Best Investment Apps for 2023

You don't need a full-service stock broker or financial advisor to help manage your investments. In fact, you don't even need a computer. Excellent mobile apps make it easy to buy and sell stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and other investments right from your phone -- from anywhere. There are apps for beginners and experienced investors, for active trading and hands-off automation. Some even offer robust features like stock analysis and research.

The top investment apps are more than investment apps. While some apps in this list are dedicated to that purpose, some go beyond investing and bring together your full financial picture in one place where you can set up banking and loans through the same app. Whatever your financial needs, there's an app for you. Here's our list of the best investment apps.

Best for: Stocks, ETFs, options, cryptocurrency, and fractional-share investing

Robinhood is a user-friendly platform that gives you access to a variety of common investment vehicles. Its cash management feature pays interest on cash balances. A Robinhood Gold premium membership for $5 a month gives you access to Morningstar stock research reports and $1,000 of interest-free margin.

On the downside, the app offers few educational tools, no advanced trading tools, no mutual funds, and no IRAs. The company has also taken a hit for its handling of the GameStop (GME) frenzy in January 2021.

• iOS rating: 4.1/5 stars
• Android rating: 3.8/5 stars

Best for: Hands-off investors putting their investing on cruise control with a robo-advisor

Betterment was one of the pioneers in the robo-advisory space, and it's still one of the best options in the business. Betterment will craft an age- and risk-appropriate portfolio to help you meet your long-term goals. It charges a low management fee and has no minimum balance. It offers tax-loss harvesting, which is rare for low-balance brokers. You can also use a cash management account to earn interest on your idle cash. Betterment is a fantastic choice for beginner and intermediate investors, and its user-friendly app is one of the highest-rated in the business.

• iOS rating: 4.8/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.4/5 stars

Best for: Investors who want a feature-packed brokerage and an excellent mobile trading app

TD Ameritrade offers two mobile apps, and customers can connect their accounts to one or both of them. TD Ameritrade's standard app is the simpler of the two and the best place to start. It's a user-friendly platform for checking accounts and buying and selling stocks. The other option, thinkorswim, is designed for active traders and has nearly as much functionality as the award-winning desktop platform of the same name.

TD Ameritrade's packed feature set rivals the best stock brokers in the market. Customers can open almost any type of account and access a vast library of educational resources and stock research. For passive investors, TD Ameritrade has one of the best robo-advisor platforms. It also has nearly 2,000 no-transaction-fee mutual funds. Plus, the thinkorswim platform has an excellent practice "paper money" function.

Standard TD Ameritrade mobile app

• iOS rating: 4.5/5 stars
• Android rating: 3.3/5 stars

thinkorswim mobile app

• iOS rating: 4.7/5 stars
• Android rating: 3.6/5 stars

Best for: Managing your money needs within one app

SoFi, short for Social Finance, sets out to be an all-in-one financial community. The company is best known for its lending business, which includes:

• Mortgages
• Personal loans
• Credit cards

It also offers a high-yield savings account and an investment option called SoFi Active Invest. You can use the platform for active trading or automated investing. Unlike many financial tech companies, SoFi lets you invest in traditional and Roth IRAs as well as cryptocurrencies and traditional securities. The best part? All of these features are available through a single, highly-rated app.

• iOS rating: 4.8/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.3/5 stars

Best for: Mobile app trading platform

Webull is a mobile-based trading platform with considerably more functionality than most of its rivals. There are no account minimums, and customers can trade stocks and options commission free. For investors who use margin, Webull has some of the lowest rates in the industry. New investors can take advantage of Webull's virtual trading "play money" feature as they learn. This makes it one of the best mobile investing apps for hands-on beginners.

• iOS rating: 4.7/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.4/5 stars

Best for: Investors who want a great mobile experience with all the features Fidelity has to offer

Fidelity's investing platform is user friendly and highly customizable. Through the app, users can set up a customized news feed, view stock research, and even deposit checks and pay bills. Plus, it's one of only a few brokerage apps to facilitate trading on international markets.

• iOS rating: 4.8/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.4/5 stars

Best for: Investing app for IRAs

Charles Schwab offers a solid app for IRA investing as well as for all your routine investing and banking needs. You can manage a diverse array of account needs on the go. Compare that to many other stock brokers, which offer apps with slimmed-down feature sets that require you to manage your account online to take advantage of all features. Importantly for IRA account holders, you can make annual deposits and withdraw funds for your required minimum distributions (RMD) or other needs, along with paying taxes on those withdrawals.

• iOS rating: 4.8/5 stars
• Android rating: 3.5/5 stars

Best for: Budgeting app for investors

Personal Capital doesn't offer a brokerage account or a robo-advisor. Instead, it's a budgeting, net worth tracking, and financial advisory platform to support your investing strategy. You can link all your financial accounts, including banks, brokerages, and even an employer's 401(k). The app gives a single-screen view of your entire financial life. It offers excellent retirement planning tools and other analytical features, all for free. The company makes its money by selling the services of its human financial advisors. But the free side of the business (including the app) is fantastic on its own.

• iOS rating: 4.7/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.3/5 stars

Best for: Experienced investors interested in mobile options trading 

tastyworks is one of the brokers that made options trading accessible to retail investors. While it offers other types of investments, including cryptocurrencies, options are still its forte. The tastyworks app puts all the most popular options tradingstrategies at your fingertips, including strangles, straddles, and iron condors. It also lets you view a trading activity feed and follow the moves of traders you like.

There is a learning curve to tastyworks, and it doesn't have as many features as all-purpose investing apps. For those reasons, it's not designed for new investors. If your focus is options trading, tastyworks is hard to beat.

• iOS rating: 2.8/5 stars
• Android rating: 2.7/5 stars

Best for: Keeping your finances all in one place

Ally Invest's mobile app combines a few vital financial services in one easy-to-use app. You can buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and mutual funds through this investment app. You can also access a number of features, including:

• Ally's Managed Portfolios robo-advisory service
• A high-yield savings account
• Checking accounts
• CDs
• Mortgages
• Auto loans
• Personal loans

In short, Ally is a great financial app that also has impressive investing functionality. It's one of the best personal investment apps for people who want to keep their banking and investing in one user-friendly place.

• iOS rating: 4.7/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.1/5 stars

Best for: Automated investing

Wealthfront is a robo-advisor with one of the highest-rated investment apps. It provides automated investment portfolios with low management fees. It has some excellent features, like Path, which analyzes the impact of investment decisions on your long-term financial health. Customers can also contribute to a high-yield savings account with debit card access. Wealthfront is a rare robo-advisor that offers a 529 college savings account, and it offers a low interest portfolio line of credit to customers with $25,000 or more in their accounts.

• iOS rating: 4.8/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.6/5 stars

Best for: Beginning investors to put savings and investments on cruise control

Acorns automates investing by rounding up each purchase you make with a connected credit or debit card and investing that spare change in one of five investment portfolios. The app is simple to use, as evidenced by its high user ratings. What's more, Acorns has straightforward and transparent pricing and offers a checking account with a debit card.

• iOS rating: 4.7/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.3/5 stars

Best for: Self-directed investing, stocks, ETFs, fractional-share trading, banking, line of credit

M1 Finance is built for self-directed investors. You start by customizing your portfolio with stocks (including fractional shares) and ETFs, or choosing an expert-designed portfolio. You can answer questions about your financial goals and use M1's tools to make investment choices. M1 shows you the balance of your portfolio with its "Pie" interface, which helps you easily see the performance of each stock or ETF. A minimum initial investment of $100 is required to get started. After that, you can fund your account with as little as $10 at a time. M1 also offers a banking account called M1 Spend, an FDIC-insured checking account with no monthly fee and no minimum balance.

• iOS rating: 4.6/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.5/5 stars

In the list above, we've included an array of investing apps, some for beginners and some for experienced investors, some for hands-on investing and some for set-it-and-forget-it investors.

If you're brand new to investing and want to use an app tailored to your situation, check out our list of best online stock brokers for beginners.

Mutual fund options can be tough to find when you're browsing online stock brokers and investment apps. Many of these apps focus on more hands-off securities like ETFs and don't give you the option to invest in mutual funds.

If you know you want mutual funds to be part of your portfolio, find the best stock broker for you on our list of best stock brokers for mutual funds.

Many online stock brokers and investment apps have gotten with the program and added cryptocurrency options to their platforms. But these are usually limited to a fraction of the available currencies and won't likely satisfy you if you're an experienced crypto investor (or want to dive in deeper).

Our list of the best cryptocurrency apps and exchanges includes some of the most popular apps dedicated solely to crypto trading, so you can choose from among hundreds of currencies instead of a handful.

Is it worth your time and money to get started with an investment app when you could probably sign up for your employer's retirement plan and talk to a local financial planner about where to put your money? For a lot of people, the answer is yes, but whether it makes sense for you depends on your unique circumstances and financial goals.

The advantage most investment apps have over investment advisors and financial planners is cost. They tend to come with far lower fees than working with a human advisor, and some are even mostly free to use.

The other advantage investment apps have is automation. For low or no fees, you can set your money on autopilot and let it grow without your time or effort.

If you prefer hands-on investing, you might want to go with a more traditional broker. And if you like personalized service or want to support businesses in your community, a local advisor might be a good choice for you instead of a robo-advisor.

Here are some great reasons why you should consider using an investment app (or several).

Pros

• Plan for retirement without learning complicated investment strategies.
• Put your money on autopilot for hands-off investing.
• Track and manage investments on the go.
• Get a snapshot of your finances in a single app.
• Integration with banking and loans.
• Built-in educational resources.

And here are three major downsides to watch out for when choosing an investment app.

Cons

• Lack of access to or connection with a human advisor.
• Fees could be a high percentage of assets for micro investors.
• Hit-or-miss customer support.

No investment app offers all of these (at least, we haven't found one yet) like some of the best stock brokers do. But here are some of the types of investments you can buy and sell with investment apps:

• Individual stocks
• Bonds
• Mutual funds
• Exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
• Futures
• Cryptocurrencies
• Automated portfolios
• Foreign currencies
• Precious metals
• Fine art

How much money do you need to start investing? That depends on your long-term goals. You can find a broker or investment app that caters to any amount you want to invest. So, instead ask, "What do you want your investments to do for you?"

A general rule of investing is to start ASAP. Your money grows more the longer you leave it in an investment account, so it doesn't help you to wait until you've saved thousands of dollars to make your first investment.

If you just have a few dollars to spare each week or month, you can start with a micro investing app like Acorns. If you have a few hundred, you can start with a beginner-friendly app with more features, like Wealthfront or Betterment.

Before you decide how much you want to invest, set some financial priorities. Make sure you pay off debt first, build an emergency fund of liquid savings, and create a budget to cover your everyday expenses.

Learn more: How much money do you need to start investing?

Here are six things to look for when you're choosing an investing app:

• Diverse investment options: Some investment apps only invest in ETFs, which might be fine for beginner, hands-off investors. For more advanced options, look for apps with an array of options, including stocks, bonds, options, and mutual funds.
• Low or no commission fees: Too many brokers offer zero commissions on trades for you to put up with high fees.
• Limited extra fees: Avoid accounts with charges like an annual fee, transfer and withdrawal fees, and inactivity fees.
• Affordable account minimum: Some apps let you open an account with as little as $1, while some require an initial deposit of $500 or $1,000. There's no "right" amount to start with, but pick an app that lets you invest within your budget.
• Educational resources: Many investment apps eschew access to a human advisor in favor of automated investments. It's nice if they offer resources like third-party research and stock analysis to help you make decisions for yourself.
• User-friendly platform: Online and app-based products should be reliable and easy to use! Check reviews for an app before you sign up to make sure users are happy with their experience.