8 of the Best Investment Apps

It’s a tale as old as time that it’s a lot easier to make money if you actually have money. Investing your money can allow you to passively generate funds while you basically do nothing, and technology has only made this easier over the years. You can now invest through a plethora of apps and have them do most of the work and calculating for you.

If you’re thinking of quitting your day job and letting those savings make themselves grow, here are a few of the best investment apps on the market right now.

Acorns

Acorns is a pretty beginner-friendly app if you want to get started on investing. The app will ask you about your risk tolerance preferences and set up your own personal portfolio based on that. All you have to do then is link your credit/debit cards and that’s it. You can even shop at partner brands to get even more money for your investment plans. The starting subscription is only $1 per month, which should earn itself back easily.

Robinhood

Perhaps the most known free investment app is Robinhood. I’m sure the name is ironic because investing really isn’t for people stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, but I digress. The biggest positive about Robinhood is that it allows you to trade in stock, ETFs, cryptocurrency, or whatever else you may be interested in, all with the convenience of only needing a single application. When you sign up, they even give you a random free stock to start off with!

TD Ameritrade

If you’re looking for an app with no fees and no account minimum tied to it, TD Ameritrade is for you. The app offers a lot of options for you to invest in and gives you some free articles and videos to expand your financial knowledge as you’re actively investing. It also offers you some market news, which can allow you to make smarter investment decisions – or more risky ones.

Betterment

Betterment is basically your personal financial advisor. You can let the app know what your risk tolerance is and what your long-term goals are, and the app will automatically adjust your portfolio to stay within these parameters. There’s no real minimum number required to start investing on the app, but their annual fee is a flat 0.25% of everything you invest. That means that the more you’re investing, the more you’ll be paying to use Betterment. The price for their premium account is a 0.4% flat rate, but also requires a minimum of at least $100,000. That means you’ll be paying them $400 annually at a minimum, but you do get unlimited calls/emails to their team of financial planners in return.

CARL

If you’re looking for an app that’ll help you with managing a hedge fund, CARL is right up your alley. The biggest pull of this app is the fact that it does nearly everything in real-time, which makes it incredibly useful for changing your options on the fly. They’ll even get you a few opportunities and data that allow you to swap your investment strategy and potentially make even more money.

Fundrise

Fundrise is a different beast altogether. This app is very niche and only has a singular purpose, which is helping you invest in real estate. The biggest upside of using this app is that you don’t have to buy the entire building, you can invest in the purchase of a real estate building all over the US and get your dividends distributed quarterly. The minimum plan only requires a $500 cash-up, which is a lot less than what you’d usually have to shell out to even think of buying these properties.

Pilot Trading

Another very easy-to-use app, this one uses psychology-based AI to monitor trader activity, so it can warn you whenever the market is about to change. This will lead to you being able to buy low and sell high, but it does cost a hefty $19.95 per month. Depending on your budget, you may or may not be able to earn that fee back.

Public

This app is free of commissions and will allow you to buy fractional shares of stock. That means you won’t need to shell out the entire value of the stock if you want to invest in a company. This makes it very low-risk since you’ll be able to invest in stock like Microsoft and Apple with a very limited budget. It also has a social media feature that will make your portfolio – you guessed it – public to other users and vice versa.