You can own a piece of Apple, Amazon, or Starbucks for $1

Three apps that make investing as simple as online shopping

You use Amazon. You drink Starbucks. You carry an iPhone. You already know which companies are good because you buy from them every day.

What most people don’t realize is that you can own a piece of those companies for as little as $1. Not a mutual fund. Not a complicated options contract. An actual share — or a fraction of one — of the companies you already know and trust.

It’s called fractional investing, and it changed who gets to participate in the stock market. You don’t need thousands of dollars. You don’t need a financial advisor. You don’t need to know what a P/E ratio is. Three apps have made it possible to start investing with pocket change, with zero commissions and no account minimums.

We compared the three most popular ones to help you decide which is worth opening.

Best stock broker apps

What fractional shares are and why they matter

A single share of Amazon costs over $180. Apple is around $170. For most of the stock market’s history, you had to buy a whole share — which meant you needed hundreds or thousands of dollars just to own one company.

Fractional shares changed that. Instead of buying a full share, you buy a dollar amount. Put in $5, and you own $5 worth of Amazon. Put in $1, and you own $1 worth of Apple. You get the same proportional gains (or losses) as someone who owns 100 shares. The only difference is you started smaller.

This is what made investing accessible to everyone, not just people with large portfolios. And it’s why platforms like Public have made it their core feature.

Three apps worth comparing

All three of these platforms offer commission-free trading and fractional shares. The differences come down to what else they offer and how they handle your orders behind the scenes.

What happens after you open an account

Opening a brokerage account takes about 5 minutes on any of these platforms. You’ll enter basic personal information (name, address, SSN for tax reporting — this is required by law for all brokerage accounts) and connect a bank account for funding.

Once approved (usually instant or within a day), you can deposit money and buy your first fractional share. On Public, that means browsing for a company you recognize — Apple, Amazon, Starbucks, Nike, Disney — and buying as little as $1 worth.

From there, you can invest as much or as little as you want, on your own schedule. There’s no monthly fee, no required deposit amount, and no pressure to trade frequently. Most people start small, see how it feels, and go from there.