Beanstalk Customer Reviews
Tell us what you think of this provider.
Great savings for little ones!
I love saving with beanstalk, we only a pay in a little each months but it will give our children a great start in life when they’re 18. I really like that family members can also add money into the account!
Great customer service and features
Really impressed with the responsive team they have in dealing with queries. They are knowledgable, helpful and get things done.
In addition, I really like how you can share links direct with friends/ family so they can top up a child’s JISA directly – in my mind this only encourages people to contribute by making it easy to do so, even allowing a personalised message.
Couldn’t speak more highly of Beanstalk.
Easy to use
I have a child’s JISA and it was so easy to set up and it’s quick and easy to login and view
Excellent
I have a child’s JISA account, I love how easy it is to save & how you can use kidstart when shopping online & a % of what you spend goes straight back to your child’s account. 5 stars from me.
Great
Easy to use savings and easy to navigate around the app. Great way to save for our child
Amazing
We have been using the junior ISA account . We have never doubted beanstalk, and it has always brought money back.
Good money guide
The best money saving app. Easy to use and very efficient.
Really easy
I have jisa accounts for children with beanstalk. They are easy to use, simple to find extra money through Cashback etc and really easy to share with family and friends for birthdays etc.
Fantastic
Super simple, yet effective!
Makes it so easy to save and invest for our children
Saving for grandchildren
I have seven grandchildren and I have a savings account for each of them. I can save as much or as little as I like and each child will gave a little something to help them when they are older.
Beanstalk is the Best!
Beanstalks varied accounts, ease of use of their App, together with clear & concise information is second to none. All accessible from the comfort of your home. S must for children to start saving.
Super-easy to set up and manage
It was a pleasant surprise how easy the account was to open. I particularly like the flexibility of allocating the funds to lower, and higher risk investments, with a swipe at any time I wish to make a change.
Great Investment Scheme
Our kids are important to us and it’s great to know that someone else is also investing into their future that small change I’ve always added to my daughters account is doing numbers right now and it’s great to know she will have some money in the future because I didn’t have this opportunity.
We are happy with it
We are using it for a few years now. It is very good. Happy with the results. Never had a problem with the app. I can only recommend it.
Good product, awful financial app
The product seems to be a good option to save for children in a JISA.
It was easy to register accounts & link with family members, but unfortunately the app really lets the product down.
The UI/UX is poor. It’s not possible to copy text, notably ref numbers from the app – reason why later…
Investments are nor straightforward. If you pay using a linked bank your money disappears immediately but doesn’t show even as a pending amount in the Beanstalk accounts. Apparently this is due to them using an intermediary to process the transaction. I don’t accept that as a valid reason not to note the amount in the JISA given HMRC used an intermediary to take payment for my tax return and were still able to immediately acknowledge the amount against my account. This poor behaviour of money disappearing for days doesn’t instill confidence in this app.
There is no flexibility for regular top ups using the app either. Yes you can set up a regular contribution, but the money can only be taken on the one date Beanstalk decide each month (18th). This is really not user friendly and doesn’t allow flexibility for investments aligned to differing income schedules. If they don’t want to provide users the ability to select the date a contributions are taken, there should at least be a few options for dates.
One way to get around the problem of making investments when you want to schedule them is to set it up from your bank as a Standing Order instead. Getting the account, sort code and reference number is not easy though, you have to go into each JISA and make a dummy investment there and select ‘Bank Transfer’ before the app will show the details you need. This is then where the copy function would be super handy to save flipping back and forth between banking apps that lock to set up a transfer on the bank side. The app has even disabled copying the text or via a screenshot. Why are these details not readily available without having to make a dummy payment? Once a bank payment is made, it goes through as a fast transfer. This would usually show up immediately or within a short period in a receiving bank, not Beanstalk though, your money disappears for a few days again!
To top it all off, customer service is only via email, with no live chat or telephone. If this wasn’t registered and regulated the the FCA I would worry that the money might all disappear and not be available for withdrawal when the children turn 18.
This might well be a good JISA, but the app and process for how this company handles investments needs some serious work. It shouldn’t be so difficult and opaque in 2025.
Beanstalk did reply to my comments, but in my opinion they still need to invest in developing the app so it’s suitable for digital natives in 2025. They pointed out that money doesn’t disappear and is accounted for which I acknowledge, but to a customer it has effectively disappeared whilst their slow processes don’t display funds as pending. I know they could make improvements, and more, however they have shown an unwillingness to take my feedback onboard and give any reassurance of roadmap for their app development. As this is a digital only product, I believe this only warrants a 2/5 star rating, however I’d reconsider my rating if there is substantive enhancement to the Beanstalk app.
Easy and simple
We have found saving for our child so easy with beanstalk. The sign-up process is simple and easy to navigate, and the extra features such as round ups and cashback via kidsave give their savings a much needed boost
Makes saving easy
Easy to use app, plenty of good ideas making saving for children super easy.
Easy to use and straight forward!
Registered through my sister to contribute money for my nephews. Love the fact that they each have their own pot, I can send messages and any amount, it doesn’t have to be direct debit and the app is simple to use!
Fantastic
I have a juniors isa account for both my kids. I like how you can send a link to family for them to help contribute to the savings account for birthdays and treats. I love the fact you can use kidstart for shopping and a percentage of cash back goes into my kids account. Very happy with the service and I highly recommend for family and friends to join.
Easy to use
Junior ISA for my son. Easy to set up. Easy to use and great for giving grandparents Easy access to contribute. Can keep track of balance easy too.
Beanstalk Expert Review
Beanstalk Investing App Expert Review: Voted Best Junior ISA 2026
Provider: Beanstalk Investing App
Verdict: Beanstalk is an investment app that helps you invest for your children through a Junior ISA. It was founded by the team behind Kidstart (a cashback site for children’s shopping) and won “best Investing Account” in 2025 and in 2022, 2023, 2024 & 2026 the award for Best Junior Stocks & Shares ISA as they make setting up an account to invest for your children’s future cheap, easy, flexible and accessible for you and for others to contribute to.
Is Beanstalk a good investing app?
Yes, Beanstalk won best investing account (as voted for by customers) in the 2025 Good Money Guide Awards. Beanstalk is a super simple way to start investing in an ISA. You can either invest as an adult of in a Junior ISA for your children, which you can split between cash savings and the stock market.
Beanstalk Junior Stocks and Shares ISA
Beanstalk has won “Best Junior Stocks and Shares ISA” in our 2024, 2023 and 2022 awards. They offer one of the easiest ways to invest for your children and you can quickly move money between cash and the stock market to manage the amount of risk/reward you want to take.
Julian Robson, founder and CEO of Beanstalk said after winning the award: We’re thrilled to have won the Best Junior ISA Award from the Good Money Guide Awards for the third consecutive year. It’s a fantastic recognition, reflecting our unique and valuable proposition for parents and grandparents who want to invest in their children’s future. Our focus is on encouraging long-term investment over cash savings, as that tends to yield better returns. We aim to support first-time retail investors with a simple solution to put money away for 18 years, and it’s great to see the UK retail investment market thriving.
Beanstalk provides a simple yet effective way to invest for your children’s future. Friends and family can also make deposits directly into your child’s account via the app. The investment options are split between cash and the stock market enabling parents to adjust the level of risk they are prepared to take. It’s a good option for parents who want to investment for their children, but don’t want to pick individual investments.
Why is Beanstalk so good? Well…
We quite often go to the ponies as a family, and if there is more than a single page of horses on the card for a race we always let the children have a little bet to cover more of the field. A while ago we were at Sandown, it was the last race of the day, and Hugo, my youngest, chose a horse based on the only sensible strategy available to a two-year-old, he picked one at random. As luck would have it, it was a rank outsider, a 13-year-old with an exceptional track record that was now a little bit long in the tooth. But, he wished and he hoped and Wishing and Hoping romped home to win at 50-1, after leading the pack the entire race.
ITV Racing caught us trackside on the TV as the owner burst into floods of tears and the trainers were whooping away. That’s us on the left clapping the trainers…
We didn’t get 50-1, we got 34-1 because we only bet with the bookies at the track, in particular, we like a chap called Barry, who wears a Fedora.
A tidy return nonetheless, but what to do with it? Usually, we’d all go out to dinner to celebrate, but because it was Dry January, we just went home. And because we’re trying to be more responsible parents, we thought we’d invest his winnings. Let it ride as it were, on the biggest bet out there, the stock market.
Previously, we invested one of my other children’s birthday money through GoHenry, but as Hugo is too young to get pocket money, I chose Beanstalk for him.
But was it a good time to be investing in your children’s future? I hear you ask. The stock market was coming off five-year highs, we may have been in a recession, the world is nearly at war and the tech giants who have historically created massive shareholder returns are laying people off left right and centre.
Well, here’s the thing, there is always a disaster around the corner, and actually now is the best time to start investing, because it is in fact, now. When it comes to long-term returns (Hugo can’t access money in his JISA until he is 18), the best time to invest is as soon as possible.
When I interviewed Julian Robson, the co-founder of Beanstalk, he told me that one of the inspirations for setting up the Beanstalk JISA was a chart that was on the wall in his old boss’s office. It was a chart of the stock market going back to the 1900s. His point was that if you look at a long-term chart of the stock market, you can’t see 1987’s Black Monday, The 1930’s Great Depression, or any other major stock market crash. In general, it just goes up.
Here is a good example of the Covid market crash that Cem Eyi (Beanstalks other co-founder highlighted on LinkedIn recently (the fund is Fidelity World Index).
What does Beanstalk invest in?
When you invest in a Junior stocks and shares ISA with Beanstalk, you are essentially making two investments (three if you want to include your child’s future), the Legal & General Cash Trust fund and the Fidelity Global Index fund. The first tracks interest rates and keeps your money as cash, the second tracks the stock market, and holds big profitable companies like Apple, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson (you can see the full portfolio breakdown here). It’s a standard diversified portfolio.
How much does Beanstalk cost?
It costs 0.5% of the balance of your portfolio for a Beanstalk JISA, but if cost is your only concern, you can buy these funds individually with a DIY platform like AJ Bell (0.25%) and interactive investor (JISA is free with a £9.99 per month trading account). Regardless of who you invest with, you will still have to pay the 0.12-0.15%. charges levied by L&G and Fidelity for managing the fund. It’s worth noting that Hargreaves Lansdown Junior ISA is now free, so much cheaper.
Why invest in a Beanstalk ISA?
Where Beanstalk earns its money is that you can very easily switch between what percentage of cash and stocks are in your child’s portfolio. There is a handy slider, which also shows what the historic returns would have been depending on the allocation.
So, if you think the market is going to crash, you can switch to more cash and interest, rather than stock market investments. But remember, a general rule of thumb when it comes to investing is that the younger you are, the more risk you should take. If you are old, the closer to retirement you are the lower risk your investments should be. So, when your child comes close to 18, you can tune down the risk so that you don’t get bitten by a shock stock market crash the week before they get their money.
I’m not suggesting for a second that you bet on horses to kickstart your children’s financial literacy, that would be idiocy. But, if you have a few pounds sitting around, pick up your phone, download the app, and start investing for your children’s future. If you’re looking to bet on a winner, that’s a sure thing.
Pros
- Switch between stocks and cash
- Low cost & tax efficient
- Easy to use & contribute
Cons
- JISA funds can only be accessed when your child turns 18
- App only, no website access
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Pricing
(4.5)
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Market Access
(4)
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Online Platform
(4.5)
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Customer Service
(4.5)
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Research & Analysis
(4)
Overall
4.3Richard is the founder of the Good Money Guide (formerly Good Broker Guide), one of the original investment comparison sites established in 2015. With a career spanning two decades as a broker, he brings extensive expertise and knowledge to the financial landscape.
Having worked as a broker at Investors Intelligence and a multi-asset derivatives broker at MF Global (Man Financial), Richard has acquired substantial experience in the industry. His career began as a private client stockbroker at Walker Crips and Phillip Securities (now King and Shaxson), following internships on the NYMEX oil trading floor in New York and London IPE in 2001 and 2000.
Richard’s contributions and expertise have been recognized by respected publications such as The Sunday Times, BusinessInsider, Yahoo Finance, BusinessNews.org.uk, Master Investor, Wealth Briefing, iNews, and The FT, among many others.
Under Richard’s leadership, the Good Money Guide has evolved into a valuable destination for comprehensive information and expert guidance, specialising in trading, investment, and currency exchange. His commitment to delivering high-quality insights has solidified the Good Money Guide’s standing as a well-respected resource for both customers and industry colleagues.
