Seven self-invested personal pension providers, AJ Bell, Charles Stanley Direct, Freetrade, Hargreaves Lansdown, Interactive Investor, InvestEngine and Prosper, have been compared on fees, investment choice and customer service by This is Money, as savers face a series of upcoming changes to pension tax rules.
A Sipp gives investors more control over how their pension is invested than a standard workplace scheme, letting them buy shares, funds, investment trusts, exchange-traded funds and bonds through an online platform. Most providers also offer ready-made portfolios for those who do not want to pick individual investments.
Comparing fees across providers
AJ Bell charges a 0.25 per cent annual account fee, £1.50 for fund dealing and £5 for share dealing, and has scrapped fees for regular investing, though dividend reinvestment still costs £1.50.
Charles Stanley Direct charges 0.3 per cent of a portfolio's value, with a minimum fee of £60 and a maximum of £600 for pots of £200,000 or more. There is a £100 plus VAT Sipp fee, waived for accounts above £30,000, and customers get £100 in trading credits a year, though fund dealing costs £4 and share dealing £10.
Freetrade removed account fees for its Sipp in January 2026 and made access to mutual funds free too, positioning it as an alternative to bigger platforms. Its foreign exchange fee is 0.99 per cent on the free plan, and it offers no drawdown support.
Hargreaves Lansdown has cut its account fee to 0.35 per cent, stepping down to 0.25 per cent above £250,000 and 0.1 per cent above £1 million, with share and bond holdings capped at £150 a year. It introduced a £1.95 fund dealing charge but cut share dealing from £11.95 to £6.95. Its customer service team is available six days a week.
Interactive Investor introduced new fees on 1 February 2026: a Core plan at £5.99 a month for portfolios up to £100,000, and a Plus plan at £14.99 a month above that, with Isa and Sipp accounts now available within the same subscription. It is offering cashback of between £100 and £3,000 for savers who open a Sipp and deposit or transfer at least £20,000, an offer that closes on 31 August 2026.
InvestEngine, which offers only ETFs and charges no account fee, now allows Sipp transfers from more than 20 providers including AJ Bell, Fidelity and Interactive Investor, having previously accepted transfers only from Hargreaves Lansdown and Vanguard. Prosper charges no account fees or dealing fees and refunds ongoing charges on 30 index funds from providers including Blackrock and Vanguard, though it does not offer shares and is app-only.
Other platforms to consider
This is Money also flagged Bestinvest, Fidelity, Trading 212 and Vanguard as worth considering. Fidelity charges £7.50 for a one-off online share deal but only £1.50 within a regular savings plan. Trading 212 has recently launched a Sipp. Vanguard charges £4 a month below £32,000 and 0.15 per cent above that, up to a maximum of £375 a year, but only offers its own funds.
What pension investors are buying
Data from Interactive Investor's Sipp customers, as at 30 June 2026, showed Tesla was the most-held stock, Royal London Short Term Money Market the most-held fund, Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust the most-held investment trust and Vanguard FTSE All World ETF the most-held ETF.
Interactive Investor's Sipp Index for the fourth quarter of 2025 and first quarter of 2026 found allocations to ETFs increased among customers in both accumulation and drawdown, while customers sold individual equities and cash holdings rose slightly, which the firm suggested may have been driven by uncertainty over the Middle East conflict.
Craig Rickman, a personal finance expert at Interactive Investor, said: "We should note that while cash-like investments can hold an important place in any well-balanced portfolio, allocating too much over long periods can drag on investment performance, harming overall growth."
Tax relief and contribution limits
Most savers get pension tax relief automatically at the 20 per cent basic rate, with higher rate taxpayers able to claim more through self assessment. A higher rate taxpayer earning £90,000 who contributes £20,000 in a tax year would have £4,000 in tax relief claimed automatically and could claim up to a further £7,946 through self assessment, cutting the real cost of the contribution.
The annual allowance caps contributions that qualify for tax relief at £60,000 or 100 per cent of earnings, whichever is lower. For people earning above £260,000, the allowance is reduced by £1 for every £2 earned above that threshold, down to a minimum of £10,000.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed in the Autumn Budget on 26 November 2025 that national insurance contributions will apply to pension contributions above £2,000 from April 2029, as part of changes to salary sacrifice rules.
Access, inheritance tax and pension age changes
Savers cannot access money in a Sipp until the minimum pension age, currently 55, which rises to 57 from April 2028 for anyone born on or after 6 April 1973. At retirement, options include a tax-free lump sum of up to 25 per cent of the pension, capped at £268,275, drawdown, uncrystallised funds pension lump sums, or buying an annuity, which Sipp providers do not sell directly.
The lump sum allowance of £268,275 applies once total pension savings exceed £1,073,100, replacing the lifetime allowance that was abolished in April 2024.
The state pension age is currently 66 and is rising to 67 between 2026 and 2028 for people born after 6 April 1960. From April 2027, pensions will be brought into inheritance tax, meaning they will form part of an estate and could face a 40 per cent charge, though not all estates will be large enough for the tax to apply.
