How to invest with Lightyear: a beginner’s guide
Financial Interest was founded by Damien Talks Money (389,000 YouTube subscribers) to teach the personal finance lessons he wished he'd been taught at school.
Last updated 6th May 2026
14 min read
Lightyear has caused a bit of a stir in the investing world recently by slashing their FX fees to just 0.10%.
Already a commission-free platform, this move makes them even more competitive compared to rivals such as Trading 212, Freetrade and InvestEngine.
If you're new to Lightyear and not quite sure where to start, take a deep breath – you're exactly where you need to be.
In this tutorial, we'll walk you step-by-step through how to use Lightyear in 2026 – from opening an account, choosing and making an investment, setting up plans and recurring deposits, and getting to grips with lesser-known but equally useful features tucked away inside the platform.
Financial Interest provides guidance, not advice. If you’re unsure about anything, speak with a qualified adviser. When investing, your capital is always at risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Give your investment journey a head start by signing up to Lightyear through our link, and you'll get up to £100 in a free US fractional share of your choice.
If you opened an account within the last 15 days, you can still get your free share – head to the Lightyear app, go to Promotions under Settings, type in the promo code FIN, then click Claim reward. Terms apply, capital at risk when investing.
Get up to £100 in free fractional shares when joining Lightyear via our link, or using promo code ‘FIN’. Minimum deposit £100. T&Cs apply. Affiliate link.Free fractional shares worth up to £100 with Lightyear
Opening an account
To open an account, head to the Lightyear homepage or download the app, and add your details.
Then you'll need to either scan the QR code or follow a link they'll send you over text.
Next, you'll need to submit a picture of a valid form of ID like your passport or driver's license, so be sure to have those to hand. Unfortunately, taking and submitting a selfie is also part of the process. This is just so they can make sure all your records match up.
The whole process is easy and painless, and took us less than two minutes.
Next, you'll have to select the account type you want to open.
For this tutorial, we'll assume you're investing inside a tax-free stocks & shares ISA. Lightyear also offers a business account and a General Investment Account, but the principles we'll run through here are the same no matter what account you're using.
To set up your account, just tick the boxes to agree to Lightyear's terms, and away you go.
Funding your account
Once your account is open, you'll be prompted to deposit some cash.
Click on "deposit" and you'll be presented with a few options. You can either:
- Make a bank transfer, which is free
- Deposit via Apple pay, Google pay or a debit card, which incurs a 0.6% charge.
Depositing via card is instant, while Lightyear says bank transfers can take up to two hours. However, for us, the money showed up right away.
To make a bank transfer, just follow the instructions and enter the amount you want to deposit.
The exact steps may vary depending on your bank. In our case, we were asked to enter an access code to approve the payment, but the whole thing was still very quick.
You can easily transfer an existing ISA to Lightyear, too – it takes around 30 days (depending on your provider) and you can do it all online on mobile or desktop. In-specie transfers are supported, meaning your investments can be transferred as they are without you having to sell them first.
What can you invest in with Lightyear?
Fund and stocks range
Lightyear gives you access to more than 6,000 global shares, around 350 funds, and a small selection of bonds.
Not bad, but a narrower investment universe than you'd find with some fee-free rivals – worth knowing if you like wandering into the more obscure corners of the market.
And of those 6,000 stocks, fewer than 300 are priced in GBP – that's around 400 fewer than Trading 212, for example.
While Lightyear has some of the lowest FX fees on the market at 0.10%, having so few pound-denominated shares can still feel a bit restrictive, especially if you'd rather avoid the extra faff of currency conversion.
Within its fund range, you'll find equity and bond ETFs, ETCs (commodities), and money market funds.
What you won't really find are traditional mutual funds. Aside from BlackRock money market funds, Lightyear doesn't currently offer the kind of big-name mutual funds some investors might expect to see.
Fractional shares
Until recently, Lightyear didn't offer fractional shares at all inside their ISA, but they made this feature available in early 2026.
Not every share or ETF can be bought fractionally though, meaning you won't always be able to buy just a slice instead of a whole unit. Almost all of the funds on the platform are available as fractional investments, but only around half of the shares are – and most notably, none of the shares priced in GBP. This can be a drawback if you like investing smaller amounts into UK-listed companies.
Choosing an investment
Once you've funded your account, it's time to decide what you actually want to invest in – and Lightyear has a tonne of features to help you narrow things down.
From the app homepage, you'll be able to see which stocks and ETFs are popular this week, and browse funds by a whole range of categories, sectors, countries, including dividend-paying funds, and more.
On top of that, you'll find investments grouped by collections including tech, real estate, finance, energy, and well… just about everything you can think of.
Alternatively, you can just search for the stock or fund you want using the search bar at the top.
If you're using Lightyear's desktop platform, you'll have more sophisticated filtering options by using the stock and fund screener.
This feature allows you to filter stocks, funds and bonds by all kinds of options, including countries, dividend yield, share price, and more.
Under the "basic" screener section, you can also filter assets to only see those you can buy fractionally.
If you're on the mobile app, though, the only way you'll be able to tell if an asset is fractional is by clicking into it – it'll either say Fractional or Non-fractional at the top of the screen.
As an alternative to using the stock screener, you can select the "premade" filter option, which lets you browse stocks by sector and country, and funds by exchanges and fund manager.
When you click into an asset, you'll see a load of useful information, including share price charts , a summary of what the stock or fund does, the index it tracks, the base currency, and much more.
Usefully, when buying a fund, there's also a feature that lets you compare it with others tracking the same index.
By clicking through to Compare, you can directly stack up performance, fund charges, share price, fund size and plenty of other useful details side by side.
There's also a Personal notes section, should you wish to journal about your relationship with a particular stock.
Making an investment
Buying a fund or stock is super simple.
When you're ready, you can place an order either by choosing the number of shares you want or simply how much cash you want to invest. To choose between the two options, click on Market order and select Cash or Shares. Don't worry, even though it says £500 or 5 shares in the boxes, you're not committing to buying that amount, they're just examples.
You'll also be able to choose between a market order, a limit order or a stop order – though stop orders aren't available on all instruments. If you're not sure on the difference or whether you should bother, read our guide to different order types.
Alternatively, you can click Buy max, and invest whatever amount of cash you have in your account.
After that, Lightyear will show you a preview so you can double-check all the details.
Click Confirm, and you're all set.
At this stage, Lightyear will also give you the option to make it a repeat order of the same investment either daily, weekly, or monthly. If you opt to do this, make sure you set up a standing order with your bank so the money will always be there on time – there's no option to do this natively in the Lightyear app, currently.
Creating plans and automating investments
Now you've bought a stock or ETF, you'll see it appear at the bottom of your stocks & shares ISA page, along with the option to create a plan. This is a way of grouping investments together that have a similar theme or purpose, a lot like InvestEngine's portfolios and Trading 212's pie system.
Just head to Create a plan and give it a name.
If you've already made an investment, you'll be asked if you want to move it into your plan.
From there, you can add up to 60 different funds or stocks. Lightyear will weight them automatically to begin with, so if you add two investments, for example, they'll each make up 50% of the plan. You can then adjust those weightings manually however you like.
You can also create multiple plans if you're investing for different goals.
And again, you'll also have the option to set up regular investing, so you can automatically add a fixed amount to your plan daily, weekly, fortnightly or every two months.
And if you're not ready to start straight away, you can choose a later date for those regular investments to begin – just make sure you've got enough cash in your account when the time comes.
A quick note: we did things the other way round and bought an investment first, but you can just as easily create your plan before investing.
Choosing a ready-made plan
Lightyear's "ready-made plans" are their most recently added feature, designed for investors who want a simple, hands-off portfolio. You'll see the option to create one when you go to create a new plan from the homepage.
Each plan is built using funds managed by experts at BlackRock and Vanguard, and grouped by risk level.
You'll find thee options:
| Fund charge | Description | Management style | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moderate Mix | 0.25% | The most cautious of the three, with 48% in equities, 38% in bonds, and the remainder in cash and other assets. | Actively managed by BlackRock |
| Growth Group | 0.25% | A step up in risk, with 84% in equities, 10% in bonds, and the rest in cash and other assets. | Actively managed by BlackRock |
| All-World Wonder | 0.19% | The most adventurous option, invested entirely in global equities. | Passive – contains the Vanguard FTSE All-World, tracking the FTSE All-World Index |
Confusingly, you'll notice one of the options is a passive tracker, containing a popular Vanguard global index fund. Still, for those who prefer active management, the 0.25% fund fee for managed portfolios puts Lightyear's offering among the cheaper options on the market.
There are still no account fees or dealing commissions – the charges above reflect only the underlying fund costs.
Creating a watchlist and receiving updates
If you’re not ready to invest in something yet, a watchlist is a useful way to keep tabs on it without committing any money straight away.
Lightyear's watchlists let you group stocks and ETFs you want to keep an eye on in one place. On the app, you'll find the option to do this on the Explore page.
Click Get started, then either search for the assets you want or choose them from the Most watched list.
Once an investment is in your watchlist, you'll be able to see price movements at a glance on the mobile app, and more detailed information on desktop, such as the current market cap, percentage day change, and even a watchlist calendar showing notable events related to the assets in your list, such as upcoming dividend payments.
Setting price alerts
For any stock or ETF, you can set a price alert so Lightyear notifies you when it hits a level you've chosen. It's a handy feature if you're waiting for a better entry point, or just want to keep tabs on an investment without checking it every five minutes.
Just open the asset, tap Alert – or the bell icon on mobile – and choose your target price. Just be aware that if you create the alert on desktop, the notification will still come through on the app.
Using the research tools
If you're someone who loves a bit of data, Lightyear gives you plenty to dig into.
When you're browsing individual shares, you'll find things like analyst ratings, price targets and bulls say/bears say summaries, alongside more traditional company data such as revenue, earnings per share, P/E ratio, beta and dividend information.
Some shares also come with extra features like the option to listen to the latest earnings call and even view the slide decks and reports, so you can pretend you're on the investment committee instead of on the sofa in your dressing gown.
Opening a Lightyear Vault
Like many investment platforms, Lightyear pays some interest on uninvested cash at a rate of 1.00%. But if you want to earn a bit more, it also offers a feature called "Vaults".
Vaults let you move cash into BlackRock qualifying money market funds (QMMFs), which are designed to broadly track short-term interest rates such as the Bank of England base rate.
Money market funds essentially invest in very low-risk, short-term debt issued by governments, banks and large companies, so they’re generally used as a stable and safe home for cash rather than a way to chase big returns.
The important thing to understand here, though, is that a Vault is not the same as a bank savings account or a cash ISA. Your money is being invested in a money market fund, so it doesn't get the usual FSCS deposit protection you'd associate with cash held in a bank. If anything were to happen to the QMMFs you're investing in, it would be treated as an investment loss.
You'll find the option to add your money to a Vault on your portfolio page under your cash balance. Click Get started, and confirm.
Then, you'll be able to add however much cash you want, or just click Add max to deposit the full amount.
Hiding your balances
One of the annoying things about investment apps is that if you check your portfolio in public, you can end up flashing your account value to anyone nearby. Not ideal if you're just trying to have a quick nosy on the train.
Lightyear gets around that with a feature that lets you hide sensitive data. On the mobile app, there's an eye icon next to your account name. Tap it, and your total account value and available cash are hidden from view.
The same feature is available on desktop too, although the eye icon is in the bottom left instead.
Other platforms like Lightyear
Lightyear's rock-bottom fees may be making it an increasingly popular choice for UK investors, but it's far from the only commission-free platform out there.
Trading 212 is probably its closest rival. Its FX fees are also low at 0.15%, and it offers a very similar investing experience, but with a broader range of investments stocks and funds to choose from.
Freetrade is another strong alternative, particularly if you stick with its basic plan, which is also commission-free. It also offers access to a range of mutual funds – something neither Lightyear nor Trading 212 currently do.
InvestEngine, meanwhile, is a good fit for investors after something simpler. There are no trading or account fees, but it's an ETF-only platform built mainly for passive, long-term investing.
Luckily, we've made comparing them easy. Our comparison tool lets you stack up costs, investment choice, flexibility and more in just a couple of clicks.
You'll also find a variety of new customer offers, welcome bonuses and even free shares from a range of platforms via our offers page.
Financial Interest provides guidance, not advice. If you’re unsure about anything, speak with a qualified adviser. When investing, your capital is always at risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
