How to Get Free Stocks
Investing is easier to do today than ever. So easy, in fact, that there are several apps and websites that will award you with free stock!
We won’t dive deep into the details of each app/website that you can get free stock from; we have review articles for most of these if you want to learn more.
Instead, we’re going to briefly summarize each service and explain in detail how you can get free stocks on each app.
But first, maybe we should explain to you what micro investing is.
What is Micro Investing?
Micro investing is simply investing with small amounts of money, up to only a few dollars at a time.
It’s meant to “democratize” investing by lowering the traditional barriers to entry in the investing world such as fees and deposit amounts.
In addition, they tend to provide educational resources to help the average person better understand the markets, keep up with news, and make more informed financial and investing decisions.
Micro investing apps all have their unique features and tools, but they all aim to put investing power in the hands of average person.
We have a more in-depth article on micro investing you can check out if you want to learn more.
For now, let’s talk about getting you some free shares of stock.
Robinhood
Robinhood might be the best pure investing app for beginners. It’s completely free to sign up for, although they offer a premium plan with more features and the ability to trade on margins.
It’s also completely free to trade. Yep, they charge no fees/commissions on your trades. Buy and sell stock, ETFs, and even cryptocurrency without throwing away a penny in broker fees!
How to Get Free Stocks With Robinhood
When you first sign up, you earn 1 free share of stock from a random company.
It won’t always be some obscure stock, either. Robinhood might award you with a share of any stock it has, including large companies or companies with high-ticket stock like Apple, Netflix, or Tesla.
What does that mean for you?
Well, you could earn a share of stock that’s worth a few bucks, but there’s a small chance you’ll get something worth a few hundred per share!
If you just need a quick cash boost and you aren’t interested in keeping the stock, selling one share of something like Apple could put a few hundred dollars into your wallet.
Free stock doesn’t stop at signup, though.
Robinhood lets you invite friends to earn more free stock. Once they sign up, you’re both awarded a free share of stock. It won’t be the same stock, but hey, it’s free!
You can earn up to $500 in free stock before they cut you off.
Not a bad way to jump start your investment portfolio!
Webull
Webull draws inspiration for its name from the concept of “bull markets”, aka markets that are trending upwards. The “We” part is a nod to making investing more accessible to everyone, or in other words, “we”.
Like Robinhood, Webull doesn’t charge any commissions for trading.
However, Webull’s geared more towards the technical trader (technical trading is a broad trading style that involves using historical data and trends to predict future asset prices); it provides plenty of technical research for these types of traders.
If you’re interested in learning how to trade with technical analysis and want free stock, Webull might be for you.
How to Get Free Stocks With Webull
Webull awards you with a share of free stock if you sign up through a referral link. You’re very likely to win a stock that’s only worth a few dollars, but there’s still the possibility of winning one that’s $50+.
You can earn another free share of stock by depositing at least $100 in your Webull account within 30 days of opening it. This time, you could win a stock worth up to $1,000 per share, although the chances shrink with higher-priced stocks.
But don’t worry if you only won stocks worth a few bucks, because you can get more by inviting your friends.
Webull lets you earn up to $1,000 in free stock, double that of Robinhood.
Sign up on Webull today to earn some free stock!
Stockpile
Every robo-advisor or micro investing app finds some way to put a new twist on investing. Stockpile’s is gift cards. You can actually get someone a gift card loaded with fractional shares of stock for their birthday or for the holidays.
A cool gift that’s also educational!
And yes, they award you with fractional stocks. That means you have just as much a chance of earning shares of Apple as you do earning shares of some obscure, small company.
Granted, you’ll only have a sliver of an Apple share, but hey, it’s free!
Speaking of free stocks, that’s what you’re here to learn about, so keep on reading to find out how to earn free stocks on stockpile.
How to Get Free Stocks With Stockpile
Stockpile offers $5 in free stock when you buy your first stock on their platform. Alternatively, you can buy one of the aforementioned gift cards of at least $10 to earn your free stock.
As for their referral program, you earn $5 per referral.
But unlike other services, Stockpile doesn’t limit the amount of free stock you can win.
So invite all your friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers, neighbors, etc.
Are you a personal finance blogger? This could serve as a nice income stream to help you build your wealth.
Lastly, your friends or family might get you a Stockpile gift card for your birthday or a holiday. It’s free stock!
Acorns
Acorns is a micro-investing app known for its “round-up” feature. This feature takes your “spare change” from purchases made with your linked card and moves it from your checking account to your investment portfolio.
For example, if you spend $7.65 on your lunch, Acorns automatically draws $0.35 from your checking and puts it into your investment account.
Acorns has a lot of educational content as well.
How to Get Free Stocks With Acorns
Acorns is quite innovative in all aspects of micro investing, even free stock. We’ll get to that in a second.
Acorns first awards you with up to $5 in free stock just for signing up. Easy enough.
Similar to other investing apps, you can invite your friends and family to earn additional free stock.
Now, for the innovative method of earning free stock. It’s called Found Money.
How does Found Money work?
Acorns has partnered with over 350 companies, including behemoths like Apple, Amazon, and Groupon to reward you with free investment capital if you shop with them.
It works like round-ups, except you’re getting free money to invest, rather than just automating investments out of your own funds.
Stash
Stash is geared towards beginner investors, hands-off investors, and socially conscious investors.
It’s most well-known for allowing you to invest based on your values and preferences. To do this, Stash renamed its ETF offerings to names that are more closely related to their holdings. For example, the iShares Global Clean Energy Fund (an ETF with companies developing renewable energy) is called Clean & Green on Stash.
But how about that free stock?
How to Get Free Stocks With Stash
Stash awards you with $5 free for signing up and making your first investment.
They have a standard referral program as well; each referral that opens a qualifying account earns you $5 you can invest in stocks and ETFs. You can earn up to $500 in free investment capital per year.
Like its competitor Acorns, Stash innovates in the free stock department with it’s Stash Debit card.
Ever heard of a cashback credit card?
Stash’s Stock-Back program will reward you in a similar fashion with free “stock-back” when you make qualifying purchases with the Stash Debit card.
For example, if you buy something from Walmart, you’ll earn a bit of free Walmart stock in your Stash account.
But what if you make a purchase at a non-public company, like a local mom and pop shop?
That’s fine! Stash will reward you with stock-back in one of Stash’s ETFs.
To start earning stock back, all you need to do is sign up for Stash and open a Stash bank account.
They’ll then send you your debit card so you can earn free stock on every purchase!
M1 Finance (Free $10 Bonus)
M1 Finance is a commission-free robo-advisor/micro investing app. It’s greatest feature is it’s “pie-investing” focus; you can select from several hand-picked portfolios or create your own. Each one lets you adjust the weights of each investment in the portfolio to your liking.
Once you’ve done so, you can set recurring investments into that portfolio. But M1 Finance doesn’t just stick your money in the investments; each time your investment hits your account, M1 Finance allocates money to each asset in a way that rebalances the portfolio weights.
They offer fractional shares just like Stockpile as well.
How to Get Free Stocks with M1 Finance
M1 Finance awards you $10 to invest with just for signing up. To earn your bonus, you have to sign up through our link, create your account, fund your account with 90 days ($100 minimum for taxable accounts, $500 for IRAs), and keep that deposit amount for 90 days.
If you’re doing micro investing right (aka setting and forgetting your investing), you’ll earn your $10 pretty passively.
Their referral program is nice, too. You earn $10 per referral that completes the steps outlined above, and they also earn their $10 when they complete them.
TD Ameritrade (Bonus)
TD Ameritrade is a robo-advisor with a massive investment selection. They supplement their offerings with a huge library of educational content, updates, and various tools.
You can technically open an account without depositing a penny. However, you do have to deposit a certain amount upon opening your account to earn your free stock, as we’ll explain next.
How to Get Free Stocks with TD Ameritrade
TD Ameritrade offers both cash and commission-free trades as your signup bonus. The exact amount of your cash rewards varies depending on your initial investment:
- Deposit $3,000 – $24,999: Earn 500 commissions-free trades
- Deposit $25,000 – $99,999: Earn a free $100 on top of 500 commission-free trades
- Deposit $100,000 – $249,999: Earn a free $300 on top of 500 commission-free trades
- Deposit $250,000+: Earn a free $600 on top of 500 commission-free trades
We’ve seen them offer even more for those deposit levels, though.
TD Ameritrade’s referral program rewards you with free stock for inviting others to join. It dishes out your reward in one of two ways, depending on your preferences:
- $50 in investment capital
- 10 commission-free trades
Being able to trade commission-free is basically free money, which is basically free stock as we’ll explain below.
No-Fee ETFs
No-Fee ETFs are offered on several of the platforms we’ve gone over. While you don’t directly earn free stock for investing in No-Fee ETFs, you’re saving money that would normally be hitting a broker’s bank account.
That means you have more money to invest in stock, or in this case, in ETFs.
But as you might know, ETFs are funds that represent buckets of different assets, usually stocks.
Therefore, investing in No-Fee ETFs is almost the same as getting free stocks.
The same logic applies to any other fee-free types of investments, such as No-Fee Dividend Reinvestment Plans. These take your dividend payments and reinvest them (a popular retirement investing strategy), but without charging your commission or management fees.
Which One Should I Sign Up For?
That’s an easy one to answer. You should sign up for all of the services we listed!
Well, you should in theory. Don’t drain your savings to open an account with something like TD Ameritrade just for the free stock, though.
Those with little money should take advantage of services like Acorns, Webull, Stockpile, and M1 Finance to build up a portfolio of free stocks.
From there, it’s up to you whether you want to let the stocks grow or sell them for a nice cash injection into your bank account.
