Compare Stocks & Shares ISAs

An ISA (individual savings account) is a tax-free savings or investment account that allows you to save up to £20,000 a year in a tax efficient way. Compare ISAs from leading providers below to find what’s right for you*.

* Fees shown may vary. Detailed fees can be found on the providers’ websites. Unbiased will not charge a fee to you for using this service however it will receive fees from product providers.

Product information has been provided by each individual product provider not Unbiased

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Frequently asked questions about stocks & shares ISAs

Read more about stocks & shares ISAs

A stocks & shares ISA is one that holds investments instead of cash. Despite the name, it can hold a wider range of investments than just equities (stocks & shares) alone, and may include bonds and investments funds and/or investment trusts too.

When setting up your stocks & shares ISA, you’ll get to choose what investments to place inside it. This is a critical step that determines both the risk level and potential growth of the ISA, so it’s worth taking financial advice at this point. At the very least, you should read carefully the documents from the ISA provider, to ensure you understand the various funds and assets in which your money may be invested.

The obvious benefit of a stocks & shares ISA is that it allows you to invest in a range of investments without paying capital gains tax (CGT) on the growth (which you might otherwise have to do, if you exceed your CGT allowance).

This can be particularly useful if you’ve made other capital gains elsewhere in that year, such as by selling a second property. Selling a large asset like this can wipe out your CGT allowance, so holding other investments in an ISA can protect that growth from tax.

Stocks & shares are considered high risk or ‘volatile’ assets. Volatile means they are prone to sudden changes in value, either rises or falls. This means that any investment in the stock market can go down as well as up, and a market crash can result in heavy losses. For this reason, equities are not recommended as a short-term investment except for very experienced investors who know how to ‘time the market’ – and even these experts may frequently get it wrong.

Stocks & shares ISAs can be a great vehicle for saving for mid-term or longer-term goals. If you have money that you feel able to put away for several years without touching it, then a stocks & shares ISA will in most cases deliver better value than cash savings.

Stocks & shares ISAs are particularly popular for Junior ISAs, where saving can begin when the child is a baby and continue until they reach 18. Eighteen years is a very good length of time for stock market investment, and historical growth over similar periods period has almost invariably beaten inflation and cash savings.

To open a stocks and shares ISA, you’ll need to decide how much you want to invest. Remember that you can invest up to £20,000 of tax-free money into an ISA, so decide what proportion of that amount you’d be happy investing (or can invest).

You then need to select a platform or provider to open your ISA. You can choose for yourself what stocks and shares you want to invest in, delegate someone else to take care of the investing, or potentially pick from a pre-set ISA with a set number of investments.

Here’s a quick snapshot of ten of the most popular ETFs of 2022 so far, which could be invested in via a stocks and shares ISA.

iShares Core FTSE 100 UCITS ETF
Vanguard FTSE 100 UCITS ET
Xtrackers FTSE 100 UCITS ETF
iShares plc FTSE 250
Vanguard Funds plc FTSE 250 UCITS ETF
iShares UK Dividend UCITS ETF
L&G FTSE 100 Super Short Strategy
SPDR FTSE UK All Share ETF
Lyxor Core Morningstar UK UCITS ETF
SPDR S7P UK Dividend Aristocrats

However – and this is incredibly important to remember – you should not take past performance as an indicator of how an investment is going to perform in the future.