The main thing to bear in mind with Stakeholder Pensions when comparing them to traditional Personal Pensions is that costs are lower and they typically give you more flexibility. 

Stakeholder Pension providers are only allowed to charge you a maximum of 1% of your pension policy’s value as their annual charge for managing your policy. This is significantly lower than what is charged by many Personal Pension providers.

What is more, Stakeholder Pension providers are not allowed to punish you through charges for moving money in and out of your pension policy or for stopping and starting payment contributions. Also, they cannot penalise you for choosing to retire early. 

Another major difference to traditional Personal Pensions is that your contributions can be as low as £20. You can take out as many Stakeholder Pension plans as you want so long as you are within your maximum annual contribution of £3,600.

A final major difference is the amount you are allowed to contribute each year – for a Personal Pension this is set as a percentage of your annual income while for Stakeholder Pensions you can invest upto £3,600.