Do you need to be rich to invest?

If 10 years ago you had put £1,000 into a savings account, it would now be worth £1,205. Had you invested it in global stock markets, you’d have £3,350.

That comparison, from investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown, is all well and good. But what if you don’t have £1,000?

It’s easy to feel locked out of investing and, as a result, from so much more.

‘There aren’t many opportunities to grow wealth in this country any more,’ says Gabriel Nussbaum, who creates financial content on social media as That Money Guy.

With buying a home out of reach for many, and ‘gold-plated’ final salary pensions rarely offered outside of government jobs, he sees investing as one of the few opportunities to grow your wealth.

So is investing really only for those who already have money, or is it more accessible than it looks?

Is investing more accessible now?

Nussbaum says that ‘investing is one thing that is better than it was 20-30 years ago’, with more information and education out there, and a wider variety of places to buy and manage investments.

‘In terms of how much you need and the knowledge you need, the bar to entry is the lowest it's ever been.’

The government is also encouraging more people to invest through its ‘savvy squirrel’ campaign.

• Find out more: Our beginner investor's guide

Who's investing and who isn't?

An increasing number of people are venturing beyond savings accounts and into the stock market, and not all of them are wealthy.

If we look at low-and-medium-income households, defined as having an annual household income of £40,000, the proportion investing went from 14% in 2017 to 21% in 2024.

But the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the industry regulator, also found that in those seven years the number of higher-income households investing went from 35% to 44%.

That gap can partly be explained by grim economic realities and the cost of living. If you can’t put food on the table, or don’t have emergency savings, you won’t have money to invest, even if you wanted to.

Yet a study of the FCA’s data by the pension fund Nest found that 2.3m low-and-medium-income households had sufficiently healthy finances to invest. Could you be one of them?

Can you invest with just £1?

One of the most common ways to buy investments is through an investment platform, sometimes referred to as a fund supermarket. 

Using one is similar to shopping online, as you can browse and buy a range of investments. You can then manage them and see how they perform, often using a mobile app.

Using an FCA-authorised platform (which you can check using this tool) means you know you’re not dealing with a scammer. You can also invest within a stocks and shares Isa, so you don’t have to pay tax on your profits.

It’s possible to do all this without paying fees, in the case of a handful of platforms. However, the rest tend to take fees from your investments, rather than making you pay upfront.

More of an issue are the minimum amounts of money required by platforms to start investing in the first place. 

Each year, we review platforms, and our 2026 analysis found this can be as much as £1,000. Nest’s study found that 38% of low-and-medium-income investors held less than this.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, there were several platforms where you could get started with just £1.

Investment platform minimum investments

Finding the right platform

Even if you don’t have enough for a platform’s minimum ‘lump sum’ (one-off payment), you might be able to set up a monthly regular payment instead.

Platforms tend to require lower minimum monthly payments for direct debits, and fees are sometimes reduced or scrapped entirely. Regularly contributing the same amount of money can also help reduce the impact of market dips.

One of those platforms with a £1 minimum is Freetrade, which we named a ‘Great Value’ provider. 

‘The average monthly contribution is around £200,’ says Freetrade’s head of external affairs Alex Campbell. ‘However, one of our most common direct debit amounts is just £25 a month, showing you don’t need to contribute hundreds every month to build a pot.’

Around 75% of Freetrade’s customers are aged 45 or under.

Another platform with a £1 minimum, Moneybox, has also attracted a younger crowd, aged 36 on average. It allows you to ‘round up’ the small change from payments, by connecting to your bank account or credit card, which can then be invested. 

Its director of personal finance, Brian Byres. points out that ‘small habits can make big changes down the line – all you have to do is take that first step.' 

You don’t need to choose the right one first time, as it’s fairly easy to switch platforms later on. That Money Guy’s Gabriel Nussbaum says he took three to four years of actually investing to find his current provider, so you should ‘start on the platform you think is 80% good enough’.

• Find out more: Read our reviews of investment platforms for free, and see which has the lowest fees on our fees comparison page.

How to invest in big companies with less

The world’s biggest companies often have share prices to match: Apple and Nvidia both traded at well over $200 (£148) a share at the time of writing. 

Surprisingly, they’re both dwarfed by chocolate maker Lindt & Spruengli, a share in which would set you back 9,720 Swiss Francs (around £9,163).

But these high share prices no longer matter, because of two innovations. The first is what’s called fractional shares. 

As Freetrade’s Campbell explains, these ‘allow people to buy partial shares of a company without buying a whole share. These are often appealing to first-time investors, as it gives people the opportunity to buy into even the most expensive US stocks with just £1.’

The other innovation is investment funds (of which exchange traded funds, or ETFs, are one type). Funds combine your money with that of other investors to buy shares, with a fund manager doing all the work. 

Your combined wealth can add up to billions of pounds; quite enough to snap up a chocolate factory or two. And you can also buy fractions of investment funds.

Fund managers charge a fee, but this can be less than £1 per year in every £100 invested, paid out of your investment. In return, you get a professional managing that money and access to potentially thousands of companies spread across different industries and regions. 

This ‘diversification’ means that one business failing will have less of an impact on the overall value of your investments.

How much to save first

You need only look back to 28 February, when the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, to find an example of a global market shock. It’s a reminder that investments can and sometimes do reduce in value.

This ‘fear element’, as Nussbaum puts it, is one of the major blockers to investing. 

What matters is that you don’t sell investments while they are down. Markets often recover, but if you’ve sold at a low price, the proceeds will buy you fewer shares once prices recover.

It’s possible that while markets are down, you’re faced with a big expense, from the weekly shop to your car breaking down. This is why you need emergency savings before you start investing –  but how much is open to debate.

Nest’s report on low-and-medium-income households investing noted that the minimum used to be seen as £10,000, which could be putting off investors. It suggested that £2,000 might be a better target, as that level of savings is associated with much lower odds of falling behind on household bills or getting deep in debt.

You could pick your own target, equivalent to 3-6 months of expenses. 

Emergency savings are one way to avoid having to sell up and make losses; another is to treat investing as a long-term process. Five years is seen as the minimum time you should invest for.

Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at Which? Recommended investment platform AJ Bell, explains why: ‘Someone with a short time horizon such as one to three years might experience a market downturn early in their journey and not have enough time to recover from this event before they need to spend the money.’ 

Five years gives you longer to recover and, he observes, even if markets fell a couple of years in, ‘hopefully you would have made a gain earlier in their journey that helps to cushion any setbacks.’ 

This is different to fixed-term savings accounts that lock your money away for five years: most investment platforms can get you your money within a few working days. Long-term investing is more about giving your investments the best chance to succeed. 

• Find out more: Best savings accounts 2026

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Why getting advice can be difficult

There’s one area where having less to invest undoubtedly makes things harder: getting advice on what to invest in.

Only 9% of people get professional financial advice, according to the FCA. This is not necessarily due to cost, with fees typically averaging 2.4% upfront and around 0.8% a year thereafter, usually taken from your investments.

Instead, the barrier is the minimum investment required by many independent financial advisers (IFAs). Just 25% of IFAs would take on someone with less than £49,000 to invest, according to asset management firm Schroders. The FCA found that the average client has £250,000 invested.

There’s plenty of advice available online, from educational content such as that created by Gabriel Nussbaum, to specific recommendations of what to buy, although much of the latter should be taken with a pinch of salt. 

But neither are a personal recommendation- - one that takes your current financial situation and future goals into account.

Some investment platforms, such as Moneyfarm, can recommend specific investments based on your answers to a quiz. This generally covers your goals and attitude to risk but may not cover other areas of your finances, such as debts you should pay off first.

There are several initiatives to bridge the ‘advice gap’ but, unless you’re wealthy, or investing a pension built up over a lifetime, you’ll need to make the big decisions yourself. 

However, thanks to the low minimums required by investment platforms, it’s possible to start with a small enough sum that you can afford to make mistakes.

‘The best way to learn is to do,’ says Nussbaum. ‘You’re going to spend a fiver on a pint this weekend; put a fiver in your investment account instead.’ 

• Find out more: Best stocks and shares Isas 2026 

Get investing in five steps

If you’ve got £5 spare and are feeling inspired, here’s how you can get investing:

1. Read our beginner investor’s guide to check investing is right for you - a savings account could still be more suitable for you.
2. Open a stocks and shares Isa with one of our Which? Recommended or Great Value investment platforms.
3. A low-cost investment fund or ETF that ‘tracks’ a broad market is a simple first investment. Read more about what these are in our investment funds guide and ETF guide.
4. If you can afford it, consider setting up a direct debit to invest each month in the investments you’ve chosen.
5. Sit back, relax and resist the urge to constantly check how your investments are performing. Reviewing them once a year is usually enough.