Is Trading 212 Halal? Invest, ISA, CFDs & Interest (2026)

Last updated: October 26, 2026

Is Trading 212 halal or haram?

Neither, on its own. Trading 212 is a commission-free broker, authorised and regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority (Trading 212 UK Ltd, firm reference number 609146).¹ Under AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21, buying and holding shares in a permissible company is halal, so an account for buying shares is a permissible tool.²

Where it gets tricky is a handful of features inside the app. Some pay you interest. One lends your shares out for interest. And the CFD account is leveraged trading with an interest charge every night. So use the plain buy-and-hold parts and leave the rest alone.

Trading 212 accounts: which are halal?

Good news if you're worried about borrowing by mistake: the Invest account has no margin. The only leverage Trading 212 offers is in the CFD account,³ so if you never open one, you can't end up borrowing.

Four Trading 212 features to switch off or avoid

1. Interest on uninvested cash

Trading 212 pays interest on cash you haven't invested yet in Invest, Stocks & Shares ISA, Cash ISA, SIPP and CFD accounts. That cash sits in bank deposits or qualifying money market funds.⁴ It's riba (interest), so keep it off.

You have to opt in, so it's off unless you turned it on. To check, open the app, tap the menu, go to Interest on cash, and make sure it isn't enabled. If it is, choose Don't pay me interest.⁴ Already received some? Give the same amount to charity rather than keeping it.

One more reason to skip it: from 6 April 2027, HMRC will take a flat 22% charge on interest paid on cash inside a Stocks & Shares ISA.⁵

2. Share lending

In the Invest account, Trading 212 can lend your shares to other traders, usually so they can short sell. It earns interest on the loan and passes 50% to you. Lent shares are backed by US Treasury collateral.⁶ Lending shares out for an interest fee doesn't count as a halal sale or a partnership. You also lose the voting rights on those shares while they're lent. Keep it off.

It's opt-in and only exists in the Invest account, since ISAs can't enrol.⁶ To turn it off, open the Interest on shares dashboard. It takes 2 trading days to wind down.

3. CFDs

A contract for difference (CFD) is a leveraged bet on whether a price goes up or down. You never own the share. Hold a position overnight and you pay overnight interest to fund the leverage.⁷ No ownership, plus leverage paid for with interest, is why mainstream Islamic finance standards treat CFDs as haram. They're also very risky: Trading 212's own warning says 77% of retail CFD accounts lose money.³

Watch out for this one. Search for SPUS (the S&P 500 Shariah ETF) in Trading 212 and a CFD version pops up.⁸ Buy that and you get a leveraged CFD with an overnight interest charge, and none of the actual fund.

4. The Cash ISA

The Trading 212 Cash ISA puts your money in bank deposits and passes the interest on to you.⁹ There's no halal version. If you want a tax-free halal ISA, use the Stocks & Shares ISA and hold screened shares or Islamic funds. For cash, Lifetime and Stocks & Shares ISAs more generally, see are ISAs halal?

How does Trading 212 make money?

Trading 212 charges no commission and no custody fee on Invest, ISA or SIPP accounts.¹⁰ So where does the money come from? Its help centre spells it out: "On the Invest and Stocks ISA side, our main revenue streams are the 0.15% FX fee ... and share lending proceeds, while on the CFD side, it's the overnight interest fees and CFD spread."¹¹

Trading 212 also places uninvested client cash with banks and qualifying money market funds.⁴ Its revenue article doesn't list interest on that cash as a main income source, and it doesn't say what happens to the interest on cash from people who opt out. We don't know the answer. What you do control is what you receive: leave interest off, and keep idle cash low by investing it or withdrawing it.

So if you stay in Invest or the Stocks & Shares ISA, keep share lending off and buy GBP-priced shares or ETFs, you pay Trading 212 nothing at all. US shares cost 0.15% in FX each time your pounds are converted to dollars or back.¹⁰ The 0.5% stamp duty on London shares goes to HMRC, not Trading 212.¹⁰

What you buy matters more than the broker

A halal account full of bank shares is still not halal. Every holding needs to pass two screens, both set out in AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21:²

1. Business activity: no conventional banking or insurance, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pork or adult entertainment as a core business.
2. Financial ratios: interest-bearing debt under 30% of market cap, interest-bearing deposits and securities under 30% of market cap, and non-permissible income under 5% of revenue.

Take a few big UK names from our October 2026 screening. Unilever, AstraZeneca and RELX passed. HSBC, Lloyds and Diageo failed. Results change when companies report new figures, so check a stock before you buy it. We go through the full method in are stocks halal?, and our UK halal stocks list covers the FTSE.

Doing those checks yourself is the hard part. Results change every few months, and a pie of 30 stocks means 30 checks every time. That's the problem Amal Invest solves.

US halal ETFs are not available on Trading 212 UK

SPUS, HLAL, UMMA and MNZL are US-based funds. Trading 212 shows them, but UK retail investors can't buy them. Why? A fund from outside the UK can only be sold to UK retail investors if it's a "recognised scheme", and the FCA confirmed in 2025 that "there are currently no US funds that are recognised schemes in the UK".¹² The UK's new Consumer Composite Investments rules, in force from 6 April 2026, don't change that.

You've got two halal options instead:

• UCITS halal ETFs listed in London, like ISWD, HIWS, IGDA and HIUS. (UCITS is the EU fund standard that UK investors can buy.) See our list of halal ETFs on Trading 212.
• Individual US stocks. UK accounts can buy US shares directly. Amal's Trading 212 pies hold screened US stocks, so you get something close to a halal US fund without the US ETF restriction.

How to use Trading 212 the halal way

1. Open an Invest account or a Stocks & Shares ISA. Skip the CFD account and the Cash ISA.
2. Leave interest on cash off. Check Menu > Interest on cash after you deposit.
3. Leave share lending off (Invest account only).
4. Buy screened holdings only. Use a screener, a UCITS Islamic ETF, or a halal pie.
5. Recheck individual stocks. A company can fail a screen later. If it does, sell it and purify any gain the screen flags.
6. Purify dividends. Give the non-permissible part of each dividend to charity. AstraZeneca's purification ratio in our screener was about 0.47% in October 2026, for example, so £100 of dividends means about 47p to charity.
7. Pay zakat on your holdings each year. See how much zakat to pay on stocks.

Halal Trading 212 pies with Amal Invest

Amal x 212 creates two Shariah-certified pies in your own Trading 212 account: Grow and Save. Grow is a filtered version of the Fidelity Growth Company Fund and Save is a filtered version of the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation Fund, each with the non-compliant holdings removed.¹³ Those are the only two pies on Trading 212. Other filtered funds, like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100, are on Amal's Pro plan, which runs on Alpaca only.

• Your account, your money. Amal connects using an API key with three permissions: Metadata, Pies - Read and Pies - Write. Amal never moves money or invests for you. Deposits stay in Trading 212.¹⁴
• Invest and ISA. Add a key for your Stocks & Shares ISA and Amal creates the pies there too.¹³
• Kept compliant. Holdings are screened twice a month to AAOIFI standards. When a stock fails, Amal takes it out of the pie and resets the weights. Trading 212 then moves your existing positions toward the new weights gradually, so if you want the failed stock sold straight away, rebalance the pie in Trading 212.¹³
• Your own exclusions. Optional filters for the BDS Movement and Watermelon Index lists, plus a personal blacklist.¹⁵
• One-time fee. $249 once, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. No yearly charge on your balance.

Trading 212 caps each pie at 50 holdings, so an Amal pie usually holds fewer stocks than the fund it's based on.¹³ Not in the UK? Amal also runs on Alpaca. See Alpaca vs Trading 212 to compare.

FAQ

Is Trading 212 haram?

No. Trading 212 is a broker, and buying and holding shares in permissible companies is halal. Some of its features are haram, though: the CFD account, the Cash ISA, interest on uninvested cash and share lending. Avoid those and only hold screened investments.

Is Trading 212 halal in Islam?

Using the Invest account or the Stocks & Shares ISA is halal under mainstream scholarly opinion, based on AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard No. 21. Each holding has to pass Shariah screening, interest on cash has to be off, and you should purify any non-permissible income. If you follow a particular scholar, ask them about your own situation.

Is the Trading 212 Cash ISA halal?

No. The only return on the Cash ISA is interest from bank deposits. For a tax-free halal ISA, use the Trading 212 Stocks & Shares ISA with screened holdings.

Is the Trading 212 Stocks & Shares ISA halal?

Yes, if you hold screened shares or Islamic funds and leave interest on cash off. The ISA is just a tax wrapper, and it doesn't make anything halal or haram by itself. HMRC lets you put up to £20,000 a year into ISAs in the 2026 to 2027 tax year.¹⁶

Is interest on cash at Trading 212 haram?

Yes. It's interest from bank deposits and money market funds. It's opt-in, so leave it off. If you've received some, give that amount to charity.

Are Trading 212 pies halal?

A pie is just a container. It's halal if everything in it is halal. Lots of public pies labelled "halal" never get updated after someone builds them. Amal's Trading 212 pies are screened to AAOIFI standards and updated when a holding fails. To build your own, see halal ETFs and pies on Trading 212.

Can I buy SPUS or HLAL on Trading 212 in the UK?

No. They're US-based ETFs, and no US fund is a recognised scheme for UK retail investors.¹² The SPUS listing you can trade in the app is a CFD, which isn't halal. Use London-listed UCITS Islamic ETFs instead.

How does Trading 212 make money?

On Invest and Stocks & Shares ISA accounts, mostly from the 0.15% FX fee and share lending. On CFDs, from overnight interest and the spread.¹¹ Only share lending and CFDs affect whether your investing is halal, and you can avoid both.

Is Trading 212 safe?

Trading 212 UK Ltd is authorised and regulated by the FCA (firm reference number 609146).¹ Your investments are held in your name. Like any investment, your capital is at risk.

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