InvestEngine Review: £0 Platform Fee, ETFs Only. What's the Catch?

InvestEngine is an ETF-only investment platform run by InvestEngine (UK) Limited, a London company incorporated in October 2016 (Companies House number 10438231). It gives its FCA firm reference number as 801128, so look the number up on the FCA register before you send money.

Your cash sits in pooled client bank accounts at a UK bank, kept apart from InvestEngine's own money. Your ETFs are held in a pooled account at CREST in the name of InvestEngine Nominees Limited, separate from the firm's own investments. InvestEngine says this helps keep your assets protected even if it went out of business.

If InvestEngine failed and you lost money as a result, the FSCS can pay up to £85,000 per person. That limit covers everything you hold with InvestEngine, not each ISA or SIPP separately, and the higher £120,000 limit only applies to banks and building societies. The FSCS never covers a fall in the market or a poor choice of ETF.

There are four accounts: a Stocks & Shares ISA, a general investment account (GIA), a SIPP and a Business account for UK-registered limited companies and LLPs. None of them has an account fee, and each portfolio you open needs at least £100.

The ISA is flexible: you can take money out and put it back in the same tax year without using up more of your £20,000 allowance for 2026/27.

The SIPP is open to UK residents aged 18 to 75. InvestEngine only accepts personal contributions you pay yourself, so your employer can't pay into it, and DIY regular contributions start at £20 a week or £50 a month. As with any personal pension, you can't take money out before 55 (57 from 2028).

What's missing: no Cash ISA, Lifetime ISA or Junior ISA, and no individual shares or investment trusts. Everything you buy is an ETF from InvestEngine's list of 870+, from providers such as Vanguard, J.P. Morgan and Invesco.

DIY has no InvestEngine fee. You pick ETFs, set the share of the portfolio each should take, and InvestEngine buys in those proportions. Fractional investing means you can put as little as £1 into any ETF, however high its price. You pay only the costs inside the ETFs: their annual charges, from 0.03% a year, and the market spread.

Managed starts with a questionnaire about your goals and how much risk you can take. InvestEngine matches you to a portfolio of ETFs and manages it for you, for 0.25% a year.

LifePlan costs the same 0.25%, but you choose one of five fixed mixes yourself, from 100% shares down to 20% shares with the rest in bonds. InvestEngine rebalances it to keep the mix steady.

Dividends work differently depending on the ETF. Accumulating ETFs, which make up most of the Managed Growth range, reinvest inside the fund. Distributing ETFs pay cash into your portfolio, and in a DIY portfolio with AutoInvest switched off that cash sits there earning nothing until you invest it.

If you've never invested, Managed or LifePlan saves you choosing. If you're happy picking a global tracker or two, DIY does the same job for £25 a year less on every £10,000.

InvestEngine charges no account, dealing, FX, withdrawal or transfer fees on any account. On DIY portfolios that leaves only the costs inside the ETFs: the annual charge (from 0.03%) and the market spread, the gap between the buying and selling price, which InvestEngine doesn't publish for DIY portfolios.

Managed and LifePlan portfolios add the 0.25% fee, worked out daily and taken monthly in arrears. If you withdraw or transfer part-way through a month, InvestEngine may take the fee built up so far at that point instead. For Managed Growth portfolios it gives average ETF charges of 0.11% or 0.12% and average spread of 0.07% or 0.08%; its costs page and Managed page don't quite agree.

On £10,000 held for a year at a flat value, that comes to about £43 to £45 for Managed Growth: £25 to InvestEngine, £11 to £12 in ETF charges and £7 to £8 in spread. A DIY portfolio in a single 0.03% ETF costs £3 plus spread.

The cost you won't see on the price list is cash interest. Uninvested cash earns you nothing, and InvestEngine keeps whatever interest it earns on it; its terms call this part of its charges for managing portfolios. So don't park savings here: switch on AutoInvest, or keep cash in a savings account. InvestEngine can change its fees with 30 days' notice.

A Savings Plan collects money weekly, fortnightly or monthly, by Direct Debit or Open Banking, from £10 a time. In a Managed or LifePlan portfolio InvestEngine invests it for you. In a DIY portfolio, switch on AutoInvest: every working day at noon it checks the portfolio for new cash and invests it in your target weights, buying each ETF once its share reaches £1.

Cash that arrives after noon waits for the next working day, and you can cancel an AutoInvest order until 2pm. With AutoInvest on, dividends paid out as cash are reinvested automatically too.

InvestEngine doesn't trade in real time. Orders placed before 2pm UK time on a working day go into that day's batch, which is placed in the afternoon once the US market opens; after 2pm, you wait for the next working day. InvestEngine says batching is how it keeps dealing free. It suits regular investing, but you can't choose the moment or the price.

Selling and withdrawing typically takes three working days if you ask early on a weekday and four after the cut-off: the sale, two working days to settle, then one to two days for the bank transfer. Cash that's already uninvested usually reaches you within one working day. Money only goes to the UK bank account you've nominated, and there's no fee.

Slow sales and withdrawals are among the most common complaints in user reviews, so keep money you might need at short notice in an easy-access savings account instead.

InvestEngine charges no transfer fees and sets no minimum transfer value, although the £100 portfolio minimum applies once the money arrives.

Transferring an ISA in 'in specie', moving your ETFs without selling them, only works into a DIY portfolio, only for a full ISA transfer, and only for ETFs that exactly match InvestEngine's list, including share class and ISIN. Anything else is sold by your old provider and arrives as cash, and partial ISA transfers are always cash. Managed and LifePlan portfolios can't take in-specie transfers.

Moving out, InvestEngine can transfer ETFs in specie if your new provider asks for it and the request covers the whole holding in that account. Only whole units move; fractions are sold and sent as cash. A GIA can move in specie case by case, where selling would have tax consequences.

Transfers that are slow or get stuck, in both directions, are a recurring theme in user reviews. With a cash transfer you're out of the market while the money moves.

Sign up through our link, fund an ISA, GIA or SIPP and invest £100, and you'll be invited to claim a random bonus of £20 to £200, paid into your portfolio as investment funding. The conditions come from InvestEngine's Referral Program terms, version 1.4, which apply from 1 May 2026 and have no end date. You must be a new customer who has never registered with or used InvestEngine, and you must arrive through the link: InvestEngine can't add a referral afterwards. Self-referrals don't count.

Once your £100 investment has settled, you get an in-app or email notification. Log in to claim it: the amount is drawn at random at that moment and can't be changed once shown. InvestEngine aims to pay within two business days but says busy periods can take five or more. If nothing has arrived after five business days, contact support. If InvestEngine asks for account details to verify the bonus, supply them, or it can be forfeited.

The odds are lopsided: a 75% chance of £20 to £24, 15% of £28 to £34, 5% of £42 to £56, 3% of £75 to £100 and 2% of £150 to £200, and InvestEngine says real awards may differ from these. Weighted by those odds, the expected bonus is £26.55 to £32.90, or £29.73 using the middle of each band. On the minimum £100 the likely result is a 20% to 24% top-up before any market movement: a good return on £100, and small change on a large ISA.

The catch is the hold. For 12 months from the day the bonus arrives, you must keep net funding of at least £100 plus the bonus, for example £122 after a £22 bonus, and other promotional rewards don't count towards it. Drop below that and InvestEngine takes back an amount equal to the bonus, whatever the market has done since. Cancelling in the 30-day cancellation period means selling everything, so it breaks the hold too, and InvestEngine's help centre says withdrawing shortly after investing can stop the bonus being paid at all.

Two more limits. InvestEngine only pays on the first 25 referrals each customer makes, ours included; beyond that neither side gets a bonus. And InvestEngine's own pages disagree on the amount: the terms and the page our link opens say £20 to £200 for personal accounts, while several help-centre articles and the FAQs on its ISA and SIPP pages still say £20 to £100. The terms are the binding document, and InvestEngine says the bonus follows the terms in force when you claim. Business accounts have their own bands, from £100 to £400.

Disclosure: the link on this page is GetQuids' own InvestEngine referral link. When you qualify, we're also invited to claim a randomly drawn bonus, which we must keep invested for 12 months on the same terms.

On 12 October 2026 the InvestEngine app was rated 4.8 from 9,659 ratings on the App Store and 4.7 from about 5,000 on Google Play, and InvestEngine scored 4.7 on Trustpilot from 4,934 reviews, 85% of them five-star and 4% one-star. InvestEngine's own website shows different figures; the ones here are the stores' and Trustpilot's.

The low-rated reviews repeat the same themes: once-a-day trading and slow sales and withdrawals, often reported as taking three to five days or more; email-only support with slow replies; login and two-factor authentication problems; ISA and SIPP transfers that are slow or get stuck; an app some find harder to use than share-dealing apps, with slow charts, no combined performance view and no iPad app; the ETF-only range; and, on Trustpilot, surprise at the 12-month bonus lock and clawbacks.

Support is by email (support@investengine.com) or the website contact form only, with no phone or live chat. It's staffed from 5:30am to 11pm on weekdays and 7am to 10pm at weekends, including bank holidays, and InvestEngine aims to resolve most queries within four hours.

You need to be 18 or over, a UK resident for tax, with a UK residential address and a UK current account in your own name, registered to that address. InvestEngine won't open accounts for non-UK residents, including British nationals living abroad, or for US persons (US citizens and US tax residents).

Sign-up asks for three years of UK address history, your National Insurance number and your tax residency. Identity is usually checked automatically; if not, you may be asked for photo ID, a selfie holding it or a bank statement from the last three months. There's no credit check. You can't pay in from a savings account, Cash ISA or credit card.

You have 30 days to cancel the account or ISA by emailing support and saying you want to cancel; for an ISA the 30 days start from your first payment in, if that's later. Your investments are sold and any market loss is yours. After that, close by selling or transferring everything, withdrawing the cash and emailing support with the subject 'Account Closure Request'. There's no exit fee, but any Managed or LifePlan fee built up and not yet collected may be taken at that point.

Consider it if you're a long-term ETF investor who wants an ISA, SIPP or GIA without a platform fee, if you invest monthly and don't mind orders going through once a day, or if 0.25% for a managed portfolio suits you. The referral bonus makes sense for anyone who was going to put at least £100 in and leave it for a year anyway.

Skip it if you want individual shares, investment trusts or instant trades, if you might need the money within days, if you want a Lifetime or Junior ISA, if you need phone support, or if you're not UK-resident. And if the bonus is the only reason, remember that three times in four it's £20 to £24, locked in for a year alongside your £100, and that the value of your investments can fall.