In this head-to-head, I’ll be comparing Wealthify vs Moneybox, two of the leading digital investment platforms in the UK.
I’ll be assessing Wealthify and Moneybox on a number of metrics in this comparison to see which comes out on top. This includes portfolio performance, ethical offerings, products and, of course, fees.
Most people want to get the best possible return on their money for the least cost. As an experienced investor and a Chartered Accountant, I know how important it is to balance costs against returns!
Read on for my full Wealthify vs Moneybox comparison, or use the links below to jump straight to a particular section.
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: At A Glance
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Fees
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Products
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Portfolios
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Ethical Portfolios
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Performance
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Research, Tools & Advice
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Which Has The Better App?
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Is My Money Safe?
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: Pros & Cons
- Wealthify vs Moneybox: The Winner
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Wealthify vs Moneybox: At A Glance
Here’s my overview of Wealthify vs Moneybox in case you don’t want to read the whole comparison.
The table below looks at the key features compared against each other.
| Wealthify | Moneybox | |
| Management Fees | 0.6% applies to any investment size | £1 per month subscription fee, free for your first 3 months 0.45% platform fee SIPP Fees: Up to £100k: 0.45% Over £100k: 0.15% No monthly subscription fee for a SIPP |
| Fund Fees | 0.2% | 0.12%-0.58% |
| Minimum Investment | £1 for ISA, JISA and GIA £50 for Pension (SIPP) | £1 |
| Products | Stocks & Shares: ISA, JISA GIA, SIPP (Pension) | Simple Saver & Notice savings accounts Cash LISA Stocks & Shares: ISA, LISA, JISA GIA, SIPP (Pension) |
| Number Of Portfolios | 5 | 3 |
| Ethical Portfolios | 5 | 3 |
| DIY Portfolio | No | Yes |
| FSCS Protection | Yes | Yes |
Wealthfiy is a robo-advisor investment platform that offers a range of portfolios to choose from. This includes its 5 core actively managed portfolios, as well as 5 ethical portfolio options.
Moneybox doesn’t match the choice of ready-made portfolios to choose from with only 3 on offer. Each of these has an ethical option too.
However, Moneybox does allow you to create your own investment portfolio by picking which funds you can allocate your investment to. If you’re a more experienced investor you may like this option.
If you want to pick individual US stocks and shares to invest in rather than picking funds, then Moneybox allows you to do so and it’s commission-free. There is, however, a 0.45% currency conversion fee from GBP into USD when purchasing US shares.
You’re unable to buy individual stocks or customise your portfolio with Wealthify beyond choosing a risk level, so if you want more input over your investments then you’ll prefer Moneybox.
Moneybox is more than just an investment app though. It has a wide range of personal finance features and services, including money management, round-ups and automated savings tools.
There’s also a greater product range with Moneybox. You can open savings accounts if you don’t want to invest your money into the market. It also provides Lifetime ISAs in both cash and stocks & shares, something that Wealthify doesn’t offer.
Overall, Moneybox is a more comprehensive money management and investing platform than Wealthify, but does not offer as wide a range of ready-made portfolios to invest in.
What is Wealthify?
Wealthify is a robo-advisor with the stated aim to make investing accessible to everyone.
Founded in 2016, Wealthify was fully acquired by Aviva – one of the UK’s largest financial services companies – in June 2020. It has not disclosed its assets under management (AUM) but it’s estimated that as of June 2021 Wealthify had around 50,000 clients.
Wealthify appears to target perhaps a younger and less experienced type of investor, as it allows you to get started with only £1. They also have a very simple fee structure which beats Moneybox on cost for smaller investment amounts. Read more in my Wealthify review.
What is Moneybox?
Moneybox is a personal finance and investing app that was founded in 2016. Its aim was to allow more people to access wealth building and financial planning services and knowledge.
In 2023 it now has more than half a million users and offers a wide range of personal finance and investing features
This includes a robo-advisor investment offering, similar to Wealthify, as well as savings accounts and home buying services.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Fees
Let’s look in more detail at the all-important costs for Moneybox vs Wealthify. Many people stick to one provider once they’ve opened an investment account, so if you’re not careful you can end up paying much higher fees and charges than you need to.
Moneybox has a simple fee structure – it charges 0.45% on all investments (except for over £100k in a SIPP), no matter how much you have invested. There’s also a £1 per month subscription fee, but this is waived for your first 3 months.
Wealthify has an even simpler fee structure, charging 0.6% on any size of investment with no monthly subscription costs.
| Wealthify | Moneybox | |
| Subscription Fee | None | £1 per month, first 3 months free No monthly fee for SIPP |
| Actively Managed Portfolio Management Fees | 0.6% applies to any investment size | 0.45% 0.15% if investing more than £100k in a SIPP |
| Fund Fees | 0.16% including market spread | 0.12%-0.58% |
| Ethical / Socially Responsible Fund Fees | 0.7% (including market spread) | 0.12%-0.58% |
| Individual Stocks & Shares | N/A | Commission-free but 0.45% currency conversion charge for US shares |
Because Moneybox’s subscription fee is fixed at £1 per month, or £12 per year, it means that the more you invest the lower the fee becomes in percentage terms. Beware that if you’re investing small amounts, the £1 per month fee can significantly eat into your account balance.
For example, over 12 months the £12 annual fee with £1,000 invested works out to a charge of 1.2%. This is a total fee (before fund costs) of 1.65% when added to Moneybox’s platform charge of 0.45%, .
But if you have £10,000 invested for a year the subscription fee equates to a charge of 0.12%, which comes to a total of 0.57% when combined with the platform fee.
If your Moneybox investment account balance is zero, you won’t get charged any fees.
Wealthfiy charges 0.6% on any investment size but it’s not straightforward to compare fees for Moneybox vs Wealthify because of Moneybox’s monthly subscription fee.
But with low investment amounts, Moneybox is less competitive. Wealthify is cheaper than Moneybox if investing under £8,000 in standard actively managed portfolios. Above £8k of investments, Moneybox becomes cheaper than Wealthify.
For ethical investing, Wealthify is more expensive than Moneybox if investing more than approx. £1k due to its much higher fund costs.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Products
Wealthify and Moneybox both offer stocks and shares ISAs, General Investment Accounts (GIAs), Self-Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs) and Junior ISAs (JISAs).
You can currently get up to £200 cashback if you transfer your pension to Wealthify. Head over to Wealthify and complete its pension calculator to unlock the offer.
However, Moneybox offers a wider range of products than Wealthify. It also offers a cash ISA and a cash LISA as well as Super Saver and Notice savings accounts.
Moneybox also now offers home-buying products, including mortgage advice and a broker service. You can integrate your investments and savings with your house buying goals in the Moneybox app.
You’re able to set a deposit goal in the app and it will track how long and how much you need to save, or grow your investments, to reach it.
The integration of these wider personal finance features with saving and investing make the Moneybox app one of the most innovative on the market at the moment.
Although Wealthfiy doesn’t have as many products as Moneybox, it’s a specialist robo-advisor with a wider range of portfolios to choose from. More below under Portfolios.
Moneybox also allows you to invest in individual US stocks and shares through its commission free trading feature. While there is no commission on buying and selling shares, there is a 0.45% currency conversion fee when converting your money from GBP into USD to purchase the shares.
Offering the ability to buy and sell US stocks without commission allows Moneybox to compete with other investment apps in the UK that allow you to do this too. You’re also able to buy fractional shares from just £1 if you cannot afford to buy a whole share outright.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Portfolios
Moneybox offers 3 portfolios to choose from, each with differing risk levels: Cautious, Balanced and Adventurous.
Wealthify’s actively managed offering has more portfolios to choose from with 5, each also with a different risk level. So while Wealthify doesn’t have the product range of Moneybox, it does offer more investment portfolio options.
Although Moneybox lacks the range of portfolios of Wealthify, it does allow you to create your own investment portfolio. You can choose from a range of mutual funds to build your own portfolios so if you’re a more experienced investor you may prefer this option.
Overall though, Wealthify has a greater choice of ready-made portfolios for you to choose from.
Both Wealthify and Moneybox offer ethical/socially responsible investing options. Read on for more on ethical investing.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Ethical Portfolios
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing or Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is a growing area as more people look to invest ethically.
Investors increasingly want to know which companies and industries their money is going into to ensure that they align with their values. So it’s no surprise that both Moneybox and Weathify offer a range of SRI options.
Wealthify uses the term Ethical Investing and Moneybox uses the term Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). Each of their offerings are created using Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) in the same way as Wealthify and Moneybox’s standard actively managed portfolios. The difference is that the specific ETFs chosen for SRI portfolios must adhere to socially responsible investment criteria.
Wealthify offers 5 ethical portfolios to choose from, each representing different risk levels in the same way its regular portfolios are arranged. This is also the case for Moneybox which has an SRI option for each of its 3 portfolios: Cautious, Balanced and Adventurous.
You can customise your ethical portfolio with Moneybox in the same way as with its regular funds. So if you want to pick your own ESG funds from those on offer, you may prefer Moneybox to Wealthify.
When it comes to cost, both Wealthify and Moneybox charge their usual management fees for SRI investments.
But ESG fund costs tend to be higher across the market. With Moneybox, its SRI funds have the same cost range of 0.12%-0.58% as its regular funds. But you can expect its ESG funds to be closer to the upper end of this range, e.g. L&G’s Clean Water ETF has a fund charge of 0.54%.
Wealthify’s ethical fund charges are 0.7%, which is high compared to Moneybox and other robo-advisors. This makes Wealthify typically the more expensive ethical investing option compared to Moneybox.
Again, Wealthify has the greater range to choose from when it comes to ethical investing, but Moneybox allows you to customise your portfolio.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Performance
Given that Wealthify offers 5 portfolios and Moneybox has 3, a direct comparison of performance is a little difficult. So let’s look at how the lowest risk, medium risk and highest risk portfolios with each provider compared against each other for 2022:
| 2022 Performance | Wealthify Return | Moneybox Return |
| Wealthify Cautious / Moneybox Cautious | -11.2% | -5.3% |
| Wealthify Confident / Moneybox Balanced | -10.3% | -8.6% |
| Wealthify Adventurous / Moneybox Adventurous | -9.1% | -9.2% |
It’s important to note that 2022 was not a good time for investors. Energy prices, a cost-of-living crisis, high inflation and rising interest rates, particularly in Western economies, caused sell-offs in many major stock markets.
For context, the S&P500 in the US lost 18% during 2022 and the pan-European Stoxx 600 lost 12.5%. The UK’s FTSE100 fared better, posting a modest 0.9% return for 2022. With that in mind, comparing Moneybox’s returns to Wealthify for 2022 is about which lost the least value.
On the face of it, Moneybox performed better at the lowest and medium risk levels, with about equal performance to Wealthfiy at the highest level. However, this is not a scientific analysis and past performance is not an indicator of future performance.
For added context, let’s also look at performance for 2019 for Wealthify vs Moneybox, which was the last full-year before the covid pandemic:
| 2019 Performance | Wealthify Return | Moneybox Return |
| Wealthify Cautious / Moneybox Cautious | 6.4% | 7.6% |
| Wealthify Confident / Moneybox Balanced | 11.9% | 18% |
| Wealthify Adventurous / Moneybox Adventurous | 17.1% | 20.5% |
In 2019, Moneybox appears to have outperformed Wealthify at all risk levels. However, Wealthify has a greater range of portfolios. For example, Wealthify’s Tentative portfolio achieved a return of 9.4% in 2019, which outperformed Moneybox’s Cautious performance.
Which portfolio you fall into with Wealthify or Moneybox is down to your own personal circumstances and risk appetite.
For more on how Wealthify’s returns compared to simple index investing, read my Wealthify review.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Research, Tools and Advice
Wealthify is a robo-advisor, so unsurprisingly it doesn’t have the level of research options and tools that more traditional investment platforms have.
However, Wealthify offers some basic tools such as a pensions calculator as well as a range of investing guides and ebooks on its website. You’re also able to see the past performance of its portfolios.
Reminder: you can currently get up to £200 cashback if you transfer your pension to Wealthify. Head over to Wealthify and complete its pension calculator to unlock the offer.
Although it doesn’t have a huge amount of investing tools compared to some trading platforms, Moneybox offers more money management features. The Moneybox app has savings goals and round-up features which can help to automate your investing.
Moneybox also offers home-buying tools and mortgage advice. This goes beyond a typical investing platform, so if you want a more well-rounded personal finance app then you may prefer Moneybox vs Wealthify.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Which Has The Better App?
Wealthify’s app is great for a simple and straightforward robo-advisor platform. It’s easy to navigate around and clearly provides all the relevant information about your investments.
There aren’t that many innovative in-app features with Wealthify though, unlike with Moneybox. You get more comprehensive personal finance features with the Moneybox app, some of which you may be familiar with from digital banking apps.
This includes round-up spending, savings goals, budgeting and automated investing features.
You can also browse individual US stocks and shares if you have a Stocks & Shares ISA with Moneybox.
Another difference with Moneybox vs Wealthify is that you can log in to your account through Wealthify’s website. With Moneybox, it’s completely app-only so you’ll need to be comfortable with just using the app if you sign up.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Is My Money Safe?
Both Wealthify and Moneybox are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and have Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protection.
This means that if either company were to go bust, your money would be protected up to the value of £85,000 by the regulator.
It should be noted that some of the funds offered by Moneybox are located outside of the UK and therefore are not covered by FSCS protection. For example, the Global Shares ESG fund is based in Ireland.
Both Wealthify and Moneybox use sophisticated encryption to keep your data safe. Moneybox says that it uses bank-level encryption. Wealthify also says that it uses TLS bank-level encryption.
The savings accounts offered by Moneybox are held with a range of different banks. Both Moneybox and Wealthify segregate client money from their own using custodian accounts held with secure 3rd parties. These also fall under FSCS protection.
Waalthfiy is owned by Aviva, one of the largest and oldest financial institutions in the UK. You may get more peace of mind knowing that your investments with Wealthify have the backing of a much larger and more experienced investment company.
Wealthify vs Moneybox: Pros & Cons
To summarise my comparison of Wealthify vs Moneybox, I’ve outlined below what the main pros and cons of each investment platform:
Wealthify Pros & Cons
Wealthify Pros
- Lower cost investing vs Moneybox if you invest under £8k
- Start investing from just £1
- Simple fee structure – 0.6% charge no matter the investment size
- No monthly subscription fee
- Intuitive and easy-to-use app
- Wider range of ready-made portfolios than Moneybox
- Regular market updates through its website and in the app
- Backed by Aviva, one the largest financial institutions in the UK
Wealthify Cons
- On the flip side, it’s a more expensive option compared to Moneybox if you have more than £8k to invest
- Expensive Ethical Investing fund charges
- Unable to customise your portfolio
- Underperformed Moneybox in 2022 for low and medium risk portfolios. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, though
- Lack of wider products (e.g. no LISA) and features vs Moneybox
Moneybox Pros & Cons
Moneybox Pros
- Lower platform/management fees than Wealthify when investing more than £8,000
- Start investing from just £1
- Low platform fee of 0.15% if investing over £100k in a pension (SIPP)
- Wider range of products to choose from, including savings accounts and LISAs
- Customisable portfolios
- Home-buying features, including mortgage broker
- More comprehensive personal finance app
- Access to commission free US stocks and shares trading with a Stocks & Shares ISA
- Better 2022 performance vs Wealthify in the low and medium risk categories, but past performance is not a guarantee of future performance
Moneybox Cons
- On the flip side, it has higher fees than Wealthify if you’re investing under £8,000 thanks to monthly £1 subscription fee
- Has fewer portfolios to choose from (only 3 vs Wealthify’s 5 portfolios)
Wealthify vs Moneybox: The Winner
If it’s a robo-advisor that you want, then Wealthify offers a wider choice of ready-made portfolios to choose from.
Wealthfiy is owned by Aviva, one of the biggest asset managers in the UK, which may give you more peace of mind knowing that your investments are backed by a large financial institution.
Moneybox doesn’t offer as much choice when it comes to ready-made portfolios, with only 3 vs Wealthify’s 5. But you can build your own investment portfolio by choosing which ETFs you want to invest in, therefore giving you greater customisation with Moneybox vs Wealthify.
You’ll also get a wider range of products and features with Moneybox than with Wealthify. This includes both cash and stocks & shares Lifetime ISAs, which you can’t get with Wealthify.
On top of this, you can invest in individual US stocks and shares with an investment ISA account, including fractional shares from just £1.
Beyond investing, Moneybox also offers a range of savings accounts to choose from, as well home-buying services. This includes auto-investing features which you can use to help build your deposit on a property, as well as a mortgage broker service.
Overall, Wealthify has the greater choice for a pure robo-investment platform, and is generally cheaper if investing under £8k.
Although Moneybox lacks the choice of ready-made portfolios, it has a much wider range of features beyond just robo-investing. If you want a more comprehensive personal finance and investing app then you’ll prefer Moneybox. It’s also slightly cheaper if investing more than £8k.
