Robinhood is one of the most popular names among investment apps in America. It has been a massive hit with millennial investors because of the zero commission model and easy to use interface. Millions of users signed up with Robinhood in America in 2020 (despite the COVID crisis). The no commission trading model is great as investors don’t need to pay any money as fees when they buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies. It is one of the most popular trading platforms in America but as things stand today, it’s not available for citizens of any other country. Robinhood UK was expected to be launched for all British citizens but the plans were eventually shelved. However, just because Robinhood is not there in the UK, doesn’t mean you don’t have some awesome alternatives for it. In this post, we will take a look at all awesome Robinhood UK alternatives. Let’s get started.
Robinhood UK Alternatives: All You Need to Know
Which are the best Robinhood UK alternatives?
Freetrade
A great Robinhood UK alternative is the extremely popular trading app, Freetrade. With US stocks available and having recently launched fractional shares, it can now definitely be considered an alternative to Robinhood. While Freetrade doesn’t offer as many US stocks as Stake or Trading 212, it does offer UK stocks also. Again, as the name suggests, there is a strong focus here on commission-free stock trading.
Freetrade has a beginner friendly app interface. It also has an active community and loyal fan-base. However, it does miss out on more advanced data and analysis. For those two features, you are better off with Stake and Trading 212.,
Freetrade comes with a great offer of free stock on signup worth up to £200.
Stake
This is one of the best alternatives available for Robinhood in the UK. It has a large selection of US stocks and ETFs (over 3,700). The platform exclusively deals with US stocks so if you are looking to trade in UK stocks, Stake isn’t the platform for you. It also comes with small withdrawal fees which might rub some people the wrong way.
The platform is currently available in app only format. It provides an easy to use interface and a clean design. Making it easy to get started trading US stocks. Even if you are a complete novice.
What’s more, Stake also offers fractional shares and you can get a free stock by signing up via our link.
Trading 212
This is another great Robinhood alternative in the UK. While you don’t have the same number of US stocks available as Stake (around half). You do have the added bonus of having access to a strong selection of both US and UK stocks as well as a small number of European stocks.
Along with an excellent app, there is also a full desktop platform available. Trading 212 is great for people who want to trade in both US and UK stocks. Similar to Stake, Trading 212 also offers a number of stocks as fractional shares.
What happened to Robinhood UK?
Robinhood’s wildly popular trading app was slated for a launch in the UK and Australia with much fanfare. However, the launch was halted because of the scrutiny that Robinhood faced in America. Robinhood released a statement regarding the matter which said that all global expansion plans, including UK and Australia had been indefinitely postponed. Here’s what the statement read:
“The world has changed a lot over the past several months and we’re adapting with it,” Robinhood said in an email to those who had added their names to a waitlist. “On a company level, we’ve come to recognize that our efforts are currently best spent on strengthening our core business in the US and making further investments in our foundational systems.”
Robinhood’s initial launch date in the UK was sometime in November 2019. That was initially pushed to the early part of 2020. Even that was cancelled completely eventually.
Why did Robinhood cancel its UK launch plans?
Retail investing has witnessed a popularity surge and no-fee platforms have allowed novice investors to get into the world of stock trading at this extremely volatile moment. However, US lawmakers deemed the app’s safeguards to be insufficient because of the apparent suicide of a 20-year-old student who saw a negative account balance of $730,000. Robinhood felt the impact of the tragedy and stated that it will work with lawmakers in order to improve its interface, especially in regards to options trading.
“We are personally devastated by this tragedy,” Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, Robinhood’s co-CEOs, wrote in a blog post last month.
Robinhood has also struggled with high volume trading days and its users have experienced frequent outages. However, Robinhood was still valued at $8.6 billion recently, raising $320 million in funding.
When will Robinhood be launched in the UK?
As of now, there are no concrete plans for Robinhood to be launched in the UK. No tentative date has been announced. However, if you want to use a good trading app, there are a lot of great Robinhood UK alternatives out there and you can start with one of the three that we have discussed in this post.
