Teaching your child about investing is an excellent way to help them grow wealth, understand important financial concepts, and improve their money-handling skills. Still, children under the age of 18 (and 21 in some states) aren’t allowed to independently invest in the traditional sense.

Investing apps for teens provide a good workaround for this limitation. These apps make it possible for your teen to start investing with your help and master financial literacy early on. In this guide, we’ll look at some of the best investment apps for teens (both younger and older ones) and detail their features to help you find the right app for your teen.

5 Best Investing Apps for Teens

If you’re looking to help your child begin their investment journey, highly rated investment apps for teens are a great place to start. The five best investing apps for teens, according to App Store ratings, are:

Teen Investing App	App Store Rating
Fidelity	4.8 (2.3M reviews)
UNest	4.7 (3.7k reviews)
Webull	4.7 (299.2k reviews)
Stash	4.7 (304k reviews)
Learn by MyWallSt	4.6 (414 reviews)

Fidelity

As opposed to other investment apps for teens that follow a custodial account system—where a parent is the account owner—Fidelity is an app that lets teens own the account themselves. A Fidelity Youth Account is an investing account for teens aged 13 to 17 designed to help them make their first investments.

The app lets your child invest in most U.S. stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and Fidelity mutual funds for as little as $1. Your teen is also given a free debit card with no account or subscription fees, minimum balances, or domestic ATM fees, which they can use to manage their money and make purchases.

While these features encourage your child’s financial independence, the app still lets you track your child’s monetary activity through parental controls. To ensure you stay in the loop regarding your teen’s account history, you can set up alerts for:

• Trades
• Transactions
• Cash management activity 

Fidelity also has a Youth Learning feature that offers interactive lessons, tools, and articles to help your teen master the basics of investment and earn rewards for every level of learning they complete.

Here’s a quick summary of the pros and cons of this investment app for teens:

Pros	Cons
Child ownership of the account No monthly account fees  Comprehensive financial suite for teens  Parental controls and tools  Fractional shares that allow teens to invest in stocks which are too expensive to buy in full	The account balance doesn’t accumulate interest  Parents must be Fidelity account holders

UNest

UNest is a tax-advantaged custodial account that allows you to invest money on behalf of your child to help pay for major milestones like college or costly expenses like vacation or a new car.

The app offers the UNest Investment Account for Kids, allowing you to set up and manage savings and investment plans for your child. It also has a gifting feature that can be automated, so your friends and relatives can gift money to your child and contribute to their investment journey.

One of the best features of UNest is its age-based investing that provides options with varying degrees of risk. These include:

1. Conservative—A low-risk option designed for beginners that invests in fixed-income and bond ETFs
2. Moderate—A medium-risk option that falls between Conservative and Aggressive and is best for 13 to 16-year-olds
3. Aggressive—A high-risk option that invests 100% in equities through Vanguard equity index ETFs, and it’s suitable for older teens

This teen investing app is ideal for adjusting investments according to age. As your child gets older and enters their late teenage years, you can give them more control over their investments, and they can move on to a more aggressive investment strategy with the potential for higher returns.

Account holders can also receive bonuses for their children by partnering with companies such as Uber, DoorDash, Levi’s, Disney, and more, through the UNest partner program.

UNest’s pros and cons include:

Pros	Cons
Age-based investment strategies Easy sign-up process The gifting feature which allows friends and family to contribute to the financial success of your child	Few tax advantages because the app uses UTMA accounts

Webull

Webull is a low-cost trading and investing app with no account minimums that’s suitable for older teens (aged 18 and 19). The app currently doesn’t offer custodial accounts, so younger teens can’t invest using Webull.

The app offers commission-free trades on stocks and ETFs and allows users to participate in initial public offerings (IPOs). It’s a good choice for teens who are intermediate investors and want more complex features, such as:

• Charting tools
• Real-time stock alerts
• Technical indicators
• Customizable screeners

One of the app’s top features is the Webull Smart Advisor, which combines Webull’s in-house investment expertise and AI to build, manage, and rebalance an ETF portfolio for your child. 

Here’s a quick look at the pros and cons of this teen investment app:

Pros	Cons
Powerful technical analysis tools  Good selection of investments Fractional shares  Robo-advisory services  Voice commands Clean interface and great mobile experience	No custodial accounts (age-limited) Mutual funds not supported

Stash

Stash is a good choice for young adults new to investments because it offers a robo-advisor that invests on behalf of your child based on their ideal risk level to optimize returns.

The app offers two main features—investing (via a custodial account) and banking. A two-tiered monthly subscription fee gives access to both services, with separate balances for each service. 

Starting with a $1 investment, your child can build a portfolio of individual stocks, bonds, and ETFs. The two different Stash investment account options are: 

• Growth—This is a $3 per month intermediate account that comes with options for personal investments as well as retirement investments. Stash allows you to pick between a traditional or Roth IRA 
• Stash+—This account offers a personal investment option, plus a retirement investment plan and a custodial investment feature for up to two children 

Both of these plans enable the purchase of fractional stock shares and let your child choose how to fund their investment accounts.

Here’s a summary of the pros and cons of this teen investing app:

Pros	Cons
Good selection of investment assets  Rewards in fractional shares of stock earned by debit card purchases Online banking account with budgeting tools included	The banking account doesn’t earn interest  Monthly subscription rates can be expensive for small portfolios  Robo-advisor manages only taxable investments  No human financial advisors are available

Learn By MyWallSt

Learn by MyWallSt isn’t exactly an investment app—it’s an investment education app perfect for introducing teenagers to the world of stock investing. The course design is straightforward, introducing your child to financial ideas such as: 

• Financial goals 
• Money management 
• The importance of saving
• Compound interest 
• Stocks 
• Stock exchanges 
• S&P 500 
• Dividends 
• Income reports and balance sheets 
• Business cash and debt

The app also teaches your child how to buy their first stock and build a portfolio. They also get to understand the importance of diversification and common investing mistakes they should avoid.

Each part of the course is broken down into a couple of easily digestible lessons, and the app tracks your child’s progress as they complete each lesson.

Pros and cons of Learn By MyWallSt include:

Pros	Cons
Easily digestible investment lessons Investment lessons written by experts	Can’t be used to actually invest in stocks

How To Make the Most Out of Teen Investing Apps

To make the most out of the investing apps above, make sure you do the following:

• Remain involved—Even if an investing app grants autonomy to your child, keep up with their investing journey and help them internalize important financial concepts. You may also want to keep an eye on where they spend their returns to ensure they don’t fall into the wrong habits
• Begin early—Don’t delay getting your child started with investing. Introduce them to the world of investment as soon as they start demonstrating a good level of financial understanding
• Take long-term measures for your child’s financial well-being—As your teen learns investing concepts through investing apps, it’s also important to take solid measures for their long-term financial success, such as helping them build a good credit profile

A strong credit score is key for many financial milestones in your child’s life, like getting a mortgage, a car loan, or financial aid for education to make college payments easier. Still, building credit isn’t easy for teens since they can’t obtain credit cards on their own. To help your child overcome this limitation and thrive financially, you can rely on a service like FreeKick, which helps children build credit from the age of 13.

FreeKick—A Two-in-One Credit Building and Identity Protection Solution

A great investment portfolio won’t be of much use if your teenager doesn’t have a good credit profile to back it up. That’s why it’s a good idea to invest in FreeKick, an FDIC-insured deposit account powered by Austin Capital Bank. This platform helps you build credit for your child and protect their identity at the same time.

Building Credit for Your Teen With FreeKick

FreeKick’s credit building service is designed for children and young adults aged 13 to 25. It’s a great way to help your teen establish a credit history early on in life. There are three steps involved:

1. Create an Account—Create an account at FreeKick.bank and choose a deposit that suits your budget
2. Set It and Forget It—Once you activate the account, FreeKick will start building 12 months’ worth of credit history for your teen
3. Keep Growing—After 12 months, you can close the account without any fees or continue building credit for your teen for another year

As a result, your teen gets a credit history head start of up to five years when they turn 18. This can translate into $200,000 saved during their lifetime since it enables them to get great loan terms.

Securing Your Teen’s Identity With FreeKick

Identity theft is one of the threats to your child’s good credit profile, which makes identity protection a worthy investment. Child identity theft happens every 30 seconds, and if your teen falls victim to it, their credit profile will suffer.

To protect your child from getting charged with grave crimes like credit card theft and damaging their investment portfolio, it’s good advice for parents to sign up for identity protection. FreeKick’s ID protection services include:

Services for Minors	Services for Adult Children and Parents
Credit profile monitoring Social Security number (SSN) monitoring Dark web monitoring for children’s personal information Up to $1 million identity theft insurance Full-service white-glove concierge credit restoration Sex offender monitoring—based on sponsor parent’s address	Credit profile monitoring SSN monitoring Dark web monitoring for personal information Up to $1 million identity theft insurance Full-service white-glove concierge credit restoration Lost wallet protection Court records monitoring Change of address monitoring Non-credit (Payday) loan monitoring Free FICO® Score monthly FICO® Score factors Experian credit report monthly

FreeKick Pricing

FreeKick has two pricing plans:

FDIC-Insured Deposit	Annual Fee
$3,000	$0 (Free)
No deposit	$149

Both plans include:

1. Credit building for six children aged 13 to 25
2. Identity protection for two parents and six children aged 0 to 25

Give your child a solid credit profile to help them build an impressive investment portfolio while protecting your family from ID theft—sign up for FreeKick today.