Where to buy, hold and store crypto in the UK

• Every platform on this page is FCA-registered. Binance is not: it has been closed to new UK customers since 2023. Registration is an anti-money-laundering check, not a safety net: no platform’s crypto is FSCS-protected.
• Buying the same £100 of bitcoin costs anywhere from about 10p to over £4 depending on the route. Cheapest verified right now: Robinhood’s 0.1% and Revolut X’s 0.09%; paying by debit card is the expensive way everywhere.
• Where you keep coins after buying matters as much as where you buy, and two platforms here (Robinhood, and eToro without its 2% wallet fee) won’t let coins leave at all.

Buying crypto in the UK is easy now. Buying it without quietly overpaying (and without stranding your coins somewhere they can’t leave) still takes ten minutes of reading, because platforms make their money in the gaps between what they advertise and what a trade actually costs. “Zero commission” platforms earn on the exchange rate. Apps with clean fee schedules charge triple for the convenience of a card. And two of the friendliest apps on this page don’t support withdrawing coins to your own wallet at all, which matters more than any fee if you ever want to actually hold what you bought.

This page compares the major FCA-registered platforms on what they verifiably charge and what they actually let you do, then deals with the question that follows: leave the coins where you bought them, or move them. Fees were checked against the platforms’ own published schedules in August 2026, worth saying plainly, because two big ones changed their prices this summer and most comparison sites are still printing the old numbers. Education, not advice; we hold no position in any platform here and there are no affiliate links on this page.

The rules of the game

Anyone selling crypto to UK customers must be registered with the FCA for money-laundering supervision, and since 2023 must show you risk warnings and give first-time investors a 24-hour cooling-off period. That’s why every signup now feels like being warned off. The big absence is Binance: never FCA-registered, closed to new UK customers since October 2023, though it says it will apply under the new regime. That new regime is the backdrop to everything here: full FCA authorisation opens for applications on 30 September 2026 and becomes mandatory in October 2027, and no platform converts automatically. Expect this page to change as that shakes out.

Understand what registration does not mean. It is not a solvency guarantee and it is not compensation cover. The FSCS never protects crypto, on any platform, full stop. The UK got its own small reminder in July 2025 when FCA-registered app Ziglu went into special administration with a £2.2m hole, its yield-product customers left as unsecured creditors. Registered is the minimum bar, not a promise.

The platforms compared

Gemini has left. It announced in February 2026 that it was withdrawing from the UK, EEA and Australia: UK accounts went withdrawal-only on 5 March 2026 and closed on 6 April 2026, with customers pointed towards eToro. If you still hold anything there, it should already be out. We have removed it from the table because it is no longer a place a UK reader can buy.

Crypto.com also serves the UK as an FCA-registered platform, but publishes so little of its current UK fee schedule that we can’t put honest numbers in the table: its card buys have carried fees around 3%, and its separate exchange product prices closer to the pro tiers above. When a platform makes its prices this hard to check, that is itself information.

Where the catches are

Four patterns explain almost every surprise cost. The spread: “zero commission” means the platform’s margin lives in the exchange rate: Robinhood’s 0.1% headline is real, but the rate you trade at includes an unpublished markup, which is why it can be cheap and still not free. The card premium: paying by debit card costs about 3.75% at Kraken; fund by bank transfer instead, which is free everywhere here. The interface tax: the same platform often charges very different prices in its simple app versus its pro interface: Kraken’s 1% app fee versus 0.80% on Pro, Coinbase’s few-per-cent instant buy versus 0.60% on Advanced. The pro interfaces look intimidating and take twenty minutes to learn; that twenty minutes is the best-paid time in retail crypto. And the weekend: Robinhood’s conversion fee triples outside market hours. Buy on a weekday.

Hold it there or move it?

Once you own coins, they sit with the platform’s custodian, mostly in cold storage, all of it outside any compensation scheme. Whether to leave them is a genuine trade-off, not a purity test.

If you decide to move it, these are the three picks from our self-custody guide, where the full comparison lives:

Leaving coins on a registered exchange is reasonable for small amounts and active trading: it’s convenient, recoverable when you forget a password, and the big platforms’ custody practices are serious. The case against is history: Celsius and FTX froze and fell in 2022 holding customer coins, and Ziglu proved in 2025 that FCA-registered UK platforms can fail too. When an exchange fails, “your” coins become a queue position among creditors.

Moving meaningful long-term holdings to keys you control removes the exchange from the equation entirely (that is the actual point of crypto) at the price of taking on responsibility for the keys. Our self-custody guide is honest about who should and shouldn’t take that on, and our withdrawals guide covers the mechanics of getting coins out cleanly.

Which makes the fact-based pick simple: if the ability to leave matters to you, buy where the door exists. Coinbase, Kraken and (with limits) Revolut let coins out. Robinhood doesn’t at all; eToro charges 2% at the exit for a subset of coins. Cheap gets you in; check what gets you out.

Common questions

So which one is actually cheapest?

On verified numbers today: Revolut X (0.09%) and Robinhood (0.1% + spread) for buying; Kraken Pro and Coinbase Advanced (0.60–0.80%) for anyone who wants cheap and the ability to withdraw coins. The most expensive common route on this page is a debit-card purchase on a simple interface: up to forty times the cheapest. The gap between platforms is small next to the gap between routes on the same platform.

Which is safest?

The honest answer: they’re more alike than different. All are FCA-registered, all custody most coins in cold storage, none carries FSCS cover for crypto. Revolut is unique in that your uninvested pounds there sit in an actual UK bank with £120,000 of FSCS protection. Beyond that, safety is mostly in your hands: strong unique password, app-based two-factor authentication, and not keeping life-changing sums on any single platform.

Why isn’t Binance on the list?

Because it can’t legally take new UK customers and hasn’t been able to since October 2023. It says it will apply for authorisation under the new regime; if that lands, this page will change. Existing UK accounts still function, but its pound deposits and withdrawals have been unstable for years: not a foundation we’d suggest building on.

Does buying crypto put me on HMRC’s radar?

Since January 2026, yes, literally: UK platforms now collect customers’ details and report holdings and transactions to HMRC. Buying isn’t taxable (tax happens when you sell, swap or spend at a gain), but the reporting is automatic either way. Our plain-English tax guide covers what actually triggers a bill.

Fees and policies checked against the platforms’ own published schedules and the FCA in August 2026, including the July 2026 Kraken Pro fee rise that most comparison sites haven’t caught up with. This page is reviewed on a schedule and updated when prices or rules change. It is education, not advice. There are no affiliate links on this page; if that ever changes it will be disclosed here, in line with our affiliate disclosure and editorial policy.