Does Revolut offer an ISA? Alternatives for 2026

As a UK resident, you have investment incentives that people in other countries can only dream of. Paying no tax at all on dividends, interest or capital gains can be the difference between retiring in 20 years or 25.

Revolut offers a Stocks & Shares ISA, and since March 2026 it is also a fully licensed UK bank. But is its ISA the best option on the market?

In this article we analyse Revolut’s Stocks & Shares ISA and go through the alternatives worth considering, with the rules as they stand in the 2026/27 tax year and the changes coming in April 2027.

What is an ISA, and what are its main benefits?

ISA stands for Individual Savings Account. Inside it, dividends, interest and capital gains are free of UK tax, with no limit on how big the pot grows. What is limited is how much new money you can put in each tax year: £20,000, and the allowance has been frozen at that level since 2017, with the government confirming it stays there until 2030.

As the old saying goes, nothing is certain except death and taxes. With an ISA you cannot cheat death, but you can certainly save a lot of tax.

There are four types of ISA:

1. Cash ISA: pays tax-free interest. Suited to people who want capital protection or may need the money soon;
2. Stocks and shares ISA: for investing in the markets with long-term objectives;
3. Lifetime ISA: for a first home or for retirement. The government adds a 25% bonus to your contributions, capped at £4,000 a year, which sits inside the £20,000 allowance. You can open one between 18 and 39, contribute until 50, and withdraw penalty-free from 60 or earlier for a first home worth up to £450,000. Any other withdrawal costs a 25% charge;
4. Innovative Finance ISA: for alternative investments such as peer-to-peer loans, which match investors with borrowers.

What changes in April 2027

The Autumn Budget 2025 brought the biggest ISA change in years, and it takes effect on 6 April 2027:

• The overall allowance stays at £20,000;
• Savers under 65 will be able to put no more than £12,000 of it into a cash ISA. The remaining £8,000 has to go into a stocks and shares ISA or an innovative finance ISA;
• Savers aged 65 and over keep the full £20,000 cash allowance.

Money already sitting in a cash ISA is unaffected. The 2026/27 tax year, which runs to 5 April 2027, is the last one in which an under-65 can shelter the full £20,000 in cash.

What can I invest in through a Stocks and Shares ISA?

The “qualifying investments” are:

1. Shares;
2. Securities issued by companies;
3. Recognised UCITS funds;
4. Depositary receipts, American Depositary Receipts and American Depositary Shares.

In plain English: shares, funds, investment trusts, ETFs and fixed income such as corporate and government bonds. What each provider actually offers is narrower than what the rules allow, which is where the comparison below matters.

Features of Revolut’s Stocks & Shares ISA

• Accessible in-app setup: you open and manage the ISA entirely inside the Revolut app, which is also the only place you can use it, as there is no web platform for UK investing;
• Wide investment options: more than 4,000 stocks and ETFs across the UK, US and European markets, with fractional shares;
• Flexible ISA: if you withdraw and put the money back within the same tax year, it does not eat into your annual allowance. Most large platforms, including Hargreaves Lansdown, interactive investor and Interactive Brokers, do not offer this;
• Backed by a UK bank: Revolut received full authorisation as a UK bank in March 2026, although the ISA itself is run by Revolut Trading Ltd, an HMRC-approved ISA manager.

One thing to check before you transfer a large portfolio

Revolut says in its own guidance on how it protects customer funds that “stocks, cryptocurrencies, or commodities available through Revolut aren’t protected by FSCS, as they’re separate from deposit-based products”. The £120,000 of FSCS cover it advertises applies to deposits held with Revolut Bank UK Ltd, which is a different thing from the shares and ETFs inside the ISA.

That is a real difference from the five alternatives below, where investments are covered up to £85,000 if the firm fails. It does not mean your shares disappear if something goes wrong, as they are held separately from Revolut’s own assets, but the compensation backstop is not the same. If you are moving a large ISA, confirm the current position with Revolut first.

Fees and costs

• No subscription or custody fees for the ISA itself;
• Commission-free trades included each month, depending on your Revolut plan:
  • Standard (free): 1 trade;
  • Plus (£3.99 a month): 3 trades;
  • Premium (£7.99 a month): 5 trades;
  • Metal (£14.99 a month): 10 trades;
  • Ultra (£55 a month): 10 trades, and the lower 0.12% commission after that.
• Beyond that rolling monthly allowance, the commission is 0.25% of the order amount, or 0.12% for Ultra customers, with a minimum fee of £0.01;
• Currency conversion of 0% to 1%, depending on your plan and on how much you have already converted in the month, applies whenever the order is executed in dollars or euros rather than sterling;
• ADR pass-through fees of USD 0.01 to USD 0.05 per share, charged once a year by the depositary bank, if you hold American Depositary Receipts;
• ISA transfers carry no Revolut fee.

Eligibility and terms

• You must be 18 or over and a UK tax resident (or a qualifying crown employee or spouse based overseas);
• You need a National Insurance number, and everything is set up in the Revolut app;
• Revolut Trading Ltd is an HMRC-approved ISA manager.

Pros and cons

Revolut ISA alternatives in the UK

All the options below offer a Stocks and Shares ISA, and some offer the other ISA types too. We looked at fees, platform, years in the market and customer support. Here are our top picks:

All the platforms above are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and investments held with them are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) up to £85,000 per investor, per firm, if the firm fails and cannot return your assets.

One point that trips people up: on 1 December 2025 the FSCS limit for deposits rose from £85,000 to £120,000, but the limit for investments did not move. It is still £85,000, because it sits under separate FCA rules. So a cash ISA is covered to £120,000 and a stocks and shares ISA to £85,000, even at the same provider. Either way, the scheme protects you against the failure of the firm, never against falls in the market.

The five alternatives side by side

The pattern is the one you would expect. A percentage fee is cheap when your pot is small and expensive when it grows, a flat monthly fee is the opposite, and a platform with no fee at all makes its money on dealing and currency conversion. On a £10,000 ISA holding funds, Vanguard’s minimum works out at £48 a year, Hargreaves Lansdown at £35 and interactive investor at around £60, while Revolut and XTB charge nothing to hold the account. Push that to £100,000 and the ranking reverses: the flat fee looks cheap and the percentage does not.

Founded in 1995 and owned by abrdn since 2022, interactive investor is the UK’s second-largest DIY platform, with more than 400,000 customers.

Its selling point is the pricing model: a flat monthly fee instead of a percentage, with tiers depending on the size of your portfolio and how much you trade. On a £200,000 ISA that is a few hundred pounds a year against more than a thousand on a percentage platform. On a £5,000 ISA it is the most expensive option on this list. Share and fund dealing costs £3.99 a trade, less on the top tier.

Whichever plan you pick, you can invest from as little as £25 a month through its regular investing service, with no dealing fee on those purchases. Set up a direct debit and the monthly contribution goes in free of charge.

You can also open a Junior ISA, a Lifetime ISA, a Bed and ISA transfer and an ethical ISA for more socially responsible portfolios. Note that the ii ISA is not flexible.

Hargreaves Lansdown is the biggest platform for individual investors in the UK, with around 1.9 million clients and roughly £135 billion under administration. It is no longer a FTSE 100 company: a consortium of CVC, Nordic Capital and ADIA took it private in 2025 and it was delisted from the London Stock Exchange.

March 2026 brought the biggest repricing in its history, under pressure from zero-commission rivals:

• The platform fee on funds fell from 0.45% to 0.35% for portfolios up to £250,000, with lower tiers above that;
• Share dealing fell from £11.95 to £6.95 per trade;
• Fund dealing, previously free, now costs £1.95, although regular investing remains free;
• The annual cap on shares, ETFs and investment trusts stays at £45 in an ISA.

You can open the ISA in two ways: manage it yourself, with access to thousands of instruments from a £100 lump sum or £25 a month, or choose one of the ready-made portfolios built by HL’s investment team.

What you are paying for is service and research rather than the lowest price, and the HL ISA is not flexible.

Founded by Jack Bogle in 1975, Vanguard is one of the most respected asset managers in the world and is built for the long term: it does not encourage short-term trading, and the company is owned by its funds, which aligns its interests with yours.

Its Stocks and Shares ISA charges 0.15% a year, capped at £375, which makes it one of the cheapest options for a large portfolio. Since 2025 there is also a minimum fee of £4 a month for self-managed accounts with less than £32,000 invested, which changes the maths at the small end: on a £5,000 ISA, £48 a year is close to 1% before fund charges. The minimum does not apply to Junior ISAs or the managed ISA.

Dealing is free when your order goes into one of the two daily bulk trades, and costs £7.50 if you want to buy or sell an ETF in real time. You can invest through the LifeStrategy funds or build your own portfolio, but only from Vanguard’s own range, with no individual shares and no other fund managers’ products.

You need £500 as a lump sum or £100 a month to open an account, and the ISA is not flexible.

Final verdict

Revolut’s Stocks & Shares ISA is a strong option for mobile-first investors who want a low-cost, flexible and simple way to start. No platform fee, fractional shares and a genuinely flexible wrapper are three things most of the big names still do not offer together.

The case against it is just as clear. Currency conversion of up to 1% on US and European shares is easy to overlook, the commission past the free allowance is charged as a percentage with no cap, so a £10,000 order costs £25, and there is no web platform, no research depth and no ready-made portfolio if you would rather not choose.

A reasonable way to decide:

• Small portfolio, occasional trades, everything in the app: Revolut or XTB, where holding the account costs nothing;
• Large portfolio: interactive investor, where the flat fee stops scaling with your success;
• Global markets and the lowest dealing and FX costs: Interactive Brokers;
• Index funds and nothing else: Vanguard, as long as you are above £32,000;
• Service, research and the widest choice: Hargreaves Lansdown, now that it costs meaningfully less than it did.

Two things to settle before you commit, whichever you pick: check the FSCS position for the investments themselves, not just for the cash, and remember the deadline, because the 2026/27 allowance disappears on 5 April 2027 and cannot be carried forward.

If you need further guidance or have questions, feel free to reach out to us. We wish you the best in your investment journey.

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