Which Investment App Each State Searched for Most

Search interest in investing apps didn't settle on a single name in 2021. A study of Google Trends data pulled that May found Acorns the most-searched app in eight states and Robinhood in six, with 22 apps in all leading at least one state and several leading exactly one.

Acorns Led in Eight States, Robinhood in Six

The gap says something about how the two apps got attention. Robinhood's came in a burst.

It was a household name for a few weeks in January 2021, during the GameStop and WallStreetBets story, and it added more than 6 million users in the first two months of the year before search interest cooled as negative coverage piled up. Even after that drop, its average search popularity was still running well ahead of 2020.

Acorns got there a different way. Instead of one enormous surge, it held a steadier share of search volume across the full 12-month window, which is what carried it to the top spot in more states. There was real user growth behind it too.

The company passed 9 million users after adding 600,000 accounts in the first six weeks of 2021, which its founder described as the biggest growth quarter in company history.

Twenty-Two Apps Topped at Least One State

The headline names weren't running away with it. Four more platforms led multiple states: TD Ameritrade and JP Morgan Chase with five each, Stash and E-Trade with four.

Count everything and 22 separate investing apps and platforms were the most-searched option in at least one state. Some appear exactly once: Ellevest in Wisconsin, tastyworks in Washington, Merrill Edge in Rhode Island. No national favorite was dominant enough to crowd the others off the map.

The Full State-by-State Results

The table below lists each state (plus the District of Columbia) and the investing app with the highest search interest there.

Four Census Regions, Four Different Leaders

Grouping the states by standard U.S. Census regions and taking the app that led the most states in each one produced four winners, with no overlap.

That's an established discount broker, a fund giant, an app built around automated round-ups, and an online brokerage: four fairly different approaches to investing, one per region.

Search Volume Counts Curiosity, Not Accounts Opened

Search volume doesn't measure accounts opened, money invested, or satisfaction. A state can top the list for a brand because people are researching it, comparing it, reading news about it, or trying to find the login page.

That matters when you read a map like this one. Take a state where Fidelity or Vanguard came out on top. Plenty of those searches likely come from people who already know the name because it administers a workplace retirement plan, not from people shopping for a new app.

A newer app with no offline presence has to earn every search from scratch, which makes its appearances on the map mean something slightly different.

Brand lineups also shift. Since this data was collected, some of the platforms named here have been rebranded or folded into other firms, so a similar study run today would produce a different map.

Acorns Automates Small Contributions and Skips Stock Picking

Acorns is aimed squarely at people who haven't invested before, which fits its broad, steady search interest.

Automation is the whole design: once an account is set up, money goes in without the user doing anything, and spare change from everyday purchases can be rounded up and invested alongside it. Getting started doesn't take a large sum.

The trade-off is control. Stock picking isn't part of the product. A user sets how aggressive the portfolio should be and Acorns builds it from there, with no facility for adding a particular company or leaving one out. Anyone who wants to build a position in one particular company is looking at the wrong tool.

Stash Offers Fractional Shares and More Account Types, With Fees

Stash sits somewhere between hands-off and hands-on. It leans on educational material for users, offers a wide range of account types and ways to earn, supports round-up style investing, and allows fractional share purchases. For shares that cost $1,000 or more, fractional investments start at $0.05.

Against that, some features carry fees, and the platform expects more involvement from the user than a fully automated service does.

Stash's own terms and conditions also carve out transactions the round-up feature doesn't apply to, among them prepaid cards, money orders, P2P payments, and cash withdrawals.

Robinhood Offers Commission-Free Trades, Crypto, and Options

Commission-free stock trading is the base of the account, and Robinhood layers options and cryptocurrency buying and selling on top of it, an unusual combination for a platform that's also accessible to first-time investors.

Nothing is required to open an account, though funding one isn't instant: a large deposit can take several days to clear before the money is available to trade with. The catalog has holes too, since certain kinds of stock aren't offered at all, and the platform accepts investors in the United States only.

How the Rankings Were Built

The study pulled Google Trends data on May 11, 2021, covering 48 search terms tied to investing apps and platforms, with the time frame set to the past 12 months. Where two terms tied in a state, they were compared head-to-head inside Google Trends to break the tie.

So the window runs from roughly mid-2020 through mid-May 2021, a stretch that includes the January 2021 meme-stock episode.

That's part of why Robinhood's numbers look the way they do, and part of why a study of a different 12 months might rank things differently.

No National Winner, and Three Apps for Different Investors

Twenty-two winners across 51 jurisdictions, and four regional leaders with no name appearing twice.

The three platforms profiled above also sort fairly cleanly by user: Acorns for someone who wants contributions handled automatically and doesn't want to pick stocks, Stash for someone willing to be more involved and to pay for certain features, Robinhood for someone who wants to trade stocks, options, or crypto themselves.

A study from 2021 says nothing about what these platforms charge now. Fees get rewritten, account types come and go, the list of securities a platform carries changes, and the terms on a specific account appear only in that provider's current disclosures.

Investing through any of these apps involves risk, including the loss of money invested.