Acorns Review 2024 (2024)

Paid non-client promotion: Affiliate links for the products on this page are from partners that compensate us (see our advertiser disclosure with our list of partners for more details). However, our opinions are our own. See how we rate investing products to write unbiased product reviews.

About Acorns

Acorns Invest is an automated investing platform for beginners to invest in ETFs through various brokerage account options, including retirement, custodial, and socially conscious (ESG). The app also offers banking options, such as a checking account and a debit card.

Get access to automatic recurring investments, portfolio rebalancing, and dividend reinvesting for short-term and long-term financial goals and low fees.

Invest in low-cost ETFs composed of a blend of stocks and bonds, or opt-in to invest up to 5% of your funds toward a Bitcoin-linked ETF (BITO). However, Acorns doesn't offer access to invest directly in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Rather, you'd be investing in funds that invest in Bitcoin futures.

Getting started with micro-investing on Acorns with the app's Round-Up feature that invests spare change from every purchase after you link your credit or debit card to your Acorns account. Your money will be invested once it reaches at least $5.

Acorns for beginners is one of the best robo-advisors. Instead of paying percentage-based fees, the app charges a flat monthly fee regardless of your account balance. It's a great choice for fee-conscious investors.

Is Acorns Right for You?

Acorns Invest is ideal for investors who want a hands-off investing experience from start to finish without jeopardizing portfolio personalization. With Acorns, you don't have to think about setting money aside every month to invest — the app can handle all of that through round-ups, "found money," and recurring investments.

However, Acorns' investment selection is limited to ETFs and doesn't offer tax-loss harvesting. So, if you're interested in a broader range of investments or more advanced tools and features, our picks for the best online brokerages may have what you're looking for.

Acorns: Overall Rating

Acorns Pros and Cons

Is Acorns Trustworthy?

The Better Business Bureau gives Acorns an F rating. BBB ratings reflect the bureau's opinion of how well a company interacts with its customers, ranging from A+ to F. Therefore, Acorns' rating is the lowest a company can receive.

Note, however, that the bureau considers several factors when evaluating companies. These include licensing and government actions, bankruptcy, advertising issues, and more.

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 claimed that Plaid collected more financial data than necessary from its users. Plaid agreed to pay $58 million to users affected.

Ways to Invest with Acorns

Acorns Invest

After filling out a series of questions to determine how to allocate your assets best, Acorns Invest assigns 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 tiers:

• Acorns Personal: The basic Acorns Invest brokerage option gives individuals access to customized, diverse investment portfolios, banking features, and more for $3 a month. 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 Personal also offers educational videos and tips through its Acorns Learn platform.
• Acorns Personal Plus: For $5 per month, Acorns Personal Plus 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 Premium: On top of the Personal Plus features, Acorns Premium gets you access to Acorns Early custodial accounts and DIY stock investing for $9 per month. Acorns will make bonus match investments up to 50% of your contributions. You'll also get access to educational courses, banking for kids with GoHenry, and a $10,000 life insurance policy. Plus, a no-cost Will option (valued at $259).

All Acorn Invest tiers offer banking features, IRAs, ESG Portfolios, and Round-Ups.

Acorns Later

Acorns Later is a solution for investors looking to save for retirement. Acorns Later offers some of the best IRA accounts like tax-advantaged traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, and SEP IRAs that are maximized 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. After answering a few questions, Acorns Later creates an IRA plan based on your personal information and goals.

Acorns Later is equipped with 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. Similar to the best 529 plans, custodial accounts are generally intended for future educational expenses, such as college tuition or student loan payments. However, UTMA/UGMA's can also be used for travel expenses, car payments, and whatever else as long it directly benefits the beneficiary.

It's important to note that an Acorns Early account can't be accessed until your kid is at least age 18 to 25 (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 Premium user to access custodial accounts, you'll be paying the higher $9 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.

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 like large company stocks, short-term bonds, treasury bond ETFs, and much more.

Acorns ESG Portfolio is a sustainable investing option focused on funding companies that meet environmental, social, and governance standards. Just like some of the 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-link ETF, but the actual amount varies based on your risk level. For example, a conservative portfolio will only have 1% of funds invested.

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 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 you can manually select the transactions that you'd like 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. That means a Round-Up of $0.25 would add $0.50 to your Invest account with a 2x multiplier, for example.

Investing with 'Found Money'

Acorns Invest partners with 26 companies, including Airbnb, Google, Apple, and PayPal. When you purchase with one of these retailers through the Found 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.

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

GoHenry by Acorns

You can open a GoHenry banking account with an Acorns Premium account for kids. A GoHenry account gets kids access to a debit card, a chore tracker tool to earn automated allowances, real-time spending notifications for parents, and educational financial videos and quizzes for kids to learn essential money skills.

GoHenry is a financial tech company that offers digital banking and financial education to kids and teens in the US and UK. The company was founded in 2012. In April 2023, Acorns acquired GoHenry. The business now operates under the name GoHenry by Acorns in the US.

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 Acorn's Invest and retirement account when you get a Might 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, $5, or $9 monthly fee depending on which Acorns tier 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 — Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How Acorns Compares

Acorns vs. Stash

Acorns Invest and Stash Invest are investment apps offering automated investing, round-ups, banking perks, and more. The two diverge, however, 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, $5, or $9 per month.

Robinhood review

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 0 to 5.

Investment platforms usually offer multiple assets, trading tools, fees, and other resources. Some investing platforms are better for more advanced or active investors, while others may better suit beginner and passive investors. Acorns were evaluated with a focus on how they performed in each category.