How many ISAs Can You Have in 2026?
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Interactive Investor
Review 2026
Overview, highlights & more!
What will you find in this review:
Overview of Interactive Investor
In this YourWalletManager Interactive Investor review, we look at the UK's original flat fee investment platform. Interactive Investor, almost always shortened to ii, has been running since 1995 and is now the second largest direct platform in the country behind Hargreaves Lansdown.
The thing that makes ii different is how it charges. Nearly every other UK platform takes a percentage of your portfolio, so your bill grows as your investments grow. ii charges a flat monthly fee instead, which does not move whether you hold £5,000 or £500,000.
This review is tailored to UK residents.
What you will find in this review:
ii has restructured its pricing into three plans: Core at £5.99 a month, Plus at £14.99 and Premium at £39.99. Which one you are on depends partly on your portfolio size, because the Core plan is capped at £100,000.
That flat fee model is the whole argument for and against ii. Above roughly £50,000 it usually works out cheaper than a percentage platform. Below that, you are paying at least £71.88 a year whether you invest actively or leave the account untouched.
Platform Highlights
| 🗺️ Supported Countries | The United Kingdom |
| 📊 Platform fee | Flat monthly fee from £5.99 |
| 💲 UK and US share dealing | £3.99 per trade, £2.99 on Premium |
| ⏳ Inactivity fee | £0 |
| 🏧 Withdrawal fee | £0 next day in GBP or EUR |
| 💵 Minimum Deposit | £0, regular investing from £25 per month |
| 💡 Products offered | Trading Account, ISA, Managed ISA, SIPP, JISA |
| 🎮 Demo Account | No |
| 📜 Regulatory entities | FCA (FRN 141282) |
ii covers the mainstream UK wrappers, though the Junior ISA is only available on the Plus and Premium plans rather than on Core.
Because the fee is flat rather than a percentage, the effective cost as a share of your portfolio falls the more you hold. That is the opposite of how most UK platforms work.
All figures in this review were checked against Interactive Investor's own charges pages in July 2026. Charges and plan structures can change, so it is worth confirming current rates before you open an account.
Interactive Investor accounts and plans
ii works differently from most platforms. Rather than charging per account, you pick one of three monthly plans, and that plan gives you access to every account type you are eligible for. You can open one account and add the others later at no extra cost.
The Core plan, £5.99 a month
The entry plan, and where every new customer starts. It covers a Trading Account, Stocks and Shares ISA, Managed ISA and Personal Pension, plus research, multi currency investing and the ii Community forum. Fund and UK or US share trades cost £3.99 each, other international shares are £9.99, and foreign exchange is charged at 0.75%. The catch is the £100,000 portfolio limit: pass it and you move up to Plus automatically.
The Plus plan, £14.99 a month
Plus removes the portfolio cap and adds the features most families want. You get free Junior ISAs for all your children, five free family accounts, one free trade a month, and fund dealing drops to £1.49. UK and US share trades stay at £3.99, other international shares fall to £7.99, and foreign exchange drops to 0.25% on anything above £50,000.
The Premium plan, £39.99 a month
Aimed at frequent traders. Fund dealing and dividend reinvestment are free, UK and US share trades cost £2.99, other international shares are £5.99, and foreign exchange is a flat 0.25% with no threshold. You also get two free trades a month and unlimited free family accounts. At £479.88 a year it only makes sense if you trade often or have a large family group to cover.
The accounts you can hold
Every plan includes a Trading Account, a Stocks and Shares ISA, a Managed ISA, a Personal Pension and the Managed Portfolios range. The Junior ISA is the exception, available only on Plus and Premium. There is also a Joint Trading Account, charged separately at £14.99 a month, and a cash savings service.
Whichever plan you pick, the investment range is the same and it is one of the widest in the UK market. You get UK, US and international shares, funds, over 1,000 exchange traded funds, investment trusts, and corporate and government bonds and gilts. If all you want is low cost ETF exposure, a specialist such as InvestEngine may cover your needs more cheaply.
If you would rather not choose investments yourself, ii offers a Managed ISA and a range of Managed Portfolios for the pension, where its team handles the selection for you. These sit inside the same flat monthly fee rather than carrying an extra percentage charge on top, which compares well against dedicated robo advisers such as Nutmeg that charge a percentage of your portfolio for the same service.
The family benefits on Plus and Premium are genuinely unusual. You can gift free accounts to relatives, who each invest up to £100,000 without paying their own monthly fee. For a couple or a family investing together, that can change the maths considerably. If you want to see how ii’s flat fee compares against percentage based platforms at your portfolio size, our UK Broker Fees Calculator is a quicker way to work it out than doing the sums by hand.
Advantages
Your fee stops growing when your portfolio does
On a percentage platform, doubling your portfolio doubles your bill. On ii it does not move. Over a couple of decades of compounding, that difference on a large portfolio can run into thousands of pounds.
One of the widest investment ranges in the UK
UK, US and international shares, funds, over 1,000 ETFs, investment trusts, bonds and gilts. Whatever you want to hold, ii almost certainly offers it, and the range is identical on every plan.
Free regular investing and monthly trade credit
Regular monthly investing costs nothing on any plan. Plus and Premium also include monthly trading credit worth £3.99 or £5.98, which covers one or two UK or US share trades.
UK based support and long customer tenure
ii's support team is UK based and reachable by phone. The company reports that more than half of its customers have stayed with it for over ten years, which is a reasonable signal on service quality.
Free family accounts on Plus and Premium
Plus covers five family members and Premium covers unlimited, each investing up to £100,000 without their own monthly fee. Junior ISAs for your children are included too. For a household investing together this is unusually good value.
Hold an ISA, a pension and a trading account with Interactive Investor for one flat monthly fee.
Disadvantages
Expensive for smaller portfolios
The £5.99 monthly minimum means £71.88 a year regardless of activity. On a £5,000 portfolio that is roughly 1.4% a year, which is far more than a percentage platform would charge you at that size.
No Junior ISA on the Core plan
To open a Junior ISA you need the Plus plan at £14.99 a month. Several rivals offer a Junior ISA at no platform charge at all, so ii is a poor choice if children's accounts are your main reason for joining.
The Core plan is capped at £100,000
Pass £100,000 and you move to Plus automatically, so your monthly cost jumps from £5.99 to £14.99. It is still competitive at that portfolio size, but the step up is worth planning for rather than discovering on your statement.
Fee Structure at a Glance
The monthly plan fee
ii charges a flat monthly fee rather than a percentage of your portfolio. Core is £5.99 a month and is limited to portfolios up to £100,000. Plus is £14.99 a month with no portfolio limit. Premium is £39.99 a month and is aimed at frequent traders.
Everyone starts on Core, and you move to Plus automatically once your portfolio passes £100,000. You can also move up voluntarily to unlock the Junior ISA or the family accounts. The fee is normally paid by Direct Debit, which is the only payment method available on the Core plan. A pension admin fee is included within the monthly cost rather than charged on top: £2.50 including VAT on Core, and £6 on Plus and Premium. ii publishes the full breakdown on its charges page.
Trading charges
Trading is charged separately from your plan fee. On Core, funds and UK or US shares cost £3.99 per trade and other international shares are £9.99. On Plus, funds drop to £1.49, UK and US shares stay at £3.99 and international shares fall to £7.99. On Premium, fund trades are free, UK and US shares cost £2.99 and international shares are £5.99.
Regular monthly investing is free on every plan. Dividend reinvestment costs £0.99 per holding on Core and Plus, and is free on Premium. Plus and Premium also include monthly trading credit, £3.99 and £5.98 respectively, which covers one or two UK or US share trades. That credit expires after 31 days and cannot be carried over.
Other charges to know about
Foreign exchange is charged at 0.75% on Core. On Plus it is 0.75% on the first £50,000 and 0.25% above that, and on Premium it is a flat 0.25%. Telephone trades cost £49. Next day withdrawals in sterling or euros are free, while same day or other currency withdrawals cost £15.
There are no transfer charges in or out, including full in specie transfers where you keep the same investments. Some situational admin charges do apply, including £25 for a failed payment, £5 a month for non-UK residents and £35 plus VAT for a share certificate withdrawal. Government taxes are separate, including 0.5% UK stamp duty on share purchases and a £1.50 PTM levy on UK trades above £10,000.
Interactive Investor's Customer Support
Available customer support channels:
ii is a phone-answering platform rather than an app-only one, and its support team is based in the UK. The company points out that more than half of its customers have been with it for over ten years, which is a reasonable proxy for people being satisfied enough to stay put.
Support matters most at the awkward moments: a pension transfer that stalls, a corporate action you do not understand, or a bereavement. Being able to reach a person on the phone is worth something in those situations, and it is one of the reasons ii and Hargreaves Lansdown both retain customers who could pay less elsewhere.
ii also runs the ii Community, a moderated forum where customers discuss holdings and platform questions with each other. It is included on every plan and is a genuinely useful supplement to the official help centre.
The research side is strong. Every plan includes ii’s investment research and insight, its expert fund and trust selections, and shareholder voting rights on eligible holdings, which not all platforms pass through to customers.
Account Setup Process
Opening an ii account is done online and takes a few minutes. You will need your National Insurance number, your bank details and some basic personal information. There is no minimum deposit to open an account, though regular investing starts at £25 a month.
ii accounts are aimed at UK residents. Non-UK residents can hold an account but pay an extra £5 a month on top of their plan fee.
Every new customer joins on the Core plan at £5.99 a month. You will need to set up a Direct Debit for the monthly fee, as that is the only accepted payment method on Core. You can change plan later from inside your account, though you have to stay on a new plan for at least a month before dropping back to a cheaper one.
If you are moving from another provider, ii does not charge for transfers in and assigns a case handler to walk you through it. Transfers can still take several weeks depending on who you are leaving, and it is worth checking whether your current provider charges an exit fee first.
- Choose your first account, for example an ISA, Personal Pension or Trading Account
- Enter your personal details, including your National Insurance number
- Set up the Direct Debit for your monthly plan fee
- Fund the account, or start a regular investment from £25 a month
- Choose your own investments, or pick a managed option
One point worth planning around: the Junior ISA is not available on the Core plan. If you are opening ii specifically for your children’s accounts, you will need Plus at £14.99 a month from the start, which changes the cost comparison against platforms like Hargreaves Lansdown that charge nothing at all on a Junior ISA.
Once you are set up, you can hold multiple currencies in the Trading Account and the Personal Pension, converting when the rate suits you rather than being forced to convert on every trade. That is a useful feature if you invest regularly in US shares.
Regulatory Safeguards
Your services are provided by Interactive Investor Services Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 141282. The company is registered in England with company number 02101863, and its registered office is at 201 Deansgate, Manchester.
Your investments are registered in the name of a separate company, Interactive Investor Nominee Services Limited, which keeps client assets ring fenced from ii’s own money. If ii were declared in default and there were a shortfall, eligible customers would be covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000 per claimant. As always, the FSCS protects you against the platform failing, not against your investments falling in value.
ii is not independent. It was bought by the asset manager abrdn, now trading as Aberdeen, in 2022, and operates as part of that group. It administers around £95bn of assets for more than 500,000 customers, and says it handles roughly one in every seven investments bought or sold by the UK public.
Being owned by a large listed asset manager is generally a stability signal, though it is worth being aware of the relationship if you are considering Aberdeen’s own funds on the platform.
Interactive Investor Alternatives
ii’s flat fee is compelling above roughly £50,000, but it is not the right answer for everyone, and a £5.99 monthly minimum is a real cost on a small portfolio. We looked at total cost, beginner friendliness, product range, regulatory standing and user feedback to pick the alternatives below. You can also browse our full set of UK broker reviews.
Best commission-free alternative
We compared what you pay before you have bought anything. eToro charges no commission on real share and ETF dealing and no monthly platform fee, so a smaller portfolio avoids ii's £71.88 annual minimum entirely. Currency conversion and withdrawal costs apply instead, and eToro does not offer a SIPP, so it is a different type of platform rather than a like for like swap.
Best alternative for beginners
We looked for simple onboarding and a small, clear set of decisions. InvestEngine offers commission free ETF investing with no platform fee on its DIY option, plus managed portfolios if you would rather not choose, which is a gentler starting point than ii's much larger menu.
Best competitor with a similar product range
We prioritised platforms with a comparable set of wrappers and investment types. Hargreaves Lansdown is ii's closest rival and the platform ii most often compares itself against. HL offers more research and a free Junior ISA, but charges a percentage rather than a flat fee, so it usually costs more on larger portfolios.
Most secure alternative
We focused on long established, FCA regulated providers with a conservative reputation. Vanguard is the asset manager behind many of the index funds UK investors already hold, and its own platform is a low cost route into those funds, albeit with a much narrower investment range.
Best for social and copy trading
We looked at features ii does not attempt at all. eToro's CopyTrader lets you mirror the portfolios of other investors automatically, and its social feed is built into the platform. That is a very different proposition from ii's research-led approach, and it suits a different kind of investor.
The honest summary is that ii’s competitors mostly win on cost at smaller portfolio sizes, while ii wins as your portfolio grows. If you are not sure which side of that line you fall on, our Find My Broker tool and our AJ Bell review are useful next steps.
Frequently Asked Questions
Closing Thoughts and Conclusion
Interactive Investor is the strongest flat fee option in the UK, and for the right investor it is a straightforwardly good deal. If you hold a decent sized portfolio, want an ISA and a pension in one place, and value being able to phone someone, ii is difficult to beat on cost. The investment range is broad, the research is included, and the family accounts on Plus are unusually generous.
The catch is that the flat fee cuts both ways. At £5.99 a month you are paying £71.88 a year before you buy anything, which on a £5,000 portfolio is about 1.4% and worse than almost any percentage platform. The Junior ISA sitting behind the £14.99 Plus plan is another awkward gap. As a rough rule, ii starts making sense somewhere around £50,000, and gets better from there. Below that, look at eToro or another commission free option first.
