15 tips & tricks for using InvestEngine in 2026

InvestEngine is popular with UK investors who want a low-cost, straightforward way to put money into ETFs. It offers fractional trading and simple automation, with no platform or dealing fees if you manage your own portfolio.

But too many investors treat it like a posh coffee machine, pressing just one button and ignoring the fancy features lurking under the hood.

Here's how to make the most of InvestEngine without cooking your brain or sacrificing your weekend.

1. Let AutoInvest do your homework

AutoInvest is InvestEngine's automation tool. It grabs any spare cash in your account (whether from a dividend or a deposit) and immediately invests it according to your allocation settings.

The allocation settings are the percentage split you've chosen between the ETFs in your portfolio. We've covered exactly how to do this in our InvestEngine tutorial.

This stops cash from snoozing on the sidelines and gets your money hustling harder without you having to think about it.

If you're already making regular deposits using Savings Plans, AutoInvest activates itself automatically. It's basically financial housekeeping without the Marigold rubber gloves.

To turn on AutoInvest while on your desktop, follow these steps:

• Go to one of your portfolios. If you haven't made one yet, start from the Dashboard and find Create Portfolio or Transfer. Next, select Create Portfolio and choose either ISA, Personal Pension, or General (depending on what suits your needs) and click Do it yourself. Select the ETFs you want in your portfolio and press Continue
• Once you've chosen the ETFs and their allocations, underneath the Portfolio balance you can find the AutoInvest option. Toggle it on.

• You'll be prompted to decide whether you want to keep a cash buffer. This is the amount of money you're happy to keep on the sidelines. Any cash above this buffer will be automatically invested according to your portfolio's ETF allocation settings.

2. Get comfy with fractional investing

Fractional investing lets you put as little as £1 into any ETF, no matter what its actual share price is. It's like ordering just one biscuit instead of having to fork out for the whole tin.

This means your cash gets invested immediately rather than idling around, and you're not forced to wait until you've saved up for a full ETF share.

• As long as you've got the balance, you can buy any amount you like. One share might cost £100, but you can still pick your own figure. If £12.91 is your lucky number, you can invest exactly that.

💡Compare fees and features of all major UK brokers at a glance with our broker comparison tool 💡

3. Keep things neat with one-click rebalancing

Portfolios don't stay perfectly balanced on their own: they drift off like conversations at an awkward dinner party.

InvestEngine's Rebalance Portfolio button recalculates exactly what's needed to restore your chosen allocations and carries out the trades without any additional cost.

• How often should you rebalance? Once or twice a year is usually enough. Another approach is to set yourself a rule: if your allocations drift by say, 5%, it's time to hit that rebalance button
• Be aware of capital gains. Rebalancing inside an ISA won't create a tax bill, but doing the same in a General Investment Account can. Check whether this applies to you, and if you're not sure, it may be worth asking a professional.

To rebalance, open up your portfolio and click the Options button beneath your balance. You'll find Rebalance listed in that menu.

4. Check for sneaky overlaps with Portfolio Look-through

ETFs are basically investing pick-and-mix bags: a bit of everything gets tossed in.

But that means you can end up unintentionally owning loads of Apple or Tesla through multiple funds, like a box of Quality Street with too many toffee pennies.

• Check for hidden overlap. Many global ETFs are dominated by the same few big tech stocks. The look-through tool highlights your cumulative exposure so you can avoid doubling up on the same companies.

To use InvestEngine's Superman X-ray vision on your portfolio, go to My Dashboard, select your portfolio under General, click Analytics and then toggle between Regions, Sectors, Holdings and Asset Class to see where your portfolio's loyalties really lie.

Alternatively, you can click Analytics in the top bar and see a breakdown for All portfolios.

5. Simplify choosing ETFs with the screener

Picking ETFs can feel about as relaxing as assembling flat-pack furniture with a hangover.

To make things a bit less daunting, InvestEngine's ETF screener lets you filter funds by options such as asset class, provider, whether dividends are paid out (Distributed) or reinvested (Accumulated), ESG ratings (scores that show how environmentally and socially responsible a fund is), and currency hedging (which helps protect your investment if exchange rates move against the pound).

Go to Investments and beneath the search bar click More to expand the options.

6. LifePlan portfolios (ready-made investing)

If you're not into DIY (or you're the kind of person who starts assembling IKEA furniture and instantly regrets it), LifePlan portfolios are ready-made solutions where you pick a fixed equity allocation.

Equities are shares in companies (higher risk), while the remaining proportion of the portfolio is filled with bonds, which are loans to governments or firms (steadier, lower return).

To outsource the thinking to InvestEngine, head to Investments and scroll down to LifePlan portfolios. Choose your equity weighting: 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, or 100% equity. (Hint: the more equity, the riskier the ride; however, if you're planning to invest for the long haul, many advisers suggest going the full hog with 100% equity and skipping the bonds).

Note: LifePlan portfolios have been "temporarily unavailable" for new investors since early 2025. Support says they're coming back online, but they won't say exactly when (like your Deliveroo when the rider's going the wrong way).

It's also important to consider the costs: LifePlan portfolios charge an annual 0.25% platform fee, regardless of equity mix, and also come with a total expense ratio (TER) that varies depending on the fund selected. The total annual cost ranges from 0.34% to 0.39%, which is competitive for a set-it-and-forget-it glide-path service.

7. Savings plans (VRPs): automate without the faff

Using Open Banking, InvestEngine can set up "Variable Recurring Payments" so you invest on a schedule, e.g., weekly, fortnightly, monthly.

You pick the amount, whether it's £10, £200, or the odd figure left in your account after a reckless takeaway binge. You can change it whenever you like without paperwork or having to contact customer service.

The cash goes straight to your portfolio, where AutoInvest spreads it across your investments according to your settings.

To lock your future self into investing (for the benefit of your even-further-in-the-future self), go to My Dashboard, pick the portfolio you want under General, and click Set up a Savings Plan (you'll find it below the portfolio balance).

Just be aware that some banks don't support Recurring Variable Payments – InvestEngine has a list of the banks that currently support this feature here.

As an alternative, you could set up a weekly standing order from your bank account, which would just work as a regular manual bank transfer.

• What is pound-cost averaging? It's when you invest the same amount regularly, no matter what the market is doing. This is exactly what InvestEngine's savings plans are geared up to do. Sometimes you buy at high prices, sometimes at low, and over time it all evens out. Think of it like buying bread or eggs every week: you don't wait for a flash sale on sourdough; you just keep buying and get on with your life.

8. Flexible ISAs: tax breaks without stress

InvestEngine's stocks & shares ISA comes with a neat trick: flexibility.

You can pull money out and put it back in the same tax year without eating into your allowance. It's like borrowing a pen from a friend, using it, and returning it before they even noticed it was missing. No harm done.

• Remember the ISA allowance: For the 2025/26 tax year the ISA allowance is £20,000. Even though a flexible ISA lets you take money out and put it back in, you still need to watch the tax year (which runs from 6 April to 5 April the following year). Any withdrawals and repayments have to happen within the same tax year if you want them to count without eating into next year's allowance.

9. Referral bonuses (with restraint)

InvestEngine has a referral scheme. Invite a friend, they deposit at least £100, and you both score a bonus (£20–£100 each for personal accounts, £100–£200 for businesses).

You can refer up to 25 friends, but the bonus has to stay invested for a year (think of it as friendship capital, like lending a friend a tenner at the pub but having to wait a year before getting it back).

Don't spam everyone you've ever shared a lift with (and definitely don't get back in touch with that toxic ex), but if someone genuinely wants a low-cost investing platform, you might as well both get something out of it.

10. Watch costs like a hawk

InvestEngine likes to shout about having no platform or dealing fees for DIY accounts, but that doesn't mean it's entirely free.

ETFs charge ongoing fees (typically around 0.05%–0.25%), and there's also a small 'spread' (the difference between the buying and selling price). InvestEngine tries to keep this tight by grouping all trades into one batch each day.

• Stick to cheap ETFs. Look for broad-market funds with low annual fees, known as the Ongoing Charges Figure (OCF)
• Trades happen once a day, not instantly. It doesn't matter for long-term investing, but just be aware you can't catch a midday price swing (so turn off Bloomberg and hang up the Patagonia gilet).

11. Hide/re-order portfolios

There's a neat little feature tucked away in InvestEngine that most people never notice until their dashboard starts looking like a messy sock drawer.

You can hide or re-order your portfolios.

Press and hold on the portfolio you want to change and a menu pops up with your options. From there, you can drag it higher up the list if it's one you actually care about, or hide it completely if it's an old, empty relic from your experimental phase.

There is one catch: if the portfolio still holds money, it has to stay visible. No sweeping it under the rug just because it's underperforming and you can't bear the sight of it.

But if you've already moved the investments elsewhere and it is sitting there doing nothing, you can tidy it away in seconds.

12. Financial learning and news links

If you fancy sharpening your financial brain without enrolling on a three-year economics degree, head to the links at the top of your InvestEngine dashboard.

They serve up news, investing tips and explainers on what's happening in markets and why it might matter for your money. There are quick reads, as well as short videos you can watch while pretending to work.

It's an easy way to stay clued up on the forces nudging your portfolio around, without falling down a three-hour doom-scroll about bond yields.

13. Report generator

Click the "reports" tab at the top of the page (or via the four squares at the bottom of the page if you're using the app) and you'll see past reports already produced on your account, which can be filtered by type and time frame (handy if you're a little hazy on the details of the previous tax year).

If you want something personalised, you can create everything from a full account review, a cash statement, a breakdown of fees, or even a capital gains report to see what the taxman might be eyeing up.

14. Transaction history

Click the "transaction" tab to see every deposit, top-up, buy, sell, dividend and fee, plus any orders still waiting to go through.

You can filter it six ways from Sunday: narrow it down by top-ups, withdrawals, trades, income or transfers. Slice it by time frame, or zoom in on a single portfolio. You can even isolate one specific ETF to see exactly when you bought it, sold it or tinkered with it.

If your portfolio sometimes feels like a blur of past decisions, this is where the paper trail tells the truth.

15. Net contributions and buy-and-sell events

Switch on "Show net contributions" just beneath the return graph and you'll see a second line appear, showing the money you've actually put in.

Suddenly, you can tell whether your portfolio grew because of clever investing or because you kept feeding it.

Then flip on "Buy and sell events". Little dots pop up along the graph marking every trade you made. Over time, it becomes a constellation of past decisions – showing when you were brave, when you were cautious, and when you probably should have left it alone.

Bottom line

No one's making a Hollywood blockbuster about you for using a nuts-and-bolts platform like this, but it's just about everything the average investor could want. With a few tricks (AutoInvest, rebalancing, saving plans) you can let it run in the background and get on with your life.

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