Best auto investing apps of 2026

Auto investing apps make it easier for ordinary people to become excellent investors. “Set it and forget it” options can be great for buy-and-hold investors who are not interested in short-term trading.

Building wealth typically requires regular savings and a disciplined approach to investing. Unfortunately, these things are easier said than done.

Below, we break down the three best auto investing apps for 2026 before sharing some additional apps that weren’t on our list but may still be worth considering.

After reviewing more than two dozen of the best brokers and micro-investing apps, we’ve narrowed down the best auto-investing apps to these three.

Acorns is one of the original automated investing apps ever created. It was the first “surplus change” app, where you could round up your spare change and invest in it. Then they started focusing on automated investing as well.

Acorns takes your automated reporting and investments and puts them into low-cost index funds so you can see long-term growth. This is the simple “set and forget” approach that most people looking for auto investing apps are looking for!

The downside to Acorns is the fees. Unfortunately, Acorns isn’t free — you’ll pay a monthly fee that ranges from $3 to $12 per month depending on which plan you select.

Bonus: Right now, Acorns is offering a $20 bonus when you register an account and make your first $5 investment. Stare here>>

M1 Finance frequently tops our ‘best’ investment lists. Its premium interface, low fees, and customizable investment pies make it a great choice for investors looking for a disciplined yet unique investment experience.

M1 Finance allows users to subscribe to “Automatic Investing”. With automatic investing, M1 Finance’s algorithms will rebalance your portfolio any time you have at least $25 cash in the account. This “smart” rebalancing process automatically keeps investors more in line with their stated goals.

M1 Finance also has a monthly fee of $3 per month until you have $10,000 in assets.

Because M1 Finance supports Roth, Traditional, and SEP IRAS, it allows many investors to automate tax-advantaged investments. It also supports individual and joint brokerage accounts.

The Charles Schwab Intelligent Portfolio is a free advisory service for people who have at least $5,000 in their accounts. Intelligent Portfolio makes it easy to set up recurring account transfers.

Users choose from several different pre-designed portfolios that invest in 51 diversified, low-cost ETFs. Whenever funds arrive in the account, Schwab automatically invests the funds to rebalance the portfolio.

However, the app also follows tax loss capping laws to help minimize taxes (only for taxable accounts with balances over $50,000). This type of active investing is somewhat complex when done manually, so it’s good to see bots taking over complex but routine tasks.

The only major drawback of Intelligent Portfolio is the high cash position. Most portfolios hold between 6-30% of the portfolio in cash which can be a drag on the overall performance of the portfolio (especially when the investment horizon is several decades).

Charles Schwab Intelligent Portfolios was also voted Best Robo-Advisor in The College Investor’s annual investor survey.

Griffin It is an automated investment app that turns your daily purchases into stock investments. For example, if you make a purchase on Amazon, Grifin will automatically invest $1 in Amazon stock. Spend the money at Starbucks, he’ll invest $1 in Starbucks stock, and so on.

Grifin makes automatic investing easy for over 400 individual stocks.

Grifin charges a monthly subscription fee of $5, or $60 annually, although you can cancel at any time. There are no other commission fees of any kind. You’ll need to decide if the membership fee is worth it, but transparent pricing is refreshing.

5. Stash

Stash is another long-term investing app that focuses on making things simple and easy. It’s probably the most direct competitor to Acorns, without the zoom feature.

With Stash, you can set up your investment goals and portfolio, and when you deposit money, it will be automatically invested to match your portfolio. They also focus on making investing easier – they simplify investment terms and make things easy.

However, you will pay a monthly fee to invest with Stash. You’ll pay anywhere from $3 to $9 per month depending on which plan you sign up for.

Promotion: You can get $5 from Stash when you sign up and make your first deposit of at least $5 into your personal wallet! Start here >>>

Although we’ve picked out the best real auto investing apps, there are a few that didn’t make it. These honorary accolades are worth applauding because they can be convenient for some investors.

Webull is a great application for automating active trading. With no commissions and a wealth of information, it is the best choice for active traders. But it’s also a great place for investors looking to automate the buying process.

Active trading automation may seem like an oxymoron. But in this case we mean that it allows users to set up buy and sell prices which the app then handles. This is much easier in Webull than in most applications. However, this brokerage does not support fractional shares at this time.

Public offers DRIP, but it doesn’t offer a clear way to set up recurring investments at this time. Part of this may be intentional. The public wants users to buy into the social aspect of investing in the stock market. Automated investing does not fit into that. However, we are seeing this rising star who is already promoting fractional stock investing and commission-free trading.

Most investment platforms these days allow some form of recurring investments. However, great automation means more than just allowing users to automatically transfer money to their accounts. To create our list, we took into account five main criteria:

Micro investing apps specialize in investing small amounts of money. They often give users the ability to purchase fractional shares using just a few dollars at a time. They can also connect your checking account and “bundle” transactions to the nearest dollar and enter the additional amount into your investment account.

The idea behind micro-investing apps is that a little savings goes a long way. In some ways, this is true. However, most people will need to invest more than just spare change to achieve their long-term financial goals.

Although the fees for these apps may seem low on the surface (typically $1-3 per month), when compared to relatively small investment balances, they can be shockingly high. For most people, setting up an automatic transfer of $20 to $25 per week to one of the apps above will produce better results than partial savings.

If you’re serious about building wealth, we recommend using some type of helpful automation to keep you on track to achieve your goals. Simple steps like setting up recurring transfers to your investment accounts can ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

People who enjoy poking around in their investment accounts, reading investment news, and researching new stocks probably don’t need to use specific investing automation techniques (beyond regular savings). If that’s you, you probably trust yourself to buy new stocks and maintain your investment.

However, those who are not disciplined about tracking investments and purchasing new stocks should consider automatic investments. Life happens, but most people want to keep investing even when they can’t stay in tune with their portfolio. For those in this category, auto investing apps are a good fit.