Recurring Purchase Features Compared
Standing orders remove the decision that costs most beginners money. Implementations differ in ways that matter.
A scheduled purchase is the single feature that most improves outcomes for ordinary buyers, because it removes discretionary decisions. Implementations vary considerably.
What to compare
The funding source. Whether the schedule draws from a fiat balance you maintain, or directly from a bank account. Direct debit removes a manual step and adds a dependency.
The execution method. This is the one that matters. Some platforms execute recurring purchases through their simplified interface, which carries a spread. Others execute on the order book.
The difference is frequently several times the trading fee, applied to every purchase, forever.
The fee treatment. Some venues charge a different rate for recurring purchases, in either direction.
The schedule options. Weekly, fortnightly, monthly, and whether you can choose the date.
Pausing and resuming. Whether it is straightforward, which matters when circumstances change.
Failure handling. What happens if funding is insufficient. Silent failure means a missed month you do not notice.
What we test
We set up a recurring purchase, let it run for several cycles, and compare the executed price against the order book mid price at that moment.
That comparison reveals whether the venue is executing on the book or through a quoted price with a margin, which is not usually stated.
What we found
The gap between the best and worst implementations, measured over a year of monthly purchases, exceeds any difference in advertised trading fees between the same platforms.
A recurring purchase executing through a simplified interface is convenient and expensive. One executing on the order book is convenient and cheap.
The alternative
Where a platform’s recurring feature is expensive, placing a limit order manually on the same date each month achieves the same result at a lower cost.
It requires remembering, which is exactly what the automatic version exists to avoid. Whether the saving justifies the discipline depends on the amounts involved.
Why we rate this feature highly
Because it is behavioural rather than technical. Every discretionary purchase decision we have tracked, across our own accounts and in the accounts of people who have written to us, has underperformed the scheduled ones.
A venue that makes scheduling easy and executes it cheaply, such as venues supporting external addresses, is doing more for its customers’ results than any interface improvement.
Products covered here are bought at full retail price and used for real transactions before anything is written. There are no affiliate links on this site, no sponsored placements and no review units. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed at the top of the article.