The advent of investment apps has led to the democratization of investing in general. You can simply download an app, create an account, connect a payment method, and start investing. Minimum investment balances are either absent or much smaller than with traditional investment.
The issue for you and other investors ultimately comes down to one question: Which investment app is best?
Titan and Robinhood are among the largest and most significant investment platforms. They both make investing on the go with small sums simple and easy. However, as we’ll investigate further, these two companies vary greatly in a few critical aspects, including:
- Actively managed investing vs. DIY
- costs
- the scope of available financial instruments
- minimum deposit (one of these two platforms doesn’t have one)
- assets under the companies’ management
What is Titan?
Titan is an investment platform that offers actively managed stock portfolios. This is one of the key differences between Titan and Robinhood. While they offer you an investment team to actively manage your portfolio, Robinhood only allows you to invest in stocks yourself to do this, Titan changes management fees that are quite low given what you get, making investing more accessible to everyone, including people who don’t know how to invest or self-manage their portfolios. As of 2022, the company was approaching $750 million in assets under management.
Titan’s offer is simple, and its fee structure is transparent. Users can use their services for a 1% fee for balances over $10,000 or just $5 per month for smaller balances. So if you’re curious about what they offer, you can get started with as little as $100. They also offer a 3-month free promotion, so you can test their offer without paying.
In a nutshell, Titan offers low-cost active stock portfolio management. With its low costs and ease of access, anyone can benefit from active management. However, the platform does lack some advanced features that some of its competitors provide, such as tax strategy.
What is Robinhood?
Robinhood is a financial services company best known for its mobile investing services. The online brokerage offers a wider range of investment options than most of its competition. It’s also known for its low costs and the especially low bar for entry.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in California, Robinhood has made more news than Titan and other competitors. The company’s stated mission is to “democratize finance for all.” So far, Robinhood has largely succeeded.
Robinhood has exploded in popularity in the last few years, especially among the young. The lack of fees levied by Robinhood has made it an attractive option for young people who are put off by the fees present in much of the financial industry.
As of January 2022, Robinhood has over $80 billion in assets under management, a figure far ahead of most of its competition. With this balance of assets under management, Robinhood is the outsider most closely competing with more traditional financial institutions like Charles Schwab ($3.8 trillion under management and TD Ameritrade ($1.3 trillion under management).
Titan vs. Robinhood: Pros and Cons
Let’s review some pros and cons of the two mobile apps for investing:
Pros of Robinhood
Below are some of the key advantages of using Robinhood:
- No minimum deposit required
- No sneaky fees, $0 for withdrawal
- Wide selection of over 5,000 financial instruments
- Free stock and ETF trading
- Excellently designed apps that are very easy to use
Pros of Titan
Below are some of the key advantages of using Titan:
- Low costs
- Low account minimums
- Active portfolio management
- 3-month free trial
Cons of Robinhood
Review the disadvantages of using Robinhood as your investment app:
- Have to manage investments yourself without expert help
- More limited product selection than many traditional alternatives
- Poor customer support infrastructure
- It lacks some standard features, such as an extensive educational library
- Has allegedly misled customers in the past
Cons of Titan
Review the disadvantages of using Robinhood as your investment app:
- No phone customer service
- No tax strategy features
- Limited investment options
Titan vs. Robinhood: The Differences
Titan and Robinhood offer many of the same services. However, they also differ decisively in a few areas.
Titan vs. Robinhood: Key Differences
The biggest difference between Titan and Robinhood is the amount of help you receive in managing your investment portfolio. With Robinhood, you have to research individual stocks or EFTs yourself, which requires considerable knowledge and time. Titan removes those obstacles by having experts actively selecting stocks for your investments.
Titan vs. Robinhood: Key Similarities
To start, both of these platforms are very inexpensive and transparent. Titan goes so far as to provide complete historical returns data for all four of its investment strategies. For the most part, their returns are impressive, especially for Titan Flagship, but they don’t try to hide the (short) periods where the returns didn’t look great. Robinhood, for its part, has had its major controversy and SEC charges over failing to disclose how it makes money but has otherwise made good on its promises to users. Regardless, the costs of each platform have remained low.
Ease of access is another key similarity. While Robinhood is easier to start with than Titan, neither of these platforms has unreasonable minimum balances or fees.
If you’re looking for cryptocurrency investments alongside your other investments, both Titan and Robinhood offer them. Titan doesn’t offer individual cryptocurrencies, but one of their four strategies is Titan Crypto, which, as the name suggests, is a crypto-only account. Robinhood Crypto can be used to purchase individual cryptocurrencies.
Perhaps more importantly than the other factors, both of these investment platforms are secure. Titan employs SSL and 256-bit encryption to keep users’ data secure. Robinhood uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) and keeps its configurations and ciphers up to date. Overall, both companies use the most up-to-date security measures to protect user data.
For additional peace of mind for their users, both Robinhood and Titan have comprehensive insurance policies. Robinhood is a member of SIPC, protecting customers’ investments of up to $500,000 in securities protection). Titan is also SIPC protected through Apex Clearing Corporation, but Titan offers the same $500,000 protection and up to $250,000 for cash claims.
Lastly, each platform focuses on offering customers risk tolerance options. If you want to play it safe or take more risks, both platforms offer you that choice.
How to Get Started with Titan
To get started with Titan, you just need to follow these simple steps:
- Visit the Titan website or download the mobile app to create an account
- Connect a payment method
- Select an investment strategy
- Let Titan do the rest
How to Get Started with Robinhood
Getting started with Robinhood is equally simple. You just need to follow these steps:
- Go to the Robinhood homepage to create an account
- Download the app (iOS, Android, or the Web App)
- Start using the resources Robinhood offers and start investing
