8 Best Investing Apps for College Students to Start Investing

College can be a stressful time for students, but investing your money shouldn’t add to the stress. College is typically when people start investing their money and it’s important to find an investing platform that grows with you as your financial needs change.

The best investing apps for college students offer this flexibility, making them powerful enough for long-term use while still simple enough to understand at first glance.

These platforms will also make transitioning from college life easier by providing all of the personal finance tools in one place. Investing doesn’t have to be complicated or scary—these are some of the best investing apps out there!

Best Investment Platforms and Apps for College Students—Top Picks

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What Are the Best Investment Apps for College Students?

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When looking for the best investment apps for beginners, you will want to consider apps that offer a variety of investment options and allow you to track your stocks as you wish, research and read stock news and grow with your needs.

Investing apps for beginners should also be easy-to-use, mobile-friendly and provide useful features such as automatic rebalancing or the ability to set up recurring investments with just one swipe.

The following list represents the best investing apps for college students starting to invest for the first time.

Related: Best Brokerage Account Bonuses, Promotions and Deals

1. Plynk (Best Investment App for Beginner and Intermediate Investors)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Plynk® is an investing app designed to not only help you start putting your money to work, but teach you about the markets and your money along the way. It charges no account opening fees.

With the Plynk app, you can start investing with as little as $1. It offers commission-free trades on 5,000 stocks and nearly 2,000 ETFs, and also provides access to more than 50 mutual funds and four cryptocurrencies. You can use the app as a traditional brokerage account, but if you’d prefer the potential tax advantages of retirement accounts, the Plynk app also allows you to open traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs.

The app is more than appropriate for seasoned investors, but it’s also extremely friendly to beginners. It’s light on jargon and instead uses straightforward, easy-to-understand language to explain investing concepts in its tips and how-tos. The Plynk app also offers expert ratings on stocks and funds that novice and experienced investors alike can use to identify high-quality opportunities.

Want to start building good investing habits right off the bat? The Plynk app offers automatic investing—you choose how much you want to invest, in which securities, and how often, and the app processes the trading from there. Want help building a consistent habit? Plynk’s Steady Start feature is a 52-week ramp-up program that starts your contribution at $1 in the first week, then ups that contribution by a dollar each week—so by the time you’re done, you’ll have contributed $1,378 in a year.

The Plynk app’s educational tools are among the best from the apps we’ve reviewed. Beginners will want to check out Plynk Think—a series of tips and how-to explanations that help you grow as an investor. Curious about how certain investments would’ve worked? Plynk’s virtual portfolios let you “invest” virtual money to see how any portfolio you can think up would have performed depending on when you started investing in its underlying stocks and ETFs. You can even build experience without using real money thanks to the app’s simulated trading feature, which shows you how to buy and sell stocks and funds, and lets you test out your trading strategies.

Plynk’s customer support is staffed by knowledgeable professionals, and your account is backed by encryption, multifactor authentication, and 24/7 fraud monitoring.

Begin today: Sign up with Plynk using our exclusive link to kick-start your investing journey.

Related: 15 Best Investment Apps and Platforms [Free + Paid]

1. Robinhood (Best Trading App for Beginners)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Robinhood jumped into the investing public’s consciousness in 2013 when they rolled out commission-free trading. They remain a standout option for cost-minded investors thanks to their continued $0 commissions on stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency; 24/7 trading; and the use of fractional shares, which allow people to invest with as little as $1.

Robinhood has long catered to beginner investors with its gamified interface and growing library of educational content. But Robinhood has grown up, too—from a bare-bones app to a full-featured platform, chock full of tools and capabilities designed to both build up notice investors, and help beginners get the most out of their accounts from the get-go.

For instance, Robinhood now offers traditional individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and Roth IRAs via Robinhood Retirement. We love that investors have the option of self-selecting all their investments, having Robinhood recommend a portfolio (made up of five to eight ETFs), or mixing the two by starting with Robinhood’s recs and tweaking to your own preferences. IRA investors can choose from stocks, ETFs, and options, but not crypto.

But Robinhood Retirement has really made a name for itself by offering matching funds. If you open up an IRA with Robinhood Retirement, Robinhood will match 1% of any IRA transfers, 401(k) rollovers, and annual contributions to your account—typically almost immediately after you make your contribution. (Robinhood Gold subscribers get a 3% match on new contributions, though rollovers and transfers are still 1%.) 

Robinhood also has tools for budding traders. Advanced Charts, for instance, provides simple and customizable charts with a variety of technical features. Robinhood’s Options Strategy Builder simplifies the options-trading process by helping you build a strategy based on what you expect your target stock or ETF will do in the future. Robinhood also offers 24/7 commission-free cryptocurrency trading with Robinhood Crypto (though you’ll still have to pay a spread), allows extended-hours trading, and lets users earn interest through stock lending.

If you want to keep your banking and investing close together, you can also add a Robinhood spending account. This FDIC-insured account includes a Robinhood Cash Card issued by Sutton Bank. The Cash Card is a physical card (though you do have the option of having a virtual debit card only) that’s compatible with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay, and also provides you with access to fee-free withdrawals from more than 90,000 ATMs. One of our favorite features: Robinhood’s card lets you round up purchases and invest the money into your brokerage or crypto account.

Sign up for a Robinhood brokerage account or Robinhood Retirement account today.

Related: 9 Best Free Investing Apps [No Fees to Start Saving]

3. Public.com: Best Investment App for Alternatives

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• Available: Sign up here
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Public.com is a commission-free investing app, geared toward Millennials and Gen-Zers, that as of late has built up the types of assets available to its users. On Public, users can invest in not just individual stocks and ETFs, but also more than 25 different cryptocurrencies—and more recently, alternative assets from art to sneakers.

That last point is worth a callout. Alternative assets are a relative rarity among investing apps. They can be difficult to research (and thus difficult to properly invest in), but they can provide uncorrelated returns compared to the stock and bond markets, so many savvy investors like to diversify into these assets.

But while the number of tradable assets on Public.com is growing, it’s still somewhat limited: It doesn’t offer mutual funds, options, bonds, or futures. New users are also limited to individual brokerage accounts—retirement accounts aren’t currently available.

Public also acts as a micro-investing app, allowing you to invest in fractional shares with as little as $1. However, it does lack some of the more advanced features offered by other apps.

Read more in our Public.com investing app review or sign up today.

4. Webull: Best Stock Trading App for Intermediate Investors

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• Available: Sign up here
• Platforms: Desktop app (Windows, Mac, Linux), web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Webull first hit the investing world in 2018 and made a splash by offering free stock trading, as well as commission-free trading of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and options. And since then, it has become one of the best stock trading apps for intermediate traders, though many of its features are helpful to beginner investors as well.

For one, Webull remains friendly to wallet-conscious traders today. It costs nothing to open a Webull account. Stocks, ETFs, and options still trade commission-free. Many options have $0 contract fees. And Webull has no deposit minimums. On top of that, it offers fractional shares, which allows investors to start buying for as little as $1.

Webull also is available across just about every platform, allowing you to research, trade, and track your stocks on your smartphone, tablet, or desktop.

Why choose Webull to trade stocks?

Webull provides traders with a number of useful features and tools, including:

• Customizable screeners for both stocks and ETFs
• Preset lists–including Top Gainers, Top Losers, Most Active, and Best-Performing Industries—traders can use to identify opportunities
• Free real-time stock quotes
• 12 charting tools and more than 50 technical indicators
• Real-time stock alerts you can set to notify you of events such as significant price action or certain technical conditions
• Numerous order types—simple orders such as limit and market orders, sure, but also group orders such as bracket, OTO, and OCO orders
• Quant ratings that help you to evaluate stocks through numerous lenses, such as growth, value, income, quality, and momentum

These tools make Webull one of the best stock research and analysis apps for traders.

We’ll point out that while Webull allows for many types of commission-free trades, other costs will still apply to a few transactions. For instance, a 55-cent contract fee applies to certain options trades. Webull doesn’t directly charge fees for trading cryptocurrencies, but it does build a 1-percentage-point markup into the price of cryptocurrency when you buy or sell crypto. And Webull’s margin rates, which are variable depending on the debit balance, are currently roughly middle-of-the-road.

You should also know that you can’t buy mutual funds on Webull, though that’s more of a concern for long-term investors and less so for traders.

Regardless, Webull remains one of the best, and most cost-friendly, trading platforms you can come across. And on top of all the free features mentioned above, Webull also runs frequent promotions that allow investors to collect free stocks.

Read more in our Webull review, or sign up at Webull today.

 

5. Vanguard: Best Fund Company Offering an Investment App

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• Available: Sign up here
• Best for: Basic trading options with cheap mutual fund investing
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

Vanguard has long been regarded as the low-cost index fund investing service provider. In fact, in 1975, John Bogle launched the first U.S.-listed index fund available to retail investors. Now, Vanguard offers numerous dirt-cheap index products in both its mutual fund and exchange-traded fund lineups.

But Vanguard also offers low-cost investing, and no account minimums, through its brokerage and other accounts. That means commission-free trading not just on Vanguard products like VTI or VTSAX, but also on stocks, all other ETFs, and all no-transaction-fee mutual funds. But investors and traders still shoulder some costs. Unless you have more than $1 million in your account, transaction-fee mutual funds cost $20 per trade. And if you have a higher risk tolerance, you can trade options on Vanguard—but while commission-free, you’ll still incur a $1 contract fee on options trades.

Vanguard’s web and mobile versions are very much geared toward beginning investors, though the latter is better-designed. The web version can be downright clunky at times, and it can be difficult to access some of the features. I used to use the app to manage my work’s 401(k) plan, and I’ll admit to its bloat and lack of clarity on calculating investment returns on a percentage basis. The mobile apps run more smoothly, and I like the secure two-step login. But certain features, such as price alerts, aren’t available on mobile.

My main beef with Vanguard’s apps is that they make it difficult to measure the performance of individual holdings. All that said, Vanguard might have made this by design, incentivizing you to check your funds less often and thus living by their buy-and-hold ethos.

Still, if you’re a beginner who’s not sure if you’ll be more into trading, or more into long-term investing, a Vanguard account is a good place to start.

 

6. Acorns: Best Micro-Investing App for Beginners

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• Available: Sign up here
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

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.

The Acorns investment offering itself is a simple, automated platform that uses pre-built portfolios of ETFs to keep investors exposed to stocks and bonds. While it doesn’t have much to offer intermediate investors who want variety in their portfolios, Acorns’ basic approach makes it one of the best investment apps for beginners.

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 Silver and Gold subscribers, respectively. 

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

• Acorns Bronze ($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 Silver ($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 Gold ($12 per month): Everything in Silver plus Acorns Early for up to four children. Gold is also the only way to unlock Acorns Early Invest: a custodial investment account for your child that lets you invest for them while they’re a minor. Additional Gold features include 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.

Sign up for Acorns today (and subscribe to Acorns Gold for an Acorns Early Invest account), or learn more in our Acorns review.

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

7. M1 Finance: Best DIY Robo-Advisor

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• Available: Sign up here
• Platforms: Web, mobile app (Apple iOS, Android)

M1 Finance is an investing app that acts like a hybrid between self-directed investing (you manually choose what to invest in, and determine when to buy and sell) and automated investing (AI helps make decisions for you and manages your account). The result is effectively a highly customizable robo-advisory service that functions like a 401(k).

M1’s investing platform is based around Pies. Your portfolio is represented as a Pie (a pie chart); every stock and ETF you decide to buy becomes a slice of that pie. Like a 401(k), M1 uses fractional shares; unlike a 401(k), it uses stocks and ETFs. Each investment is a “Slice,” and you choose what percent of your Pie each Slice should account for—so, you might set Stock X at 5% of your portfolio, and ETF Y at 25%. After that, whenever you fund your M1 account, it will automatically invest your money based on these targets. 

From there, M1 can automatically rebalance your portfolio for you, or you can go in and manually change how small and large each Pie slice is. If you really want to put it on autopilot, you can invest in M1’s model portfolios—professionally pre-built portfolios designed for different investment money goals. (And if you want something in the middle, you can even combine Expert Pies with your own custom choices.)

Unlike traditional online brokers, you cannot trade stocks and ETFs throughout the trading day. M1 has two trading windows—at 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. every day the New York Stock Exchange is open—during which it processes all of the orders it has received before then. 

On the one hand, if you wanted to jettison a position immediately during the trading day, you couldn’t do that with M1, and you certainly can’t trade stocks like you can with a traditional brokerage. On the other hand, this trading window system won’t stop you from achieving your goals—and it could actually stay your hand from panic-selling in the middle of the day.

The company also offers both taxable and tax-advantaged accounts, making this one of the great options for those who qualify as a Roth IRA investor. They even have offer a Roth IRA for kids.

You can read more in our M1 Finance review, or you can use our exclusive link to open an M1 account today.

 

8. Stash: Best for Approaching Finances for the First Time

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: Starter: $3/mo. Stash+: $12/mo.

Stash is an all-in-one personal finance app that comes with a checking account and an investment platform.

While the app primarily caters to hands-off investors looking to automate their investing through exchange-traded funds (ETFs), you can also actively select stocks to trade. You can do all of this as you spend money and make recurring deposits into your account.

Stash also makes saving easier with the Stock-Back^® rewards program², which allows users to earn stock on qualifying purchases made on their linked Stock-Back^® Card¹. Over time, these additional stock contributions can build your portfolio.

Many parents love Stash as an investing app for kids because they can use it to open a custodial account and save for their children’s educations. However, many teenagers and young adults like the app for the control it offers them over their money and investments.

Prospective users should note that while Stash does charge a monthly account service fee for its full suite of products, it does not charge trading commissions for your investment holdings, nor does it have an account minimum.

Sign up for Stash if you’re looking for a simple investing and banking solution.

 

How to Start Investing in College

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When starting your college career, you’re likely more focused on your course load, making friends and getting adjusted to a new environment than investing.

However, it’s important not to neglect your financial future and start investing in college (even including building credit as a college student) so that you have an even stronger footing when starting the rest of your life!

Investing doesn’t need to be complicated or scary – here are some tips on how you can best get started as a student:

• Start with small amounts of money: Building up your investments with small amounts of money is a smart idea when you’re starting out. You can then build it up over time and turn investing into an automatic habit
• Pick a simple investing platform: There are lots of different platforms to choose from, but what’s important is that the one you pick should be simple enough for you – and have all the features you need to make investing an easy process.
• Have the platform grow with you: You can set up automatic investments, choose how much risk you’re comfortable taking on (and what percentage of your budget to put towards it), and even see where all of your money is invested – so that managing everything as a student becomes easier with time

What Should College Students Invest In?

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When you just start investing with little amounts of money, you should consider investing in lower-risk investments. This will help you get used to the investing process without risking too much of your money if something goes wrong with it.

By this, I don’t mean certificates of deposit or short-term bonds, but rather investments that don’t carry risk tied to a specific company or sector.

Because traditional students begin college as teenagers and can start investing young, they should favor riskier asset types like stocks rather than bonds.

When you are investing at 18, these will have the greatest overall upside potential and take advantage of college students’ greatest asset: youth.

In general, college students should focus on what they are best at learning and enjoy before looking into investing in anything else. For example, the best investments for young adults is an investment in themselves by attending college.

As for how to invest their money in the stock market, they should likely start with investing in index funds. Index funds are investments that mimic the performance of a market index like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq and do not require any active trading on your part.

So, if you’re just beginning to invest, it’s a good place to start.

These low-cost, diversified investment options allow you to buy stocks but don’t require you to do any of the research into what those stocks are.

When selecting an investing platforms for beginners, they should grow with the user and make their money work for them.

For example, if a college student starts with index funds as an investment, when they graduate from college they’ll be able to invest in other more complex or riskier investments like individual companies.

For the more engaged investor, you can identify these individual stock opportunities with the best stock picking services, stock advisor services or through stock investment newsletters.

Likewise, you can conduct your own stock research and analysis with apps and find undervalued stocks before the market has caught on. At the same time, if you’re not sure what to invest in, index funds are a good place to start. They’re also a good place to invest for your entire life.

They require no active trading and provide diversification for even just $500 or less with very little effort involved from you. They do the heavy lifting for your portfolio automatically.

Best Investment Apps for College Students Beginning to Invest

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These apps help college students begin to invest and grow their money.

The investing platforms grow with the user and make their money work for them, teaching students how to invest in stocks, bonds, ETFs – even how to start a Roth IRA account!

These apps are designed from the ground up to be easy-to-understand but still powerful enough to handle college students’ long term investing needs. Hopefully, college students choose to invest in appreciating assets over the long-term.

Consider opening an account with one of the above online discount brokers and see if it works for you.

Related: Best Stock Trading Apps for Beginners

Disclosures

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Plynk

All Plynk disclosures can be viewed here.

Stash

* Paid non-client endorsement. See Apple App Store and Google Play reviews. View important disclosures.

Nothing in this material should be construed as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation to buy or sell any security. All investments are subject to risk and may lose value. 

1 Stash Banking services provided by Stride Bank, N.A., Member FDIC. The Stash Stock-Back® Debit Mastercard® is issued by Stride Bank pursuant to license from Mastercard International. Mastercard and the circles design are registered trademarks of Mastercard International Incorporated. Any earned stock rewards will be held in your Stash Invest account. Investment products and services provided by Stash Investments LLC and are Not FDIC Insured, Not Bank Guaranteed, and May Lose Value.

¹ All rewards earned through use of the Stash Stock-Back® Debit Mastercard® will be fulfilled by Stash Investments LLC and are subject to Terms and Conditions. You will bear the standard fees and expenses reflected in the pricing of the investments that you earn, plus fees for various ancillary services charged by Stash. In order to earn stock in the program, the Stash Stock-Back® Debit Mastercard must be used to make a qualifying purchase. Stock rewards that are paid to participating customers via the Stash Stock Back program, are Not FDIC Insured, Not Bank Guaranteed, and May Lose Value.

Stash has full authority to manage a “Smart Portfolio,” a discretionary managed account.

* Offer is subject to T&Cs.