Acorns Review 2024: Is Acorns Worth It?

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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. 

Introduction to Acorns Invest

Acorns is one of the most well-known investment apps. It 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. 

Acorn’s low-cost ETFs are composed of a blend of stocks and bonds. You can also opt to invest up to 5% of your portfolio in a Bitcoin-linked ETF (BITO). 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.

Acorns stands out for its unique micro-investing feature, Round-Up. After you link your credit or debit card to your Acorns account, Round-Up invests spare change from every purchase. Your money will be invested once it reaches $5. 

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). 

Is Acorns Invest Worth It? 

Acorns Invest is worth it for beginners interested in micro-investing and building a diversified portfolio of stock and bond ETFs. It offers a hands-off experience from start to finish while considering financial goals, risk tolerance, and time horizon.  

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, “earn money,” and recurring investments. Plus, it’s easy to view the performance of your investment, the projected growth, and reinvested dividends. 

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.  

How Acorns Works

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, 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 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:

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, treasury bond ETFs, and more. 

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 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 manually select the transactions 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. 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.

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 Pros and Cons

There are various pros and cons associated with investing in Acorns. 

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

Acorns Trustworthiness

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 for more information. 

The Better Business Bureau gives Acorns an NR rating as it is currently responding to complaints. BBB ratings range from A+ to F and reflect the bureau’s opinion of how well a company interacts with its 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 claimed that Plaid collected more financial data than necessary from its users. Plaid agreed to pay $58 million to users affected.

Acorns Invest vs. Other Investment Apps for Beginners

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

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

Acorns Invest FAQs