Best Investment Apps for Teens With Parental Controls and Education (2025)

Teaching a teenager to invest used to mean handing over a custodial account and hoping for the best. Today's apps take a smarter approach: supervised autonomy. They give teens real market exposure — fractional shares, ETFs, even crypto in some cases — while letting parents set boundaries, approve trades, and track progress.

We tested four of the most popular teen investing platforms against criteria that matter: fees, age minimums, parental controls, and educational depth. Here are the things actually worth buying.

The Best Investment Apps for Teens

1. Fidelity Youth Account — Best Overall for Older Teens

Fidelity's Youth Account is the closest thing to a professional brokerage designed specifically for 13-to-17-year-olds. There are zero fees, zero commissions, and no monthly subscription — a rarity in this space.1 Teens get a real brokerage account with access to stocks, ETFs, and Fidelity's research tools, while parents get read-only monitoring and the ability to set alerts.

The standout feature is the Youth Learning Center, which includes bite-sized lessons on diversification, compound interest, and risk management. Fidelity doesn't allow options trading or margin, which keeps the guardrails sensible. When the teen turns 18, the account converts seamlessly to a standard Fidelity brokerage account.

Specs: Age 13–17 | No fees | Parental monitoring (alerts, read-only access)

2. Greenlight — Best for Comprehensive Financial Training

Greenlight started as a debit card for kids and evolved into a full financial platform. The Investing tier (part of the Greenlight Max and Infinity plans) lets teens buy fractional shares of stocks and ETFs — but only with parental approval for every trade.1 Parents can also set a custom dollar limit per trade.

What sets Greenlight apart is the chore-and-allowance system that ties real-world work to investable money. Teens learn that earning comes before investing. The app includes educational quizzes and a "Stock Research" section that explains companies in plain language. The trade-off: plans start at $9.98/month, making it the priciest option here.

Specs: Age 5+ | $9.98+/mo | Parental approval required per trade

3. BusyKid — Best for Younger Teens Learning the Work–Wealth Link

BusyKid is built around a simple premise: kids do chores, earn real money, and invest it. The app lets children as young as 5 buy fractional shares of real stocks with no trading fees.2 Parents fund the investment account and can review activity, but BusyKid's controls are lighter than Greenlight's — there's no per-trade approval gate.

The educational angle is more implicit than explicit: the lesson is that work produces money, and money can grow. For $4/month (or $48/year), you get chore management, allowance, and investing in one app. It's a solid first step for families who want to introduce the concept of investing without overwhelming a younger teen.

Specs: Age 5+ | $4/mo | Parental monitoring (no per-trade approval)

4. Stash — Best Educational On-Ramp for Beginners

Stash isn't a teen-specific app, but it's one of the best tools for any beginner — including teens — who wants to learn how to invest. The app offers educational content that guides users through every step, from opening an account to building a diversified portfolio.3

Teens (with a parent opening a custodial account) can start with as little as $1, buying fractional shares of thousands of stocks and ETFs. Stash's "Learn" section covers topics like asset allocation, dollar-cost averaging, and market psychology in digestible formats. The $3/month Starter plan keeps costs low, though parents should note that Stash lacks the chore-management features of Greenlight or BusyKid.

Specs: Age 18+ (custodial for teens) | $3/mo | Educational content, no parental trade controls

Comparison Table

Why These Apps Matter

The biggest barrier to teen investing is risk — both real and perceived. Fractional shares solve this: instead of needing $500 for one share of Apple, a teen can buy $10 worth.1 That lowers the stakes and makes experimentation possible.

The second innovation is gamified learning. Greenlight's quizzes, Fidelity's bite-sized lessons, and BusyKid's chore-to-invest pipeline all turn abstract financial concepts into concrete actions. A teen who learns dollar-cost averaging by investing $5 from mowing a lawn will remember that lesson far longer than one read in a textbook.

A Parent's Guide to Getting Started

The best approach is to learn together. Sit down with your teen, open the app, and walk through the first trade as a team. Set small, achievable goals — "Let's see what happens if we invest $20 in an S&P 500 ETF every month for a year" — and check in quarterly.

A few ground rules we recommend:

• Start with a diversified ETF, not a single stock. It teaches the concept of diversification without the volatility of a meme stock.
• Set a recurring investment amount. Most apps support auto-invest, which reinforces dollar-cost averaging.
• Use the educational tools. Fidelity's Learning Center and Stash's guides are genuinely good — don't skip them.
• Talk about losses. The best lesson a teen can learn at 15 with $50 in the market is how to handle a downturn at 35 with $50,000.

Recomate earns commissions from some of the products featured in this guide. Our picks are based on independent testing and research — we only recommend the things actually worth buying.

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