Mobile apps became very popular. They make your life a lot easier. There is an app for everything now. You can buy flight tickets, book a hotel or trade on the stock exchange.

There are a lot of trading apps out there so, to save you time, we selected the best free trading apps for you. Apps providing free stock and ETF trading are gaining popularity, so it is worth taking a look at them if you don't want to spend fortunes on your trading fees!

What are trading apps great for?

Trading apps can be used for trading, learning, charting, finding trading ideas, and also for market data and news. Some of the apps offer all of these features, while others only a few. Don't worry, we have made trading app top lists for all of these features!

Trading apps are usually offered by financial companies such as online brokers or banks. These apps can be great add-ons to your web or desktop trading platform, but they can also be the flagship product of a company, for instance in the case of Robinhood and Freetrade.

We see trading apps as excellent complementary tools to web-based trading platforms and other financial portals. When you want to buy a stock, you can make fundamental or technical analyses on a computer more conveniently, but it's easier to follow the price of the stocks you've already bought through a trading app. You can also intervene faster via an app, when, for example, you quickly need to sell your stocks.

And now, let's see the best free trading apps in 2021!

Just to make it clear again: with these apps, you can trade stocks and ETFs for free.

Besides the best free trading apps, we have also selected the best trading apps for charting, trading ideas, market data, news, and learning.

Now, let's take a closer look at the best trading apps in 2021!

Mobile trading apps are key for staying up-to-date when you are on the go. The best trading apps are great both in functionalities and user-friendliness and they also provide commission-free stock and ETF trading.

We have tested the mobile trading apps of more than 70 online brokers. We have selected those, which provide free trading for stocks and ETFs on the US market, are user-friendly and have great functionalities. If you are interested in comparing these apps, visit our comparison page.

When we tested the mobile applications we looked for:

• User-friendliness
• Good product and market search function
• Great variety of order types
• Price alert and order confirmation availability
• Two-step (safe) login

Now let's see the five best trading apps!

Robinhood

The Robinhood mobile platform is one of the best platforms we've tested. It is safe, well designed and user-friendly.

Robinhood optimized its brokerage service for millennials, so it has a very intuitive and well-designed mobile trading platform. 

We also liked the additional security features, such as the fingerprint sensors to access the app.

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Trading 212

Trading 212's mobile trading platform is user-friendly and well-designed, with great search, alert, and order functions.

The Trading 212 mobile trading platform is user-friendly, well-designed and has a clear structure. 

The app provides two-step authentication beside a one-step login. To activate this, you have to use a third-party authenticator app, which is a bit inconvenient. The search functions are great. You can search by typing the name of the assets but you can also find the assets in categories.

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Merrill Edge

The Merrill Edge mobile app, available for iPhone and Android devices, is easy to use and provides a safe and easy login. On the downside, the search functions could be improved.

Merrill Edge has an excellent, user-friendly mobile trading platform. You can use a wide range of order types and set a more secure two-step login. Biometric authentication is also available, which is a convenient feature.

When you use the search function, you have to enter the asset's ticker or the name of the company. There are no other ways to search. 

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TD Ameritrade

The TD Ameritrade mobile trading platform is great. It is user-friendly and well-designed.

TD Ameritrade's mobile trading platform is user-friendly. Its design is more up to date than its web trading platform. You can also place a wide range of order types.

You can search by typing both a company's name or an asset's ticker. On the flip side, the relevancy of search results could be improved. When we searched for Apple shares, they haven't appeared instantly.

Besides TD Ameritrade Mobile, you can also use the 'thinkorswim' mobile trading platform. 'Thinkorswim' is designed for traders, especially options traders. The 'thinkorswim' platform is available both on iOS and Android.

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Freetrade

Freetrade provides a great mobile trading platform. It is user-friendly and well-designed with an efficient search function. However, there are only two order types and price alerts are missing.

Freetrade has a user-friendly mobile trading platform and does a great job offering a platform with a superb interface catering mostly for beginners. Under the 'Discover' section, you can easily find the assets you're looking for.

The order types are limited: you can't use limit or stop orders by default, only if you sign up for Freetrade Plus. In addition, you can't use price alerts.

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We hope that you have found the best app for your trading needs. Remember to visit our full broker reviews for more trading app reviews. 

Using the right sources of information and building your trade strategy on the right data is really important. And it is not easy to do.

It's no exaggeration to say that in the past two decades information was one of, if not the most important resource. In recent years, data became another major resource.

To be up to date you can read news portals, watch videos, follow investors, analyze data and so on. We tested 9 apps providing these services, considering the following criteria:

• User-friendliness
• Design
• Watchlists and alerts
• Special features, like stock screener or chart analysis

The 9 apps we tested are: Benzinga, Bloomberg, CNBC, Finimaze, Investing.com, MSN Money, Seeking Alpha, Simply Wall Street, Yahoo! Finance.

If you are interested in market data and news, these are the best trading apps for you:

Investing.com

Best for: researching and analyzing market news and market data.

Investing.com is unique as it has all the necessary features that can ease your decision-making in trading.

The number of functions is outstanding, you can use this app from reading news to a detailed stock analysis. The news is categorized based on asset classes, so if you are interested in stocks you can read only news on stocks. The economic calendar shows you all the important upcoming events. If you like technical analysis, try the main technical indicators or the detailed charts. Furthermore, you can read trading ideas provided by professional analysts. Not only professionals, but also beginners will find this app useful as there are educational videos and webinars too. Watchlists and alerts are applicable, so you can follow the big events that may impact your trades. After you completed your research and analysis, you don’t have to open another app to execute your trades, you can do it through Investing.com’s platform. The application's interface is really user-friendly and well-designed.

Download Investing.com for iOS

Download Investing.com for Android

Bloomberg

Best for: high-quality market news and data on a well-designed platform.

Bloomberg is a high-quality app which provides news and market data on a clean and well-designed platform.

On the main page you will find news, videos, and audios. News can be filtered by categories, like markets or technology. The news section usually contains videos, audios, and illustrative pictures. Products are categorized based on asset classes, i.e. you will find indices, stocks, currencies and other asset classes. When you select a product, the overview contains basic market data, like market capitalization or volume, and its performance in comparison with similar products. Beyond market data, you will see the related news and the main financial data, such as income statements or balance sheets. Finally, you can set watchlists and you will get alerts about the important happenings.

On the flip side, the app is slow.

Download Bloomberg for iOS

Download Bloomberg for Android

You can also get market news and data from online brokers. In our broker comparison table you can check which broker has a great research.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato said that "The beginning is the most important part of the work". It's no different in the world of finance.

If you don't have a clue what a stock is and how it works, you better deepen your knowledge first. Fortunately, you have countless opportunities to do that. You can watch films and videos, read books, participate in webinars, and, of course, use apps. We think that learning is more efficient if it is combined with gamification. 

We tested 7 apps providing learning services considering the following three criteria:

• Gamification
• Availability of educational texts
• Availability of virtual trading

The 7 evaluated apps are the following: Best Brokers, ForexHero, Invstr, Learn, Stock trainer, Tradehero, Trading Game.  

There's nothing left to do but see our top picks for learning.

Invstr

Best for: practicing trading on a nice and easy-to-use platform.

Investr is an app which combines learning with gaming. 

We really liked the app's nice and easy-to-use design and its interesting and useful functions. When you start compiling your trading portfolio, an account summary shows your profit & loss and your capital allocation, i.e. the share of your money in the different asset classes. Furthermore, you get news from prominent third-party providers, like the Financial Times or Reuters. When you click on a product, you will see a chart and the related feeds, and you can compare its performance with other products. There is also a competition among the users and the winners are awarded every week. Moreover, users can follow each other, and they can also use different social functions, e.g. comment, share or like.

The app is suitable for practicing trading, but the educational texts are missing.

Download Invstr for IOS

Download Invstr for Android

Trading Game

Best for: learning the basics of forex trading.

With Trading Game you will learn the basics of forex trading and have fun at once.

The app provides educational texts about the different aspects of forex trading. At the end of each text, there is a quiz. Your knowledge is your wealth as correct answers give you virtual money. You can also set the difficulty of the questions. You can increase the amount of your virtual money with virtual trading as well. At the trading section only a few assets, like EURUSD or gold, are available. Trading Game users can compete with each other, the goal is to collect the most money. Finally, the app has an easy-to-use and clean design.

On the flip side, Trading Game mainly focuses on forex trading.

Download Trading Game for iOS

Download Trading Game for Android

Online brokers also provide education. In our broker comparison table you can check which broker has a great education function.

If you want to invest or trade, you have to start with finding a trade idea. Then you can take a look at the chart and do a technical analysis. 

To do this, you need a great interactive charting tool with several functions and technical indicators. The handier the interactive chart is, the more opportunity you have to find the right trading patterns.

We tested the following 8 charting and trading ideas apps: Market Trends, NetDania Stock & Forex Trader, StockMarkets, StockSpy, StockTracker, Stocktwits, TradingView, Webull. 

From this group, we selected the best charting apps based on:

• User-friendliness
• Design
• Availability of technical indicators
• Trading ideas

Let's see our top picks for charting and trading ideas. 

TradingView

Best for: interactive charting and trading ideas community.

TradingView is a great app for charting. We loved it.

The interactive charting function is amazing. It is unbelievably user-friendly and it has an awesome design.

Another great part is the community around it, which shares tons of trading ideas. You can join forum channels for trending topics like cryptos.

On the flip side, you should be careful with following others' trading ideas, even if each user has a reputation score with the number of followers.

Download TradingView for iOS

Download TradingView for Android

Stocktwits

Best for: sharing and watching trading ideas.

As its name suggests Stockwits is like traders’ Twitter.

The financial and investing community can publish posts with a 140-character limit on trading ideas, trends, charts and whatever trading-related content. The users can share, comment or like these messages. You can also tag these posts as bearish and bullish, i.e. you decide if the content has a negative or a positive overtone. The bearish-bullish tagging clearly shows how market sentiment changes. We liked the design as it was clean and user-friendly. Furthermore, you can search for a given product and you will see all the related tweets and basic data, like P/E, EPS, 50-day moving average or average volume. You can also add the selected products to your watchlist which helps you find those more easily. On the flip side, we missed the chart analyzing function.

We liked Stocktwits as it is unique and fulfills its purpose: it has built a financial and investing community.

Download Stocktwits for iOS

Download Stocktwits for Android

We are sure that you can now pick your favourite app for charting and trading ideas.

You can also get trading ideas from online broker research pages. Check which broker has a great research in our broker comparison table.

If you are still uncertain which are the best trading apps in 2021 for you, this little summary may provide further clarity. 

Best free trading apps in 2021:

• Robinhood's mobile app is the best for free stock and ETF trading. It is extremely intuitive and well-designed. 
• Trading 212's mobile app is available in many countries globally and provides free stock and ETF trading. The app has a clean design and there are many features you can use, such as a two-step login.
• Merrill Edge's mobile trading platform is available for iPhone and Android devices, is easy to use and provides a safe and easy login. On the other hand, the search functions could be improved.
• TD Ameritrade is an incumbent US stockbroker. It has two mobile trading apps: TD Ameritrade mobile, which is designed for investors and 'thinkorswim' for traders. Both mobile apps are user-friendly and well-designed.
• Freetrade provides a great mobile trading platform. It is user-friendly and well-designed, with an efficient search function. However, there are only two order types by default and price alerts are missing.

Best apps for market news and data

Investing.com and Bloomberg are our top picks for best apps for market news and data.

• Investing.com offers a wide range of market data and news.
• Bloomberg provides high-quality news and you can also watch videos or listen to audios. 

Best apps for charting and trading ideas

TradingView and Stocktwits are our top picks for the best apps for charting and trading ideas.

• TradingView has excellent charting and analyzing functions and it has a great design.
• Stocktwits is a great app for sharing and watching others' trading ideas.

Best apps for learning

Invstr and Trading Game are our top picks for best apps for learning.

• On Invstr's great and easy-to-use platform you can easily learn the basics of trading.  
• Trading Game provides well-illustrated educational texts.