Best Broker for Automated Portfolios in Europe (2026)
This page is about handing the decisions over: someone else picks the funds, sets the weights and rebalances, and you pay for that. It turns on four things — who legally holds the discretion, what the management layer costs, whether you can open it where you live, and how you get out — and the honest finding is that broker-run managed portfolios are far thinner on the ground in Europe than the marketing suggests.
Investing involves risk of loss. This is not investment advice. Currency fluctuations can impact your returns. Discretionary portfolio management means a third party makes investment decisions on your behalf within an agreed mandate; it does not reduce market risk.
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TL;DR
- Scalable Wealth — the only contractually discretionary option here. 0.75% / 0.69% / 0.49% banded, product costs on top. Germany and Austria only.
- Mintos Core ETFs — cheapest by a distance: €0 commission, 0% management fee, €50 minimum, rebalanced automatically.
- eToro Smart Portfolios — no portfolio management fee, $500 minimum, 65+ portfolios, rebalanced periodically.
- Trading 212 Pies — included because everyone assumes it belongs. Trading 212 states plainly that it does not.
- Scalable marks Wealth “not yet available” in France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. The #1 pick is unopenable for most of Europe.
- eToro’s euro account cannot buy Smart Portfolios or CopyTrader at all — you convert to USD at 0.75% to reach a product priced at zero.
- Mintos does not offer pausing or temporary suspension for ETF Portfolios, unlike its other portfolios.
- Mintos positions cannot leave the platform. Fractions may only be sold through Mintos to other platform users.
“Automated” hides three different legal arrangements
Every product on this page runs without you pressing buttons. They differ on something that never appears in the app: who is legally responsible for the decision, and what obligations that creates for the provider.
The provider manages assets on your behalf under a mandate. It selects the instruments, sets the weights and rebalances without asking. This is a regulated investment service in its own right, and it normally requires a full suitability assessment. Scalable Wealth sits here contractually; eToro’s CopyTrader is described by eToro as a limited form of it.
A ready-made allocation built and maintained by the provider, which you buy into as a unit. It rebalances on the provider’s schedule. Mintos Core ETFs and eToro Smart Portfolios work this way. Whether that amounts to discretionary management in the regulatory sense depends on the contract — and in one case here, that contract is not published.
A tool that executes your instructions on a schedule. You chose the instruments and the weights; the platform exercises no discretion and takes on no advisory duty. Trading 212’s Pies are explicitly this, and the terms say so in as many words. It looks the most “automated” of the three and is legally the least.
The best option here is unavailable in most of Europe
Scalable Wealth wins the axis on every measure that matters — and Scalable’s own country websites mark it unavailable in four of the six EU markets this site covers. That is not a footnote. For most readers it decides the page.
| Market | Scalable Broker | Scalable Wealth | What Scalable says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | Available | No unavailability line | Not published as an availability list either |
| Austria | Available | No unavailability line | Not published as an availability list either |
| France | Available | Not available | “Pas encore disponible en France” against the Wealth row |
| Netherlands | Available | Not available | “Not yet available in Netherlands” against the Wealth row |
| Spain | Available | Not available | “Not yet available in Spain” against the Wealth row |
| Italy | Available | Not available | Scalable’s own press release: Wealth “non ancora disponibile in Italia” |
Sources: Scalable Capital’s French, Dutch and Spanish websites, product rows read August 2026; Scalable Capital Italian press release dated 10 September 2025. Germany and Austria carry no unavailability line, but Scalable does not publish an affirmative country list for Wealth either — treat the two DACH markets as “not marked unavailable” rather than as confirmed. These are “not yet” statements, so re-check your own country’s Scalable site before deciding.
Ranked on who holds the discretion, and what it costs
Ranked honestly on the axis, not on availability or on whether we earn anything. Read the availability table above before acting on the order.
Scalable’s special terms for Wealth state that the client wants to make use of financial portfolio management, meaning the discretionary management of individual assets invested in financial instruments on behalf of others. That is the strongest and clearest statement of the arrangement anywhere in this comparison, and it is why Wealth ranks first despite being the most expensive and the least available. Each portfolio is a legally independent business relationship, so a Wealth portfolio and a Broker account at the same company are separate arrangements under separate terms.
- Management fee: banded and applied marginally — 0.75% p.a. up to €100,000, 0.69% above €100,000, 0.49% above €500,000. The flat “0.75%” you see quoted elsewhere is the entry band, not a rate.
- The Gerd Kommer exception: that strategy uses 0.70% / 0.65% / 0.60% with bands at €100,000 and €250,000, and — uniquely among the strategies — the applicable rate applies to the whole portfolio rather than marginally. Worth checking if you are near a band edge.
- Product costs on top: 0.12% (Weltportfolio Klassisch) to 0.54% (Crypto), varying by strategy. Scalable’s ESG strategy page quotes 0.19% ETF costs plus 0.49–0.75% for management and trading, which is the same structure stated on the marketing surface.
- Entry and exit: Scalable’s strategy pages put the entry at €20 a month or a €1,000 one-off — and state that a partial withdrawal which would drop the balance below €1,000 is not possible. In that case you terminate the contract and take the whole amount out, which is available at any time. Portfolio transfer out is priced at €0 plus any third-party costs.
- What the mandate excludes: the investment guidelines prohibit credit-financed transactions, leveraged instruments, short sales, securities financing transactions and anything carrying margin-call or collateral obligations. A real constraint on the manager, in writing.
- Fourteen strategies including Weltportfolio Klassisch, ESG, ZinsInvest, Allwetter, Megatrends, Klima, Value & Dividende, BIP Global and Gerd Kommer.
- Best fit: German and Austrian residents who want an actual mandate rather than a model portfolio, and who are comfortable paying an explicit fee for it.
On cost, Mintos wins outright and it is not close: zero buy and sell commission, a stated zero percent management fee, no custody or holding charge on ETFs, automatic rebalancing and reinvestment, and a €50 minimum. Mintos is authorised by Latvijas Banka for portfolio management among other services, and states that it receives no inducements while providing portfolio management and none at all on ETFs. It ranks second rather than first for one specific reason, given below.
- Why not first: the Terms and Conditions of Portfolio Management are referenced as an integral part of the client agreement but are not published on the legal documents page and could not be located publicly. Scalable’s discretionary status is contractually sourced; Mintos’s is not. We are not inferring a discretionary mandate from a licence list, and neither should you.
- Two different Mintos ETF products, routinely merged: Core ETFs portfolio is the managed one — €50 minimum, automated, rebalanced, Investment plan available, executed at 11:00 EET on Latvian business days. Self-selected ETFs are a separate, unmanaged product with a €1 minimum. Every fee is €0 in both, which is exactly what makes them easy to confuse.
- No pausing. Pausing or temporary suspension is not offered for ETF Portfolios, unlike other Mintos portfolios. That is a genuine limitation on a long-horizon product and it is not on the marketing page.
- You cannot transfer out. Fractions may only be sold through Mintos to other platform users and may not be transferred to another person, and the platform is stated as the sole place of purchase and sale. The only exit is selling and withdrawing cash — which may trigger a taxable event depending on your country.
- Orders are final: once submitted and accepted for execution, a transaction order cannot be cancelled, withdrawn or amended. Investment Plans and unexecuted secondary-market sale offers are the two carve-outs. Materially stricter than most EU brokers.
- Fund costs still apply: the TER is charged by the fund provider and reflected in the daily price rather than deducted from your account. Mintos’s own cost disclosure gives a range of roughly 0.03% to 0.85% a year across individual ETFs.
- Best fit: investors outside Germany and Austria who want a rebalanced ETF allocation at the lowest possible cost, and who are treating it as a satellite holding rather than a locked-in decade.
eToro describes Smart Portfolios as long-term portfolios curated by its analysts, and states directly that they are a diversified way to access market trends without paying portfolio management fees. There are over 65 of them, most created and managed by the eToro Investment Team, with Partner Portfolios built by outside firms — BlackRock provides asset allocation guidance on the Core range, and Franklin Templeton builds the Target Model portfolios. The minimum initial investment is $500.
- The euro problem, and it is the finding of this section: euro funds cannot be used for CopyTrader or Smart Portfolios — those require USD. An EU client holding a local-currency account must convert at 0.75% to reach either product. On the $500 minimum that is $3.75 paid to enter something priced at zero, and it recurs on every top-up.
- One local currency account only: an eToro user may hold a single local-currency account, so an EU client cannot hold both EUR and GBP.
- Rebalancing is periodic, not scheduled: eToro states expressly that rebalancing periods differ from portfolio to portfolio and directs you to each portfolio’s own page. There is no single frequency to quote, and anyone quoting one is inventing it.
- Dividends: dividends on eligible assets held via a Smart Portfolio are added to the portfolio’s cash balance and reinvested into its holdings at the next rebalance — not on receipt. Between those two points the money sits uninvested.
- CopyTrader is a different animal: eToro’s European client terms describe Copy Trading as a limited form of discretionary portfolio management, requiring a full suitability assessment covering knowledge, experience, objectives, risk tolerance and financial situation. Failing it, or declining to answer, blocks copy trading entirely. Smart Portfolios are documented separately and are not characterised that way by any eToro source we read.
- Cash earns nothing in a local-currency account. There is no EUR, GBP, DKK or AUD interest rate published by eToro.
- Best fit: investors who want thematic or partner-built allocations and are already operating in USD, where the conversion cost is a one-off rather than a recurring tax on every contribution.
Pies look like managed portfolios and are frequently listed as such. Trading 212’s own terms disagree in unusually blunt language: Pies are a technical tool, not a managed product; the service is execution-only; no portfolio management and no financial, legal or tax advice is provided; and the firm does not assess whether the feature is appropriate for you based on your knowledge, experience or understanding of the risks. It is included here so you can rule it out deliberately rather than by accident.
- Copying a Pie doesn’t keep it updated: Copy Pie and Model Pies set only the initial state and do not reflect later changes to the source. You are notified when a copied or selected Pie has been updated or rebalanced, and can then review and apply or skip. There is no automatic rebalancing, and Trading 212 states that neither tool constitutes discretionary portfolio management.
- Rebalancing is a button you press: manual rebalancing is available to return a Pie to its target weights after market drift. Self-balancing directs new contributions toward underweight slices, which reduces drift without selling — but the allocation remains your decision throughout.
- The projected return is not what it looks like: the average annual return shown when you set up a Pie is based on the past five years, and slices younger than six months — a recent IPO, for instance — are substituted with the average return of the total equity market. A Pie containing a new listing displays a projection based on market-average returns for a holding that has no such history.
- Model Pies rest on third-party data and embed assumptions about asset-class returns, correlations and variances. They are not personalised, and no guarantee is given on performance.
- Exit friction: fractional shares are liquidated on transfer to another firm or on account closure and cannot be converted to certificated form. Liquidation “may result in additional charges” — and those charges are not priced in the terms.
- Cost: €0 commission, €0 custody. Pie cash sits in your primary currency and conversions are charged at 0.15%, including on dividend reinvestments inside a Pie.
- Best fit: people who actually want to choose their own allocation and have it executed cleanly. That is a good product — it is just not this page’s product.
Discretion, cost, entry and exit
The four questions that decide a managed product, answered from each provider’s own terms and pricing documents.
| Provider | Who decides | Management fee | Minimum | Can you pause | Can you transfer out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scalable Wealth | Discretionary mandate, stated in the special terms | 0.75% / 0.69% / 0.49% marginal, plus product costs | €20/month or €1,000 one-off | Not stated; the contract has no minimum term and no cancellation penalty | Yes — €0 plus third-party costs |
| Mintos Core ETFs | Model portfolio; the governing terms are not published | 0% stated, plus fund TER | €50 | No — not offered for ETF Portfolios | No — fractions cannot leave the platform |
| eToro Smart Portfolios | Curated by eToro’s investment team or a partner | No portfolio management fee, plus fund costs | $500 — and euro funds cannot be used | Positions can be closed at any time | Not stated in sources read |
| Trading 212 Pies | You do — execution-only, no discretion | €0 commission, €0 custody | €1 order minimum | Yes — AutoInvest toggles off at any time | Whole shares yes; fractional positions are liquidated |
Sources: each provider’s published price list, terms of business and product pages. Verified August 2026. Scalable’s €20 / €1,000 entry figures come from its own strategy pages. Where a provider’s documents are silent, this table says so rather than assuming zero. Fees and terms are subject to change. Investing involves risk of loss.
Two of these charge 0% to manage your money. Follow the revenue.
Nobody manages portfolios for free. Where a management fee is absent, the revenue is somewhere else — and where it sits changes what the provider is incentivised to do.
Charges an explicit banded fee and, in Wealth specifically, accepts no monetary inducements from third parties or rebates them to the client. That is the opposite of its own Broker arm, where Scalable may receive and grant inducements and discloses the actual amount to clients once a year.
Worth knowing, and disclosed by Scalable itself: BlackRock is an indirect minority shareholder in Scalable’s parent company. Scalable states that ETF, ETC and ETP selection for Wealth is made on objective criteria and that no economic incentive exists to favour BlackRock products. Judge that as you like — the point is that they publish it.
Mintos states there is no management fee for investing in ETFs through ETF Portfolios, receives no inducements on ETFs, and states it receives none while providing portfolio management. On the ETF product specifically, that is a genuinely clean cost line.
The revenue sits next door. Mintos does not pay interest on Cash Account funds, and its terms state it may place those funds in money market funds and retain the interest for its own benefit. Earning anything on cash means actively moving it to Smart Cash, at 0.19% a year to Mintos plus 0.10% to BlackRock. Keep the cash balance small and this costs you little; leave money parked and it is a real transfer.
No portfolio management fee, and the stock commission does not apply to Smart Portfolios either. But the product is USD-only, a euro balance cannot buy it, and the conversion between a local-currency account and USD is 0.75%. For a euro investor that is not an occasional cost — it is a toll on every euro that enters the product. Cash held in the local-currency account earns nothing in the meantime.
No management fee because there is no management. Commission is €0, custody is €0, and the visible cost is 0.15% on currency conversion — applied to Pie deposits and withdrawals and to dividend reinvestment inside a Pie. Selecting the instrument currency per order avoids it entirely, which makes this the most controllable cost structure of the four.
When a managed portfolio is the wrong answer
This is a page about paying someone to make decisions. It is worth being direct about when that purchase does nothing for you.
- You already follow a plan through a drawdown. If you have held a recurring routine steady through a falling market without changing it, the management layer is buying you very little. The main thing it sells is protection from your own decisions, and you have demonstrated you don’t need it.
- Your portfolio is one or two broad UCITS ETFs. There is not much to manage. A single global equity fund plus a bond fund is already diversified and self-maintaining; adding a fee for someone to rebalance two positions once a year is poor value. See three-fund UCITS portfolio.
- You may need part of the money back. Several products here restrict partial exits — Scalable will not process a partial withdrawal that drops the balance below €1,000, and Mintos positions cannot be transferred out at all. If a portion of this capital has a foreseeable claim on it, that constraint matters more than the fee.
- You want a specific tax wrapper. If your country offers one — a French PEA, an Italian regime amministrato, a Polish IKE or IKZE — the right account may be the one that supports the wrapper, regardless of what it costs to run. Check that before optimising on management fees.
- You are choosing it to avoid learning anything. Fair enough, and it is a legitimate reason — but be aware you are still choosing a risk level, a strategy and a provider. A managed product removes the ongoing decisions, not the initial ones, and the initial ones matter most.
Ready to hand over the decisions?
Check availability in your country first — the strongest option here is not open to most of Europe. Then compare on the four things that decide it: who holds the discretion, what the management layer costs, the minimum, and how you get out.
Go deeper
Frequently asked questions
What is the best broker for an automated, managed portfolio in Europe?
On the axis of who actually holds the decision, Scalable Wealth leads: its special terms describe it as the discretionary management of individual assets on behalf of others, and Scalable accepts no monetary inducements in Wealth or rebates them to the client. The management fee is banded at 0.75%, 0.69% and 0.49% a year applied marginally, with product costs on top. The problem is availability — Scalable itself marks Wealth as not yet available in France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, leaving Germany and Austria as the only markets where no such line appears. Mintos Core ETFs is the cheapest managed option, at €0 commission and a stated 0% management fee from a €50 minimum. eToro Smart Portfolios charges no portfolio management fee but requires $500 and cannot be funded from a euro account. Trading 212 Pies are not a managed product at all.
Is Scalable Wealth available in my country?
Probably not, if you are outside Germany and Austria. Scalable’s own country sites carry a “not yet available” line against the Wealth product row in France, the Netherlands and Spain, and its Italian press release says the same for Italy. The Scalable Broker — the self-directed product with savings plans — is available in all of those markets; it is only the managed product that is restricted. Germany and Austria are the two markets where no unavailability line appears, though neither is affirmatively published in a product availability list either. These are “not yet” statements, which means they are the sort of thing that changes, so check the Wealth row on your own country’s Scalable site before planning around it.
Does a 0% management fee mean the portfolio costs nothing?
No. It means the provider is paid somewhere other than a management fee. Both Mintos Core ETFs and eToro Smart Portfolios state a zero management fee, and in both cases the underlying fund charges still apply and are reflected in the daily price rather than billed. Beyond that, Mintos states it does not pay interest on Cash Account funds and may place those funds in money market funds and retain the interest for its own benefit. At eToro, a euro account holder cannot buy Smart Portfolios at all without converting to US dollars at 0.75%. Scalable Wealth is the opposite structure: an explicit management fee, and a contractual position of accepting no monetary inducements in Wealth or rebating them to the client.
Are Trading 212 Pies a managed portfolio?
No, and Trading 212 says so directly. Its Pies and AutoInvest terms state that Pies are a technical tool rather than a managed product, that the service is execution-only, that no portfolio management and no financial, legal or tax advice is provided, and that the firm does not assess whether the feature is appropriate for the client based on knowledge, experience or understanding of the risks. Copying a Pie or selecting a Model Pie sets only the initial state; there is no automatic rebalancing, you are notified when a source Pie has been updated and can apply or skip the change, and Trading 212 states that neither tool constitutes discretionary portfolio management. Manual rebalancing is available to return a Pie to its target weights after drift.
Can I pause a Mintos ETF portfolio?
No. Mintos terms state that pausing or temporary suspension is not offered for ETF Portfolios, unlike other Mintos portfolios. This is worth knowing before you commit, because pausing is a standard feature on most savings plans and managed products in this comparison. Separately, stopping or pausing a Portfolio elsewhere on the platform does not stop an Investment Plan from executing — the allocation is held until the Portfolio resumes.
Is eToro CopyTrader the same as a managed portfolio?
eToro’s own European client terms describe Copy Trading as “a limited form of discretionary portfolio management”, and it requires a full suitability assessment covering knowledge, experience, objectives, risk tolerance and financial situation. Failing that assessment, or declining to provide the information, blocks copy trading entirely — a materially higher regulatory bar than execution-only trading. Smart Portfolios are described by a separate document and are not characterised as discretionary by any eToro source read for this page. Do not assume the two products carry the same status just because they are marketed together and priced the same way.
Can I move a managed portfolio to another broker?
Exit terms vary far more than the fees do. On Mintos, fractions may only be sold through Mintos to other platform users and may not be transferred to another person, and the platform is stated as the sole place of purchase and sale — so the only route out is selling and withdrawing cash. At Trading 212, fractional shares are liquidated on transfer to another firm or on account closure and cannot be converted to certificated form, and liquidation “may result in additional charges” which the terms do not price. Scalable states €0 for transferring a portfolio out, plus any third-party costs. Selling rather than transferring can trigger a taxable event depending on your country, so check that before assuming an exit is free.
Should I use a managed product or just buy one broad ETF myself?
For most people who will actually follow a simple plan, buying one or two broad UCITS ETFs on a recurring schedule is cheaper and carries fewer constraints. A managed product is worth its cost when the alternative is not investing at all, or abandoning the plan when markets fall. The honest test is behavioural rather than financial: if you have already run a manual or scheduled routine through a market drop without changing it, the management layer is buying you very little. If you have not, it may be buying you the only thing that matters.
QuantRoutine provides educational content only. Nothing on this page is an offer, solicitation, or recommendation to buy or sell any security or to open an account with any specific broker. Investments can lose value, and past performance does not guarantee future results. You are responsible for your own investment, tax, and legal decisions. Always review each broker’s current terms, fees, and eligibility on their official website before opening or funding an account.