The Best SIPPs in 2025: Fees & Features Compared

Broker	Fi Fee* (£10k pot)	Fi Fee* (£100k pot)	Fi Fee* (£500k pot)	Employer contributions
Fidelity	£53	£108	£108	Yes
InvestEngine	£0	£0	£0	No
Freetrade	£119.88	£119.88	£119.88	No
Vanguard	£48	£150	£375	No
AJ Bell	£43	£138	£138	Yes
Hargreaves Lansdown	£45	£200	£200	Yes
Interactive Investor	£71.88	£155.88	£155.88	Yes
Nutmeg	£45	£450	£1,450	Yes
Wealthify	£60	£600	£3,000	No
Bestinvest	£179.40	£459.40	£959.40	Yes
Moneybox	£45	£450	£1,050	No
Plum	£45	£450	£2,250	No

The lowest fees in each investment bracket are highlighted in green, while the highest fees are highlighted in red. All listed brokers are FCA registered and covered by FSCS protection.

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Which SIPP is best?

Choosing the right SIPP will depend on your specific needs and requirements.

Fees are one important aspect to consider — but they’re certainly not everything. Other factors you should consider include the style of investing you want, the quality of a broker’s customer support, the ease of transferring if you ever want to leave in the future, and a variety of other things.

If you want your employer to be able to pay into your SIPP, that’s another factor to consider. Many brokers do not offer this ability. This does not apply if you’re self-employed, as contributions to your SIPP would be made via you as an individual.

Small balances

The broker with the lowest SIPP fees for small investors (£0-£10,000 investment balance) is InvestEngine. They removed SIPP product fees and do not charge trading commissions, costing you precisely £0 annually on a £10,000 balance — excluding fund fees, which always apply. It’s really easy to set up a SIPP with this platform.

Unfortunately, InvestEngine don’t allow employer contributions at the time of publishing, nor do they support transfers in or drawdown.

Editor’s note: In the wake of Vanguard increasing their fees, InvestEngine have rolled out transfers in from Vanguard via their website. Instructions here.

The cheapest option for smaller investors that supports these features is AJ Bell.

Broker	Effective fee*	Comments
InvestEngine	0%	Cheapest option for smaller balances
AJ Bell	0.43%	Cheapest option that allows employer contributions
bestinvest	1.79%	Most expensive option for smaller balances

Medium-sized balances

For medium-sized ETF balances of around £100,000, the broker with the lowest fees is again InvestEngine — due to charging no platform or trading fees within regular ETFs.

After this, Fidelity come in second, and would charge £108 on a £100,000 balance annually if you invested in ETFs — fees on exchange-traded instruments are capped at £90 per year (plus trading fees). Fidelity also support employer contributions which is a big perk of having a SIPP, especially if you’re a shareholder of a limited company.

Freetrade follows closely behind in third, as another alternative option.

Freetrade’s fees can be quite expensive for smaller investors — with a balance of just £1,000, your effective fee would be around 12%. However, the platform’s fees start to shine as balances become larger. On a £100,000 balance, fees would amount to 0.12%.

If you trade more than once per month, there’s a chance that Freetrade would become the cheapest option.

This is because trading is free on the platform, whereas it costs £7.50 per trade on Fidelity — though this fee is reduced to £1.50 per month within our calculations above. This discounted trading fee applies when investing as part of a regular savings plan, i.e. a monthly direct debit.

All investments have risk, you may get out more than you put in.

Broker	Effective fee*	Comments
InvestEngine	0%	Cheapest option for medium-sized SIPP balances
Fidelity	0.11%	Cheapest option that supports employer contributions
Freetrade	0.12%	Another cheap option for medium-sized balances
Nutmeg	0.75%	Most expensive option for medium-sized balances

Large balances

For very large balances of £500,000 or more, InvestEngine is again the cheapest option, followed by Fidelity, Freetrade, and Interactive Investor in fourth. AJ Bell also deserves a mention for being not too far behind.

Effective fees for the three cheapest brokers in this category come in at 0%, 0.02% and 0.02% — all of which are incredibly low. For comparison, the most expensive option in this bracket, Wealthify, would charge in excess of 25-times more than the cheapest option.

Again, much like we saw with medium-sized balances, Freetrade could potentially become cheaper than Fidelity if you trade more frequently, or differently to how we have in our example calculations.

As a reminder, this guide assumes a once-monthly passive investment into ETFs. Fees for shares, funds, and other investment options can vary on each provider.

All investments have risk, you may get out more than you put in.

Broker	Effective fee*	Comments
InvestEngine	0%	Cheapest SIPP for large investment balances
Fidelity	0.02%	Cheapest SIPP for large investment balances with employer contributions
Freetrade	0.02%	Another very cheap SIPP for large investment balances, and could be the cheapest if you trade more actively
Interactive Investor	0.03%	Cheapest option that allows employer contributions, second cheapest option in the category overall
AJ Bell	0.04%	Worth a mention because they support employer contributions and drawdown
Wealthify	0.6%	Most expensive option for large balances

Expensive options

So-called ‘robo-advisers’ are very expensive in all three investor categories, partly because they do not offer DIY investing, but their fees are also high when comparing managed portfolio services too. For example, Wealthify charges 0.6% and Plum charges 0.45% — uncapped — where alternatives such as InvestEngine charges as little as 0.25%.

Fund fees

Fund fees are charged for ongoing management of the fund and will be charged by the fund managers, rather than the broker you’re using.

The exception to this is with Vanguard as they are both the broker and the fund manager at the same time — selling access to their funds via their own platform and via other platforms too. It can often be cheaper to invest in Vanguard’s funds via other brokers, depending on your balance.

The fund fees you’re charged will depend on the fund you’re investing in and the type of platform you’re using too.

These fees can also be misleading, on occasion.

For example, you could invest into Vanguard’s FTSE All-World fund (VWRP) on InvestEngine. The Total Expense Ratio (TER), i.e. the fund fee, is 0.22%. On a robo-adviser like Wealthify, you can’t choose which funds you invest in, but the ‘average investment costs’ (again, the fund fee) shows as 0.16%. That’s lower! Right?

Well, not necessarily. There are two things to note with this:

Firstly, the platform fee Wealthify takes (0.6%) is much higher than what InvestEngine takes — 0.25% if you want your portfolio managed on your behalf, which would be the fairest comparison in this situation as Wealthify would also manage your investments. The slightly smaller fund fee doesn’t balance things out overall.

Secondly, and more importantly, the Wealthify ‘average investment costs’ figure is misleading. Why? Because even selecting the most adventurous investing style — which means you’re willing to take the most risk — your portfolio will “invest” a small amount of money in cash.

Obviously there will be no fund fee for simply holding cash, which brings the average investment cost down. The investment costs where you’re funds are being invested into stocks will likely be very similar.

On top of this, over 10% of your funds will also be held in government bonds, which again have lower fees than equity funds (stocks and shares) typically have.

An additional thing to be aware of is that many brokers offer access to the same funds, which means fund fees are consistent across these platforms.

It doesn’t matter if you invest into Vanguard’s VWRP fund via the Vanguard platform, or via InvestEngine, or Hargreaves Lansdown, the fund fee will always be 0.22% — the yearly fees discussed in this guide are then additional to this, as these are the comparable costs associated with using a specific broker account.

Exit fees

None of the brokers above charge an exit fee — a fee to transfer your SIPP to another broker in future — though there is a small exception in the case of Nutmeg.

If dividends and interest come in after transferring to another broker, Nutmeg will charge fees capped at 1% before sending the remaining balance. They also hold 1% of your pension transfer back to cover any outstanding fees before sending the full amount.

Fee breakdown

This table shows how we calculated the fees within each investor bracket. We’ve also linked to each broker’s fee page and added any extra notes that might be relevant.

When calculating Fi Fee, we assume a passive once-monthly investment into an ETF with no portfolio growth and no withdrawals. Fund fees are excluded to isolate broker charges (i.e. fund fees also apply).

Broker	Account fee	ETF fee*	Additional Notes
Fidelity	0.2% – 0.35%	£7.50 (reduced to £1.50 with regular savings plan)	Account fees on ETFs with a regular savings plan are capped at £7.50 per month. “For exchange-traded instruments, this portion of the fee is capped at £90 (£7.50 a month)”.
InvestEngine	0%	£0	InvestEngine removed SIPP product fees in December 2024.
Freetrade	£11.99 per month or £119.88 per year	£0	Paying annually is £24 cheaper than monthly.
Vanguard	0.15% (capped at £375 per year) with a minimum ££4 per month	£0	SIPP page does not confirm £375 annual cap, but the cap is confirmed within customer T&Cs and this blog post.
AJ Bell	0.25% (capped at £10 per month)	£1.50	The ETF trading fee is £5 unless you use a regular investment via direct debit.
Hargreaves Lansdown	0.45% (capped at £200 per year for ETFs and shares)	Free with direct debit	The £11.95 ETF trading fee increases SIPP costs significantly if you don’t invest via direct debit.
Interactive Investor	£71.88 – £155.88 per year	No fee when using regular investing service	Using the ‘Pension Essentials’ and ‘Pension Builder’ plan. Existing ii customers can add a SIPP for £5-£10 per month; the price depends on your overall balance.
Nutmeg	Up to 0.45%	£0	0.45% on the first £100,000, then 0.25% on balance beyond, using the ‘Fixed Allocation’ investment style.
Wealthify	0.6%	£0
Bestinvest	Up to 0.4% per year with minimum £10 per month charge	£4.95	0.4% on the first £250,000 with a minimum £120 per year, then 0.2% from £250,000 – £500,000.
Moneybox	Up to 0.45% per year	£0	0.45% on the first £100,000, then 0.15% on funds above this figure.
Plum	0.45% per year	£0

When investing in a SIPP, your capital is at risk. Investments can rise or fall in value. SIPP rules apply. Speak to a qualified financial adviser if you need assistance.

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