Sharesies vs Hatch vs Stake: Which NZ Investing Platform Actually Fits You

I opened accounts on all three of these platforms and put the same amount of money into each. Then I watched what happened — to the fees, to the experience, to my sanity trying to navigate three different apps simultaneously.

This is not a theoretical comparison. This is what I found after using them side by side.

The Landscape in One Paragraph

Sharesies is the everything-platform. NZ shares, Australian shares, US shares, ETFs, managed funds, KiwiSaver, and crypto — all under one login, all in one app. Hatch focuses almost entirely on US shares and ETFs with a clean, no-nonsense interface. Stake is the Australian-born US specialist that gives you a USD wallet, which changes how fees work. Between those three approaches, you have the entire spectrum of what NZ retail investing looks like right now.

Where the Money Leaks

All three charge brokerage — the fee per trade — and a foreign exchange fee — the cost of converting NZ dollars into US dollars. The difference is in how those two costs interact, and that interaction matters far more than any headline number.

Sharesies charges 1.9% of the trade value as brokerage, but with caps. On US shares, the fee caps at US$5 — which kicks in on any order above about US$264. On Australian shares, the cap is AU$15 above roughly AU$805. On NZ shares, it is NZ$25 above about NZ$1,316. The percentage model means very small trades are cheap — but large trades hit the cap quickly and then the cap is what matters. The foreign exchange fee is 0.5% on every conversion between NZD and a foreign currency.

Hatch charges a flat US$3 per trade for up to 300 shares, and an extra US$0.01 for each share beyond that. The FX fee is 0.5% — applied when you deposit NZD (converting to USD) and again when you withdraw (converting back). No percentage scaling, no caps — just a flat number. For auto-invest orders, fees are capped at 1% of the order value.

Stake charges US$3 per trade up to US$30,000, and 0.01% above that threshold. The FX fee is 1% — charged only when you deposit NZD into your USD wallet and when you withdraw back to NZD, with a minimum of US$2 per conversion. Once your money is in USD, you can trade without paying any additional currency conversion fee. That is a fundamentally different model from the other two.

Hatch

US$3 per trade. 0.5% FX. Owned by Fisher Funds. US shares and ETFs only.

Hatch is the most straightforward of the three by a clear margin. You sign up, you transfer money, it converts from NZD to USD, you buy shares, you own them. There is no subscription to think about, no plan to optimise, no choice paralysis around what tier you should be on. The platform is clean, the information is well-organised, and the educational content is genuinely useful if you are still learning.

The flat US$3 fee means Hatch pulls ahead as trade sizes grow. Once you are investing more than a few hundred dollars at a time, that flat number becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of your investment. If you are the kind of investor who puts in a few hundred dollars a month into the same ETF and leaves it alone, Hatch is hard to beat on simplicity and cost for US-only investing.

Hatch is a New Zealand-owned platform, FMA-licensed as a Discretionary Investment Management Service, with customer funds custodied through a US-regulated broker. They handle the W-8BEN tax form — the document that stops the IRS from taking a larger share of your dividends — as part of the onboarding process.

Stake

US$3 per trade under US$30,000. 1% FX on deposit and withdrawal only. No per-trade FX. Australian company, FMA-licensed for NZ. US shares only.

The 1% FX fee looks worse than it often is in practice. If you deposit NZ$5,000 into Stake, you pay about US$50 in FX — and then your money sits in USD and you can trade without paying another cent in currency conversion until you eventually withdraw. On Hatch or Sharesies, that same NZ$5,000 would cost about US$25 in FX going in, but every subsequent sale triggers another 0.5% conversion back.

For someone who buys once and holds, Stake is more expensive on FX. For someone who trades actively — buys and sells multiple times without withdrawing — Stake's model becomes cheaper because you are not paying FX on every individual trade. The trade-off is real and it rewards a very specific kind of investor.

Stake also has an optional premium tier called Stake Black for about NZ$15 a month. It includes analyst ratings, extended hours trading, and priority customer support. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on how much you trade.

The platform itself is polished, the app is responsive, and the sign-up process is quick. Stake also covers the W-8BEN fee that some platforms charge for filing your US tax status. It is a small thing but it removes a point of friction at account setup.

Sharesies

1.9% brokerage with per-market caps. 0.5% FX. All three major markets plus managed funds and KiwiSaver.

Sharesies is the platform you pick when you do not want to pick a platform. It does everything. NZX shares. ASX shares. US shares. ETFs. Managed funds. KiwiSaver. Crypto. Kids accounts. One login, one app, one place to see everything.

The optional monthly plans change the cost equation considerably. The NZ$3 plan covers transaction fees on NZ$500 of buy and sell orders plus NZ$1,000 of auto-invest orders each month. The NZ$7 plan covers NZ$1,000 of buys and sells plus NZ$3,000 of auto-invest. The NZ$15 plan covers NZ$5,000 of buys and sells, NZ$10,000 of auto-invest, and adds NZX market depth and US live pricing — features that matter if you are actively trading rather than passively accumulating.

If you are putting in NZ$200 a month, the NZ$3 plan covers you and you pay basically nothing beyond the FX fee and the subscription. If you are putting in NZ$2,000 a month, the NZ$7 plan gets you most of the way there. The plans make Sharesies competitive on cost for regular, modest investors — the opposite of what its uncapped 1.9% percentage fee would suggest.

The trade-off is that the plans are an optimisation puzzle. You need a rough sense of how much you invest each month and whether auto-invest or manual orders make up the bulk of your activity. If that sounds like homework you do not want to do, Hatch's flat model is simpler.

Sharesies is also the only platform of the three that gives you direct access to NZ and Australian shares alongside the US market. If you want one login for everything — some Meridian Energy, some Vanguard ETFs, some Apple — Sharesies is the only option that delivers that.

Three Investors, Three Answers

The small regular investor. Putting in NZ$50 to NZ$200 a fortnight, mostly into ETFs, wants to set and forget. Sharesies on the NZ$3 plan. The subscription covers the brokerage and the percentage model barely registers. The NZ market access is a bonus.

The lump-sum investor. Puts in NZ$2,000 to NZ$10,000 at a time, maybe quarterly, buys individual US stocks and holds them for years. Hatch. The flat US$3 fee is a rounding error on those trade sizes, the FX is competitive, and there is no subscription to manage.

The active trader. Buys and sells frequently, moves in and out of positions, wants the lowest friction. Stake. The 1% FX hit on deposit is absorbed by the fact that you never pay FX on individual trades. If you are making regular trades without withdrawing to NZD, that matters more than the deposit fee.

None of these three profiles are boxes you need to fit into. The point is that the cost structures are different enough that you should match your behaviour to the platform, not the other way around.