CMC Invest Review and Test: An Easy Investing App that Lets You Deal for Free

Is CMC Invest Good for Investing?

Yes, CMC Invest is commission-free and gives you access to the most popular UK shares, US stocks and ETFs – a bonus for traders who want to also build a long-term investment portfolio. I tried it out for this review.

What is CMC Invest?

It’s an investing app that lets you invest for free on major markets. Is CMC Invest trustworthy? Yes, CMC Invest is regulated by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) in the UK. CMC Invest is owned by CMC Markets, a FTSE 250 company traded on the London Stock Exchange and worth £726m (as 12/6/25).

Is CMC Invest Safe?

Your money is safe with CMC Invest as clients’ funds are protected up to £85,000 by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

CMC Invest lets you invest in the stock market for long-term capital gains, as opposed to its owner, CMC Markets, which lets you speculate in the short-term through CFD trading and financial spread betting.

What Can You Invest in with CMC Invest?

Since launch in the UK in 2022, the platform has increased the number of UK stocks from 100 to over 500 UK shares, 3,000 US shares and around 400 ETFs and investment trusts.

It’s still a relatively small universe of potential investments when you compare it to incumbent DIY platforms like Hargreaves Lansdown and interactive investor, but it’s catching up. CMC Markets has always excelled in building excellent in-house tech for traders to speculate on the most liquid and popular markets cheaply. And in reality, most of the volume that goes through trading platforms is in the top 10 traded assets like the FTSE, Lloyds shares, and EURUSD. Having loads of peripheral markets is great, but actually, all people want is to trade and invest in is what everyone else is trading and investing in.

When I opened an account with CMC Invest, it took less than a minute to get up and running and fund it with £500 to get started. Obviously, this was helped in part by the fact that it links to my existing CMC Markets account, reducing the need for additional checking on my identity.

There’s a general investment account, a stocks and shares ISA and a SIPP.  You can also choose to invest by shares or amount, but unlike other investing apps where you can choose to buy £100 of something through fractional shares, CMC Invest rounds the purchase down to the nearest amount of whole shares. This was a shame because for this review I was going to try and buy the five ETFs that our man Jackson Wong suggested were all you need to build a globally diverse portfolio including the FTSE, a world ETF, gilts, property and gold. But of those he suggested, not all were available on the app. So in two different ways, I couldn’t just buy £100 of each. So instead, I backed Britain and bought £500 worth of an American-owned ETF that tracks the performance of the FTSE 100 (VUKE).

How Much Does CMC Invest Cost?

It’s free to invest with CMC Invest basic account. The Plus account has a £10 per month subscription fee that includes an ISA, smaller cap stocks, and a USD wallet. Thankfully though for those getting started Meridyth Park, former Head of Marketing for CMC Invest, told me there will always be a free version. But as with all investing, there are other costs involved. For example, when I bought those 16 shares in the Vanguard FTSE 100 UCITS ETF, there were no charges levied by CMC Invest, but you still have to pay the Vanguard investment management fee, which is what Vanguard charges for providing and managing the ETF. There is no way around these fees with any investment app, for that particular ETF the cost is 0.09% (£10.20 a year which is £51 over a five-year period).

It’s really good to see CMC Invest display these charges on the dealing ticket, because most investing apps I see hide this in the small print somewhere or do not really explain exactly what it is.  It’s handy to see the fees calculated over a five-year timeline as well, as that is the average time most investing accounts expect to see people invested for.

CMC Invest also makes money by charging 0.5% in FX fees when you convert GBP into USD. Which is fairly competitive – not as cheap as Interactive Brokers which charges 0.2%. It’s an important charge to be aware of, though, because US stocks are a massive gateway for new investors as they have had stellar returns, and are all over social channels, and are all household names so lots of those starting out investing will dabble in the US markets. The likes of Lloyds and Vodafone, don’t quite have the same appeal as investing in Netflix and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA).

How does CMC Invest Compare to Other Investing Apps?

CMC Invest has great tech, but at the moment I feel that this app was a little rushed out. I know there is a massive race between trading platforms to offer longer-term investing products, but I was quite surprised initially to see such a basic app on offer and no web version. I’d have much rather seen the exceptional trading platform offer the ability to buy and sell physical versions of the assets that can be bought as a CFD or spread bet. I think Saxo Markets does this best as everything is all in one place and when you look at a market you can choose to trade as a future, a CFD or a physical share. IG also does it where you get the same app and desktop platform, but you log in to a share dealing account rather than the trading platform.

But CMC Invest told me it hasn’t just been built to cross-sell to traders already signed up, it’s there to target an entirely different audience of long-term investors.

Freetrade has better functionality and more markets but in my mind, Freetrade is too early stage to put any proper money into. It seems to have grown too quickly and it makes me nervous. I’d prefer to invest through an app like CMC Invest which is backed by an already established, profitable and publically listed company (CMCX on the LSE).

Compared to the robo-advisors like Nutmeg and Wealthify, CMC Invest is much cheaper. If you are confident enough to pick your own investments, you can save up to 0.6% a year in fees. For example, if you have £10,000 on account, that is only £60 a year, but as your account grows, if you have £100,000 invested then that is a massive difference of £3,000 over five years. If you’ve got the time and inclination you can just take a look at any robo-advisor’s ETF portfolio and replicate it for free. You do not of course get the benefit of the portfolio being managed or rebalanced on your behalf, though.

For a while, zero commission brokers were seen as a marketing gimmick, but now as major brokers like Interactive Brokers look to compete in the free investing market, the bigger platforms have all moved to embrace low-cost longer-term investors.

Should You Invest with CMC Invest?

I believe it’s good value. If you have a trading account with CMC Markets, the CMC Invest app is a great place to start building your long-term investment portfolio.

CMC has always innovated, always been at the forefront of its industry, and always listened to client feedback. Read CMC founder Peter Cruddas’ biography or interview with us, and you can see there is a huge passion for developing great products. He told us back in 2018:

“One of our top priorities at the moment is to improve the user experience for our customers.”

Before writing this review, I also got the chance to talk to Alister Sneddon, who was the Head of Product, and it’s quite clear that he too had a passion for the app. Plus having previously worked with AJ Bell on the Dodl app, Moneyfarm and interactive investor, he had some fairly valuable insider knowledge on what makes an investing app work.

So, if you want a feature added, sign up to the CMC Invest forum through the app and say what you want.  You never know. You could have a hand in creating the investing app you always wanted where you can also deal for free…