5 Best Investment Apps Of January 2024 (2024)

No app we reviewed scored as highly across the board as Fidelity’s relatively new product, Spire. Designed for inexperienced traders, Spire combines savings graphics and nudges with the ability to buy and sell stocks.

Spire has no account or investment minimums, and it features fractional share investing, allowing you to buy less than one share of a particular security. There are no account fees, and your orders aren’t sold to high-frequency trading shops. This practice, called selling order flow, is thought by some to result in customers getting worse prices when they buy or sell investments.

Plus, you needn’t commit yourself to short-term buying and selling; Spire offers a range of account types outside of normal taxable investment accounts, like you find at Robinhood. Its retirement and 529 accounts allow you to invest for your and your children’s futures.

From a usability standpoint, Spire is first-rate. Not only is it easy to navigate, but it’s also chock-full of useful investing definitions and educational material that will help fledgling Warren Buffets find their way. Another perk is the ability to coordinate with Fidelity Go, the Boston-based investment firm’s robo-advisor service, which tied for third in our ranking of best robo-advisors. As with most leading robos, you’ll be presented with a suite of pre-made portfolios that match your risk tolerance and are stuffed with low-cost funds.

While Spire provides indirect access to the full capabilities of investing behemoth Fidelity, Forbes Advisor’s top choice for best brokerage overall, traders desiring more esoteric options, such as commodities or cryptocurrency, will be disappointed.

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Many of the top online brokerages offer robo-advisor services. These automated portfolio management platforms have evolved a lot over the past decade, but if you’re looking for a dedicated robo-advisor investment app that will manage a low-cost diversified portfolio of ETFs, you may be best served by Betterment. It’s one of the original robos, and is the number-one pick in Forbes Advisor’s ranking of the best robo-advisors available.

Betterment has no account minimum ($10 minium to start investing), making it easy to get started, and it offers a strong platform that will help you automate your investments in a way that best suits your long-term goals and risk tolerance. The pricing structure, however, may be unfamiliar t0 those new to the world of investing.

For its basic service, it charges 0.25% of all of the money you invest with it each year. That works out to be $25 per $10,000 you invest.

This is important because other leading robos, like Acorns and Ellevest, charge subscription fees of at least $1 a month (or $12 a year). These flat rates effectively penalize small balances: You’d have to have almost $5,000 invested before fees at Betterment exceeded those of the most bare bones plans of those other services. That minimum cutoff rises dramatically when you include retirement accounts into the equation.

Instead of starting with one of these platforms just because they seem easier or cheaper, then, you’d probably be better off starting with Betterment’s app to take advantage of its leading platform and low-fee access to all investment account and goal types.

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On Binance.US' Secure Website

Crypto enthusiasts will notice that none of our prior picks allow for trading digital currencies. Those who want exposure to what some have called “digital gold,” then should instead consider the app of Forbes Advisor’s top choice for best cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.US.

Certain beginner-friendly investment apps, like Robinhood or Webull, allow you to easily buy crypto along with other more mainstream investments, like stocks and ETFs. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Platforms like Robinhood and Webull offer a relatively limited range of cryptos and, perhaps more importantly, don’t let you move your cryptos off of their apps. Some crypto investors like to transfer their coins from the apps where they buy them into so-called “cold” crypto wallets disconnected from the internet to protect their investments from hackers. What’s more, these platforms’ “free” trades aren’t really free and instead have fees baked into the prices you buy and sell your cryptocurrencies at.

That’s why we recommend a pure crypto app, like Binance.US, even for those new to crypto. Binance.US provides access to countless more cryptocurrencies, from mainstays like Bitcoin and Ethereum to dozens of lesser-known altcoins. Beginners and advanced traders alike benefit from Binance.US’ industry-low fees and instant buy or more advanced trading platforms.

While Fidelity Spire stands out as a solid choice for those of all experience levels and investing interests, beginners particularly interested in trading should look to E*TRADE. The original online-first brokerage boasts an average Apple App Store rating of 4.6 (with 139,000 reviews) and nabbed the top spot in the usability category of our ranking of Best Online Brokerages for Beginners, in no small part because of its investment app.

E*Trade has no trading minimums or fees. There’s also a surfeit of investing information available for users, from basic definitions of common terms like diversification to the ability to live stream Bloomberg TV. You’ll also be able to sign up for a wide range of account types, including IRAs and custodial accounts for children, in addition to more typical taxable accounts.

Unlike Fidelity Spire, though, you can’t open a 529 to save for children’s college educations. Moreover, the lack of fractional trading may make it harder for those with less available cash to buy the security they want, especially when certain individual stocks like Tesla (TSLA) or Apple (AAPL) have shares that cost at least $100.

You can also access a robo-like service through E*Trade’s Prebuilt Portfolios, though you’ll need $500 to get started with mutual funds and $2,500 to open an account with exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Like with Fidelity Spire, you can’t trade commodities or cryptocurrency, though newbies might benefit from that restriction given the volatility of those assets.

Disclaimer: Since this list was compiled, TD Ameritrade’s thinkorswim app has been incorporated into its parent company Charles Schwab.

More advanced traders may want to consider TD Ameritrade’s app. Through the normal TD Ameritrade app, you’ll have access to the basics (e.g., stock, options and futures trading) as well as advanced charting functions, margin trading and the ability to buy and sell securities on the over-the-counter (OTC) market. Traders can monitor market-breaking news easily in-app and benefit from a wealth of educational resources.

In addition, as a TD Ameritrade client, you gain access to thinkorswim, our top choice for Best Online Broker Mobile App. Through the thinkorswim mobile app, you can engage in pretty much all of the trading capabilities of the normal TD Ameritrade app plus more sophisticated investments like forex.

What’s more, you can access the settings you enable on thinkorswim’s powerful desktop platform in-app, meaning your chart drawings and market scans are always with you. thinkorswim also offers chatrooms and paper trading for you to discuss and try out your trading ideas.

Those in search of a cryptocurrency option, though, will be disappointed, and you don’t have the ability to buy fractional shares, though this is likely less important for advanced traders with larger capital reserves at their disposal.