Acorns Review 2025

Acorns Invest is a trusted micro-investing app with competitively priced trades. Its easy-to-use platform offers security and efficiency for beginners and passive investors. 

Business Insider's personal finance team compared Acorns to the best investment apps for beginners, and we found it to be an industry leader for beginner-friendly trading and zero-fee stocks and ETFs. 

While a great option for beginners, Acorn's investment options, personalization, and strategies are limited compared to other apps. Those seeking greater flexibility and trading features should look elsewhere. 

Pros and Cons

Acorns Pros

• Low $5 minimum to start investing
• Personalized, diverse ETF portfolios
• Easy-to-use interface
• ESG portfolios
• DIY trading available
• Automatic saving and investing tools, including "earn money" feature

Acorns Cons

• $3, $6, or $12 monthly fee
• DIY trading and custodial accounts are only available with the Gold plan
• No advanced charting features
• Can't directly invest in Bitcoin

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Acorns Invest Overview

Acorns is one of the most well-known investment apps that caters to beginners and passive traders seeking accessible mobile investment strategies without complex charting tools and dashboards.

Its mobile-first approach to building a diversified portfolio of low-cost ETFs is geared toward those interested in opening their first brokerage account, custodial account, or IRA.

Acorns stands out for its unique micro-investing feature, Round-Up, which invests spare change from every purchase.

Instead of paying percentage-based fees, the app charges a flat monthly fee regardless of your account balance. This is great for large account balances.

However, Acorns is less cost-effective than other beginner-focused investment apps with no subscription fees (like SoFi ). That said, the first subscription tier is only $3 a month.

In 2024, kids' financial wellness platform GoHenry merged with Acorns. Exclusive GoHenry features can now be accessed as part of Acorns Early (more on that below).

Ways to Invest with Acorns

Let's unpack how Acorns Invest works, including membership tier levels and portfolio options. 

Acorns Invest

After filling out a series of questions to determine how to allocate your assets best, assign your funds to a specific portfolio of ETFs.

The robo-advisor then uses these same six funds for every investor but adjusts the asset allocation depending on your goals and risk tolerance. The funds represent a mix of companies, markets, real estate assets, and bonds. 

These are the monthly fees for Acorns subscription plans:

Acorns Bronze: $3/month

The basic Acorns Bronze brokerage option gives individuals access to customized, diverse investment portfolios, and banking features. Earn bonus investments when you shop at over 450 partnered in-app brands with the Acorns Earn feature. Or even discover a side hustle gig with the Job Finder tool. Acorns Bronze also offers educational videos and tips through its Acorns Learn platform. 

Acorns Silver: $6/month

Acorns Silver gets you access to more investing and savings tools, such as an emergency fund, bonus Acorn matches (up to 25% of your contributions), and access to live expert Q&As. 

Acorns Gold: $12/month

On top of the Silver features, Acorns Gold gets you access to Acorns Early custodial accounts and DIY stock investing. Acorns will make bonus match investments up to 50% of your contributions. You'll also get access to educational courses, banking for kids, and a $10,000 life insurance policy.

All Acorn Invest plans include banking features, IRAs, ESG portfolio opportunities, and Round-Ups. 

Acorns Later

Acorns Later offers industry-standard retirement account options and features, making it a solid option for beginners looking to start their retirement-saving journey. It offers some of the best IRA accounts, such as:

• Traditional IRAs
• Roth IRAs
• SEP IRAs

Retirement portfolios are allocated based on your age and retirement savings goals.

Like a standard Acorns Invest brokerage account, Acorns Later accounts offer both Core Portfolios and ESG Portfolios with automatic recurring contributions available. Accounts receive up to $500,000 of SIPC insurance.

Acorns Early

Acorns Early is the platform's UTMA/UGMA custodial account option for investors to save on behalf of a beneficiary. Like the best 529 plans, custodial accounts are generally intended for future educational expenses, such as college tuition or student loan payments. 

It's important to note that an Acorns Early account can only be accessed by children between the ages of 18 and 25 (the age varies by state). So don't invest money you might need to access before then. 

An Acorns Early account offers investing, checking, and retirement savings all in one. Since you have to be an Acorns Gold user to access custodial accounts, you'll be paying the higher $12 per month fee. A plus, however, is that you can open multiple kid's accounts for the price of one. You'll also get full access to Acorns' investing tools, banking features, and educational content.

Unique features of Acorns Early include a debit card, a chore tracker tool to earn an automated allowance, real-time spending notification for parents, and educational videos and quizzes for kids to learn essential money skills. The features were previously part of GoHenry, which combined with Acorns in 2024. 

All Acorns Early accounts are opened as an "Aggressive Portfolio" but will automatically rebalance over time. 

Acorns Core and ESG Portfolios

Acorn's Core Portfolio options were built by financial experts and are managed by firms like BlackRock and Vanguard. Core portfolios include investments such as large company stocks, short-term bonds, and treasury bond ETFs.

Acorns ESG Portfolio is a sustainable investing option focused on funding companies that meet environmental, social, and governance standards. Like some Core Portfolio options, ESG Portfolios are best for the long term. Plus, Acorns ESG Portfolios were built with iShares by BlackRock. 

You can add a Bitcoin-linked ETF to your current Acorns Invest portfolio to further diversify your allocation. Acorns will only invest up to 5% of your money into the Bitcoin-linked ETF, but the amount varies based on your risk level. For example, a conservative portfolio will only invest 1% of funds. 

Acorns Round-Ups

After you've created your Acorns account, you'll have the opportunity to link your bank account, debit card, or credit card. Once your card or account has been linked, Acorns will monitor all your purchases and round up each transaction to the nearest dollar.

For example, if you bought a cup of coffee for $2.25, Acorns would set aside $0.75. Once you've reached a $5 threshold in your Acorns Acorns Invest account, it will be automatically invested in your Invest account portfolio. Acorns says that the typical person invests over $30 per month with Round-Ups alone.

You can set Round-Ups to work with every transaction or manually select the transactions you want to round up. Also, you can tell Acorns how much you'd like to invest when your transactions equal exactly one dollar.

Finally, you can supercharge your Round-Ups by adding a multiplier of 2x, 3x, or 10x. For example, a Round-Up of $0.25 would add $0.50 to your Invest account with a 2x multiplier.

Investing with 'Earn Money'

Acorns Invest partners with 26 companies, including Airbnb, Google, Apple, and PayPal. When you purchase with one of these retailers through the Earn Money portal, the company will invest a percentage of your sales into your Acorns Invest account. It's like a shopping portal, but instead of getting cash back, you get a small amount added to your Acorns Invest account.

Acorns

Each brand is free to set its own investment amount. You can search for Earn Money deals on the Earn Money section of the Acorns app and website or by using the Google Chrome extension. Earn Money rewards are credited to your account 90 to 120 days after purchase.

Mighty Oak Card

Acorn's Might Oak Visa debit card, partnered with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, saves and invests toward your future. Like an Acorn's Invest account, you can enable real-time round-ups to invest your spare change with each purchase. 

Receive an Acorns Invest and retirement account when you get a Mighty Oak debit card. You can even invest directly from your paycheck after setting up a direct deposit with Acorns and automatic investments through the Paycheck split feature. 

Acorns Fees

Acorns Invest requires a $5 minimum investment to start. Investors will also pay either a $3, $6, or $12 monthly fee depending on which Acorns plan level they invest in. It's unusual for an online brokerage to charge a flat monthly fee, but as a result, Acorns doesn't charge a management fee or commissions on trades. 

Acorns Trustworthiness and Security

Acorns Invest is a secure, modern investment app equipped with industry-standard user and asset security protection features, such as multi-factor authentication, regular security audits, security alerts, encrypted data software, and 24/7 oversight from Acorns' Security Operations team.  

A third party also regularly assesses the platform to validate SOC 2 compliance and ensure compliance with FINRA and SEC regulations. 

You can review Acorns' privacy policy on its website for more information. 

The Better Business Bureau gives Acorns an NR rating and flags it for multiple patterns of complaints. Specifically, the BBB found a pattern of complaints from customers who could not liquidate their accounts promptly or were still being charged fees after exiting the program. Acorns responded to these complaints and said it is fixing a bug in its system via a third party and that is increasing its transparency with customers.

While Acorns' slate is fairly clear of lawsuits and scandals, its affiliation with Plaid, a financial service that allows investment platforms and other apps to connect to your bank account, linked it to a class-action lawsuit in 2022. The lawsuit said that Plaid collected more financial data than necessary from its users. Plaid agreed to pay $58 million to users affected.

Google Play: 4.7/5

Apple Store: 4.7/5

Acorns Alternatives

Here's how Acorns compares to other beginner-friendly investment apps. 

Acorns vs. Stash

Acorns Invest and Stash Invest are investment apps offering automated investing, round-ups, banking perks, and more. However, the two investment apps diverge regarding investment choices, fees, and features. 

Stash offers stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies, while Acorns only offers ETFs. You'll pay the same amount to use a custodial account at Acorns and Stash. 

Another huge difference is that Stash also lets you trade on your own. If you're looking to pick and choose the investments in your portfolio, Acorns isn't the best option. Stash best suits those who want access to automated investing and DIY trading, while Acorns better serves hands-off investors who primarily want automated accounts.

Stash Invest review

Acorns vs. Robinhood

Acorns and Robinhood Investing differ in several ways. While Acorns is the best option for hands-off investors searching for automated ETF portfolios, Robinhood strictly caters to DIY active traders who want to exchange assets like stocks, ETFs, options, cryptocurrencies, IPOs, and ADRs.

Robinhood's advisor fees are also cheaper. It doesn't charge commissions for its investments. More advanced investors may be interested in Robinhood Gold, which charges a $5 monthly fee. With Acorns, however, you'll have to pay a monthly fee of $3, $6, or $12 per month.

Robinhood review

Acorns Invest FAQs

Methodology: How We Reviewed Acorns Invest

We examined Acorns using Business Insider's rating methodology for investing platforms to compare and examine account types, pricing, investment options, and overall customer experience when reviewing investing platforms. Platforms are given a rating between 1 to 5. 

Investment platforms usually offer multiple assets, trading tools, fees, and other resources. Some platforms are better for more advanced or active investors, while others may better suit beginners and passive investors. 

Business Insider's Overall Acorns Rating

Tessa Campbell

Investing and Retirement Reporter

Tessa Campbell is an investing and retirement reporter on Business Insider’s personal finance desk. Over two years of personal finance reporting, Tessa has built expertise on a range of financial topics, from the best credit cards to the best retirement savings accounts.ExperienceTessa currently reports on all things investing — deep-diving into complex financial topics,  shedding light on lesser-known investment avenues, and uncovering ways readers can work the system to their advantage.As a personal finance expert in her 20s, Tessa is acutely aware of the impacts time and uncertainty have on your investment decisions. While she curates Business Insider’s guide on the best investment apps, she believes that your financial portfolio does not have to be perfect, it just has to exist. A small investment is better than nothing, and the mistakes you make along the way are a necessary part of the learning process.Expertise: Tessa’s expertise includes:

• Credit cards
• Investing apps
• Retirement savings
• Cryptocurrency
• The stock market
• Retail investing

Education: Tessa graduated from Susquehanna University with a creative writing degree and a psychology minor.When she’s not digging into a financial topic, you’ll find Tessa waist-deep in her second cup of coffee. She currently drinks Kitty Town coffee, which blends her love of coffee with her love for her two cats: Keekee and Dumpling. It was a targeted advertisement, and it worked.

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Elias Shaya

Compliance and Operations Associate

Elias Shaya is a Compliance and Operations Associate on Business Insider's personal finance team in New York. He collaborates with the editorial team to provide timely, accurate, and impartial financial advice to readers ExperienceElias is a point person on multiple personal finance topics, from credit cards to investment products. He ensures editorial content is transparent and accessible through clear and precise language while also complying with regulatory and partner marketing guidelines. Since joining as a compliance fellow in 2022, Elias has played a crucial role in the team’s compliance efforts, ensuring no stone is left unturned. His close attention to detail and broad knowledge of various complex financial subjects help minimize risk for partners while protecting editorial independence so readers get the best possible advice. Expertise: Elias’ expertise includes:

• Credit cards
• Investing
• Loans
• Mortgages

Education: Elias graduated from the College of Staten Island with a degree in International Business.When he’s not reviewing or updating personal finance topics, Elias enjoys traveling, comedy shows, and binge-worthy TV shows.

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