Stash charges a flat $12 per month. Acorns runs $3 to $12 per month depending on the plan. Robinhood charges no monthly subscription. Since none of the three asks for a large deposit to open an account, the monthly charge is usually where a comparison between them starts.
Fees, Account Types, and Trade Timing Side by Side
| Feature | Robinhood | Acorns | Stash |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum investment | None | None | $1 |
| Recurring fee | None ($5/mo for Gold) | $3 to $12 per month | $12 per month |
| What you can buy | Stocks, ETFs, options, crypto | Five prebuilt ETF portfolios | Stocks and ETFs |
| Trade timing | Real time | Portfolio-based | Four daily trading windows |
| Retirement accounts | Traditional, Roth | Traditional, Roth, SEP | Traditional, Roth |
| Custodial accounts | Not listed | Yes | Yes |
| Bank-style account | FDIC-insured spending account | Checking | Online banking |
Flat Monthly Fees and What Each Tier Buys
None of the three charges commissions on trades. The cost difference is the monthly charge, and because that charge is flat, its weight depends on how much is actually invested.
On a large balance, a monthly subscription barely registers. On a small account funded a few dollars at a time, it claims a visible share of the money going in, and it stays put whether the balance grows or shrinks. Which of those two cases an account falls into is the difference between background noise and a real drag.
Robinhood has no monthly fee at the basic level. Acorns prices by feature set: the entry Invest plan covers Round-Ups and a basic investment account, the $3 per month plan adds an IRA (Acorns Later) and a checking account (Acorns Spend), and the $6 per month plan adds custodial accounts for investing on a child's behalf.
Stash charges a single $12 per month price that bundles a taxable investment account, the Stock-Back card, a banking account, and personalized advice.
The subscription isn't the only cost, either. The ETFs inside any prebuilt portfolio carry their own fund expenses, the way funds do everywhere, and that sits outside what the app charges.
What You Can Buy and When Trades Execute
Robinhood covers stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency, and trades execute in real time. If a piece of news moves a stock at 10 a.m., that's the app of the three where a buy or sell order goes through when you place it.
Stash handles stocks and ETFs, but transactions run through four daily trading windows rather than instantly, and whether those windows are available depends on market conditions. In practice, an order waits for the next window to open instead of filling on the spot.
Acorns doesn't compete on trade timing at all. It offers five premade ETF portfolios and rebalances them as needed to keep each mix on target, so there's no individual security to buy or sell on a given morning.
Taxable Accounts, IRAs, and Custodial Accounts
All three offer a taxable brokerage account, and all three offer traditional and Roth IRAs. Past that, the differences get specific:
- Acorns is the only one of the three with a SEP IRA, which matters for self-employed people and small business owners.
- Acorns and Stash both offer custodial brokerage accounts. Reaching the custodial tier at Acorns means paying for the $6 per month plan.
- Robinhood Retirement accounts don't include crypto trading, unlike the standard Robinhood account.
Each app also pairs its investing accounts with a spending or banking product: an FDIC-insured spending account at Robinhood, checking at Acorns, and online banking at Stash.
Two of the Three Match Retirement Contributions
Robinhood Retirement advertises a 1% match on qualified deposits, an unusual feature for a retail brokerage account rather than an employer plan.
Acorns runs a comparable program called Later Match on contributions to an Acorns Later IRA: 1% of new contributions with a Silver subscription, and 3% with a Gold subscription. Stash doesn't offer a contribution match.
A match is real money, but at Acorns it's tied to the subscription tier, so the higher match sits behind the higher monthly price. Same arithmetic as the fee question above, pointed the other way.
Stash's Stock-Back Card Pays Rewards in Stock
Stash's Stock-Back debit card pays rewards in fractions of stock instead of cash. Spend at a public company and the reward comes as stock in that company; spend somewhere that isn't available as stock and the reward lands in a default investment instead.
Any stock earned this way is held in the Stash Invest account, and it accumulates there without the cardholder placing an order.
Neither Robinhood nor Acorns has an equivalent.
Round-Ups and Automated Portfolios at Acorns and Stash
Acorns is built around finding money people wouldn't otherwise invest. Link a payment card, and each purchase rounds up to the nearest dollar; once that spare change reaches $5, it gets invested. Recurring automatic investments can run alongside Round-Ups.
Stash also supports round-ups and automatic investments, and adds Smart Portfolios, discretionary managed accounts that Stash rebalances and where dividends are reinvested. It provides portfolio analysis and recommendations too, though the diversification analysis feature doesn't itself rebalance anything.
Robinhood doesn't offer automated portfolios or automatic rebalancing. Every buy and sell decision is the account holder's.
Low Minimums and Fractional Shares at All Three
Robinhood and Acorns list no minimum investment, and Stash lists $1. All three support fractional shares, which is what makes those small minimums usable: a deposit worth less than one share still buys part of one, instead of sitting in cash until it covers the full price.
Margin, Research, and Cash Interest Sit Behind Robinhood Gold
Robinhood Gold costs $5 per month and adds professional research, margin trading on the first $1,000 of margin, and 3.35% APY (as of 02/11/26) on uninvested cash. Earning that interest requires an actual cash balance, since a margin balance leaves no cash to earn on, and the rate can change at any time.
Robinhood is the only one of the three that offers margin at all. The money in a margin trade is borrowed from the broker, so gains and losses both apply to a position larger than the cash behind it, and the borrowed portion has to be repaid either way.
Acorns and Stash have no comparable feature to compare against.
Picking Stocks, Prebuilt Portfolios, or a Bit of Both
- Robinhood fits someone who wants to pick individual investments and control exactly when trades happen, in a taxable account or an IRA. It offers no help building a diversified portfolio, so a new investor looking for guidance won't find it here.
- Acorns fits someone who wants a prebuilt, rebalanced ETF portfolio instead of individual picks, and it's the only one of the three with a SEP IRA.
- Stash sits between the two: individual stocks and ETFs, managed Smart Portfolios, IRAs and custodial accounts, plus the Stock-Back card, at a $12 monthly price and with trades limited to daily windows.
Robinhood makes trading easy, Acorns makes not deciding easy, and Stash does some of both while turning debit spending into stock.
What each of those conveniences costs depends on the balance it's charged against, since a flat monthly fee is either trivial next to the account or a visible bite out of it. Investing carries risk in all three cases, and none of these apps changes that.
