How to Set Up a Savings Plan on Scalable Capital (2026)

Updated September 2026  ·  8 min read  ·  Covers the FREE and PRIME+ broker plans

Fees verified August 2026 against official pricing pages — see our methodology

A Scalable Capital savings plan automates recurring purchases of ETFs, shares and funds from as little as EUR 1 per execution, at EUR 0 on both broker plans. Crypto ETPs are also eligible, but they carry a spread surcharge that the other three do not. This guide covers every setting you choose, the five-banking-day lead time that governs almost everything, how the money is actually reserved and debited, and the failure modes that catch new users out.

A savings plan (Sparplan in German, piano di accumulo in Italian) is a standing instruction that buys a chosen security for a fixed euro amount on a set schedule. You define the security, the amount, the interval and the execution day once, and every subsequent purchase runs without further input.

Scalable Capital states that savings plans can be set up on ETFs, shares, crypto ETPs and funds. All ETFs and all crypto ETPs offered in the Broker are eligible, and Scalable advertises more than 2,700 ETFs. Many shares and funds are eligible too, with no restriction based on company size or headquarters — but Scalable publishes no count for either, so treat any specific share or fund number you see elsewhere with suspicion.

The floor is the differentiator. Scalable accepts EUR 1 per execution and states no maximum savings rate anywhere we have read. Trade Republic, the closest comparison for most EU investors, works within a band of EUR 10 to EUR 10,000 per execution. If you are splitting a small monthly contribution across several positions, that difference decides how many positions you can actually run.

Because you can also pick the execution day, running several plans across different assets lets you spread execution dates deliberately rather than having everything hit the account on the same morning. With one plan permitted per security, that is the main lever you have for managing cash-flow timing.

Scalable Capital’s savings plan page describes the feature as letting your savings amount increase automatically over the year by setting a dynamic inflation adjustment rate. The uplift keeps your real contribution from eroding as prices and income move. It is optional and off by default.

The published options are an annual uplift of 2%, 3%, 5% or 8%, applied pro rata after each execution rather than as one jump on an anniversary date. That option list appears on Scalable Capital’s own trading page and in its 2021 product announcement of the feature, and no Scalable source contradicts it — but the current savings plan page states only that the feature exists, without the percentages, so confirm the choices in the app before you rely on a specific rate.

QuantRoutine illustration, not a Scalable figure: the annual rate compounded from a EUR 200 base. Because Scalable applies the uplift pro rata after each execution, individual debits will not match these round numbers exactly. Check the rate shown in your plan settings before each anniversary if the debit size matters to your budgeting.

Two things follow from that table and both matter for a savings plan investor.

There is no per-order break-even. Both plans pay the same EUR 1.99 per manual trade, so PRIME+ no longer reduces the published per-order price and no order count makes the subscription pay for itself on commission alone. PRIME+ is bought for the lower crypto spread surcharge, the lower Instant deposit and credit rates, the cash distribution and the platform features — not for cheaper trading. For a pure savings plan investor making no manual trades, FREE is the correct plan.

Crypto ETP plans are not free. The spread surcharge applies to every execution of a savings plan in a crypto ETP as well as to manual trades, charged on the executed volume. Scalable’s own footnote extends the scope to all financial instruments tracking the value of cryptocurrencies, including ETPs, ETCs and ETNs. On a EUR 200 monthly crypto plan on FREE, that is roughly EUR 2 per execution — the opposite of the ETF position.

Product costs still apply to the underlying asset in every case: the ETF or fund TER, and any spread at the point of execution. Those are not Scalable charges and no broker removes them. Full detail on the rest of the schedule is in our Scalable Capital fees guide.

Scalable Capital states that adjustments made less than five banking days before execution may not be carried out and are instead applied to the next execution. That single figure also governs funding the clearing account, changing the payment method, and depositing ahead of a plan. There is no separate, shorter deadline for any of them.

The practical reading: if you want a change to land on the next run, act at least a full working week ahead. This applies to stopping a plan as much as starting one — if you need a debit not to happen, five banking days is the window you are working against, not the execution date itself.

Savings plans debit the broker clearing balance by default, and Scalable states that the amounts are reserved from that balance several days in advance. Where the balance is short at the moment of reservation, SEPA direct debit from your reference account is used as a fallback. That is why clients sometimes see a debit hit their bank account when they never selected direct debit — the reservation found the clearing balance short and pulled from the reference account instead.

The same mechanism explains a second thing that confuses people. Once a savings amount is credited to the broker account it does not increase your spendable cash, because it is reserved for the automatic purchase. That is not an error and it is not a fee — the money is earmarked, not missing.

Fractions are bought to six decimal places and always rounded down, so the savings rate is never exceeded. Scalable gives two worked examples. A EUR 100 plan against a EUR 150 security price would need 0.667 units to cost EUR 100.05, so 0.666 units are bought for EUR 99.90 and EUR 0.10 stays in the clearing account. And a EUR 1 plan against a EUR 1,500 price rounds to 0.000 units, so the plan does not execute at all and the rate is returned to the available balance.

The second example is the one to watch. A EUR 1 minimum is real, but it only works against securities cheap enough for the rounding to produce a non-zero position. Pair a very small rate with a very expensive security and the plan simply never runs.