a share. It's a bet with the platform on the price, usually with borrowed money, and a small move can wipe out what you put in.

Platforms in the UK and EU have to publish how many of their own customers lose money on CFDs. On eToro's fee page on 2026-10-05, the number was 51%. If you're a beginner buying your first shares, make sure you're in the part of the app that buys real shares. Our CFD article explains the difference in full.

How to check a platform is regulated

Don't take the platform's word for it. Look the firm up on the regulator's own register, using the company name or firm number in the website's footer.

• UK: the FCA Financial Services Register.
• EU: your country's regulator, such as BaFin in Germany, AMF in France or CySEC in Cyprus.
• US: FINRA BrokerCheck, plus SIPC membership for account protection.
• Australia: ASIC's professional register. Canada: CIRO.

If the name on the website doesn't match a name on the register, walk away. Our broker article goes through the checks in more detail.