I am not a financial advisor, this is not advice. This post is just for fun, I’m just a weird dude who enjoys talking about finances. For further advice, please seek a professional financial advisor. Don’t sue me.

If you haven’t seen my previous blog about micro investing, check that out as it will provide some further background into this blog.

Early last year I wanted to run an experiment throughout the year between Raiz and Spaceship to see which platform I preferred for micro investing. I did this so I knew which was a better one to recommend to friends and so I’d have something neat to write about. I deposited $500 into both Raiz and Spaceship at the start of the year to watch them grow throughout the year and to play with the app.

Note about Commsec Pocket

I should note the reason I didn’t add Commsec Pocket into this experiment was because it required me to have a Commonwealth Bank account and at the time I didn’t want to sign up to get access to it. Otherwise, Commsec Pocket has some cool features like a larger variety of investments and easy tracking of investments in Commsec, allowing you to track your investments in one place. The platform also has cheap fees under 1k, so consider using them as a platform when deciding on a micro investing platform.

The Fun Stuff

So if you’re after a TL:DR, Spaceship wins by a long shot not only investment performance but in fees as well, simply because there isn’t any under 5k. Here are the graphs, Spaceship on the right and Raiz on the left.

/img/Raiz%20vs%20Spaceship%20361fd8ccaa65478fbc0390681c0d5fd2/Untitled%201.png

Spaceship was set up on the Universe platform and Raiz was set to an aggressive portfolio. Both did have a referral reward in both, Spaceship being $5 in December, and Raiz being $2.5 about a year before I began the experiment. The returns speak for themselves, however, what about the fees?

Fees

Spaceship has 0 fees when the account balance is under $5,000 AUD, with reasonable fees once your balance is over that threshold.

/img/Raiz%20vs%20Spaceship%20361fd8ccaa65478fbc0390681c0d5fd2/Untitled%202.png

Source: https://www.spaceship.com.au/voyager/

Raiz fees are $2.50 per month if the account is under $10,000 AUD, with fees increasing once your balance is above that threshold. It should also be noted the fees are backdated if your balance is too low and will be charged when you load the account with more money. I learned that after having $2.50 in the account as a referral bonus for about a year and was charged over $25 after setting up this test. The fees are not deducted from your Raiz account, they are taken from your bank account you’ve transferred money from.

/img/Raiz%20vs%20Spaceship%20361fd8ccaa65478fbc0390681c0d5fd2/Untitled%203.png

Source: https://raizinvest.com.au/fees

Conclusion

Overall, this experiment went quite well and I had a lot of fun tracking the progress throughout the year. I am honestly blown away with the returns from Spaceship, however, it makes sense since they are so aggressively in tech stocks which had a great year last year. Both platforms are easy to use with Raiz having more features available that Spaceship is missing such as auto round up and shop back rewards. I recommend checking out both of these platforms if you’re in the market for a micro investing platform.