Is eToro’s GIA good for long term investing in 2025?

Is eToro good for long term investing?

eToro is a great GIA for investing in the long term if you’re interested in buying major US stocks and copying the portfolios of other successful traders. Jeppe Kirk Bonde, for instance, has historically produced market-beating returns for his 30,000 followers, and now has over $100m copying his portfolio (though past performance is no indication of future results). (Disclaimer: eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.).

Pricing: No account fees or commission – great value and a low minimum account size of £10

Market Access: Access to the most popular global markets through a general investment account. There is limited access to smaller cap shares, but you can invest in crypto, which most other traditional investing accounts don’t let you do. Plus the copy trading feature lets you see what other investors hold in their portfolios and what they think about the,m which you can copy manually or automatically.

App & Platform: really easy to use, no complex order types but that’s not really what eToro is about it’s about discovery.

Customer Service: Quick responses from the live chat and email support and if you’re accuont is over $30k you get a personal account manager.

Research & Analysis: eToro have some really good social channels with educational vides, some excellent “how to” courses (which are free so no need to buy a trading course from a Youtuber. But the most unique thing is the social feed where investors chat about what they are investing in.

However, there are some things I believe eToro could improve for long-term investors from the UK.

The main issue is that the accounts are in USD, and you can’t invest through tax-free wrappers, or into a pension, and there’s limited access to bonds and funds.

eToro also used to absorb the stamp duty on UK shares. But now you have to pay the 0.5% UK stamp duty tax when investing in UK companies, so that tax break has gone.

I explain below why these are issues if you’re investing in the long term.

USD Account Balances

With eToro, your account balance has to be in USD. This is part of how it makes money (when it converts your GBP into USD) but it means that if you buy UK shares, then over time your profits can be eroded by differences in the GBP/USD exchange rate.

Granted this can also work in your favour, but you’re not trading FX – you’re investing. And if the exchange rate moves 5% and you have a £100,000 portfolio, that’s £5,000 lost.

No ISA or SIPP

With an ISA you can invest up to £20,000 a year and no pay tax on the profits. Unfortunately, eToro doesn’t have its own ISA. It does have a co-branded eToro ISA in partnership with Moneyfarm. But Moneyfarm is more of a digital-wealth manager, so you may as well just open a separate account with Moneyfarm – it will at least help you resist the temptation to speculate with your long-term investments.

With a SIPP, you’re investing for your pension and, as with an ISA, you don’t pay tax on your profits. But with eToro you can’t invest in a SIPP, so if you’re buying shares and aim to hold them until you retire, your tax bill at the end of it could be unnecessarily high.

• Related guide: How to make money on eToro.

No Funds, Corporate Bonds or Small-Caps

eToro is great at giving investors access to popular markets like US stocks, cryptocurrency and commodities, but its market access is pretty limited. You can’t invest in small-cap growth stocks in the UK, for example. And if you’re building a long-term portfolio, it should be diverse so you should add in some corporate bonds (fixed-income investments) and some funds that spread the risk and invest in lots of shares and bonds for you.

This is a shame, because eToro generally does give people what they want. However, it would be better if it focused a bit more on what people need.

On the positive side, eToro does let you invest in bonds through bond ETFs or fixed-income portfolios like YieldGrowth which contains a range of 13 bonds from Vanguard, iShares and SPDR.

What is eToro’s Platform Like to Use?