ISA Transfer Rules 2026: How to Move Your ISA
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AJ Bell vs Vanguard: Which Is Better for UK Investors in 2026?
A side by side comparison of two established low cost platforms, covering fees, account types, investment choice and who each one actually suits.
☆☆☆☆☆ Rated 4.5 out of 5
AJ Bell
Funds, shares and trusts | ISA, LISA and SIPP
Capital at risk.
☆☆☆☆☆ Rated 4.3 out of 5
Vanguard
Index funds | Long term investing | ISA, SIPP and Junior ISA
Capital at risk.
Funds, shares and trusts | ISA, LISA and SIPP
Index funds | Long term investing | ISA, SIPP and Junior ISA
Brief overview
AJ Bell is a Manchester based investment platform and a FTSE 250 company, with more than £108 billion of assets under administration and around 723,000 customers. It is a full service DIY platform: over 2,000 funds, plus UK and overseas shares, investment trusts, ETFs, gilts and bonds, held inside a stocks and shares ISA, Lifetime ISA, Junior ISA, SIPP or ordinary dealing account.
You pay a percentage account charge on what you hold, plus a charge each time you deal, and in return you get one of the widest investment ranges in the UK market. Our full AJ Bell review covers the platform in detail.
Vanguard Investor is the UK direct to consumer arm of one of the world’s largest index fund managers. Rather than a shop window onto the whole market, it is a single manufacturer selling its own products: roughly 85 Vanguard funds and ETFs and nothing else. There are no individual shares, no investment trusts and no third party funds.
What you get in return is a very low, very predictable cost base built around broad index tracking. Read our full Vanguard review for the detail. Whether you searched for AJ Bell vs Vanguard or Vanguard vs AJ Bell, the comparison below covers both platforms the same way round.
AJ Bell vs Vanguard at a glance
| Criteria | AJ Bell |
Vanguard |
|---|---|---|
| Overall rating | ||
| Best for | Investors wanting funds, shares and every ISA type | Hands off index investors and pension savers |
| Regulator | FCA (AJ Bell Securities Ltd and AJ Bell Management Ltd) | FCA (Vanguard Asset Management Ltd) |
| Account fee on funds | 0.25% to £250,000, then 0.10% | 0.15% a year, capped at £375 |
| Account fee on shares and ETFs | 0.25% capped at £3.50 a month | 0.15% a year, capped at £375 |
| Minimum fee | None | £4 a month below £32,000 invested |
| Dealing commission | £1.50 funds, £5 shares, free regular investing | £0 on funds, £7.50 for one off ETF trades |
| Currency conversion fee | 0.75% tiered down to 0.25% | Not applicable, funds priced in sterling |
| Account types | ISA, Lifetime ISA, Junior ISA, SIPP, Junior SIPP, Dealing | ISA, Junior ISA, SIPP, General Account, Managed ISA |
| Minimum investment | £250 lump sum or £25 a month | £500 lump sum or £100 a month |
| Investment choice | 2,000+ funds plus shares, trusts and ETFs | Around 85 Vanguard funds and ETFs |
| Individual shares | Yes | No |
| Lifetime ISA | Yes | No |
| Junior ISA | Yes | Yes |
| Ready made portfolios | AJ Bell funds and Ready made pension | LifeStrategy and Target Retirement |
| Automated investing | Free regular investing from £25 | Regular investing and dividend reinvestment |
| Inactivity fee | None | None |
| Exit or transfer fee | None | None |
| FSCS protection | Up to £85,000 on investments | Up to £85,000 on investments |
| Customer support | Phone, email and secure messaging on weekdays | Phone, email and chat on weekdays |
| Mobile app | Full app, plus the separate Dodl app | Functional, browser led |
Fees and product details checked August 2026. Always confirm current terms on the provider’s own site.
Fees and charges
1. The annual account charge
AJ Bell
AJ Bell charges a percentage account charge on the value of what you hold, and the rate depends on the type of investment. Funds, meaning unit trusts, OEICs and structured products, are charged at 0.25% a year on the first £250,000, 0.10% between £250,000 and £500,000, and nothing above that.
Shares, which includes ETFs, investment trusts, gilts and bonds, are also charged at 0.25% but capped at £3.50 a month in an ISA or dealing account, so £42 a year at most. In a SIPP that cap is £10 a month. Cash is not charged at all. The charge is worked out on your month end valuation and collected monthly.
Vanguard
Vanguard charges one account fee across every account you hold with it. If your total invested balance is below £32,000 the fee is £4 a month, which is £48 a year. At £32,000 and above it becomes 0.15% a year, capped at £375. Junior ISAs are exempt from the £4 minimum.
The fee applies only to money that is invested, not to cash sitting in the account, and it is collected quarterly by direct debit or from available cash. If neither is available, Vanguard sells units from your largest fund to cover it.
2. What it costs to buy and sell
AJ Bell
Fund deals cost £1.50 each. Share deals, including ETFs and investment trusts, cost £5 online, falling to £3.50 the following month if you placed ten or more share deals. Regular investing has been free since May 2026, so a monthly direct debit from £25 into your chosen investments carries no dealing charge at all.
Dividend reinvestment is £1.50 and telephone dealing is £25. Buying AJ Bell’s own funds carries no dealing charge. Stamp duty of 0.5% still applies on UK share purchases, as it does on every platform.
Vanguard
There is no dealing commission on Vanguard funds, however often you buy or sell. ETFs are priced once a day at no charge, and only if you want to trade at a live price during market hours do you pay £7.50 for the optional Quote and Deal service. Most investors never use it.
ETFs carry a small one off spread cost of roughly 0.01% to 0.26% depending on the fund. There is nothing to pay for switching funds, withdrawing money, transferring out or closing an account.
3. Where each one works out cheaper
AJ Bell
The cap on share and ETF charges is the detail most comparisons miss. In an ISA, a portfolio made up of ETFs is charged at most £42 a year however large it grows. Vanguard’s 0.15% passes £42 at around £28,000 invested, so above that an ETF portfolio held at AJ Bell is the cheaper of the two, and the gap widens as the pot grows.
Hold funds rather than ETFs and the picture reverses, because the 0.25% fund charge runs uncapped until £250,000. You can model both against your own balance with our UK broker fees calculator.
Vanguard
Vanguard is cheapest in the middle of the range. Below roughly £19,200 the £48 annual minimum works out at more than AJ Bell’s 0.25% on funds, so a small fund portfolio costs less at AJ Bell. Between roughly £19,200 and £250,000 Vanguard’s percentage fee is lower than AJ Bell’s fund charge, with nothing to pay on dealing.
Remember that fund management costs of 0.06% to 0.79% sit on top of the account fee at both platforms, and on a cheap tracker those charges are often larger than the platform fee itself.
Account types and minimums
1. What you can open
AJ Bell
AJ Bell covers almost every UK wrapper: a stocks and shares ISA, a Lifetime ISA, a Junior ISA, a SIPP, a Junior SIPP and an ordinary dealing account. That breadth matters if you want everything in one place, and the Lifetime ISA in particular is something Vanguard does not offer at all.
Worth knowing: the AJ Bell stocks and shares ISA is not a flexible ISA, so money you withdraw and pay back in the same tax year still counts against your £20,000 allowance. There is also Dodl, AJ Bell’s separate app, charging 0.15% with a £1 monthly minimum across a much smaller investment range.
Vanguard
Vanguard offers a stocks and shares ISA, a Junior ISA, a Personal Pension and a General Account. The ISA can be self managed or run for you through the Managed ISA service, which adds a 0.20% management fee on top of the account fee.
There is no Lifetime ISA and no cash ISA. For many people that is not a problem, since the four wrappers on offer cover most long term goals, but anyone saving for a first home through a LISA will need a second provider.
2. What it takes to get started
AJ Bell
Opening an account costs nothing and you can fund it with a £250 lump sum or a direct debit from £25 a month. Now that regular investing is free, the £25 monthly route is genuinely low cost: no dealing charge, and the account charge on a small balance amounts to pennies.
Transfers in from another ISA or pension are free, and so are transfers out. You will need to leave at least £100 in an ISA to keep it open.
Vanguard
Vanguard sets a higher bar to start: £500 as a lump sum or £100 a month by direct debit, across every account type. Combined with the £4 monthly minimum fee, that makes Vanguard a poor fit for anyone testing the water with a small amount.
Transfers in and out are free, and in specie transfers, meaning moving funds without selling them, are possible where the other provider supports them.
Platform and app experience
1. The web platform
AJ Bell
The AJ Bell website is a traditional broker platform: a dashboard for each account, a funds and shares search with filters, factsheets and charts, and a research section carrying its own analysis and the free Shares magazine. It is dense rather than beautiful, and there is a learning curve if you have only ever used a simple app.
Once you know where things are it is quick, and the depth of information on individual holdings goes well beyond anything Vanguard offers.
Vanguard
Vanguard’s site is deliberately plain. There is no live order book and no ticker watching, because the product range does not call for it. You choose a fund, choose an amount and set up a direct debit. Fund pages carry the essentials, holdings, charges and past performance, and little else.
For an investor who wants to check in twice a year, that restraint is a feature rather than a shortcoming.
2. The mobile app
AJ Bell
The AJ Bell app handles dealing, valuations, transfers and payments, and is well rated by users, though it works as a companion to the website rather than a replacement for it. Some research and account admin still sends you to a browser.
If you want a genuinely app first experience from the same company, Dodl is the answer, but you give up the full investment range to get it.
Vanguard
The Vanguard app covers balances, contributions, fund switches and documents. It is functional rather than polished, and it lags the newer app first platforms on both speed and design.
For a portfolio you pay into monthly and otherwise leave alone, it does what is needed. If you want to watch prices move, this is not the platform for it.
3. Automation and tools
AJ Bell
Free regular investing from £25 a month is the main piece of automation, and since May 2026 it costs nothing per deal. There is automatic dividend reinvestment at £1.50 a time, pension and ISA calculators, and a set of ready made AJ Bell funds plus a Ready made pension for anyone who would rather not choose.
Screeners, factsheets and in house commentary are a real strength here, and the reason many people pay a little more to be on the platform.
Vanguard
Regular investing and automatic dividend reinvestment are both included at no charge. Beyond that the tools are light: a retirement calculator, a risk questionnaire for the Managed ISA and some straightforward goal planning.
The LifeStrategy and Target Retirement ranges do much of the work that tools would otherwise do, by holding a fixed mix of shares and bonds and rebalancing inside the fund.
Investment choice
1. Funds
AJ Bell
More than 2,000 funds from third party managers, including the full Vanguard range. That last point matters more than it first appears: you can hold Vanguard LifeStrategy or FTSE Global All Cap inside an AJ Bell ISA and pay AJ Bell’s charges instead of Vanguard’s.
There are also AJ Bell’s own multi asset funds, which carry no dealing charge to buy, and a range of ready made portfolios built from them.
Vanguard
Around 85 Vanguard funds and ETFs, and nothing from anyone else. The range covers global and regional equity trackers, bond funds, the LifeStrategy multi asset range and the Target Retirement series.
It is a short list by design. For a straightforward index portfolio it is more than enough, and the ongoing charges run from about 0.06% to 0.79%.
2. Shares and investment trusts
AJ Bell
UK, US and a number of overseas markets, plus investment trusts, gilts, corporate bonds and ETFs from providers including Vanguard, iShares and Invesco.
This is the clearest structural difference between the two platforms. If you want to hold individual companies alongside your index funds, Vanguard cannot do it and AJ Bell can.
Vanguard
None. Vanguard Investor does not offer individual shares, investment trusts or third party funds, and there is no sign of that changing.
If you decide later that you want to own individual companies, you would need a second account elsewhere or a full transfer out. That is worth thinking about before you commit a pension to the platform.
3. The trade off
AJ Bell
Breadth costs a little more and asks more of you. With 2,000 funds and thousands of shares in front of you, the risk is not that you cannot find what you need, it is that you trade more than you should.
The dealing charges are modest but they are real, and a busy year of £5 share deals quietly adds up on a small portfolio.
Vanguard
A narrow range removes decisions, which for most long term investors is a benefit rather than a limit. Fewer choices means fewer chances to tinker, and tinkering is what costs most people money.
The cost is flexibility. You are tied to one manager’s view of how index investing should work, and if the charges or the fund range change you have less room to respond without moving platform.
Safety and regulation
1. Who regulates them
AJ Bell
AJ Bell Securities Limited and AJ Bell Management Limited are both authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. AJ Bell plc is a FTSE 250 company listed on the London Stock Exchange, which brings public reporting and audited accounts alongside FCA supervision.
Client investments are held in nominee accounts, kept separate from the firm’s own money in line with FCA client asset rules.
Vanguard
Vanguard Asset Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. It is part of the Vanguard group, one of the largest asset managers in the world.
Your investments are held separately from the firm’s own assets, again under FCA client asset rules. In practice both platforms sit at the conservative end of the UK market on this measure.
2. What FSCS protection covers
AJ Bell
Eligible investments are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000 per person per firm if the provider fails and cannot return your assets. Cash held in your account sits with a bank, and deposit protection rose to £120,000 per person per bank on 1 December 2025.
Neither figure protects you from investments falling in value, which is the risk you are actually taking when you invest.
Vanguard
The same £85,000 investment limit applies, per person per firm. It is worth being precise about what that means: compensation if the firm fails, not compensation for markets falling.
Vanguard’s size, and the fact that the funds on the platform are its own, does not change your protection in either direction.
Customer support
1. How to reach them
AJ Bell
Telephone support on weekdays, email, and secure messaging from inside your account. A phone line matters more than it sounds on a platform that handles pensions and transfers, where one call can settle something that would otherwise take a week of messages.
There is also a detailed help centre covering charges, transfers and the mechanics of each wrapper.
Vanguard
Vanguard offers telephone support on weekdays alongside email and a chatbot. The phone team is generally well regarded, and reviewers regularly mention that questions get answered clearly rather than quickly.
The help centre is organised around the handful of things people actually ask about: fees, transfers, contributions and withdrawals.
2. What to expect
AJ Bell
Service is generally rated well, and AJ Bell states that it has been a Which? Recommended Provider for eight consecutive years.
Transfers in from other providers are the most common source of delay, and that is usually the outgoing provider rather than AJ Bell. Pension transfers in particular can take several weeks whichever platform you use.
Vanguard
Service is reported as competent and unhurried rather than fast. Because the product range is narrow, most queries are administrative: contributions, transfers and paperwork rather than anything complicated.
If you want handholding on what to invest in, neither platform can give you that. Both are execution only, meaning no personal advice.
Learning resources
1. Guides and articles
AJ Bell
AJ Bell publishes a large library of guides on ISAs, pensions and investing basics, alongside daily market commentary and the free Shares magazine.
Its investment team also publishes fund and trust research, which is unusual at this price point and genuinely useful if you are choosing between holdings rather than buying a single multi asset fund.
Vanguard
Vanguard’s education leans towards investment principles rather than platform mechanics: diversification, the effect of costs, time in the market and why most people should not try to pick winners.
It is well written and consistent with the products it sells, which is both its strength and its limit. You will not find a balanced view of active management here.
2. Tools and planning
AJ Bell
Pension and retirement calculators, an ISA allowance tracker, and screeners for both funds and shares. If you like doing your own research before you buy, this is where AJ Bell pulls clearly ahead.
There is no practice or demo account, so the learning happens with real money. Starting small through regular investing is the sensible way in.
Vanguard
A retirement calculator, a risk questionnaire and some basic goal planning. There is no screener, largely because with around 85 funds there is not much to screen.
The LifeStrategy range does the heavy lifting: pick a shares to bonds split you can live with and the fund handles the rest.
3. Who it suits
AJ Bell
Best for someone who wants to understand individual holdings and make their own calls, with enough research on tap to do it properly.
If you are not sure yet, our broker matcher tool takes a couple of minutes and narrows the field.
Vanguard
Best for someone who wants to understand why a simple, low cost index portfolio works, and then leave it alone for a decade.
If you are weighing up wrappers as well as platforms, our guides to the best stocks and shares ISAs and the best SIPP providers cover the wider market.
Which platform suits which investor
1. Best for
AJ Bell
Investors who want everything under one roof: funds, shares, investment trusts and every wrapper including a Lifetime ISA and a Junior SIPP.
Also anyone building an ETF portfolio beyond roughly £28,000, where the £42 annual cap on share charges quietly makes AJ Bell the cheaper platform of the two.
Vanguard
Long term investors with somewhere between about £19,000 and £250,000 in funds who want one simple index portfolio, no dealing charges, and nothing to think about between contributions.
Also anyone who values a single, predictable annual fee they can explain to themselves in one sentence.
2. Less suited to
AJ Bell
Frequent traders, who would rack up £5 share deals quickly, and anyone holding a large fund only portfolio where the uncapped 0.25% is comfortably beaten by Vanguard’s 0.15%.
Also anyone who wants a flexible ISA, since the AJ Bell stocks and shares ISA is not one.
Vanguard
Beginners starting small, because £48 a year on a £1,000 pot is a heavy drag: you would need close to a 5% return simply to cover the fee.
Also anyone who wants individual shares, a Lifetime ISA or a cash ISA, none of which Vanguard offers.
3. A note on costs
AJ Bell
The headline 0.25% is only part of the picture. Work out first whether you will mostly hold funds or ETFs, because the capped share charge changes the answer completely, then add your likely dealing pattern on top.
The 0.75% starting rate on currency conversion also matters if you buy US listed holdings regularly.
Vanguard
Vanguard’s fee is simple and predictable, which counts for something in itself. Above £250,000 the £375 cap makes it very cheap indeed.
Just remember that fund management costs sit on top at both platforms and often matter more than the platform fee. Our broker fees calculator will do the arithmetic for your own balance.
Pros and cons
AJ Bell
Cons
Pros
Vanguard
Cons
Pros
Verdict
1. The short answer
AJ Bell
AJ Bell wins on breadth and, less obviously, on cost for larger ETF portfolios. The £3.50 monthly cap on share and ETF charges means an ISA full of ETFs costs at most £42 a year, which beats Vanguard’s 0.15% above roughly £28,000 invested.
Add the Lifetime ISA, the research and the far wider fund range and it is the more complete platform. The detail is in our AJ Bell review.
Vanguard
Vanguard is the better answer for a mid sized, fund only portfolio held for the long term. Between roughly £19,000 and £250,000 the 0.15% charge with no dealing costs is hard to beat, and the LifeStrategy range removes almost every decision.
Below about £19,000 the £4 monthly minimum undoes the advantage. Our Vanguard review has the full picture.
2. Who should choose it
AJ Bell
Choose AJ Bell if you want shares as well as funds, if you need a Lifetime ISA or a Junior SIPP, if your ETF portfolio is heading past £28,000, or if you want research and a phone line sitting behind your pension.
Vanguard
Choose Vanguard if you want a single index portfolio, you are contributing monthly for a decade or more, and you have or will soon have more than about £19,000 invested.
If you are weighing other platforms too, our platform comparison hub covers the rest.
Risk disclaimer
This article is for general information and education. It is not personal financial advice and does not take account of your circumstances. When you invest, your capital is at risk and you may get back less than you put in. Past performance is not a guide to future returns.
Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and ISA and pension rules may change. If you are unsure whether a product is right for you, seek advice from an FCA authorised adviser.
Fees and product details were checked in August 2026 against each provider's own published charges and may have changed since. Always confirm current terms on the provider's own website.
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