Robinhood vs Acorns vs Stash Invest - Which One is Right for You?
Which savings account should you use? Robinhood vs Acorns vs Stash Invest? This is a question that many people have to ask themselves when they are deciding on saving for the future.
All three of these companies offer different benefits and drawbacks, so it's important to compare them before making your final decision. In this post, we will discuss the top features of each company and help you decide which one is right for you!
While effectively every crucial brokerage offers online savings accounts, Acorns and Robinhood are a couple of the very few that make it easy to save. Let's dive into more and compare these three savings accounts, i.e., Robinhood vs acorns vs stash invest.
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Robinhood Vs Acorns Vs Stash Invest — Comparison
About Robinhood
Robinhood is a brokerage and trading platform that was launched in 2013. Robinhood offers many free stock trades, commission-free options trading, and margin lending services to over five million users. They receive no interest in the money they hold for you but offer fee waivers on certain accounts if your balance falls below $0.
The company does not have any minimum deposit requirement. Still, it requires that all deposits be made through ACH transfers or from an external bank account, so it's best suited for people who are already invested with them as opposed to those just getting started investing their first dollar into the market.
For the testing purpose, we have bought the Robinhood account so that we can explain the process of buying and selling stocks using the platform.
About Acorns
Acorns is a mobile app and investment service that provides users with micro-investments. Users put their money into an account, then every time they swipe on the app to make a purchase or do one of the other activities it's tracking (like reading articles), Acorn rounds up how much was spent to the nearest dollar and invested in stocks automatically.
Acorns do not have any minimum deposit requirement but require all deposits to be made through ACH transfers or debit card transactions, so it's best suited for people who are already invested in investing as opposed to those just getting started investing their first dollar into the market.
Acorns charge a $.25 monthly fee, which is waived for people with balances over $5000 and those under the age of 23. You can easily set up your acorns account as a "roundup" account.
Acorns invest in stocks from companies that it believes will do well based on the data they collect and use to make investment decisions. Still, there's no way for you to know what stock Acorn is invested in or see how your money is doing once deposited in the acorns platform.
About Stash
Stash is a perfect investment app that you can use to invest in a variety of stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. You can get started for as little as $25 with your spare change or make an entire lump sum deposit to start investing.
Stash has no account fees but does charge 0.25% every year on the money you have invested there (unless it's under $5000). Stash offers many investment options such as low-fee index funds that track various indexes like S&P 500, tech, and biotech sectors, so you won't need to go through all the trouble researching which sector is best performing at any given time because they already did the research for you!
If you're learning to invest, then stash also offers a number of helpful articles for beginners.
How good is Stash?
Stash has an average rating on Google Play Store and Apple App store; both are close to four stars out of five! They have over 300k downloads with many satisfied customers.
The only downside that we found was the lack of information when it comes to the fees you incur if your balance falls below $5000, which could prove costly depending on how often this happens.
The other thing is that they're limited in their range of ETFs, but some people may not need all those choices anyway, so it's not really anything major to worry about.
How Are These Three Same
These three investment platforms provide good features red and are all geared towards beginner investors. They're pretty similar in terms of performance, costs, and features, but it really comes down to personal preference on which one will work for them the best!
- Minimum Investments
- Investment Account Types
- Investment Types
- Mobile Apps
Unique Features
Unique Features Of Robinhood
If you're starting then, Robinhood is a great choice. They have no minimum investment, they only charge fees on trades, and their app has an easy-to-use interface for beginner investors.
Additionally, the commission fee structure means that it'll be less expensive than Acorns or Stash Invest when you go through several rounds of investing in different funds!
- Robinhood supports free cryptocurrency.S. stocks.
- International stocks and ETFs
- Cryptocurrency
- No Minimum Investment Requirements
- Commission Fees Depend on Trade Type (e.g., ACH, Limited)
- Works in all US States except NY for Day Trading*
Unique Features Of Acorns
Acorns offer a unique and most exciting feature for investors, which is the Acorns app. You can invest with a few taps on your phone! Their goal was to make investing easy for everyone, and this has been accomplished by making their services free if you have $100 or more invested in an acorn portfolio plan. They are also great at teaching people how to save money and manage.
They take care of everything; all you have to do is find your account.
Unique Features Of Stash
Stash has its unique features, which are the lowest fees and the best of both worlds with traditional investments. They offer a free micro-investing service as well as manage your money for you in exchange for an annual fee (which is less than 0.30%!).
Stash also offers investment opportunities that include stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, and more!
- You can focus on your investment in various themes.
- Offers 100 investments options
- Offers to bank solution
Final Words
So this completes the comparison of Robinhood vs acorns vs stash invest. With three different options for investing your money, it isn’t easy to decide which of these Robo-advisors is the best.
We can help you make that decision by looking at how each one works and what their fees are like. Acorns charge a $1/month fee if you want them to invest your spare change from purchases into stocks or ETFs in an account they manage, with no minimum balance requirement.
Stash Invest has slightly higher monthly rates than Acorns (ranging from $2-$6 depending on the number of accounts) but also offers its customers access to unlimited trades through Robinhood without any added costs. Finally, Robinhood does not charge anything for trading but does have some limits set on transactions.
Michael Restiano
I support product content strategy for Salt Money. Additionally, I’m helping develop content strategy and processes to deliver quality work for our readers.