Hargreaves Lansdown Stocks & Shares ISA Customer Reviews & Expert Rating

The overall score out of 10 combines our expert rating out of 5 with the average customer rating out of 5.
8.7/10Very good

Based on 1,775 customer reviews and our expert analysis

  • Experts consistently rate Hargreaves Lansdown's Stocks & Shares ISA as one of the best in the industry, particularly for investing in individual shares. They highlight the extensive range of investment options and exceptional customer support, while noting that it can be expensive for larger fund portfolios.
  • Across 1775 user reviews on Good Money Guide, averaging 3.8/5, customers frequently commend the platform's user-friendly app, excellent customer service, and the wide variety of investment options available. However, some users express dissatisfaction with high fees for buying shares and the platform's navigation, suggesting that improvements could enhance the overall experience.

Expert rating

Our expert rating is the average of the areas listed here, each scored out of 5 by our team.
4.9Excellent

Our experts have rated Hargreaves Lansdown Stocks & Shares ISA across five key areas of our review framework.

  • Pricing4.5
  • Market Access5.0
  • App & Platform5.0
  • Customer Service5.0
  • Research & Analysis5.0

Pros

  • Thousands of UK and international shares, bonds & funds
  • Ready-made portfolios with different levels of risk
  • Excellent research and analysis
  • An established and listed company on the LSE.

Cons

  • Can be expensive for large fund portfolios
See full expert review

Our verdict

Hargreaves Lansdown’s Stocks & Shares ISA offers access to a vast range of investments. Investors have access to domestic and international equities, over 4,000 funds, bonds, and more. Another advantage is that the platform offers plenty of research and investment tools to help you make investment decisions.
Capital at risk.

Is Hargreaves Lansdown's Investment ISA: Is it any good?

Yes, we consistently rate Hargreaves Lansdown's stocks and shares ISA as one of the best in the industry, particularly if you are investing in individual shares. You can also invest in a cash ISA through their Hargreaves Lansdown Active Savings account.

Hargreaves Lansdown was ranked as the best self-select investment ISA in 2023 in our awards, as they offer a huge range of investment options backed up by industry-leading customer support and research.

Popularity: Hargreaves Lansdown's Investment ISA is incredibly popular with over 955,000 stocks and shares ISA currently active.

Fun fact: An HL ISA is gets opened or topped up via the website or app every 6 seconds during the busiest hour on the last day of the tax year (between 3pm-4pm).

Special Offer: As it's ISA season, until 5 April 2025, Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) is offering any new or existing clients transferring or contributing a minimum of £10,000 into a newly opened HL Stocks & Shares ISA and/or SIPP cash back between £100 and £3,000. Clients transferring into an existing HL Stocks & Shares ISA / HL SIPPs are also eligible.

In addition, clients topping up their HL Stocks & Shares ISA, Lifetime ISA, Cash ISA or SIPP by a minimum of £3,500 in one single product, will be automatically entered into a prize draw for two chances to win £50,000.

Fees: Hargreaves Lansdown’s ISA costs 0.45% of the value of your portfolio. However, share account fees are capped at £45 per year. Funds are charged at 0.45% for the first £250,000. There is no charge for buying funds, but shares are charged at £11.95 per deal or £5.95 if you do over 20 deals per month.

Automatic Regular Investing

The latest research from Hargreaves Lansdown highlights just how important it is to invest in an ISA as if you invested your full allowance (£20k) in a stocks and shares ISA over ten years, a basic rate taxpayer could save £8,521 in tax, a higher rate taxpayer £19,336 and an additional rate taxpayer £21,358.

Joseph Hill, a senior investment analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown: said that“Albert Einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world, and compound interest has something in common with other wonders of the world – to most people it’s mysterious and beyond comprehension. We asked people what they’d end up with if they invested £10,000 for a year, and their investments grew at 8%, compounded daily. Just 28% of people got the answer right. The most common answer was £10,800 – which is 8% growth without compounding. The actual answer was £10,832.

Hargreaves Lansdown suggests that people reinvest their stocks and shares ISA profits in income funds like Artemis Income and Fidelity Global Dividend funds. Becuase income funds are not just for those needing an income today, they can be a great way of seeing compounding in action if investors reinvest the income.

This can increase the number of units held in the fund, growing the value of an investment and repeating this process over a long period can be a great way to grow capital.

Customer reviews for Hargreaves Lansdown

Customer ratings come from reviews left on this site. Every review is read and approved before it is published.
3.8Basic

Based on 1,775 reviews

  • Excellent27%
  • Very good38%
  • Basic24%
  • Poor7%
  • Bad4%
Read customer reviews

hideous experience

Daz ·

just speechless! I created the kids accounts. They changed the primary person on my child's account without telling either parent, locked me out when I Phoned about a login issue, then dictated what I do in my own home and with whom. Never had an experience like that!

Website

Richard Cowell ·

Excellent platform for stocks, shares and cash investing.

Class

Jacques Opoku ·

Amazing customer service

Efficient

Ivana Balitska ·

Very simple app. Brilliant customer service. Good range of ETFs, which I use for long-term investing. Brilliant Cash ISA also, with great interest rate. Trusted and credible. I trust my money is in a safe place.

Good

Jon Stephenson ·

Communication

Intuitive

Adrian Saw ·

Good, intuitive app. Very responsive customer service.

Excellent

Guy Saunders ·

Easy platform to use

Confidence

Morgan Beake ·

Easy to use platform, very supportive and excellent telephone service.

fantastic

Stephen Sullivan ·

They listen then execute the right strategy

Accessible

Bernard Crick ·

Easy to use and patient/friendly when contacted. 5he brand provides access at all investment skill and money levels.

Great for junior ISA

Shade Gotau ·

Provide good junior stocks and shares ISA

Quality

Pauk Baker ·

Been with them for years and I have always felt they provide me with the best service for my needs as being retired now , not the force of old but heh ho still looking . Pb

Bereavement Support - Incompetent and Difficult

David Bibby ·

Where do I start.
Claiming they sent forms when they didn't. Then sent them in an email, but the forms were not attached.
Provided all information requested.
Week later I get an email requesting more information. We are all HL clients but they have made a bad situation so much worse because of their incompetence and awkwardness.
I have NEVER dealt with a more difficult organisation in thise who bereavement process.
They offer good products but I am seriously considering moving my considerable financial invesment away from HL.
Utterly appalled.

Overall good but the app could be easier to use.

Andy ·

One of only a few providers of a JISA where you can pick and manage your investments. Setting up the account was reasonably easy. The app UI is ok but not great. Can only fund the account through a card payment is a little frustrating but not a deal breaker.

Free JISA and app is great

Justin ·

Opened up a JISA on HL due to fees and ease of use. Good stock universe and the app works very well. Got no complaints

Good but room for improvement

JB ·

HL Junior ISA is okay but their website and app need improvement compared to competitors like InvestEngine and Trading212.

Operating outside of Law Demanding Facial Recognition to Verify / Fake Reviews

Jane Maitland ·

Hargreaves Landsdown operate outside of the law demanding Facial Recognition to verify accounts of both new and existing customers. They will tell you its the only way to verify, but when you look into the privacy law, this is simply not the case.
The system they use is MITEK. A quick search will show you who owns MITEK. Its the same corporations whom own everything.
Furthermore, HL are using extremely unscrupulous resources to keep their image squeeky clean by using BLACK MARKETING sources to write positive reviews. They pay approx £10 a review. Search Black Marketing and you will find many people happy to lie and cheat for money.
Go onto Trustpilot and see how many reviews they receive per day. I just counted over 20 in 24 hours. This is a statistical impossibility.
Now, do you really want a company that lies and cheats and sells your data to look after your hard earning money?
Think about that
I have been a customer of theirs for many years and i am absolutely disgusted at their practices and you should be too.

Good service

Gianluca Spinetti ·

one of the very few services that allows for some investments... It could be improved and made even more powerful (i.e. investments in other currencies) but really probably the best platform for easy access and universe of investments possible!

Not as good as they used to be

richard tomlinson ·

I've used HL for more than 10 years. They used to be low cost. Customer service was excellent. Online platform was great. Still not bad, but other platforms are now cheaper. Slower to resolve the occasional problem.

Cheap and easy to trade with, but lacking advanced features for active traders

Elie Gabay ·

Hargreaves Lansdown are good value for those that are low volume traders of stocks. If you hold funds then they are not such great value because of the admin fees that they charge. However, they don't charge dealing fees on funds which is a good point. A negative thought is that fund trades have to be placed by 9am or 8am for some in order to receive that day's valuation price. Many other brokers have a cut-off time of 11am-11.30am. HL are also one of the slowest to update fund prices - if you check Fidelity, Morningstar or AJ Bell, at 4pm, most fund prices are update, whereas HL take until 6pm or later.

The process of placing a deal with HL using the app is the best of many brokers that I have used as it is so smooth and quick. Very quick to login. However, there are many small companies, foreign companies or investment trusts that don't load up on the app and only can be viewed or traded on the desktop website.
The app and website are my first choice for checking share prices and news/RNS releases for UK stocks. Historical performance indicators are good too. However there is no provision of key metric data like P/CF, Forward P/E, Debt/Equity, Quick ratio, current ratio, Free cash flow yield, ROCE, ROE, ROA etc so I have to go to Reuters or other sites to check such details.

HL has always been very unaccommodating for those who wished to subscribe to IPOs or share offers, I have found other brokers providing access to new IPOs but HL will not.

They also have a strange system whereby they put dividends you receive into a hidden account and then only 2 weeks later transfer them to your capital account to allow you to trade with that cash.

Watchlists are very good in providing current prices and being well layed out.
It would be good if we could see futures prices for US markets and individual stocks in the morning when the UK is open. I have to check marketwatch or investing.com for that.

Why can't you make charts with HL of different stocks all on the same chart?
The total return chart function is great for funds but why can't that be extended to longer than 5 year periods and for stocks as well?

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