Our 2025 Best Buys - The pick of the crop

Dust off your digital dicky bows and taffeta frocks, my friends, because the 2025 Boring Money Best Buy Awards are here!!!

This year, we have trawled through our test accounts with over 40 providers, run 100s of pricing scenarios, phoned call centres, endured web chat, downloaded apps and also factored in over 22,000 customer reviews. We’ve identified who we think are the best picks out there.

Here are some of the categories:

• Best Buy ISAs

• Best Buy Pensions

• Best Buy Junior ISAs

• Best Buy Lifetime ISAs

• Best for Low-Cost ISAs

• Best for Low-Cost Pensions (under £50,000 and those over £50,000)

Last week, I wrote about the ongoing Gender Investment Gap which exists – in part – because of low investment confidence. Women are more likely to report lower confidence, which stops them from making the jump into shares. I promised to share the winners of our Best for Beginners category with you this week – you can see the 6 winners here, who are all good picks for less confident readers:

Moneybox and Monzo let you start from just £1 and are the best digital choices – and they both make round-ups and little regular contributions easy to do. Bestinvest have supportive investment coaches on the phone and you can start with £50. Nutmeg’s app guides you into a robust, diversified portfolio with some sustainable options too, from a minimum of £500. And Vanguard’s Managed ISA needs a minimum of £500, but is a well-respected global heavyweight and you’re in good hands. Younger people who want to consolidate their pensions and see everything on a decent app will like PensionBee.

Grandad’s Army?

I had a fantastic email this week from Ken. I hope he will forgive me sharing a little of it here.

After reading last week’s mail, I decided to offer my two granddaughters £50 each to choose from next week’s top buys. All they have to do is read, choose, and say why and if they will continue. It also solves future birthday gift problems!

KenBoring Money reader

Ken, you win my unofficial Grandad of the Week Award! (Although if struggling, I suggest a Space NK voucher would also hit the spot!). I hope your granddaughters find the information helpful. Girls, once set up, consider a monthly direct debit? Even £5 a month will just get the habit going. Please, do let me know who you choose and why?!

I wonder if a key way to solve the Gender Investment Gap might be to mobilise Britain’s Grandads? Given that 9% of 18–24-year-old women invest compared to 22% of blokes that age, you can see how £50 and a gentle nudge might make a huge difference.

And something for the savvier investor…

Many of our readers are more experienced investors and will build and trade their own portfolios. If that’s you, have a look at our Share Trader Award. There are some really interesting new apps I have tested, which offer extremely low fees as well as great content. Fees have become keener as competition hots up and the average platform now charges less than a fiver to place a UK trade. And lots of the newcomers have no platform fees for ISAs.

Savvy investors who have stuck with the same platform for years might well be in the best home for them. But have a look at some of these apps just to see how things have progressed. Even if you just use them as a source of information, you might enjoy the ride. Lightyear, Saxo Investor and XTB are some of the newest options on our comparison tables.

A final thanks to all our readers who voted for your favourite. Our Consumer Choice Award recognises your top pick, looking at the number of votes, but also the strength of conviction. In 2025, the Boring Money Consumer Choice Award goes to #drumroll... interactive investor, with AJ Bell and Trading 212 the runners-up.

If you’d like a little more flavour on these Awards, you can follow me on Instagram for some more thoughts on top picks, as well as market musings and occasional thrilling pictures of my dog and me swimming in the sea. Yes, I'm very exciting and almost as popular as the AustralianFireFightersCalendar (my current Instagram favourites!).

As this glittering Awards bash fizzles out, leaving a few drunk people stumbling around to “Come On Eileen”, we’ve also got a feature piece on the outlook for tech and AI stocks AND a Valentine’s inspired romantic look at how married couples can make better financial decisions and save tax. Gifting someone your annual £500 dividend allowance in tax-tastic 2025 is the modern equivalent of a bunch of carnations and a lot prettier, I tell you!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Holly

Want to get Holly's weekly blog straight to your inbox?

Sign up for no-nonsense tips, tricks and food for thought every Friday!

SIGN UP

I would like to hear from you about products, events, general marketing and other things from Boring Money – including personalised content and ads - but please try not to make them as boring as everything else in finance!

Already have an account? Login