What are the best stocks and shares Isas of 2026?

Rob Lilley-Jones: With 12 months to go until ISA reform comes into effect, now might be a good time to start investing. After all, it's what the government is encouraging us to do. But beware, choosing the wrong account could cost you thousands of pounds during your investment journey.

Welcome to Which? Money. Hello, it's Rob Lilley-Jones in the Which? studio and I am covering for James Rowe this week. But fear not, because we've got a fascinating episode of the Which? Money podcast for you. Today we are chatting all about stocks and shares ISAs, something I know that all of you are very, very interested in.

To do that, firstly, I'm delighted to say I'm joined by senior data journalist, Josh Wilson. Hello.

Josh Wilson: Pleasure as always.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Thank you for being here, Josh. And also, having returned from her moonlighting in the health team, she is back – one – time – only appearance, I believe – Megan. You are back on the money team and you're here to talk stocks and shares ISAs.

Megan Thomas: Yes, it's lovely to be back.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Megan Thomas, welcome back. Right, Josh, we are talking about stocks and shares ISAs today. There's a year to go until the shake – up of the ISA rules. What's going to happen and when?

Josh Wilson: The big news is that at the autumn budget, the Chancellor announced that the cash ISA allowance is going to be cut down from £20,000 to £12,000. Now, that's going to come in in April 2027, although there is a bit of a caveat that it's only for cash ISAs. So the £20,000 limit will still be in place for stocks and shares ISAs. You can still put £20,000 into stocks and shares ISAs, or you could split it – you could do £12,000 into the cash ISA and you could do £8,000 into a stocks and shares ISA.

The other caveat is that this new change won't come into effect for the over – 65s. They will still be able to put the full £20,000 into a cash ISA if they wanted to.

Rob Lilley-Jones: A couple of questions from me then. Do you think this will make stocks and shares ISAs more attractive for investors?

Josh Wilson: That's what the government wants, and that's what Rachel Reeves wants. This whole policy was designed with in mind to try to get more people investing. The FCA, for example, has found that there's a good number of people who could be investing their money, but they've instead got it sat in current accounts making no interest. Ideally, they would like to see more people investing in stocks and shares ISAs. I'm a little bit more suspect as to whether this will encourage people to shift into investing, but time will tell.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Time will tell, as you say. And also, I'm sure people watching and listening to this podcast will know this already, but in terms of your ISA allowance, as you said, currently £20,000 for cash ISAs going down to £12,000 next April, unless you're over 65. Your allowance renews every year, is that right? For example, at the moment you can invest £20,000 and then another £12,000 from each year going forward.

Josh Wilson: Yes, that's correct, but not quite, because you will still have that £20,000 allowance as I said. The £12,000 is just for cash ISAs. So you would have that limit, but you'd still have £8,000 to play with to put into other ISAs. In that sense, the £20,000 limit isn't going, but it's just that limit is changing for cash ISAs.

Megan Thomas: They just make it a little bit more complicated for everyone.

Josh Wilson: Exactly.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Which is why we are here, because we are going through who we found to be some of the best stocks and shares ISAs on the market. We'll get to those results in a second. So, Josh, also to come back to something that you wrote in the latest Which? Money magazine. You said that over the next 12 months, tax rates are set to rise on dividends and on savings interest. And then also we've mentioned the cash ISA allowance is going to be cut. Does that mean that now is a really good time to think about investing?

Josh Wilson: Potentially yes, it all depends on your personal circumstances. At Which? we always say that if you want to get into investing, it's really important that first off you take a look at your finances and you make sure that you can afford to get into investing. Any money that you do invest, you could potentially lose.

We always say that it's a good idea to have a rainy – day fund in place before you do this. A rainy – day fund would be three months' outgoings put into an easy – access savings account, so you always have that safety net if anything should go wrong. And then we also say that you should also look at your debts and make sure that those debts are affordable. And then if those things are in place, then yes, investing can be a really good way. But you should treat it as a long – term thing. Always plan to have your money invested for at least five years would be a good starting point.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Megan, this is something you've also been looking into. Do we think there's enough education out there for how people go about doing something like this?

Megan Thomas: There's a lot of education. Whether all of it is useful is hard to say because it's so specific to your personal circumstances. You get a lot of people making these broad, sweeping statements like "this asset is the next big thing and everyone's going to make loads of money if you put money into that," but that's not the most reliable source.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Yes, what's useful but also what's true and what you can believe. We had an article in the Which? Money magazine not long ago about the rise of finfluencers – financial influencers – on social media, who could be promising you the world but actually the reality is just not the case.

Megan Thomas: Yes, and I think sometimes people stand to gain, especially on social media. The more dramatic it seems, the more you'll pay attention. But investing should really be quite boring. And as Josh said, always thinking about the long term and not these short – term, quick wins.

Josh Wilson: Exactly, and it's worth pointing out a lot of the time those online finfluencers are either pushing scam investments that don't exist or they're pushing very high – risk investments.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Sometimes boring is good, right? And this is one of those times. Hopefully you're not finding this episode boring. Hopefully you are going to enjoy what we have to tell you, because it is now time to talk about our results – our best stocks and shares ISA results. Best stocks and shares ISA providers, I should say. Josh, first before we get to those results and the winners and losers, talk to me about the process. How has the way that we've awarded our WRPs in this sector changed?

Josh Wilson: We changed it up a little bit this year. To explain how we did it, it's a two – part thing. On the one hand, we did a survey of more than 3,000 investors – people who use these platforms.

Rob Lilley-Jones: So not an insignificant number of people.

Josh Wilson: No indeed, exactly. And this covered enough results back to cover 23 of the biggest platforms in the country. That survey asked people about their experiences of using these platforms – whether they thought they were good value for money, whether they thought they had good customer service, that kind of thing.

And then the other strand of it was we also specifically looked at the platform fees for using these platforms and we compared each platform's fees against each other. We also looked at how expensive it would be to invest in those platforms depending on your size of portfolio. We brought in several different sizes of portfolio and then looked for each platform how much it would cost for you to invest into shares with that portfolio, how much for ETFs, and how much for general funds. And that gave us an overall fee score.

The other thing we did is we looked at how many assets each platform offered – that gave us an asset score. And finally, we got a customer score, which was from the survey that I mentioned. So we got those three scores together – the customer score, the fee score, and the asset score – and using those three scores together, that gave us an overall score for each platform.

Rob Lilley-Jones: So it was very thorough.

Josh Wilson: Very, very thorough.

Rob Lilley-Jones: You mentioned ETFs. What are ETFs?

Josh Wilson: ETFs – or exchange – traded funds – are very similar to more traditional funds. The way they work is it pools investors' money together into a fund and then that money is used to buy a range of investments – for example, shares in various companies or bonds. The reason exchange – traded funds are a little bit different from traditional funds is because they're actually listed themselves on the market and can be bought and sold on the market.

Megan Thomas: ETFs can come in different themes. It could be sector – specific – like a healthcare ETF – it could be region – specific – global, or Asia. Or it could be following an index – so you might have heard the S&P 500 is a very popular type of ETF. So lots of different options.

Rob Lilley-Jones: I mentioned WRPs as well. We are of course talking about Which? Recommended Providers. So, Megan, let's talk WRPs. Who are our WRPs then?

Megan Thomas: This year our WRPs are AJ Bell, InvestEngine, and Scottish Widows.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Let's have them one more time.

Megan Thomas: AJ Bell, InvestEngine, Scottish Widows – formerly iWeb.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Thank you for that clarification. Let's start with AJ Bell then. An eighth year in a row that they've been awarded a Which? Recommended Provider status. An impressive asset score. Are they a bit pricey on their fees then?

Megan Thomas: I think they're not as cheap as some because we're getting some of these completely fee – free platforms now. They're not coming out the cheapest, but you cannot be awarded a Which? Recommended Provider if you're among the most expensive platforms. So AJ Bell is still reasonable, especially if you're investing in shares at a bigger portfolio. But yes, for what you get, you also get a lot more assets – so they had by far the most assets of any platform out there.

Rob Lilley-Jones: And what do we mean by that?

Megan Thomas: So that could be the number of shares, the number of funds, ETFs, all of it. So they've got, I believe, more than 24,000 to choose from.

Josh Wilson: It's a crazy library of choice you've got there. It's massive.

Megan Thomas: Yes, so if you're someone who knows your strategy, you know what you want to invest in, you're going to find it. But then also if you're a beginner, they do have a lot of guides and they have actually a specific sub – platform called Dodl for beginners as well.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Like a high – end pick and mix. I like it. Should we talk about InvestEngine as well? Really good limited ETFs. Is that a bad thing that they're limited or could it be a good thing?

Josh Wilson: If you're not bothered that you are just limited to ETFs – because obviously those stock – picking savants out there are going to want to be able to invest in, let's say, funds, or they might want to invest in specific shares of specific companies. In that case, InvestEngine is not going to be for them. But if you're not bothered by the fact that you're limited to ETFs – which in a lot of ways is not that limiting because they still do have a massive choice of ETFs if you're happy with that – it's not really a particular problem at all and they are really good value.

Rob Lilley-Jones: I didn't think we'd repeat ETFs quite as many times as we have already in this podcast. And a quick word on Scottish Widows as well because they've also got a WRP.

Megan Thomas: Yes, so Scottish Widows also is actually really quite low – cost. They have a good amount of options and they were really highly scored by customers. So kind of an all – rounder option.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Great stuff. So we've got our WRPs then that we've just mentioned there. Let's talk about our great – value providers. So this is another good option – a great option clearly for people. We've got InvestEngine, Scottish Widows again, Free Trade, Vanguard, and NatWest. So more to choose from there when it comes to great – value providers. Josh, what makes someone a great – value provider?

Josh Wilson: The great – value badge from Which? is a little bit different from the WRP. It's that we give it to providers who didn't quite make it to WRP status but we still think they have a lot to offer, mainly that they're really good value. And the other criteria is that they don't sell CFDs – contracts for difference.

Rob Lilley-Jones: In terms of the fees that are out there then. If we go to the very top end of how much people could be charged – and we'll talk in a minute about some fee – free platforms that are out there, but also some that charge fixed fees, some that charge a percentage of the amount you're investing – what's the top end of how much this could cost someone to invest?

Josh Wilson: Thousands.

Megan Thomas: Yes, if you have a huge portfolio – say you have £500,000 invested – you could be spending more than £2,000 a year on fees, especially on these platforms that are targeting people with smaller portfolios. Often they'll be a cap and you pay less the more money you have, it tapers out, but some platforms don't have that so it's these huge amounts for the biggest portfolios.

Rob Lilley-Jones: So getting it right could make a massive difference for you in terms of the amount of money you spend.

Megan Thomas: Yes, definitely.

Rob Lilley-Jones: So let's talk about fixed fee or percentages as I mentioned before. What's best?

Josh Wilson: Generally, most platforms will either have a percentage – based fee or they'll have a fixed fee. And what that means is, with a percentage – based fee, every year they will charge you a percentage of the value of your portfolio. Now, if it's a fixed fee, what they'll instead do is it's just a fixed fee, say £40 a year.

Now, the way that it generally works out is if you have a smaller portfolio, it's better to go for a percentage – based platform fee because if you have a smaller portfolio, percentage – based, it'll be a small amount every year. Whereas if you have a bigger – let's say you've got a bigger portfolio, £100,000 or whatever – a percentage of that portfolio can end up being quite a lot. So if you have a larger portfolio, it often makes more sense to go for a fixed fee instead of, £100 a year or £150 a year. There are some caveats to that, but that's generally a good rule of thumb.

Rob Lilley-Jones: One of my favourite things there, Josh, is the fact that you just said £100,000 or whatever. Just a small amount of £100,000 or whatever. So on those fees, in the best – case scenario that your investment does grow, which is of course what you want, can you move them from paying a percentage fee to then paying a fixed fee?

Josh Wilson: Yes, you absolutely could. You would probably need to switch to a different platform to do that. But yes, if your portfolio grew to the point where you wanted to move from a percentage – based platform to a fixed – fee platform, you could absolutely do that.

Rob Lilley-Jones: In terms of those fees but also something that people often talk about when it comes to investing. Is investing just for people who are well – off? Is investing just for people who have lots and lots of money or can anyone get involved in it?

Megan Thomas: Probably somewhere in between. It should be much more accessible. Like Josh said, if you have that rainy – day fund, then you absolutely can get started. The problem is a lot of people don't have that and people really struggle to save. But it's not for the super – super – mega – rich, no. And actually the attitude that it is means that you actually lose the value of your money in savings because it's not keeping up with inflation and it's getting eroded over time. So yes, investing can be for more people than they think it can be.

Josh Wilson: It's also worth pointing out as well that a lot of the platforms actually will allow you to set up monthly amounts of money that you can just have going into, like you would set up a monthly amount to go into a savings account.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Like a direct debit.

Josh Wilson: Exactly. You can do the same thing with a platform and that could just be very small amounts, £50, £100 a month, and you could still make money doing that over a long period of time. It can definitely be worth it. And it's also worth pointing out that certain platforms will reward you for doing that, for example I think some of them let you – if you set up one of those monthly account deposits – you'll be able to do cheaper trades per month or per year.

Megan Thomas: Some of them even waive the account fee.

Josh Wilson: So there are options out there.

Rob Lilley-Jones: And it sounds like as well, maybe one of the things that would attract more people again is the fact that there are some platforms out there where you don't have to pay any fees. There are fee – free platforms out there, but should we be sceptical about fee – free platforms because what's the old adage, you don't get anything for free?

Megan Thomas: Yes, they're not charities. They are trying to make money. And the way they make money varies significantly. So it could be they want to get you in the door and then they've got paid products. It might be a managed portfolio where they take a portion of fees. It could be they want you to trade more regularly and they'll have a foreign exchange fee for example. A lot of them are prioritising US stocks, in which case you would actually always be paying this foreign exchange fee. Or in some instances it could be these riskier products that Josh mentioned – contracts for difference or CFDs – where platforms can make a lot of money off your trading.

Josh Wilson: Yes, I think it's really worth reinforcing that point that some of these high – risk investments are very high – risk. Contracts for difference are a good example of this. You're essentially making bets on the market on whether certain commodities will go up or down. This is very risky and if you look, a lot of the time platforms will actually show you the percentage of people invested in CFDs who lose money betting on them and it is a very high percentage of people. And in fact, CFDs are actually illegal in many countries.

Rob Lilley-Jones: If we talk about high – risk investments then and high – risk investing generally. Magazine readers – so if you're sitting listening to this, maybe you've got your copy of Which? Money right next to you if you're a Which? member – you will see in our full results table of our best stocks and shares ISAs, Trading 212 is a big name, it's at the top of our results table, but we've not given it an endorsement. We've not given it Which? Recommended Provider status. Is it because it's so risky?

Josh Wilson: Not exactly that it's risky, but that it does offer the CFDs as a product. We decided to include Trading 212 because they are such a well – known platform at this point. There are so many people using it. It didn't really make sense to exclude them from our review because so many people use it. We felt that it was important to include them so that people could have an understanding of this platform – the pros, the cons. But we also felt that because CFDs are so risky, it wasn't fair to allow a platform to get a WRP badge if they did also offer CFDs. That was the approach we took.

Rob Lilley-Jones: But for investors then, for them to be top of our results table, they must also be doing a lot right.

Josh Wilson: There was plenty of positive feedback for Trading 212 from our survey participants. So yes, they do have a lot going for them definitely, but it's worth doing your research and being aware of these high – risk products and just being aware of the pros and cons – do your research.

Rob Lilley-Jones: The full results table – that is available in the latest issue of the Which? Money magazine and Josh also online as well, people can find it on which.co.uk.

Josh Wilson: Yes, that's right.

Rob Lilley-Jones: So I'll also put a link in the description for this podcast so you can have a look and have a read for yourself. What about switching to a new provider? There are ways to do it and there are also ways not to do it.

Josh Wilson: Yes, absolutely. So what you can do is this what's known as a transfer in specie. It's a funny old word. The way it works is if you want to transfer to a new provider, you can do it through this method and what it means is your current provider will sell all of your assets, the money will be transferred to your new provider who will then buy back all of those assets in theory at the same or a similar market price. So you should get pretty much the same investments that you had with your original provider and they should be bought back at about the same price.

So it should be fairly seamless, but we have had cases where it's taken quite a long time and the value hasn't been exactly the same. So it's a bit of an involved process, but it's still, if you are going to switch providers, it is much better to do it that way than selling the investments yourself, transferring the money yourself over to a new provider and then buying them back yourself. And the reason for that is if you do this in specie transfer, it doesn't count towards your ISA allowance whereas if you do it yourself it will count towards your allowance.

Rob Lilley-Jones: That's a really important differentiator. And also on this then, just to clarify, it is not by the sounds of it like transferring money between bank accounts. There's a lot more to it.

Josh Wilson: No, it is more involved and it can take up to like 24 days. It can be a fairly lengthy process.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Okay, so again, worth doing your research. And it's worth pointing out as well though that some providers do have switching offers where they'll cover your costs of if you have any – some platforms have exit fees. But some platforms also will offer to cover those exit fees for other platforms if you switch to them. So that can be worth bearing in mind.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Megan, just looking at the results table we have, looking at the amount of providers that we reviewed. The market is growing, there are a lot more providers cropping up now. Why is that? Why is this becoming more and more of a crowded field?

Megan Thomas: I think a big thing is the booming popularity of investing that started in COVID, especially with younger men. People saw the opportunity and that's when we saw a lot of these fee – free platforms get involved. And people see that there's an opportunity there of people who perhaps weren't engaged with investing and they think, "I know how to get these people involved." There's a lot of money to be made.

Josh Wilson: And the rise of trading apps on your phone just makes it really easy and seamless for people now as well.

Rob Lilley-Jones: And is this as well a case of people see the amount of money they can make on a savings account with your high street bank or building society, potentially the rewards here are higher but only if you get it right?

Megan Thomas: A lot of people have most of their money with high street banks and they're not getting much for it. So I think a lot of people are seeing that either with a higher savings rate or often with investing, especially if you're in it for the long – long – long term, you will get, most likely, more for your money.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Most likely, but not always. Your money is at risk. Thank you, Josh. And finally then, and this is a massive question to end the podcast with, especially given everything that's happening in the world right now and the instability that we're seeing in economies around the world because of current events. I'm going to ask you anyway. What do you see happening in the investment market over the next 12 months do you think? Is it going to encourage more people to get involved?

Josh Wilson: It's a really tricky one and things are really unstable at the moment. There is a lot of volatility in the market. I think markets are going to be very turbulent and you can always try and buy the dip, which is where you see markets going down in value, equities become cheaper and so you invest more in the market in the hope that it goes up. But it is worth pointing out that market dips can turn into bigger market dips. So be aware of that. Crystal – ball gazing is always really difficult to do, especially with the world being as unstable as it is now. I mean, there are safe – haven assets like gold for example, but again, will the gold price stay as high as it is now? It's really difficult to say.

Megan Thomas: And just on the ISA provider market, one thing I think we'll probably see more of – in my opinion not for the better – will be social media embedded within trading apps and investment platforms, which is something we're already starting to see.

Rob Lilley-Jones: And how does that work, sorry?

Megan Thomas: So it will just be other users of the platforms posting, responding to current events, positive reinforcement effectively. We're going to see people saying "I've made loads of money, you could too," that kind of thing. And just instead of listening to perhaps a professional ideally, because it's so hard to afford financial advice, people turn to other – I suppose the word is amateurs because that's what the vast majority of us are – for advice, which I think is a bit worrying. So I would say, just as a little final bit of advice, if you are on one of these platforms that has a social posting element to maybe just ignore that and do your research elsewhere.

Josh Wilson: And I would again reinforce that point that you shouldn't treat investing as a get – rich – quick scheme. It's a long – term thing.

Rob Lilley-Jones: Perfect, I think that is some really important words to finish with. Josh and Megan, thank you so much for joining us.

Megan Thomas: Thank you.

Josh Wilson: Thanks very much.