By Bo Starr, Co-CEO of Grifin. Last verified August 17, 2026.

Acorns is cheaper for a small balance, and it isn't close: its entry tier costs $3 a month while Stash now offers exactly one plan at $12 a month. Stash only makes sense if you'll actually use the advisor guidance, the Stock-Back card, and the kids accounts bundled into that $12.

Full disclosure before anything else: we make Grifin, another investing app in this category, one that links the cards you already use through Plaid and automatically buys fractional shares of the public brands you spend at, inside a real brokerage account. It gets one sentence in the argument below and no vote in the verdict. This comparison is here because most pages ranking for "Acorns vs Stash" are pricing a version of Stash that no longer exists.

What does each app actually cost in 2026?

Acorns runs three tiers: Bronze at $3 a month, Silver at $6, and Gold at $12, confirmed on acorns.com on August 17, 2026. Stash is the one that changed. Plenty of well-ranked reviews still describe a $3 Growth plan and a $9 Stash+ plan. Those are gone. When we checked stash.com/pricing the same day, Stash listed a single plan: $12 a month, or $108 billed annually. There's also a 0.25% annual advisory fee on Smart Portfolios once the balance hits $1,000, layered on top of the subscription. So the entry-price comparison is $3 versus $12, which settles the "cheaper" question before we even get to what the money buys.

How much does a monthly fee hurt a small balance?

More than most people think, because flat fees don't scale down. On a $500 balance, Acorns Bronze costs $36 a year, which works out to 7.2% of your money annually. Stash's $144 a year on that same $500 is 28.8%. For context, a typical robo-advisor charges 0.25%, and even expensive mutual funds rarely clear 1%. The fee stops stinging as the balance grows: at $10,000, Acorns Bronze is 0.36% a year and Stash is 1.44%. The takeaway is simple. Under a few thousand dollars, every subscription dollar matters enormously, and the $9-a-month gap between these two apps compounds into real money you didn't invest.

What do you get for Stash's $12 that Acorns' $3 doesn't include?

A genuinely bigger bundle. The Stash plan includes personalized guidance, a retirement match of up to $225 a year, two kids custodial accounts, a $10,000 life insurance policy, and the Stock-Back debit card, which pays 0.125% to 1% back in stock when you spend on it. Stash's own plan page values those card rewards at up to $120 a year, which is the honest ceiling on what the card contributes. Acorns Bronze gets you the core round-ups mechanic and automated ETF investing, and you climb to Silver or Gold for things like the stronger IRA match and family accounts. If you'd use most of Stash's bundle, $12 buys a lot. The trap is paying $144 a year for a bundle and using one feature of it.

When is Acorns the right pick?

When you're starting small and mostly want the investing to happen without you. Round-ups plus a recurring deposit into a pre-built ETF portfolio is the whole product, and at $3 a month it's the cheapest automated entry point between these two by a factor of four. If your balance is under a few thousand dollars, if you don't need a debit card from your investing app, and if "just make it automatic" describes what you want, Acorns wins this matchup. It's the answer for most people asking the question in this title.

When is Stash worth $12 a month?

When you'll use the bundle as a bundle. The clearest case is someone who wants to switch their everyday spending to the Stock-Back card, wants custodial accounts for two kids, and will actually message the guidance team instead of guessing. Run the math against your own life: the retirement match alone can return up to $225 a year, which more than covers the $108 annual price if you contribute enough to earn it. Stash is also the pick if you want to graduate into choosing your own stocks inside the same app, since it offers self-directed trading alongside its managed portfolios and Acorns mostly doesn't below its Gold tier.

Is there anything cheaper than both?

Yes, and an honest comparison has to say so. Fidelity and Charles Schwab charge no subscription at all, with fractional shares from small dollar amounts, and a free brokerage plus an automatic transfer replicates most of what a $3 tier does if you're willing to set it up yourself. Both support recurring investments, so the do-it-yourself version is only manual once. A third option worth knowing about is Grifin, which charges a flat single-digit monthly subscription and buys fractional shares in the publicly traded brands you already shop at, so it's answering a different question than either of these two. The reason people still pay Acorns or Stash is behavioral, not mathematical: the apps make the deposit happen, and for a lot of us, the deposit that happens beats the cheaper one that doesn't.

The verdict stands: Acorns for small balances, Stash for committed bundle users, a free brokerage for anyone who'll do it themselves.

Facts about other apps checked against their own pricing pages on August 17, 2026.