The Top 5 BEST Investing Apps

What's up you guys, it's Graham here. So, as usual, I always read all of the comments, and if you guys ask me to make a specific video, I will go ahead, I will listen, I will make the video. And this video is exactly that, because recently I've received non-stop comments asking me to review many of the investment apps out there and give my opinion about which ones would be the best to make money with.

Now, here's the thing though: when it comes to this, no joke, there is a lot to keep track of. Even for me, making this video, it was overwhelming because there were just too many options. We've got Robinhood, Webull, M1 Finance, Stash, Stockpile, Betterment, Wealthfront, Fundrise, and that's just the extent of what I could remember and say in one take. But anyway, now that I've looked into all of them, it's become very apparent that some of these are just significantly better than the others.

So with this video, I will do my best to break down the top five investing apps out there, not only in terms of making money but also with apps that just don't charge you stupid fees for using their service. Because if there's one thing I cannot stand, it's excessively high and unnecessary fees.

But really quick, I just want to thank our very special video sponsor today, and that's called smashing the like button. If you haven't done that already for the YouTube algorithm, as most of you know, these videos take me a very long time to research and make. So, something as simple as smashing the like button helps out the YouTube algorithm and helps push this video to an even larger audience. So, thank you very much to smashing that like button for making this video possible today.

And with that said, let's get into the video and go over the top five investment apps to use, in my own opinion, not financial advice, for entertainment purposes only. So first, we're going to be looking at the most popular request on my channel by far, and that would be Robinhood. Chances are, if you're watching this video without adblocker on (which hopefully you are, guys, hopefully you're watching my videos without adblocker on), but anyway, you're probably going to see a Robinhood ad on this video because they've been geniuses lately about running ads on my channel anytime I talk about investing.

But in terms of an app, I am proud to say that this is one of the very few that I like and use. And if you're not familiar with what Robinhood is yet (because hopefully you should already know this, but if you don't), here's what Robinhood is: they're basically just a stock trading app that allows you to trade stocks and ETFs and even cryptocurrencies entirely for free. That's right, I said it—free! That means they don't charge you anything because it's free.

I've used Robinhood myself over the last two years, just to buy and sell a few things on the side for fun, and honestly, I've been pretty happy with the experience. The fact that they don't charge any fees is awesome, but it's also a very easy app to navigate, and I think it would be perfect for beginners.

Of course, by now you might be wondering to yourself, "Wait a second, Graham, if it's free, how do they make money?" Well, they make their money from their premium services like Robinhood Gold, which allows margin trading for five dollars a month. They also make money from interest on your cash deposits, like pretty much any other bank or financial service out there.

Oh, and I almost forgot, silly me! They also make money from selling your data, which, let's be real, by the way, who cares? I never understood why people get so upset when their information is sold to third parties to then remarket back to them in the form of advertising. I listen; our information is already out there. Anytime you go on the internet or log in to anything, chances are your information is being sold to third parties. You know, may as well just embrace it; it's not that big of a deal.

So anyway, I digress—going back to Robinhood. Even though I love the app, there are a few downsides with this that I would like to mention. Now, the first one I heard is that their customer service is lacking anytime you might have a potential issue. Now, even though I've never had to use their customer service, for people that have, I have just heard horrible experiences from other people.

So for this reason, I wouldn't recommend trading with a huge amount of money on Robinhood—like, don't trade with hundreds of thousands or like millions of dollars on Robinhood. And at that level anyway, it's probably worth it you pay even a small amount just so you have the option to call up a person and speak with a live actual human being within a few minutes of calling if you have any issues.

Now second, with Robinhood, you're not able to purchase what's called fractional shares, which means if you want to go and buy a stock of Amazon, for instance, you're gonna have to come up with the full two thousand something dollars to buy the entire share, instead of investing like twenty dollars to buy one one-hundredth of one share. Now, this is not the end of the world and it's not that big of a deal, but it would be nice to be able to purchase fractional shares, if Robinhood ever allows that in the future.

Now third, Robinhood does not offer dividend reinvestment, which means anytime you get a dividend payout, it's not just automatically reinvested and you have to manually go and do that. Again, it's not the end of the world, it's not that big of a deal; it would be nice, but it's just a very minor inconvenience.

And fourth, if I'm gonna be really nitpicky here and just go extreme with this, Robinhood does not have any retirement accounts. Again, this is not the end of the world, it's not that big of a deal, but I would like to see at some point Robinhood expanding to checking and savings accounts and then eventually, or beforehand, retirement accounts.

So Robinhood, if you guys are watching this video right now, which I have a feeling someone from Robinhood is probably watching this video: number one, I recommend sponsoring one of my videos because I would say yes to that if you wanted to sponsor a video. And second, make retirement accounts happen! Let's make retirement accounts great again, and you could start by putting that on Robinhood.

That's it! If you're trading with smaller dollar amounts, you're just starting out, and you just want to get your feet wet by buying and selling stocks, or even if you're like a somewhat advanced trader who just wants to buy and sell without paying any commissions, then I would definitely recommend Robinhood, and this would be one of my top investment apps.

Now second, let's talk about another very popular investment app that hundreds, if not probably thousands of people, have wanted me to finally talk about. I have never talked about this before on my channel, so you've heard this here first: we're going to be looking into M1 Finance.

Now, M1 Finance was requested from me so much that it was on the same level as Robinhood, which I think is very impressive, considering that Robinhood is such a huge company, and M1 Finance is maybe just a little bit smaller in comparison. So it goes to show you how well of a job M1 Finance is doing in terms of building an audience and getting people talking about them.

Now, for those of you that are not aware, M1 Finance is another investment app, which you guessed it, is totally free! Now because I'm listing this second to Robinhood and because there's so many similarities between them, I'm just going to go over the differences between Robinhood and M1 Finance.

At first, when it comes to this, Robinhood is a great app for buying and selling stocks. So if you're just going and trading stocks all day, then Robinhood would be my recommendation. However, if you're looking for steady long-term investing, then I really gotta hand it to M1 Finance.

They win a huge benefit, with M1 Finance over Robinhood, is that they allow you to invest in, like I said, fractional shares. So you do not need to go and spend two thousand dollars to buy an Amazon stock. Instead, you could spend twenty dollars and invest in Amazon stock and still say you invested in Amazon stock. And if you're just starting out and have a limited amount of money, this is a really great way to build out a very diversified stock portfolio with a lot of different stocks without needing a ton of money.

The other great benefit of M1 Finance over Robinhood is that they allow dividend reinvesting, which means that you can reinvest back into the stocks automatically with the money that those stocks generate. You M1 Finance also allows you to do what's called M1 Retire, which you don't need to be a genius to figure out that this is basically their retirement account.

With, again, the best part about all of this is no fees whatsoever; it's entirely free. And when it comes to investing in all of this and trying to build out a diversified portfolio, they offer what's called the investment pie. This could either be a percentage of stocks that you put together yourself that automatically rebalances depending on how much money you want allocated to each stock, or they offer their own stock market funds depending on your investing goals.

Now, of course, like with anything, no app is perfect and there are some downsides to this. I would say the only downside to M1 Finance that I can really see is that it's not really the best platform for day trading stocks. This is because they do not allow you to buy and sell a stock within that same day. But really, if you just want to go and buy and sell stocks all day long, then you may as well just use Robinhood instead.

And to be honest, I'm also just not a huge fan of day trading stocks to begin with. Not only is it a lot riskier, but I prefer a long-term buy-and-hold approach that's also better for tax reasons as well. Once you hold something for over a year, it counts as long-term capital gains instead of ordinary income.

So overall, I'm super happy with M1 Finance and would highly recommend them to anyone looking to invest long term or to invest in fractional shares. And I'll link to all of their information down below in the description, so I recommend you guys go check that out if you want to learn more about M1 Finance.

Now my third choice is another really popular one that I actually just recently reviewed, but because it was actually pretty decent and I liked it, I think it deserves to be on this list. That would be Acorns. Basically, Acorns is an app that just helps you automate your investing, and I would say, in my opinion, their most notable feature is within their roundup services, which basically lets you round up the purchase of everything you spend money on up to the nearest dollar and then gives you the option to multiply that by 10, and it'll automatically reinvest that amount for you.

They also give you the option to set up recurring investments on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and again, the entire purpose of this is really just to help you automate recurring and consistent investments over time. Now, in terms of where your money goes anytime it's automatically invested for you, they say on their website that your investments are then diversified across more than 7,000 stocks and bonds and automatically rebalanced when the stock market fluctuates.

So pretty much they're investing in broad index funds that track the entire market, very similar to the Vanguard index funds that I love to talk about here in the channel. Now in terms of how much this will cost you, because again, I care way too much about how much these services are, their basic service begins at one dollar a month, which gives you access to their automated investing where they round up the charge and invest the difference.

Then for two dollars a month, you get access to their IRA and for three dollars a month, you get access to their checking and debit card. Now overall, I would say this is a pretty decent app, if even just for the roundup feature by itself. However, the downside to this is that the one dollar a month charge will heavily eat into your profits if you only have a few hundred dollars invested or you only use this just for the round-up feature alone.

But once you have more than five thousand dollars invested with Acorns, then the one dollar a month charge is pretty much on par with what Vanguard charges, and then anything beyond five thousand dollars now just becomes slightly cheaper. And when it comes to me, I like cheap a lot. I like not overpaying for things, and I like saving money. So when it comes to this, I could see the value in Acorns as long as you have more than five thousand dollars invested with them.

And again, let me be clear: Acorns is not the app for you if you just want to buy and sell stocks all day. But Acorns is good for the roundup feature if you just want low-cost broad index funds that don't really cost you a ton of money. Now I don't like that you don't have as much control as you do with Vanguard or Fidelity or just buying and selling individual stocks. But for what it is, I would say it's decent, and again, I'll have all of the info available to you down below in the description.

And also, if you want five dollars when you sign up, there's a link to that down below as well. The option's there; if you want to use it, great! If not, that's fine too. Now fourth, we have another investing app that's been gaining a lot of popularity lately, and you probably heard me talking about this before on my channel, and that would be Webull. And it might just be me, but every time I say Webull, it kind of reminds me of Weedle, you know, the Pokemon Weedle?

It sounds familiar, like Weedle, Webull, Weedle! Anyway, I'll stop. And when it comes to this, Webull is very similar to Robinhood in the sense that they allow commission-free stock trading. So really, on the surface, they're very much alike. Plus, both of them give you a free stock when you sign up and fund your account, which link below that in the description if you guys want a free stock.

But I would say where Webull really pulls ahead and separates themselves from Robinhood is within their stock analysis and charts. I would say Robinhood is really great for beginning investors who really just want the basics of buy-and-sell stock trading. But once you get more advanced, I would say Webull just offers you so much more in terms of their analytics.

Like, I'll admit it took me a little while to get accustomed to the app and to figure out how it works. There's a bit of a learning curve, and even for me, it's a bit advanced. But Webull does offer significantly more information when it comes to charts and screeners and earnings and information and everything else that goes along with that. And even though I do not day trade stocks, I have been told by other people who do that Webull processes their stock trades a little bit faster than Robinhood, which could be an advantage for people who are quickly buying and selling all day.

So just take that for what it's worth. Now, I would say if there's anything negative that I would feel about this app, the only downside that I see is that the app is a bit complicated to use. It's a little bit confusing, and it took me some time to get used to it. But overall, for a free stock trading app for someone who wants to get a little bit more advanced into things, I would recommend it. But otherwise, besides all of this, I am tempted to basically call Webull pretty much a Robinhood that's a little bit more complicated to use that offers you a little bit more information for people that are a little bit more advanced than just the beginner stages of investing.

And if you guys know me, you know I love getting just free stuff. And when it comes to getting free stuff, Webull is offering a promotion where if you open an account and you fund it with a hundred dollars, you will get a free stock worth anywhere from eight dollars all the way to a thousand dollars. So the link to that is in the description if you want to just go; at the very least, you get like eight dollars worth on a hundred dollar funding on your money.

So anyway, it's up to you if you want to do that, but I always like free stuff, so if you guys want that, link below in the description. And fifth, finally, we have one of my favorite investing apps out there, and this would be the one that I would recommend to probably most people, to most investors, and probably the vast majority of people out there would just like to use this—and that would be Fidelity.

Now, the reason I like this one so much is that their app allows you to invest with zero minimums, with zero fees into many of their completely free index funds. So everything really within that context, within this app, is entirely free. Now, I need to mention this: this is not the place to go if you want to buy and sell individual stocks because they will charge you a 4.95 commission per trade.

So don't ever go to Fidelity to buy and sell stocks when you could do that with M1 Finance, Robinhood, or Webull entirely for free. Then you could save the 4.95 to go and spend that on basically anything else. It’s a better use of your money than a five-dollar trading fee. But on the other hand, if you're looking to invest in index funds entirely for free with no management, nothing—it's all free, that is what I would recommend to most people.

Like, Fidelity would pretty much be my number one choice for anyone who has the self-control and discipline just to automatically invest a certain amount of money every single month into their completely free index funds or to open up a Roth IRA and just do the exact same thing with it. The fact that it's completely free with no minimums on many of their completely free index funds makes them by far the cheapest option out there.

Even if it's only saving you one dollar a month compared to Acorns, we gotta admit that one dollar a month adds up because after a year, that's basically a piece of avocado toast! Now, again, just to reiterate some of the downsides here: they're a horrible place to go and buy and sell individual stocks—do not do that, that's going to cost you way too much. And they're also a horrible place in terms of automatically investing for you when you can compare them to something like Acorns or M1 Finance.

But again, if you have the discipline and the self-control to invest automatically on your own, then when it comes to this, by far, they are the cheapest option out there. So with that said, those are my top five favorite investing apps, and I will link all the information down below in the description.

And if you guys are interested, just let me know down below in the description, but I can do a top five worst investment apps out there, in my own opinion—not financial advice, of course—for entertainment purposes only. But if you guys are interested in seeing that, just let me know down below in the description.

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