The Order window is Terrible on Invest Engine, you can’t place orders after 2pm, so if you place your orders before 2pm at the time of execution the price recovers and has gone higher, and after 2pm if the price is good you cant buy because your order is executed next day. The london stock exchange is only open between 8am till 4pm and because of the IE window you technically can only trade between 8am and 2pm . So Basically you are Gambling in the morning that when you place your order before 2pm that the price will stay the same or get better when InvestEngine Get around to placing the orders at 3:15am, This is like Options Gambling where you are betting on what the Price will be in 2 hours time. Very Wrong. IE should give flexible buy times like Trading212. But IE wont do anything on this matter like always…
Totally 
Agree with you and invest engine would be a better platform if allow DIY portfolio to trade like 212 and not pre set times because is the worst picking time they do. So the more people upvote it the best chance it is for a team member of invest engine give the right though to this
Buying ETFs for the purposes of long term investing, which is what the platform is supposed to encourage (and which Trading 212 doesn’t, or at least doesn’t prioritise) should mean the relatively small price variations are basically an irrelevance.
To compare it to gambling is ridiculous, not least because it is equally applicable to many platforms who don’t provide immediate buying and selling (and don’t offer fractional buying to offset any miscalculation by the buyer), and is the only way to buy and sell some investments (eg funds).
Agree somewhat, but I do agree that trading once a day needs to be looked at by IE.. If the market drops one has bought at a higher unit than if one buys after the market has actually dropped. For this reason I have decided to take my 25/26 20k allowance with Trading 212.. IE needs to look at this issue urgently.. Along with being able to buy shares instead of just etf’s for long term customers to remain loyal to IE
@Asr
I don’t agree with you.
For example: AJ Bell offers just 1 single day per month where you can buy for a lower (£1.50) than usual commission (£5, used to be £9.95) - regular investing day - the 10th of each month or the next working day thereafter in case the 10th is a weekend or bank holiday. However, you have to set up your purchase by midnight the day before - so a whole 8 hours before the market opens.
Minimum investment: £25 per investment you want to buy but they don’t do fractional shares so if £25 is not enough to buy 1 single share and cover commission and tax, in case you’re not buying an ETF, then they won’t fulfil the order.
And then there’s no guarantee that your order gets processed straight away at 8am anyway. I have had orders being processed as early as 08:02am and as late as 4:23pm.
For example: Vanguard offers 2 trading windows per day - at 10:15 am and 2:10 pm on all working days. At these times Vanguard offers commission free trading - the order must be placed before these times. They also offer instant buying at any time throughout the day however they do charge commission in these cases. Minimum investment amount: the price of 1 full share of an ETF ( I only buy ETF’s there).
For example: Interactive Investors offers just 1 single day per month where you can buy commission free - the first Wednesday of each month. Any existing regular investments, which were set up before 5 May 2021, will be carried out on the third Wednesday of each month. Minimum investment amount: £25 per investment you want to buy but they don’t seem to do fractional shares so if £25 is not enough to buy 1 single share and cover tax, in case you’re not buying an ETF, then they won’t fulfil the order.
I think the order window is the more important the shorter your investment period - if you put money into something (an ETF/investment trust/single company share etc.) expecting to be able to exploit a share price weakness you see within a short period of time then naturally you would want to be able to buy immediately.
In this case and if you want to not be restricted to a single time per working day for buying shares then Trading 212 does seem to be the better platform for you.
IE has been pretty clear from the get go that they want to encourage long-term investing among their customers and have set up accordingly. If your investment period is longer than short term, especially if you keep buying the same investment again and again, maybe even on the same date each month, then changes in price usually do even out.
Compared to other platforms, see examples above, I think that IE is well set up - daily commission free trading, minimum investment amount of only £1 per investment and offers fractional shares - I think it’s great. But… I also do measure my investment period in years and decades.
I don’t think it needs to be looked at - that’s what they set out to offer and they do offer it.
I think we’re getting into market timing with this - if you want to be able to trade instantly commission free than Trading 212 seems to be the better platform for you. However, they do not publicly declare that they want to encourage long-term investing as IE does - but they do talk a lot about “trading”.
Again, this is not what IE set out to offer - and they have been vocal about their reasons as to why. Surely you knew that when you opened an account with IE (if you have an account)?
You’ve missed the point.
Many ETFs (or at least the ones I have in IE) have daily prices. Time of trade makes little difference.
If you want to the second trading then use T212. It is a different game.
You’re getting your ‘free’ trading either way, different compromises.
Thank you all for your opinions on our Trading window and how the orders get processed. Please be assured, this is reviewed by our teams to always try to improve. In fact, we prioritize long term investing. So, To keep costs low for our clients, we combine all orders into a single trade for each ETF once per day. InvestEngine has no financial interest in the price you receive, we don’t benefit from higher prices or wider spreads. All trades are placed through brokers registered on the London Stock Exchange, and our goal is always to get a fair price for every client.
Hope this help a bit explain our procedures.
@sebastian.ricaurte Exactly 
One thing I will add though is the lag between a direct debit being processed and buy order being executed is pretty slow, my direct debit was set for 27/5/2025 and I’m hoping the buy order will go through today. So best case scenario there’s a 4 day processing window between direct debit and buy order, which to be honest I feel is very slow. It seems to me that the most efficient way to make regular contributions is to set a diary reminder then execute the process manually, that way it can all be done in the same day. Are you looking into how this process can be made more efficient/timely?
I would say IE have the balance right here as they are encouraging investing for the long term and removing the daily noise. Compared to many other platforms, daily free trading at a minimum £1 with fractional shares is a huge leap forward. I remember when I started with Halifax Online and it was probably £10 a trade on a pretty clunky site. The leap and bounds in platforms and investing opportunities open to everyone is amazing! On the DD issue, 4 days, II seems to take the money about 10 days before for its 1 only free trading window of the month, where the minimum is £25. I guess with a DD it is time for it to clear the banking process. 100% big up to IE for the platform they have built and how they operate. Sure there is some fine tuning along the way but I hope they keep true to the low cost, long term investing goal of the savers on the platform. If you want instant trades there is are plenty of other platforms out there that will support you.
Why don’t you just use Trading 212 if that’s the feature set you want? Why try to change this service into something that already exists?