Building Freetrade

Invest by Freetrade, our brokerage platform, has arrived

Freetrade Team

December 11, 2019

Freetrade Team

The new system will bring instant deposits, fractional shares, thousands of new stocks, and more

For the past three years, we’ve been working to get everyone investing.

With a focus on that mission, we’ve built a simple yet beautiful stock trading app providing commission-free investing in US and UK stocks and ETFs, used by over 70,000 customers, and followed by a community of 100,000 people across Europe.

We decided to build our own brokerage platform to be able to move faster. While it’s normal to rely on third-party software in our space, we wanted to fully own this core piece of our tech stack: a system that would underpin and power everything we do.

A team of ten engineers, the majority of our tech team, have been quietly building Invest by Freetrade from scratch for a year and a half. Made in London and cutting edge — while most companies built their investment platform in the ‘80s.

Today, Invest by Freetrade is ready, and we’ve started migrating our first beta-tester customers to the platform.

Here are just a few of the improvements you can expect to see on the Freetrade app in the coming months.

Fractional shares on Freetrade

Fractional shares have been one of the most popular requests from the Freetrade community. The US market has some particularly pricey shares, such as Amazon at $1,700 as we write this for example, and not everyone can afford to invest a larger amount like this in one go.

We expect our fractional share offering to go live in the first months of 2020.

Thousands of new stocks

Using our own platform is going to make it much easier for us to add products to the Freetrade app. In the near-term, expect thousands more US and UK stocks and ETFs. We’ll also be adding European shares in the coming months.

Premium accounts

A premium subscription account (internally codenamed “Alpha”) is the pillar of our customer-aligned business model. A couple of things need to be fine tuned before they go live, but now that the investment platform is operational, they will be much easier to launch.

Faster development of new features

As our community members know, we are always looking for feedback from Freetrader users — it helps us add new features that improve your app. Using our own platform makes this process much easier and faster to implement. You can expect real-time deposits with Apple and Google Pay, for example, as soon as you migrate to Invest.

Invest by Freetrade will enable us to build a dramatically better product in 2020, and get hundreds of thousands of people into the healthy habit of investing.

Important Information

This should not be read as personal investment advice and individual investors should make their own decisions or seek independent advice.

When you invest, your capital is at risk. The value of your portfolio can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

Freetrade is a trading name of Freetrade Limited, which is a member firm of the London Stock Exchange and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales (no. 09797821).

The views expressed above are those of community members and do not reflect the views of Freetrade. It is not investment advice and we always encourage you to do your own research.

Simple pricing plans

Choose how you'd like to pay:

Annually

Save 17%

Monthly

Annually

Save 17%

Monthly

£0.00/mo

Accounts

GIA pink
General investment account

Benefits

  • Commission-free trades (other charges may apply. See full pricing table.)
  • Trade USD & EUR stocks at the exchange rate + a 0.99% FX fee
  • Fractional US Shares
  • Access to more than 4,700 stocks, including the most popular shares and ETFs
  • 1% AER on up to £1,000 uninvested cash
£4.99/mo

£59.88 billed annually

£5.99/mo

Billed monthly

Accounts

GIA white
General investment account
ISA
Stocks and shares ISA

Benefits
Everything in Basic, plus:

  • Full range of over 6,200 US, UK and EU stocks and ETFs
  • Trade USD & EUR stocks at the exchange rate + a 0.59% FX fee
  • Automated order types, including recurring orders
  • Advanced stock fundamentals
  • 3% AER on up to £2,000 uninvested cash
£9.99/mo

£119.88 billed annually

£11.99/mo

Billed monthly

Accounts

GIA white
General investment account
ISA
Stocks and shares ISA
SIPP white
Self-invested personal pension (SIPP)

Benefits
Everything in Standard, plus:

  • Trade USD & EUR stocks at the exchange rate + a 0.39% FX fee
  • Priority customer service
  • Freetrade Web beta
  • 5% AER on up to £3,000 uninvested cash

Download the app to start investing now



When you invest your capital is at risk.