9 best investment apps for beginners and how to choose what’s right for you

If you’re shopping for an investment app, it’s a good idea to compare before you choose one—some have unique offerings that may be exactly what you’re looking for. But by our metrics, the overall best investment app for beginners is Fidelity; it scores well in just about every category, and we also chose it as the best app for retirement investing.

But all the investment apps on this list are great for beginners and let users buy or sell investments easily, review portfolio performance and analyze potential investment opportunities. Our list also includes platforms that will appeal to cryptocurrency beginners, and those just starting out looking for a robo-advisor.

From this list, here are the top-scoring investment apps and what they’re best for:

• Fidelity: Best for retirement investing and best app overall

• Webull: Best for practice investing (paper trading)

• Betterment: Best among robo-advisors

We detail these and our other high-scoring investment apps below.

Our full-time investing writers and editors do comprehensive testing of each investing and stock app we review to decide if they make this list. Our testing includes opening and funding accounts whenever possible. Our reviewers focus on ease of use, available functionality (especially as compared to the company’s website and online stock trading platform), trading and account fees and customer support. We also note how easy it is to fund an account, how quickly investment transfers settle and any account-linking hiccups. For stock trading apps, we also look for more unique factors like the availability of fractional shares and options trading costs.

• Read our detailed methodology

  NerdWallet’s comprehensive review process evaluates and ranks the largest U.S. brokers and robo-advisors by assets under management, along with emerging industry players. Our aim is to provide an independent assessment of providers to help arm you with information to make sound, informed judgements on which ones will best meet your needs.

  We collect data directly from providers through detailed questionnaires, and conduct first-hand testing and observation through provider demonstrations. The questionnaire answers, combined with demonstrations, interviews of personnel at the providers and our specialists’ hands-on research, fuel our proprietary assessment process that scores each provider’s performance across more than 20 factors. The final output produces star ratings from poor (one star) to excellent (five stars).