Mintos vs Trading 212 (2026):
The better ETF account, and the one you add to it
On the ETF product itself this is not a close contest. Trading 212 and Mintos both charge €0 commission, €0 custody, accept orders from €1 and support fractional units — and then Trading 212 wins on currency conversion, on recurring investing, on order types and on cash protection. Where Mintos earns its place is different: it is the only one of the two that holds P2P loans, bonds, real estate securities and crypto ETPs alongside your ETFs in a single account. This page compares both honestly, EU and EEA entities throughout.
Some of the links on this site are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you if you sign up through them. This does not affect our reviews or recommendations — we only feature products we genuinely believe are useful for investors. This site provides educational content only, not personalized investment advice. Investments can lose value and past performance does not guarantee future results. You are responsible for your own financial decisions and for confirming the tax and legal rules that apply in your country.
TL;DR
Trading 212 is the better ETF account. Mintos is not a replacement for it — it is an addition, for a specific reason.
- Currency conversion is 0.15%, and the price list states it is never more than that, including at weekends. Mintos starts at 0.50% and publishes no pair table.
- You can avoid the conversion charge entirely by selecting the instrument’s own currency on the order from a multi-currency account.
- AutoInvest handles recurring contributions into ETFs you pick yourself, from €1 per slice — Mintos has no plan for self-selected ETFs.
- Market, limit, pending, stop and stop-limit orders on equities, against market orders only at Mintos.
- Uninvested cash held at a partner bank is protected up to €100,000 per person, per bank — a layer Mintos has no equivalent of.
The EU Invest account holds shares, fractional shares and ETFs only — no bonds, funds, options or futures. Share lending is not available on this entity at all.
- P2P loans, bonds and real estate securities in the same account as your ETFs. Notes backed by loans, bonds including fractional bonds, real estate securities, crypto ETPs and a money market fund product — all from one balance. Trading 212’s EU account holds none of it.
- ETF commission and custody are €0, exactly as at Trading 212, with a catalogue of over 1,000 ETFs stated as UCITS.
- Mintos states it receives no inducements on ETFs in its own cost disclosure — a genuine and citable point in its favour.
- An automated Core ETFs portfolio with a €50 minimum, 0% management fee and an Investment Plan that rebalances and reinvests.
Positions built on Mintos cannot practically be moved to another broker. No interest is paid on uninvested cash. Investor compensation is capped at €20,000 with no deposit-guarantee layer.
Quick comparison
Trading 212 EU GmbH and AS Mintos Marketplace. Figures for other Trading 212 entities differ and are not used here.
| Category | Mintos (AS Mintos Marketplace) | Trading 212 (Trading 212 EU GmbH) |
|---|---|---|
| Currency conversion | From 0.50%, depending on the currency pair, shown before you confirm. No per-pair table is published. Mintos’ own cost disclosure models a 0.78% average across a twelve-month period | 0.15%, stated as never more than 0.15% including at weekends, on the live interbank rate. Avoidable entirely by selecting the instrument currency on a multi-currency account |
| ETF buy / sell commission | €0 on self-selected ETFs and on the Core ETFs portfolio | €0 on stocks and ETFs in the Invest account |
| Custody / holding fee | €0 for ETFs and for the Core ETFs portfolio — no ongoing holding, inactivity or custody charge from Mintos on either | €0, stated on the price list |
| Minimum order | €1 on self-selected ETFs, fractional. €50 on the Core ETFs portfolio | €1, fractional |
| Interest on uninvested cash | None paid. The terms allow Mintos to place cash in money market funds and state the interest is retained by Mintos for its own benefit. Earning anything requires moving cash into Smart Cash at 0.19% a year plus a 0.10% BlackRock fee | Opt-in share of interest via qualifying money market funds. If not enabled, cash sits in banks and the firm keeps all the interest it receives. Not deposit-guaranteed. No rate quoted here |
| Recurring plan for ETFs you pick | Not available. The Investment Plan is defined per Portfolio, so it exists on the Core ETFs portfolio only; the product page marks it coming soon for self-selected ETFs | AutoInvest, free, from €1 per slice, across a Pie or into a single instrument (shown as a Savings Plan) |
| Order types | Market orders only on self-selected ETFs. Limit orders named as a possible future addition | Market, limit, pending (buy/sell limit and stop), stop and stop-limit on equities |
| Cancelling an order | Once submitted and accepted, a transaction order is final and irrevocable and may not be cancelled, withdrawn or amended | Orders execute strictly in order of receipt, with a buffer above market price ring-fenced at placement. A pending equity order cannot be amended once accepted — it must be cancelled and replaced |
| Inactivity fee | €4.90 a month, but only after 360 consecutive days with no investments, sales, deposits or withdrawals, and waived entirely if the account holds ETFs, crypto ETPs, bonds, Mintos Stock, Smart Cash or real estate. For an ETF holder it does not arise | No inactivity row appears on the price list in any region — not a zero line, simply absent. The same is true of account opening and account maintenance |
| Funding | Bank transfer €0 from Mintos; the bank may charge. Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay cost 2% of the deposit | Bank transfer €0 with no limit; the sending bank may charge. Cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay and other methods free up to €2,000 cumulative, then 0.7% on the amount exceeding that |
| Products beyond ETFs | Notes backed by loans, bonds including fractional bonds, real estate securities, crypto ETPs, Mintos Stock and Smart Cash — all from the same balance, each on its own pricing | Shares, fractional shares and ETFs only on this entity. No bonds, no funds, no options, no futures |
| Execution | Orders transmitted to a third-party broker. The execution policy names two counterparties: Tradegate Exchange, and Upvest Securities GmbH as the broker for that execution. Single venue, no multi-venue routing | All EU equity orders forwarded to Trading 212 Markets (Ireland) Limited, authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland on 1 December 2025, which holds no client money and runs its own Systematic Internaliser |
| Investor compensation | Latvian scheme, limited to Mintos’ outstanding liabilities to you, up to €20,000. Mintos is an investment firm, not a bank — no deposit guarantee applies to any product | EdW: up to 90% of the value of securities-transaction liabilities, capped at €20,000 per creditor, accounts aggregated |
| Cash protection | None. There is no deposit guarantee on Mintos cash or on Smart Cash, which is a money market fund rather than a deposit | Deposit protection up to €100,000 per person, per partner bank, on cash held at a bank. Money market fund holdings under the interest programme are outside this |
| Availability | EEA, EU and Swiss citizens and residents aged 18+. UK and US residents cannot register or invest | A defined EU, EEA and Swiss country list under this entity. Belgium is explicitly excluded |
On the headline numbers, this is a draw
Worth establishing before anything else, because it is where most comparisons stop — and it is the one part of the picture where the two accounts really are level.
- Commission: €0 to buy and €0 to sell ETFs at both. Mintos states it directly in its costs and charges disclosure — no fee for the manual, order-execution-only purchase or sale of ETFs. Trading 212 confirms €0 commission on stocks and ETFs both on the price list and contractually.
- Custody: €0 at both.
- Minimum: €1 at both, on self-selected ETFs at Mintos and on the Invest account at Trading 212.
- Fractional units: supported at both, so a fixed monthly amount is fully deployed rather than leaving a remainder in cash.
Currency conversion: the one clean numeric gap on this page
Both firms publish a percentage. Both percentages are stated in their own documents. The gap between them is large, and it is the single line that decides this comparison for an ETF investor.
- The rate: from 0.50%, depending on the currency pair. The exact fee is displayed before the exchange is confirmed.
- 0.50% is a floor, not a rate. No per-pair table is published in any Mintos source. Anyone stating “Mintos charges 0.50% FX” is quoting a minimum as though it were the price.
- Mintos’ own modelled average is 0.78% across a twelve-month period, labelled in its cost disclosure as an average across pairs drawn from historical data.
- The rate itself is clean: Mintos uses mid-market rates from XE.com with no markup applied to the rate. The charge is an explicit commission on top, which is structurally more transparent than embedding it in the rate — it just isn’t a published number.
Source: Mintos’ published fee page, help centre and costs and charges disclosure version 14 of 20 July 2026, verified August 2026.
Verify on Mintos →- The rate: 0.15% on the live interbank rate. The price list states it is never more than 0.15%, and the weekend clause is explicit — no widening at weekends.
- It applies whenever funds are converted between currencies and on trades placed in a currency other than the account’s.
- It does not apply to dividends or to other corporate-action proceeds, which are credited after conversion at the interbank rate with no charge.
- You can avoid it entirely. The Invest account is multi-currency across twelve currencies, and each order lets you choose between your primary currency and the instrument’s own. Selecting the instrument currency removes the charge for that trade — but note there is no automatic top-up conversion, so an insufficient balance in the selected currency can leave an order partly or wholly unexecuted.
- Round trip: 0.15% in and 0.15% out works out to about 0.30% on a full round trip into and out of a foreign-currency instrument. That is arithmetic on the stated rate, not a quoted fee.
Source: Trading 212’s published Terms & Fees, EU Invest Terms of 6 August 2026 and multi-currency page, verified August 2026.
Verify on Trading 212 →Using each firm’s own published figures, on a single conversion in one direction.
- Trading 212 at 0.15%: €15, and the price list caps it there.
- Mintos at the 0.50% floor: at least €50 — more than three times as much.
- Mintos at its own modelled 0.78% average: about €78 — more than five times as much.
- Trading 212 with the instrument currency selected: €0 on that order.
Everything else on each price list
Commission is one line of several. Funding, inactivity and withdrawals are where the two price lists diverge in shape rather than in headline number.
- Self-selected ETFs: €0 buy, €0 sell, minimum €1, fractional. Catalogue of over 1,000 ETFs, stated as UCITS.
- Core ETFs portfolio: €0 buy and sell, 0% management fee, minimum €50, with automatic rebalancing and reinvestment. A separate product from self-selected ETFs, with different mechanics — never treat the two as interchangeable.
- Account costs: account servicing and investor support are stated free. No ongoing holding, inactivity or custody charge applies to ETFs or the Core ETFs portfolio.
- Inactivity: €4.90 a month, charged on the 1st, but only after 360 consecutive days with no investments, sales, deposits or withdrawals — and waived outright if the account holds ETFs, crypto ETPs, bonds, Mintos Stock, Smart Cash or real estate. Holding a single ETF removes it entirely.
- Funding: bank transfer costs nothing from Mintos, though your bank may charge; the open-banking route has a €50 minimum and is not available in the Baltics. Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay deposits cost 2% of the amount, with a €50 minimum and, on the wallets, a €1,000 per-transaction and per-month ceiling.
- Withdrawals: no Mintos withdrawal fee on the price list, though the terms allow bank transfer costs and related expenses to be deducted from the funds. Euro withdrawals to a SEPA Instant capable bank land in about 30 minutes; others take one to two business days.
- One-off €50 review: a non-refundable additional registration review applies to selected individual accounts with residency or tax residency outside the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and to all company accounts. It covers the compliance check only and does not guarantee approval.
Source: Mintos’ published fee page, help centre and costs and charges disclosure version 14, verified August 2026.
Verify on Mintos →- Commission: €0 on stocks and ETFs in the Invest account, confirmed both on the price list and contractually. No custody fee.
- Account costs: withdrawals, statements, account closure and bank-transfer deposits are all stated €0. There is no account-opening, maintenance or inactivity row on the price list at all — not a zero line, simply absent. Do not read that as a zero.
- Funding: bank transfer is free with no limit, though the sending bank may charge. Cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay and other supported methods are free until €2,000 has been deposited cumulatively, after which 0.7% applies to the amount exceeding that threshold. The word on the price list is cumulative, not lifetime.
- Direct debit: SEPA Direct Debit is exempt from deposit fees, but it is available to German residents only and can be used solely to fund AutoInvest contributions — not as a general deposit method.
- Withdrawals: free from Trading 212 in all regions; the receiving bank may charge its own fee. Regular withdrawals take up to three business days, and withdrawals default to the original deposit method and source.
- Statutory levies: UK stamp duty, the PTM levy, French FTT, the FINRA fee and ADR charges apply where relevant and are passed through, with Trading 212 adding nothing.
- Still a cost: the bid-ask spread on every purchase.
Source: Trading 212’s published Terms & Fees, EU legal documentation and help centre, verified August 2026.
Verify on Trading 212 →What happens to the money sitting in the account
Neither rate is published here, and for good reason — but the mechanisms are contractual, and they are not the same shape.
- Unless otherwise agreed, Mintos does not pay you any interest on funds kept in the Cash Account.
- Mintos may place those funds in money market funds, and its terms state the interest earned is retained by Mintos for its own benefit. There is no opt-in that changes this.
- Funds placed in money market funds are not held as client money under the client-fund safeguarding rules; the units are held as safe custody assets instead, segregated from Mintos’ own assets. If such a fund fails or falls in value, Mintos may decide to compensate you but states it is not obliged by law or contract to do so.
- Smart Cash is the only route to earning on cash, and it is a paid product: 0.19% a year to Mintos, deducted from interest payments, plus a separate 0.10% BlackRock management fee taken from the fund’s income before any payout. The underlying is the BlackRock ICS Euro Liquidity Fund, a short-term money market fund — not a deposit, and not covered by any deposit guarantee. Capital is at risk.
- Opt-in, requiring your express consent to the firm holding uninvested cash in qualifying money market funds. You can opt in or out at any time.
- If you do not enable it, cash sits in banks only, no interest is paid to you, and the firm keeps all the interest it receives. Where you do enable it, the firm retains all interest received and pays you a share of it.
- Paid daily on a 365.25-day basis, no minimum or maximum balance, and you can withdraw or invest at any time with no penalty. Rate cuts get at least one day’s notice; increases apply immediately.
- Money market fund holdings are client assets, not client money, and are not deposit-guaranteed. Trading 212 is not a bank. The firm’s own disclosure notes that if the fund holding your cash became insolvent you could lose some or all of those funds.
- Ten currencies pay interest — USD, EUR, GBP, SEK, NOK, DKK, PLN, HUF, CZK and RON. CAD and CHF pay none, despite both being available as multi-currency balances.
Automating a monthly contribution
If the plan is a fixed amount every month into ETFs you have chosen yourself, only one of these two accounts can do it today.
- The Investment Plan is contractually defined as a standing instruction to periodically increase the cash amount of a designated Portfolio, after which the cash is allocated per that Portfolio’s settings.
- That is why the Core ETFs portfolio has one — €50 minimum, automatic rebalancing and reinvestment — and why self-selected ETFs do not. There is no Portfolio for a plan to attach to, and the product page marks the Investment plan as coming soon.
- If the Cash Account balance is insufficient at execution, the increase is not executed at all for that period, except on a daily-frequency plan with partial allocation selected.
- Amount, frequency and schedule can be changed or cancelled at any time, effective from the next scheduled execution. Investments already made cannot be reversed. Pausing or temporary suspension is not offered for ETF Portfolios, unlike Mintos’ other portfolios.
- Two modes: across a Pie, where the contribution is split in proportion to each slice’s target weight, or into a single instrument with no Pie required. The single-instrument variant is shown on EU platforms as a Savings Plan.
- Execution-only. The firm exercises no discretion over timing, selection or allocation — enabling it is a specific instruction to place a buy order on each scheduled date.
- Minimum €1 per slice, and the total has to be large enough for the smallest slice to clear €1 — a 4% smallest slice therefore needs about €25. Minimum slice weight 0.1%, up to 50 holdings.
- If the amount is insufficient for a whole share, a fractional share is bought. If a scheduled investment cannot execute at all — insufficient balance, failed direct debit, market closed — you are notified and it simply does not run that date.
- Dividend reinvestment is on by default inside Pies, reinvesting only into the same holding, with sub-threshold dividends accumulating as Pie cash. Note that Pie cash is held in your primary currency, so conversions inside a Pie — including on dividend reinvestments — carry the 0.15% charge.
Order handling, execution and who actually fills the trade
Both firms publish their execution arrangements in full. The arrangements are unusually different, and the difference is worth understanding before you place a large order at either.
- Market orders only on self-selected ETFs, executed at the current market price as soon as the exchange is open. You see the current market price before confirming. Mintos states it may add order types such as limit orders in future.
- Orders are final once accepted. A submitted and accepted transaction order is irrevocable and may not be cancelled, withdrawn or amended. Mintos states it is not obliged under MiFID II or Latvian law to provide a cancellation right. This is materially stricter than most EU brokers.
- One venue. Orders in ETFs are transmitted to a third-party broker for execution on regulated markets, and the execution policy names exactly two counterparties: Tradegate Exchange, and Upvest Securities GmbH as the broker for that execution. There is no multi-venue smart routing; Mintos states connecting to multiple venues would add cost not in clients’ interests, and that it receives no remuneration or benefit for routing orders to a particular venue or broker.
- Timing: sell orders on self-selected ETFs can be placed at any time and execute when the exchange opens; sale proceeds can take up to three business days to reach the account. The Core ETFs portfolio is different — orders execute at 11:00 EET on Latvian business days, with proceeds up to two business days. Do not apply the portfolio cut-off to self-selected orders.
- Fractions and corporate actions: holders of fractions are deemed to have chosen not to exercise pre-emptive rights, rights of first refusal and corporate actions, with Mintos acting as representative where it participates at all. Low impact on a plain accumulating index ETF; higher on anything with a rights issue.
- Order types: market, limit, pending (buy limit, buy stop, sell limit, sell stop), stop and stop-limit on equities. A pending equity order cannot be amended once accepted — it has to be cancelled and replaced.
- Order mechanics: orders execute strictly in order of receipt. A reasonable buffer above market price, the Total Blocked Amount, is ring-fenced when you place the order and released after execution — it is not part of your available balance in the meantime. Order value is capped at 95% of available balance, and partial execution may be offered instead of outright rejection.
- Who executes: all EU equity orders are forwarded to Trading 212 Markets (Ireland) Limited, a separate group entity authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland on 1 December 2025. The Irish register records that it holds no client money and no safekeeping permission — it executes, it does not custody. It executes either on an external venue or through its own Systematic Internaliser.
- The firm’s own conflict disclosure: Trading 212 states that routing client orders to group entities rather than independent third-party brokers can create conflict-of-interest risks, such as prioritising the group’s commercial interest in retaining transaction volume or revenue. It states it remains fully responsible for best execution regardless, and selects the affiliated entity because it believes this delivers the best consistent result, particularly by eliminating third-party broker commissions.
- Off-venue execution: accepting the general terms constitutes consent to execution outside a regulated market. Off-exchange trades are executed at a price no worse than the prevailing best bid or ask on the reference exchange, though the firm discloses that this carries greater counterparty and settlement risk than on-exchange trading.
Where Mintos actually wins — and it is not the ETF product
This is the reason to open a Mintos account, and it has nothing to do with the ETF pricing being level.
- Notes backed by loans — portfolio management at 0.39% a year on Core Loans, High-Yield and Conservative portfolios, or 0.29% on a Custom Loans portfolio, calculated on the outstanding portfolio amount. Manual loan investments are stated free.
- Bonds, including fractional bonds. Manual bond investments are stated free and the High-Yield Bonds portfolio is 0.39% a year, charged monthly. Primary-market Direct Bonds carry 0.85% embedded in the purchase price rather than billed — 0.47% distribution cost compensation plus a 0.38% markup. That is a real cost that never appears as a line on your statement.
- Real estate securities — investing is stated free.
- Crypto ETPs — 0.49% per transaction with a €0.99 minimum, charged once on buy and once on sell.
- Smart Cash — a money market fund product, priced above.
- Selling on the secondary market costs 0.85%, calculated on the final sale price after any discount or premium. Buying on the secondary market is free.
- No inducements on ETFs. Mintos states in its own cost disclosure that it receives no inducements on ETFs or crypto ETPs. It does receive them elsewhere — up to 3.59% of the invested amount from originators on Notes and up to 3.00% in placement fees on bond-backed securities, retained and not passed to investors — which is worth knowing before framing the loan products as zero-cost.
- The EU Invest account covers shares, fractional shares and ETFs. That is the complete list under this entity.
- No bonds. Bonds are a UK-entity product and are not available to EU clients. No funds, no options, no futures either.
- No stocks ISA and no SIPP — those are UK products and do not exist on this entity.
- No share lending. The programme is present on the UK and Cyprus entities and absent from the EU entity entirely, so accounts covering the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, Austria, the Nordics and Switzerland cannot participate at all.
- Trading 212 does not publish an instrument or ETF count. The figures circulating online are not company-authored and should not be relied on.
- Multi-currency across twelve currencies on the Invest account: GBP, USD, EUR, CAD, CHF, DKK, NOK, PLN, SEK, CZK, RON and HUF. Your primary currency is fixed at signup and cannot be changed.
Getting your money — and your positions — back out
Withdrawing cash is straightforward at both. Moving a position is where Mintos differs from almost every broker on this site.
- No Mintos withdrawal fee appears on the price list, but the terms allow bank and other fund-transfer commission fees and related expenses to be deducted from the funds. Both are true — the price list is the headline and the contract is the reservation.
- Transfers are made within two business days of receiving the order. Euro withdrawals to a SEPA Instant capable bank arrive in about 30 minutes; others take one to two business days.
- Withdrawals go only to a verified account, and only from the portion of your balance that is not invested, pending or overdue. A withdrawal to a payment account never previously used to fund the account requires additional information first.
- Sale proceeds on self-selected ETFs can take up to three business days to reach the account before you can withdraw them.
- All withdrawals are free from Trading 212; third parties, banks or processors may charge their own fees outside the firm’s control.
- Regular withdrawals take up to three business days. Non-card requests received in working hours are processed the same day, otherwise the next business day.
- Withdrawals default to the original deposit method and source. Exceptions need firm approval and proof the new method is in your name, and third-party deposits and withdrawals are not permitted at all.
- Withdrawals do not auto-convert on a multi-currency account: you select one currency balance, convert manually first if needed, and the destination bank account should match the currency or the receiving bank may charge FX and delay the payout.
- Sale proceeds may be unwithdrawable until settlement, usually T+2, though proceeds may be used to buy more shares before settlement.
Who you contract with, and what the compensation schemes cover
Both cap investor compensation at €20,000. The difference is what sits underneath that cap on the cash side.
- You contract with AS Mintos Marketplace, registration number 40103903643, registered in Riga, Latvia. It is an investment firm licensed and supervised by Latvijas Banka, the central bank of Latvia. There are no national subsidiaries and one price list applies to all markets.
- Investor compensation: the Latvian national scheme under Directive 97/9/EC, limited to Mintos’ outstanding liabilities towards you, up to €20,000. It covers failure to return financial instruments or funds — typically operational error, fraud or administrative malpractice — and protects retail investors irrespective of country of residence. It does not cover investment risk, poor performance, or changes in price or liquidity.
- No deposit guarantee applies to anything on Mintos. Mintos is an investment firm, not a credit institution. Smart Cash in particular is a money market fund, not a deposit. If you see a €100,000 figure attached to Mintos anywhere, it is wrong.
- Safeguarding: financial instruments are held in investors’ financial instrument accounts separately from Mintos’ own assets, with Mintos maintaining the ownership registry and stating that no instrument of yours can be used to meet any obligation of Mintos in insolvency. ETF units are stated to be held in a segregated custody account in your name and recoverable from Mintos’ custodians on insolvency; the custodian is not named in any Mintos document.
- Annual reports are audited by KPMG Baltics.
- You contract with Trading 212 EU GmbH, BaFin ID 10109603, registered in Ratingen, Germany, and formerly FXFlat Bank GmbH. But an EU client with Invest, crypto and a card is served by more than one entity: the Irish entity executes every Invest order, the Cyprus entity supplies the crypto product and acts as intermediate custodian for a limited set of instruments, and the card is issued by a separate Bulgarian e-money firm.
- Investor compensation (EdW): up to 90% of the value of securities-transaction liabilities, but not more than €20,000 per creditor. The 90% applies first — it is not a flat €20,000. All accounts at the same firm are aggregated against that cap, and the payout term on a recognised claim is three months. There is no right to compensation to the extent funds are not denominated in the currency of an EU member state or in euros.
- Deposit protection: separately, uninvested cash held at a partner bank is protected up to €100,000 per person, per bank. For J.P. Morgan, the primary banking partner, the scheme is the EdB, with a seven-working-day repayment period. This layer has no Mintos equivalent.
- Custody is not the German norm, and Trading 212 says so itself. The standard German model gives investors direct co-ownership of a global note at the central securities depository. Trading 212 EU instead holds instruments in omnibus client accounts at external sub-custodians — Interactive Brokers and BNY Mellon — and your entitlement is a contractual right to delivery, a claim against the firm, rather than a direct right to the holding at a CSD.
- On an unreconciled shortfall arising from a custodian default, clients share the loss pro rata. The firm also discloses that pooled holdings may be temporarily drawn on intra-day to settle other clients’ orders in the same instrument.
What each gives you at tax time
Neither files your return. Both give you documents to work from, and there is one country where the treatment genuinely diverges.
- Country-specific tax reports are produced for tax residents of Estonia, Germany and Latvia, with a general template for everyone else.
- Transaction confirmations arrive no later than the next business day after execution, with a 48-hour objection window. A financial instruments account statement is issued quarterly, or more often on request, with a 30-day objection window. An aggregated costs and charges report is issued annually.
- On distributing ETFs, withholding tax is deducted at source before the dividend reaches your account, and you receive the net amount. Treatment depends on your country of residence, where the ETF is registered and any applicable treaties, and additional local tax may apply on top. Mintos publishes no rate for this. Most ETFs available on Mintos are accumulating, in which case income is reinvested inside the fund and no cash distribution arrives at all.
- Separately, Latvian withholding applies to Notes interest at 5% for EU and EEA tax residents investing as private persons once tax details are confirmed. That is a loan-product rate and has nothing to do with ETFs — do not let the two get mixed up.
- Where required, Mintos reports investor and transaction data to the Latvian State Revenue Service, which forwards it to your country’s tax authority under the automatic exchange arrangements.
- An Annual Statement covering full trading activity for the tax year, which Trading 212 states can be used when filing a return, plus a yearly costs and charges report, trading confirmations and account activity statements. All are generated in the app under Documents.
- Germany is the exception. Since 5 January 2026, Trading 212 EU has automatically withheld and remitted German capital gains tax, solidarity surcharge and church tax where applicable for German tax residents, issuing a Steuerbescheinigung from the 2026 tax year.
- That provision attaches to German tax residence, not to EU membership. Dutch, French, Spanish and all other clients under the same entity remain responsible for their own tax obligations.
- The separate Capital Income Statement provided to German residents is explicitly not a tax certificate — it is informational, without pre-calculated Anlage KAP lines, FIFO cost basis or final taxable gain figures.
- Dividends are credited after conversion at the interbank rate and remain exempt from the currency conversion charge.
Who each account fits
Trading 212 is the better ETF account. It matches Mintos on commission, custody and minimum, and then beats it on currency conversion by a factor of three at Mintos’ floor and more than five at Mintos’ own modelled average. It has recurring investing for ETFs you choose yourself, which Mintos does not. It has six equity order types against market orders only. It lets you cancel a pending order. And it puts a €100,000 deposit protection layer under your uninvested cash that Mintos has no equivalent of.
Mintos is not a replacement for it. It is an addition, for someone who wants P2P loan, bond, real estate or crypto ETP exposure sitting beside their ETFs in a single account — which Trading 212’s EU entity genuinely cannot do. Anyone who only wants ETFs should use Trading 212. Anyone reaching for Mintos should do it for the multi-asset breadth, and should accept that positions built there cannot practically be moved out.
- Want a straightforward ETF account and nothing more complicated than that.
- Will ever need a currency conversion — 0.15% capped, or €0 by selecting the instrument currency, against Mintos’ 0.50% floor.
- Want contributions placed automatically into ETFs you have chosen, from €1 per slice.
- Want limit and stop orders, and the ability to cancel and replace a pending one.
- Care that uninvested cash carries a €100,000 protection floor at a partner bank.
- Might one day want to move the account elsewhere and want that route to exist.
- Specifically want P2P loan exposure through Notes, or bonds, or real estate securities, held alongside ETFs from the same balance.
- Want an automated, rebalancing ETF portfolio at 0% management fee and are content with a €50 minimum and a preset allocation.
- Value that Mintos states it receives no inducements on ETFs in its own cost disclosure.
- Are treating it as a satellite account rather than the home of your main ETF position — which is the right way to use it, given positions cannot leave the platform.
- Are resident in the EU, EEA or Switzerland. UK and US residents cannot register at all.
Check the current terms before you open an account
Fees, rates and country availability change. Confirm the figures on each firm’s own pricing pages, and check which entity covers your country of residence, before opening or funding an account. Investing involves risk of loss.
Go deeper
Frequently asked questions
Is Mintos or Trading 212 cheaper for ETFs?
On the headline they are level. Both charge €0 commission to buy and sell ETFs, €0 custody, accept orders from €1 and support fractional units. The difference is currency conversion: Trading 212 charges 0.15% and states it is never more than that, including at weekends, while Mintos charges from 0.50% depending on the pair, with no published pair table, and its own cost disclosure models a 0.78% average across a twelve-month period.
If you fund in euros and buy euro-priced UCITS ETFs, neither charge applies and the two are genuinely level on explicit cost. The moment a conversion is involved, Trading 212 is cheaper by a wide margin.
How much lower is Trading 212’s currency conversion fee?
At the stated floor, Mintos is more than three times Trading 212’s rate. Against Mintos’ own modelled 0.78% average it is more than five times. On a €10,000 conversion that is €15 at Trading 212 against at least €50 at Mintos, and roughly €78 at the modelled average. A round trip into and out of a foreign-currency instrument works out to about 0.30% at Trading 212 as a calculation, not a quoted fee.
Trading 212 also lets you avoid the charge entirely by selecting the instrument’s own currency on the order from a multi-currency account. Mintos applies its charge as an explicit commission on top of a mid-market XE.com rate, shown before you confirm the exchange.
Does either broker pay interest on uninvested cash?
Trading 212 runs an opt-in interest sharing programme. It retains all interest it receives and pays you a share of it, in the currencies and at the rates published on its Terms and Fees page. If you do not enable it, your cash sits in banks and the firm keeps all the interest it receives. Money market fund holdings under that programme are client assets rather than client money and are not deposit-guaranteed.
Mintos pays no interest on Cash Account funds at all. Its terms allow it to place those funds in money market funds and state that the interest earned is retained by Mintos for its own benefit. There is no opt-in. The only route to earning anything on cash at Mintos is Smart Cash, which costs 0.19% a year to Mintos plus a 0.10% BlackRock management fee, and which is a money market fund rather than a deposit and carries no deposit guarantee. No rate is quoted here for either firm.
Can I set up a monthly ETF plan on both?
Not equally. Trading 212’s AutoInvest is free, runs on a schedule you set with no discretion over timing or selection, and works either across a Pie or into a single instrument, where it is shown as a Savings Plan. Minimum is €1 per slice, and the total has to be large enough for the smallest slice to be worth at least €1.
On Mintos the Investment Plan is defined per Portfolio, so it exists for the Core ETFs portfolio, which has a €50 minimum and rebalances and reinvests automatically. For self-selected ETFs there is no Portfolio for a plan to attach to, and the product page marks the Investment plan as coming soon. If a recurring contribution into ETFs you pick yourself is the point of the account, Trading 212 has it and Mintos does not yet.
Can I move ETFs off Mintos to another broker?
Not in practice. Mintos’ terms state that fractions of financial instruments may only be sold through Mintos to other users of the platform, that you may not otherwise sell or transfer any financial instrument to another person, and that the platform is the sole and only place for purchase and sale. A €1 ETF order is fractional by construction, so the exit route is to sell on the platform and withdraw cash rather than to move the position.
Whether a whole-unit holding could be transferred out is unresolved in Mintos’ own documents. Treat this as the strongest argument for using Mintos as a satellite account rather than the place your main ETF position lives.
How is my money protected at each?
Both cap investor compensation at €20,000, and neither is a deposit guarantee on your investments. Mintos is an investment firm licensed by Latvijas Banka, not a bank. The Latvian scheme covers Mintos’ outstanding liabilities towards you up to €20,000 and does not cover investment risk, poor performance or price changes. No €100,000 deposit guarantee applies to any Mintos product, including Smart Cash.
Trading 212 EU clients are covered by the German EdW scheme up to 90% of the value of securities-transaction liabilities, capped at €20,000 per creditor with all accounts at the firm aggregated against that cap. Separately, uninvested cash held at a partner bank is protected up to €100,000 per person per bank. That cash layer is the one real protection difference between the two.
What can I hold on Mintos that Trading 212 does not offer?
This is where Mintos genuinely wins. Alongside ETFs it lists Notes backed by loans, bonds including fractional bonds, real estate securities, crypto ETPs, Mintos Stock and Smart Cash, all reachable from the same balance. The Trading 212 EU Invest account covers shares, fractional shares and ETFs only. There are no bonds on the EU entity, no funds, no options and no futures. If you want P2P loan or bond exposure sitting beside your ETFs in one login, Trading 212 cannot do it and Mintos can.
Note the pricing on those products is not the ETF pricing: loan portfolios run 0.39% a year, or 0.29% on a Custom portfolio, the High-Yield Bonds portfolio is 0.39% a year, primary-market Direct Bonds carry 0.85% embedded in the purchase price rather than billed, crypto ETPs cost 0.49% per transaction with a €0.99 minimum, and selling on the secondary market costs 0.85%.
Can UK residents use Mintos?
No. Mintos states that residents of the United Kingdom, along with nationals and residents of the United States, cannot register or invest. Eligibility runs to EEA, EU and Swiss citizens and residents aged 18 or over, with other cases considered individually and proof of residence sometimes requested.
This page is written for EU, EEA and Swiss readers for that reason. Trading 212 EU GmbH also has a defined country list and Belgium is explicitly excluded from Trading 212’s EU-facing material; UK clients contract with a separate Trading 212 entity that this page does not cover.
How do orders execute at each broker?
Mintos supports market orders only for self-selected ETFs, executed at the current market price as soon as the exchange is open, and names limit orders as a possible future addition. Once a transaction order is submitted and accepted it is final and irrevocable and may not be cancelled, withdrawn or amended. Orders are transmitted to a third-party broker for execution, and the execution policy names exactly two counterparties: Tradegate Exchange, and Upvest Securities GmbH as the broker for that execution. There is no multi-venue routing, and Mintos states connecting to multiple venues would add cost not in clients’ interests.
Trading 212 offers market, limit, pending, stop and stop-limit orders on equities, though a pending equity order cannot be amended once accepted and has to be cancelled and replaced. Orders execute strictly in order of receipt, with a buffer above market price ring-fenced at placement and released after execution. All EU equity orders are forwarded to Trading 212 Markets (Ireland) Limited, a separate group entity authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland on 1 December 2025 that holds no client money and no safekeeping permission.
Which one should I actually open?
If you only want ETFs, open Trading 212. It matches Mintos on commission, custody and minimum, beats it on currency conversion by a wide margin, has recurring investing for ETFs you pick yourself, offers more order types, and adds a €100,000 cash protection layer that Mintos has no equivalent of.
Mintos is worth opening as a second account if you specifically want P2P loan, bond, real estate or crypto ETP exposure held alongside ETFs in one place, and you accept that positions built there cannot practically be moved to another broker. It is an addition, not a replacement. This is not investment advice.
Some of the links on this site are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you if you sign up through them. This does not affect our reviews or recommendations — we only feature products we genuinely believe are useful for investors. This site provides educational content only, not personalized investment advice. Investments can lose value and past performance does not guarantee future results. You are responsible for your own financial decisions and for confirming the tax and legal rules that apply in your country.