Best Investing Apps for Teens Under 18 [Stock Trading Apps]

Much like how money compounds over long periods of time, the same applies to financial literacy. The earlier you start, the better chance you have for reaching your financial goals. In the past, that often meant waiting until reaching adulthood to invest, but a number of investing apps for teens are looking to change that dynamic. In fact, several of these stock trading apps for teens under 18 provide powerful opportunities to teach teenagers how to invest wisely.

In this article, we cover the best investing apps for teens, under 18 year olds, minors, young adults—whatever group to which you feel you belong—where you can manage your money, invest, and watch it grow. To help you find the money app that’s right for you, we’ve explored everything that these stock apps can do, from investing to budgeting to banking and more.

(Editor’s note: Some apps are wide-ranging financial apps that provide several services, and thus offer more than stock trading functionality.)

Best Investing Apps for Teens—Our Top Pick: E*Trade

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Best Stock Trading Apps for Under 18—Runners-Up: Greenlight + Acorns

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Best Investing Apps for Teens, Minors + Young Adults

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Want to learn how to invest as a teenager or young adult? If so, numerous investing apps provide easy ways to invest—though, depending on your age, a few might require overcoming some legal roadblocks.

If you begin your investing journey early, even modest gains will give you a major advantage in where your finances will start as a young adult. Despite the volatility of the past couple years, holding money in the stock market over the long term has created wealth for countless individuals. And you can use one of your best advantages—your young age—to get a head start!

Just understand that if you’re a minor and you want to use stock apps for teens, you’ll face one basic problem: You’re not allowed to open your own brokerage account. While many investing apps (e.g., Webull, Robinhood, Acorns) look well-suited to young investors, you generally still need to be at least 18 years old to invest by yourself in the United States.

But that’s OK.

You can get around this roadblock in a number of ways. One such way is to have a parent or legal guardian open a custodial account. This type of account lets you use investing apps for minors while you’re still young and through adulthood, when they’ll revert to your name. Other investing apps (including our top investing app for teens!) use different methods to sidestep this issue.

Related: The 10 Best Micro Investing Apps

1. E*Trade (Top Teen Investing App/Custodial Account)

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• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)
• Price: No monthly fees or trading commissions on stocks and ETFs through E*Trade’s Custodial Account

Most people know E*Trade as one of the leading providers of individual brokerage accounts, but you can also put the powerful platform to work saving for your child’s future, though a custodial account (and even a custodial IRA).

E*Trade’s custodial account for teens (and generally any minor) allows you to open up a custodial account that offers the chance to build a personalized portfolio through thousands of stocks, bonds, ETFs, and mutual funds, or you can have E*Trade select your holdings for you through its Core Portfolio robo-advisory service (minimum account size of $500 is needed to use this product). Further, you can choose to open a traditional custodial IRA or a custodial Roth IRA for children under age 18 who have earned income.

Just like with its individual brokerage accounts for adults, E*Trade custodial accounts offer zero-commission stock, ETF, and options trading. It also has a leg up on some platforms by offering $0-commission mutual fund, Treasury, and new-issue bond trading.

And if you want to learn more about investing—or want your young one to learn alongside you—E*Trade also boasts educational resources, including articles, videos, classes, monthly webinars, and even live events.

For a limited time, E*Trade offers a new account funding bonus when you use reward code “OFFER24” in the following amounts:

• $1,000-$4,999 earns $50.
• $5,000-$19,999 earns $150.
• $20,000-$49,999 earns $200.
• $50,000-$99,999 earns $300.
• $100,000-$199,999 earns $600.
• $200,000-$499,999 earns $800.
• $500,000-$999,999 earns $1,000.
• $1,000,000-$1,499,999 earns $3,000.
• $1,500,000-$1,999,999 earns $5,000.
• $2,000,000 or more earns $6,000.

To open a free E*Trade custodial account, click “Open Account” below.

Related: Best Investment Apps for Beginners

2. Greenlight App (Best Investment Account With Parental Controls)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: Greenlight Max: $9.98/mo. Greenlight Infinity: $14.98/mo.

Greenlight, through its Max and Infinity tiers, is an investment account for kids that comes paired with a debit card and bank account.

It’s easy to use and can double as a savings account and banking apps for teens. The investing app will teach the basics of investing, how to invest in stocks and ETFs, and more.

It works best if parents and/or grandparents are involved in the process because it requires linked accounts from the adults’ banks or brokerages. Plus, parents and guardians will need to approve trades made in the investment account.

The all-in-one plan teaches them important financial skills like money management and investing fundamentals—with real money, real stocks and real-life lessons.

You can use the investing feature to:

• Start investing with as little as $1 in your account
• Buy fractional shares of companies you admire (say, kid-friendly stocks)
• No trading commissions beyond the monthly subscription fee
• Teens can only invest in U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs that have either a market capitalization over $1 billion or a three-month average daily dollar volume of more than $500,000
• Parents must approve every trade directly in the app.

Each account supports up to five kids. Consider opening a Greenlight Max or Infinity account to help your teen start investing today. Or, you can read more in our Greenlight Card review.

Related: Best Greenlight Alternatives

3. Acorns Early (Best Custodial Account That Transitions to Adulthood)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: Acorns Personal: $3/mo. Acorns Personal Plus: $6/mo. Acorns Premium: $12/mo.

Acorns is an investing app geared toward minors, young adults, and millennials by offering “Round-Ups”: The app rounds up purchases made on linked debit and credit cards to the nearest dollar, then invests the difference on your behalf.

For example, if you purchase a coffee for $2.60 on a linked credit card, Acorns automatically rounds this charge up to $3.00 and puts the 40-cent difference aside. Once those Round-Ups reach at least $5, they can be transferred to your Acorns account to be invested.

Users have seen an average of $30/month invested this way and makes the service one of the best investments for young adults who are looking to get started with saving and investing.

The investing app allows minors to have custodial accounts managed by their parent or legal guardian through their Acorns Premium tier. Making regular contributions over long periods of time can go a long way toward building lifelong wealth. Using an investing app like Acorns could also be the best way to invest $1,000 for a child’s future and save money.

It also features a powerful way to accelerate your savings: Later Match. While most people are aware that employers will sometimes match funds you contribute to your 401(k), “matches” are virtually unheard of in retirement accounts like IRAs, where there’s no employer to kick in extra cash. However, Acorns itself will match 1% or 3% on new contributions to IRAs for Personal Plus and Premium subscribers, respectively. 

Here’s more about what you can expect from Acorns’ varying subscription options:

• Acorns Personal ($3 per month): Includes an Acorns Invest investment account, as well as Acorns Later for tax-advantaged investment options such as Roth IRAs. Also includes Acorns Checking, a bank account that has no account fees, lets you withdraw fee-free from more than 55,000 ATMs nationwide, and Smart Deposit, which allows you to automatically invest a bit of each paycheck into your Acorns accounts.
• Acorns Personal Plus ($6 per month): Everything in Acorns Personal (Acorns Invest, Later, and Checking), plus Premium Education, which are live onboarding sessions covering account setup, Round-Ups, setting up recurring investments, and more; Emergency Fund; and a 25% bonus on Acorns Earn rewards (up to $200 per month).
• Acorns Premium ($12 per month): Everything in Personal Plus, plus Acorns Early, which allows you to open a custodial investment account for your child so you can begin investing for them while they’re a minor; custom portfolios that allow you to hold individual stocks; live Q&As with financial experts; a 50% match on Acorns Earn rewards (up to $200 per month); $10,000 in life insurance; even the ability to set up a will for free.

Learn more in our Acorns review.

Related: Best Acorns Alternatives: Micro-Investing Apps to Use

4. EarlyBird (Custodial Accounts With Personal Touches)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: $2.95/mo. for one child, $4.95/mo. for families with 2+ children

EarlyBird is a mobile app that allows parents and guardians to set up a UGMA account, where they can quickly start investing for their children. It also allows friends and family to easily gift money to a child in EarlyBird’s investing accounts for children.

EarlyBird allows you to choose from five strategic ETF-only portfolios, with investing goals ranging from conservative to aggressive, based on your stated risk tolerance and overall investor profile. This removes the complexity of conducting your own research or selecting specific investments.

Do family and friends want to provide a gift, but think money is too impersonal? With EarlyBird, they can record a video to go along with their financial contribution, personalizing these moments which last a lifetime. And if you’d like to give but the recipient doesn’t have an EarlyBird account, you can text them a link from the app to the recipient’s phone number.

EarlyBird also has a “Moments” feature that allows parents to begin to save and share special milestones and memories alongside their investments. Parents can add a “Moment” to their child’s timeline at any time by uploading photos or videos with notes to capture magical moments as their child grows—no contributions necessary (but naturally encouraged). You can choose to automatically share Moments with anyone else who has invested in your child on EarlyBird, but each Moment also has its own unique link that you can share with people outside of the app.

An EarlyBird investment account costs $2.95 per month for one child, or $4.95 per month for multiple children. When parents or guardians set up a new custodial investment account through EarlyBird, they must start with a $15/month recurring contribution minimum. However, you can change that recurring contribution amount higher or lower as your budget allows or necessitates.

Consider opening an EarlyBird account today and receive $15 to get you started after opening your account. Also, EarlyBird currently is in the “early access” stages of a cryptocurrency offering. Through a partnership with Gemini, one of the world’s largest and most secure crypto exchanges, EarlyBird also offers a crypto wallet that can hold Ethereum and Bitcoin when you sign up for an investment account. You will receive $25 when you open your wallet to invest in Ethereum or Bitcoin, and you can also earn a $50 referral bonus, which you can invest in the same token of choice, when you refer three other families.

Related: Best Brokerage Account Sign-Up Bonuses, Promotions and Deals

5. UNest (Custodial Account With Bonus Offers)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: $4.99/mo.

UNest is a custodial account that allows parents to invest money for their kids to pay for many of life’s major milestones—college, a new car, a wedding, a vacation, or anything else a minor might want someday.

UNest offers the UNest Investment Account for Kids through its app, which makes it easy for families of all income levels and backgrounds to set up and manage savings and investment plans for their kids. UNest also has a gifting feature that allows friends and relatives to contribute to your kid’s account with just a few clicks. These personalized gifts can be automated, too, so they never miss a birthday or holiday!

The app offers up several investment options for account owners:

• A conservative option investing in fixed income and bond ETFs
• Three age-based options with varying degrees of risk reflected in the investment mix (conservative, moderate, aggressive); these transition from more aggressive investments to conservative as the child gets owner and gains access to the funds
• Three socially responsible age-based options also with varying degrees of risk (conservative, moderate, aggressive), likewise on the investment mix transition strategy from aggressive to conservative over time
• An aggressive option that invests 100% of the funds in Vanguard equity index ETFs

You can also invest in cryptocurrencies for your child through a separate UNest Crypto account.

Account holders can receive bonuses for their children’s UNest accounts via partner offers from companies such as Disney, AT&T, Uber, DoorDash, Levi’s, and more, through the UNest partner program.

Related: Best Online Jobs for Teens to Earn Money From Home

6. Webull (Best Trading App for Age 18+ Only)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: Free to download, no stock/ETF trade commissions

Webull is a relatively new market entrant in the investing space, launching in 2018. Despite this, they’ve created a very powerful self-directed investing experience for anyone looking to cut their teeth on trading and long-term investing.

As an added benefit, they offer a robust paper trading product to allow you to learn about market and stock movements without exposing your own money to loss.

The company is a free stock trading app that also provides free trades of ETFs, options and cryptocurrencies through its mobile app or desktop site. In other words: You pay no commissions for trades you make in your portfolio.

Webull does not currently offer custodial accounts, so while this is one of the best trading apps for teens, we’re talking about the high teens: 18 and 19. Young adults can use this app once they reach the age of majority and make their own investment decisions. The company also offers free stocks for users who sign up.

Read more in our Webull review.

Related: 8 Best Allowance and Chore Apps for Kids [Easier Family Life]

7. Copper Card (Best for Teen Independence)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: 30 days free. Copper: $4.95/mo. and Copper + Invest: $7.95/mo.

Copper Banking was founded on the belief that kids and teens should have equal access to financial education and should be empowered to learn by doing. Now, the company is on a mission to help children gain real-world experience by giving them access to their money in a way that traditional banks can’t.

The Copper app and debit card teaches your child how to make smart financial decisions by creating a platform where parents and their kids can connect. With the Copper app, you get easy snapshots of your accounts. And with the Copper Debit Card, it’s easy to shop in-store or online, including with Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Plus, users get exclusive access to engaging advice curated by a team of financial literacy experts who provide tips on how to take control of their financial future.

Copper Banking Features:

• Send/Request: Kids and parents can easily send and receive money all at the touch of a button.
• Spend: Spend using Apple or Google Pay, or using the Copper Debit Card.
• Withdraw: Access your money from more than 55,000 fee-free ATMs.
• Monitor: Get a snapshot of all your child’s spending in an easy-to-read dashboard.
• Save: Gain quick snapshots of your kid’s savings and helpful tips on how to save even more. Set up savings buckets and save for the things that you want.
• Learn: With the help of Copper’s team of financial literacy experts, gain bite-sized tips on how you can maximize your money and prepare yourself for your financial future.

The basic Copper account includes the above banking features. With Copper + Invest, your child also gets access to automatically curated smart portfolios built with their preferences in mind. Your child is given a questionnaire that helps Copper determine a portfolio based on their age, income, net worth, investment objective(s) and investment horizon. Copper then recommends one of three ETF portfolios—Moderately Aggressive, Aggressive, and Extra Aggressive—made up of thousands of stocks. Parents can review the portfolio to ensure it matches with not just your child’s preferences, but your family’s. (Portfolios can be changed later on by accessing the Support chat.)

Your child can begin investing for as little as $1, then add more contributions down the road. Copper will automatically rebalance the portfolio as needed to make sure it always keeps up with your child’s investment preferences.

Copper is available to kids 6 years and older.

Read more in our Copper Banking review.

Related: How Old Do You Have to Be to Buy Stocks?

8. Charles Schwab One® Custodial Account

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: Free online trades

Charles Schwab offers a custodial account through their Schwab One® custodial account with no minimum balance and no annual maintenance fee. There’s also no charge for online trades of listed stock, ETFs, and mutual funds (although a service charge may apply for broker-assisted trades).

The broker has a number of financial products to consider as a discount brokerage. For instance, among other things, you can open a Schwab target date fund or invest in index funds.

As with other large brokers, Schwab provides access to no-cost research and information to help you make informed investment decisions. Schwab customers also have access to a robo-advisor. Personalized assistance is available for a fee if you have a larger account.

Want to learn more? Check out the review here, and from there, click the “Visit Site” button to visit Schwab and sign up.

 

9. Learn by MyWallSt (Investing Education App)

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• Available: iOS / Android
• Price: Free

Learn by MyWallSt is a simple, intuitive app that can quickly get you up to speed on stock investing and other important financial concepts.

The ease of use and course design are perfect for beginners. Learn by MyWallSt kicks off by helping people understand why it’s important to invest, which includes introductions to ideas such as financial goals, compound interest, and the importance of saving. From there, it jumps into defining the building blocks of investing, including stocks, stock exchanges, the S&P 500, dividends, and more.

Learn by MyWallSt’s lessons become more advanced after that, covering the process of finding great companies, digging into financial records such as income reports and balance sheets, and understanding the importance of a business’s cash and debt.

The app ties everything together by teaching you how to buy your first stock, the importance of diversification, how to build a portfolio, when and how you should finally sell your shares—and it even lays out a few mistakes that investors should try to avoid.

What sticks out most, though, is how this information is delivered. Each part of the course is broken down into a handful of lessons, and the app tracks your progress as you complete each lesson. The lessons themselves are easily digested, at just a couple hundred words each, and you can even listen to each lesson with the press of a button.

And that’s pretty much it. Learn by MyWallSt is light on frills, but we feel that this streamlined, ad-free experience is the ideal delivery method for teens who are just starting to learn the basics.

Related: Best Money Apps for Kids to Start Learning Finances

10. Best Brokers (Stock Game App)

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• Product(s): Stock market simulator
• Available: iOS / Android
• Price: Free

You can find great stock market simulators within several popular brokerage accounts, and there are even a few great browser-based paper-stock games.

However, free stock market simulator apps are fairly flawed, on the whole. The best we’ve found is (appropriately) named Best Brokers.

Best Brokers is a paper stock trading app in which you use fake money to invest in very real companies—including kid-friendly stocks such as Apple and Microsoft, plus the rest of the U.S. stock market.

The app starts you out with $25,000 in play money. It uses real-time market data, and you invest during real market hours (9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern). The realism is a neat feature, though it does pose some difficulties—teens typically are in class during the trading day, so they often can’t use the app to see how things work in real time, plus it can also be inconvenient to kids who don’t live in the Eastern Time Zone.

Still, it’s a place to practice buy-and-hold investing and trading alike. Best Brokers also allows you to compete with friends, send messages, and view a leaderboard.

Best Brokers also includes a news feed that includes articles from CNBC and Nasdaq, but it’s an unfiltered feed—one that includes useful company-specific news, sure, but also numerous chart- and data-based articles that are only really useful to professional traders, as well as other stories that have nothing to do with investing.

The app itself isn’t intuitive, either; we strongly suggest that you review the FAQs and starter videos before starting the game itself. And Best Brokers includes some European shares that you might not be able to access once you open up a brokerage account of your own.

All of that said, Best Brokers is the best of a flawed group of apps, and a suitable place to practice once you’ve learned the basics.

Related: Best Kid Debit Cards

Do Teens Under the Age of 18 Need Stock Trading Apps?

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A few more kids are being taught financial literacy than in the past, but most still aren’t—leaving technologies such as investing apps to help bridge the gap.

Currently, fewer than 23% of U.S. high school students are required to take a personal finance course to graduate, according to Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF). That’s certainly better than 17% just a few years ago, but it still means most teens and young adults aren’t improving their financial literacy through school.

The problem is nationwide. The American Public Education Foundation’s “Nation’s Report Card on Financial Literacy” found that roughly two-thirds of U.S. states received a grade of C or lower “based on currently available state-wide requirements, standards, and curriculum for personal finance.”

Clearly, many teens aren’t receiving the comprehensive financial advice they need.

When youths can’t necessarily rely on their schools to learn about finances, where can they turn? Well, according to Fidelity’s 2023 Teens and Money Study, the two best places to learn about investing are family (55% of those surveyed) and financial services companies (41%). Fortunately, a variety of money apps for teens and young adults blend these sources to help teens manage their money, teach them how to be financially responsible, and make saving for the future easier—all while bringing parents into the conversation.

How to Invest Under 18: Investing as a Teenager

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The best investments for a teenager will include a combination of the most basic building blocks of any portfolio: individual stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Many of the investing apps for under 18-year olds above offer access to these three asset classes and provide educational resources to equip teens with the financial knowledge they need to develop their investing prowess.

They all require the help of a trust adult, typically a parent or guardian, but provide clear connections between adult and teen during the investing process. To be blunt: Because minors can’t invest by themselves, they’ll need to use the apps above in concert with an adult to start investing.

Related: Top Banking Apps for Kids

How to Choose the Right Finance App

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Now that you’ve reviewed this laundry list of various investing apps for teens and young adults, how do you know which investment app for teens is right for you?

Many of these apps offer similar features, from money management tools and financial planning software for young adults, to apps that let you invest in the stock market or cut down on your expenses. And there are so many—simply scroll through Android’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store, and you’ll be overwhelmed—that narrowing your choice down to one might be easier said than done.

How to choose the right finance app, then, comes down to cutting through the clutter by thinking about what you specifically need to accomplish, then avoiding any apps that don’t do that. After that, it’s about finding the right set of features.

So if you’re trying to whittle down a long list of stock apps, here’s a quick four-step strategy that should help you settle on one.

1. Focus on the goal you’re trying to achieve
2. Consider your time and money commitments
3. Review the features offered and determine if they’re worth the price (or time)
4. Compare apps’ scores and reviews

With these guiding principles in place, sift through the list of teen investing apps above. If one of those apps will help you achieve your goal, not cost you too much time and/or money, has the features you want, and is well-thought-of by current users … well, it’s probably time to download it and give it a try!

Financial Planning for Teens and Young Adults

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The investing apps for teens listed here aim to address one or more financial problems you might face. This can include financial automation, notifications, management, expense reduction, increasing your saving contributions, and much more.

While none of these trading apps for teens can instill financial literacy overnight, nor can they serve as a substitute for sound financial decision-making, they all work in some way to encourage good financial behavior.

If they didn’t, I wouldn’t have included them on the list.

However, it doesn’t hurt to learn a little bit right now, so here are a few financial tips for teens and young adults:

• Learn to live within your means
• Develop a sense of self-control
• Don’t financially handicap yourself by not saving for your future
• Understand where your money comes from and where it goes
• Save for your retirement now
• Start an emergency fund
• Don’t skimp on your health and investing in yourself
• Protect your wealth with the appropriate insurance (e.g., life insurance, etc.)

You’ll also want to invest in your future by learning about teenage investing and stock trading for kids.

Related:

• Best Investments for Teenagers
• Stock Trading for Teens [Stock Market for Teens]
• Best Debit Cards for Teens