Best Broker for Long-Term ETF Investing (Non-US, 2026):
What a Position Costs to Hold — and to Leave
A ten-year ETF position is priced by two things almost nobody compares: what you pay every year simply to keep it, and what you pay to move it somewhere else. Commissions are paid once. Custody, connectivity, lending give-up and transfer-out charges are paid for as long as you hold.
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TL;DR
- IBKR — no custody fee, no inactivity fee, whole-share transferability and the widest venue access. The platform a portfolio does not outgrow.
- Scalable Capital — securities transfers priced at EUR 0.00 plus third-party costs, in either direction. Available in six countries.
- DEGIRO — EUR 1.00 all-in on Core Selection products, free custody, no connectivity fee on that selection. Exit is EUR 20.00 per position on most entities.
- Lightyear — free ETF execution and custody, no transfer charge, and no securities lending on any account type.
- What the broker charges per position to let the portfolio leave.
- Whether fractional holdings can be transferred at all — often they cannot.
- Which legal entity holds the account, and which compensation scheme follows from that.
- Whether the ETF wrapper creates a US estate-tax filing obligation for their heirs.
- Exchange connectivity and ETC custody charges, which are billed annually or monthly regardless of activity.
How we ranked brokers for a decade-long ETF position
This ranking does not score headline commissions. A buy-and-hold investor pays a commission a handful of times a year and pays the items below every single year. Ranking last reviewed August 2026 against each broker’s published fee schedules and legal documents.
| Factor | What we assess | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to hold | Custody and account charges, exchange connectivity fees, ETC and ETP monthly custody, inactivity conditions, cash-side charges. | Critical |
| Cost to leave | Outgoing transfer price per position, whether fractional holdings can move at all, third-party costs, and whether the position can leave the platform. | Critical |
| Securities lending | Whether it exists, whether it is opt-in, who the counterparty is, how revenue is split, and what the client gives up. | High |
| Entity and protection | Which legal entity holds the account, which regulator supervises it, and which compensation scheme applies to it. | High |
| Wrapper access | UCITS coverage, whether US-domiciled ETFs are reachable, and the estate-tax consequence that follows from domicile. | High |
| Availability | Published country lists and, where fractional investing matters, which countries are excluded from it. | Medium |
Five brokers, ranked on hold cost and exit cost
Every figure below comes from the broker’s own fee schedule or legal documentation. Where a schedule is silent on a charge, we say nothing rather than assume it is zero.
| # | Broker | Cost to hold | Cost to leave |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Interactive Brokers | No custody fee, no inactivity fee, no account opening fee. Two free withdrawal requests per calendar month. | Incoming and IBKR-to-IBKR transfers free. Australian outgoing transfers AUD 5.00–10.00 per asset, minimum AUD 50.00 per request; Asian outgoing transfers USD 50.00 per request. |
| 2 | Scalable Capital | Securities account management EUR 0.00. FREE plan EUR 0.00 per month; PRIME+ EUR 4.99 per month. Third-party custody costs are passed on. | Securities transfer EUR 0.00 plus any third-party costs — the schedule line covers transfers in and out alike. Changing depository, country or custody type EUR 24.99 plus third-party costs. |
| 3 | DEGIRO | Custody free. Core Selection products EUR 1.00 all-in per trade. Connectivity EUR 2.50 per exchange per calendar year, capped at 0.25% of account value — Core Selection products are exempt. | EUR 20.00 per position plus external costs on the Dutch, French, Irish, UK and Swiss schedules. Free on the German schedule. Internal transfer EUR 7.50 per position. |
| 4 | Lightyear | ETF execution and custody free; fund manager fees still apply. No account, platform or monthly fee. No securities lending on any account type. | No charge on Lightyear’s side. Whole shares only, minimum EUR / GBP / USD 1,000 per position. Fractional positions cannot be transferred. |
| 5 | Trading 212 | Commission and custody stated at zero on the UK, EU and Cyprus schedules. The Australian schedule carries no custody row at all. | Not stated on the Terms & Fees tabs read for this guide. |
DEGIRO Core Selection: currency or external product and spread costs may apply.
IBKR charges nothing for custody, nothing for account maintenance and nothing for inactivity, and it holds whole-share positions across more than twenty European market schedules. For a portfolio meant to last twenty years and possibly cross a border with you, that combination is difficult to match.
- Per-trade minimums are not a single European number: EUR 1.25 Tiered / EUR 3.00 Fixed in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland-EUR, but EUR 6.00 Fixed in Portugal and EUR 10.00 in the Baltics.
- On Euronext Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels a EUR 0.75 per-execution exchange fee is passed through on ETF products only. A EUR 3.00 Fixed SmartRouted UCITS ETF trade there is EUR 3.75 all-in.
- Fractional trading is offered in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK — and is not offered in the Baltics, Czechia, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania or Slovenia.
- Swiss-franc cash carries a negative rate (-0.423% Pro, -1.423% Lite). Holding idle CHF at IBKR costs money.
- Two withdrawal requests per calendar month are free; after that EUR 1.00 SEPA, EUR 8.00 wire, USD 10.00 USD wire and equivalents apply.
The securities-account schedule has five lines and no others, and one of them prices securities transfers at EUR 0.00 plus any third-party costs. The line is direction-neutral, so it covers the day you leave as well as the day you arrive. Custody is EUR 0.00 and the FREE plan has no monthly charge.
- Execution pricing on the European Investor Exchange carries no end date anywhere in the contract — unlike the gettex derogation, which runs out on 31 August 2026 and then falls under the standard line of up to EUR 1.99.
- Availability is narrow: Germany plus cross-border service into France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria. That is the practical limit on this broker for a non-US reader.
- German securities are held in collective safe custody at Clearstream Banking AG with the client acquiring co-ownership of the collective holding; foreign securities are normally held in the security’s home market with a credit in a securities account.
- A currency markup exists in the binding contract and its size is not published anywhere. Any “no FX fee” claim about Scalable Capital is wrong.
- Changing depository, country of custody or custody type costs EUR 24.99 plus third-party costs — a line worth knowing before a cross-border move.
DEGIRO’s Core Selection is defined by venue: all ETFs, ETCs and ETNs listed on Tradegate Exchange, over 1,000 products by DEGIRO’s own count. Commission is EUR 0.00 and the EUR 1.00 handling fee still applies, so a Core Selection trade is EUR 1.00 all-in. Currency or external product and spread costs may apply. Custody is free and Core Selection products carry no connectivity fee.
- There is no citable product list. Find the selection in the platform under Products > Trackers (ETFs) with the commission-type filter set to Core Selection, or the stock-market filter set to Tradegate AG.
- Outside the Core Selection the connectivity fee applies: EUR 2.50 per exchange per calendar year, capped at 0.25% of your total account value — you pay whichever is lower. Exemptions differ by entity.
- The exit price is the weak point: EUR 20.00 per position plus external costs on the Dutch, French, Irish, UK and Swiss schedules. The German schedule prices it at nothing. External costs are unpublished, vary by exchange and are quoted by the service desk on request.
- The Xetra-Gold ETC carries its own custody charge of 0.025% per calendar month plus VAT on the month-end position value — a rare example of a genuine monthly holding cost.
- No fractional shares. Value-based orders let you order by amount instead.
- DEGIRO is the trading name of flatexDEGIRO Bank Dutch Branch, the Dutch branch of flatexDEGIRO Bank SE. It is an execution-only broker and provides no investment advice.
Figures verified August 2026 against DEGIRO’s published Fee Schedules effective 1 January 2026. UK and Swiss clients are on separate schedules where several of these figures differ. Fees are subject to change. Investing involves risk of loss.
ETF execution and custody are free, with fund manager fees still applying, and there is no account, platform or monthly fee. The structural point for a long-term holder is what is absent: Lightyear does not lend client money or investments to third parties, and the same applies to crypto assets. There is no opt-in, no default state and no revenue split, because the service does not exist.
- Transfers in and out carry no Lightyear fee. Whole shares only, with a minimum of EUR / GBP / USD 1,000 per position and named step-by-step guides for several sending brokers including Interactive Brokers and Scalable Capital.
- Fractional positions cannot be transferred — they must be sold, or topped up to whole shares first. Fractional minimums are EUR / GBP / USD 2, so a small recurring plan builds exactly the kind of position that cannot move.
- 26 published countries. EU currency conversion is 0.35%; on an EU page that is the only Lightyear FX rate that applies.
- Investor compensation is the Estonian Investor Protection Sectoral Fund up to EUR 20,000 in total across all multi-currency balances, covering clients regardless of country of residence. A personal account and a business account are covered separately.
- Uninvested client money is not covered by the Deposit Guarantee Sectoral Fund, which covers bank deposits only. Crypto assets are excluded from any EU investor compensation scheme.
Commission and custody are both stated at zero on the UK, EU and Cyprus schedules, and currency conversion is 0.15% in all four regions the firm serves. The Australian schedule has no custody row at all, so we do not publish a zero for Australia.
- Which entity you contract with matters and is rarely stated. Trading 212 EU GmbH (BaFin ID 10109603) serves Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, under compensation of 90% of losses capped at EUR 20,000.
- Trading 212 Markets Ltd (CySEC 398/21) serves Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Cyprus, under the Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund up to EUR 20,000.
- Every Invest order is executed by a separate Irish entity registered with the Central Bank of Ireland. A single login can therefore mean several contracting parties and several regulators.
- Account opening, maintenance and inactivity charges are not stated on any of the four schedules — no row exists, which is not the same as a published zero.
- For EU clients the terms define investments as shares, fractional shares and ETFs. Do not plan a bond allocation here on the strength of the UK product list.
The charges that arrive whether or not you trade
A commission comparison misses all four of these. Each is billed on a calendar, not on activity, which is exactly what makes them expensive over a decade.
DEGIRO bills EUR 2.50 per exchange per calendar year, capped at 0.25% of total account value — a fee and a ceiling, and you pay the lower. The cap is always measured on the whole account, never on the position held at that exchange. Core Selection products are exempt, and the exemption lists differ by entity.
Some ETCs carry their own monthly custody charge on top of a broker’s free custody. DEGIRO applies 0.025% per calendar month plus VAT on the month-end value of the Xetra-Gold ETC. Scalable Capital charges no custody fee but passes on third-party custody costs on instruments such as ADRs and commodity notes.
Idle cash is not neutral. Swiss-franc balances at IBKR carry a negative rate of -0.423% on the Pro tier and -1.423% on Lite. At Scalable Capital a safekeeping charge on cash balances exists as a contractual line item whose rate we could not locate on any published page — treat it as unknown, not as zero.
IBKR states no inactivity fee. Trading 212’s schedules carry no inactivity row at all. Mintos charges EUR 4.90 per month after 360 consecutive days with no investment, sale, deposit or withdrawal — waived entirely if the account holds ETFs, crypto ETPs, bonds, Mintos Stock, Smart Cash or real estate.
Exit friction is a real cost, not a footnote
Nobody opens an account planning to leave it. But over ten to twenty years, brokers get acquired, fee schedules change, and people move country. A 25-position portfolio at EUR 20 per position is EUR 500 to walk out of the door, before external costs.
| Broker | Outgoing transfer | Fractional holdings |
|---|---|---|
| Scalable Capital | EUR 0.00 plus any third-party costs | Whether fractions can move in kind is not stated |
| Lightyear | No Lightyear charge; min EUR / GBP / USD 1,000 per position | Cannot be transferred — sell or top up to whole shares |
| Trade Republic | Free; third-party costs may be added, expressly including on securities transfers | Not stated |
| DEGIRO | EUR 20.00 per position + external costs. Free on the German entity | No fractional shares offered |
| Interactive Brokers | Incoming and internal free. AU: AUD 5.00–10.00 per asset, min AUD 50.00. Asia: USD 50.00 per request | Offered in 11 European countries, excluded in 8 |
| Mintos | Positions cannot leave the platform | May only be sold through Mintos to other platform users |
Mintos has the lowest published holding cost of any platform on this page — EUR 0 commission on ETFs, EUR 0 custody, and no inactivity charge for as long as the account holds ETFs. It is also the one platform a position cannot be moved off.
- The terms state that fractions of financial instruments may only be sold through Mintos to other users of the platform, and that the investor may not otherwise sell or transfer any financial instrument to another person.
- They add that the platform is the sole and only place for the purchase and sale of any financial instrument, and that there may be no market for a given instrument.
- A EUR 1 ETF order is fractional by construction, so in practice the exit route is to sell and withdraw cash — a taxable event in most countries, at a moment you did not choose.
- No interest is paid on uninvested cash. The terms state Mintos may place those funds in money market funds and retains the interest earned for its own benefit.
- Mintos is an investment firm, not a credit institution, so no EUR 100,000 deposit guarantee applies to any product on the platform.
That combination makes it a defensible satellite account and a poor primary home for a portfolio you intend to hold for a decade. Read it as a deliberate trade: you accept lock-in in exchange for the lowest running cost in the set.
Securities lending: what you give up to earn it
Over a decade this is the item most likely to be switched on and forgotten. It is a genuine decision with counterparty, voting and collateral consequences — not a free yield toggle.
Opt-in and off by default, and available in the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Italy only. Not available in Germany, France, Ireland or the UK.
The Stock Yield Enhancement Program is opt-in, enrolled through Client Portal. Once enrolled, IBKR borrows holdings that are attractive in the lending market.
Does not lend client money or investments to third parties at all. No opt-in, no default state, no revenue split — the service does not exist on the platform.
- The client signs the Appendix Securities Lending and passes an appropriateness test. There is no per-position choice: opting in makes every share, ETF and bond in the balance eligible.
- DEGIRO is the client’s counterparty. It takes legal title to the securities and then enters into a lending transaction with the borrower.
- Revenue split: DEGIRO receives the borrowing fees, deducts fees payable to its service providers, and pays 50% of the remaining amount to the client as a compensation payment, credited in the month following accrual. That is 50% of net, never 50% of gross.
- Collateral is a minimum of 105% of loan value, adjusted daily, held by a separate foundation. The client has no access to it.
- Voting rights transfer to the borrower for the duration of the loan. To vote, the client must instruct a recall five trading days before the record date, which blocks new loans until at least three trading days after it.
- No lending rate is published anywhere. Rates are set per security by market demand and change continuously, so no income figure can be projected for a portfolio.
Securities lending carries counterparty risk, market risk and the loss of voting rights. These figures are drawn from DEGIRO’s Swiss helpdesk documentation and its securities lending conditions.
Which legal entity actually holds your account
Protection follows the entity, not the brand. Over twenty years this is the field most likely to change under you without an email announcing it.
| Broker | Entity and structure | Compensation scheme |
|---|---|---|
| Interactive Brokers | Several entities with different structures — the Irish, UK and US carrying entities are not interchangeable. Nominee and omnibus carrying structure; UK client assets cleared and carried by Interactive Brokers LLC. | Scheme membership is stated per entity; the statutory limits are not published in the sources we verified, so we do not quote them. IBKR’s own UK wording is that products are covered by the FSCS in limited circumstances. |
| DEGIRO | Trading name of flatexDEGIRO Bank Dutch Branch, the Dutch branch of flatexDEGIRO Bank SE. Primarily supervised by the German financial regulator (BaFin); the Dutch Branch is registered with DNB and supervised by AFM and DNB. Securities are held by a separate Dutch foundation. | Deposit guarantee EUR 100,000; investor compensation 90% of losses capped at EUR 20,000. Both cover failure of the firm only, not investment losses. |
| Lightyear | Lightyear Europe AS for EU clients, with a separate UK entity. Direct venue access to Nasdaq Baltic and Tradegate; indirect access to Euronext, LSE, Frankfurt, Cboe Europe and Equiduct; US instruments via a third-party broker. | Estonian Investor Protection Sectoral Fund up to EUR 20,000 across all multi-currency balances, regardless of country of residence. Uninvested cash is not covered by the deposit guarantee fund. |
| Trading 212 | Trading 212 EU GmbH (BaFin) or Trading 212 Markets Ltd (CySEC) depending on your country, with every Invest order executed by a separate Irish entity supervised by the Central Bank of Ireland. | EU entity: 90% of losses capped at EUR 20,000. Cyprus entity: Investor Compensation Fund up to EUR 20,000. |
| Scalable Capital | German securities in collective safe custody at Clearstream Banking AG with client co-ownership of the collective holding; foreign securities normally held in the security’s home market, shown on the account statement. | Custody fee none; third-party custody costs passed on. Trust balances cannot be disposed of directly and there is no right to a direct transfer of them to a reference account. |
UCITS or US-domiciled: a decision your heirs inherit
Most EU retail investors cannot buy US-domiciled ETFs. Under the PRIIPs regime a key information document must be available in the required form before a retail client can purchase a packaged product, and for most US-listed ETFs it is not. That constraint has a second, less obvious consequence.
- You are not missing the index — only the wrapper. UCITS equivalents track the same underlying benchmarks.
- The decision moves to UCITS catalogue depth, the all-in cost of a trade on the venue your broker routes to, and the hold and exit costs on this page.
- At IBKR, remember the Euronext exception: a EUR 3.00 Fixed SmartRouted ETF trade on Euronext Paris, Amsterdam or Brussels is EUR 3.75 all-in.
- Check the estate-tax position below before building a portfolio around US tickers.
- Multi-currency handling becomes the recurring cost — covered in full on the FX page rather than repeated here.
- US citizens living abroad are a different case entirely: UCITS ETFs raise potential PFIC issues, so this page is only partially relevant to you.
US-domiciled ETFs such as VTI, SPY or QQQ are US-situs assets, and holding them through a non-US broker does not change that. The IRS sets a filing threshold, not an exemption in the ordinary sense: where the fair market value at death of a nonresident non-citizen’s US-situated assets, together with the gift tax specific exemption and adjusted taxable gifts, exceeds USD 60,000, the executor must file Form 706-NA. The threshold is not indexed for inflation and estate tax rates reach 40%.
- UCITS ETFs domiciled in Ireland or Luxembourg are generally not US-situs assets and sit outside this regime entirely. For a non-US investor with a material portfolio, that is a structural advantage of the wrapper you were probably going to use anyway.
- Treaties matter, and they are specific. The US holds estate tax treaties with 17 countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. That covers most readers of this site and materially softens the position for a German, French, Dutch or Italian investor.
- Domicile is what counts, not physical presence, and the estate-tax definition of residence differs from the income-tax one.
Sources: IRS, Estate tax for nonresidents not citizens of the United States and SOI nonresident alien estate tax study metadata. This is educational information, not tax advice. Confirm your own position with a cross-border tax professional.
Trade Republic: built for accumulation, not decade-scale custody
On the holding side Trade Republic looks strong: custody account management and cash account management are both free, and outgoing portfolio transfers are priced at nothing, with a footnote allowing third-party costs to be added, expressly including on securities transfers. It is left out of the ranked table because its strength is contribution, not custody, and because the recurring cost a long-term holder actually meets there is currency conversion on income.
- The published FX margins are absolute amounts in the quoted currency, not percentages — USD 0.0014, GBP 0.0011, CHF 0.0014 and so on. Anything presenting them as a percentage rate is misreading the schedule.
- The stated scope is income in foreign currencies — foreign dividends and proceeds from corporate actions — converted to EUR. Whether a separate FX cost applies to the purchase of a non-EUR asset is not stated in the sources.
- The margin is added on debits and subtracted on credits, and the conversion timestamp differs from the timestamp of the securities transaction itself.
- Card currency conversion is EUR 0. Trade Republic charges nothing to convert when you spend and takes a margin when it converts your dividends — worth knowing together.
- No inactivity fee line exists on the schedule, which is not the same as a published zero.
Checklist: a broker you can keep, and leave, for a decade
Run through this before funding. Every line is a question with a published answer somewhere in the broker’s own documents — if you cannot find it, that is itself an answer.
- Exit price known per position — you have found the outgoing transfer line on the schedule for your entity, not for the brand.
- Fractional consequences understood — if you will accumulate fractions, you know whether they can be transferred, or whether they must be sold first.
- Recurring charges mapped — custody, connectivity, product-level custody on any ETC, and anything billed on a calendar rather than on a trade.
- Cash side checked — you know what happens to idle balances, including in currencies other than your own.
- Lending decision made deliberately — on or off, with the counterparty and voting-rights consequences understood, not left at the default.
- Entity identified — you know which legal entity holds the account, which regulator supervises it, and which compensation scheme follows.
- Wrapper chosen with the estate-tax position in mind — and, if you hold US-domiciled ETFs, you know whether your country has a US estate tax treaty.
- Country availability confirmed — including what happens if you move, since some relationships are tied to a single country.
- Tax documents usable — the statements are clear enough that you will actually use them at year-end.
Interactive Brokers — no custody fee, no inactivity fee, whole-share positions and the broadest venue access in the set. It costs more attention to set up and to operate.
Check your market’s per-trade minimum before assuming EUR 3.00, and check fractional availability if your contributions are small.
Scalable Capital or DEGIRO — a free-transfer exit in six countries, or EUR 1.00 all-in Core Selection trading with a priced exit.
Trade-off: narrower availability at Scalable, and EUR 20.00 per position to leave DEGIRO outside the German entity.
Ready to open an account?
On cost to hold and cost to leave, IBKR leads this page: no custody fee, no inactivity fee, whole-share transferability and the widest venue access. If your plan is euro-listed UCITS and you want a cheaper exit or a simpler platform, Scalable Capital, DEGIRO and Lightyear are the ranked alternatives above. Check the per-trade minimum and country availability for your own market before you fund. Investing involves risk of loss.
Go deeper
Frequently asked questions
What actually costs money when you hold an ETF for ten years?
Rarely the commission. Over a decade the recurring items are custody and account charges, exchange connectivity fees, monthly custody on certain ETCs and ETPs, cash-side charges on uninvested balances, and the cost of getting the position out again. Commissions are paid once per contribution; the rest are paid every year you hold.
What does it cost to move a portfolio to another broker?
It varies more than any other line on a fee schedule. Scalable Capital prices securities transfers at EUR 0.00 plus any third-party costs, and the line is direction-neutral. Lightyear charges nothing on its side. DEGIRO charges EUR 20.00 per position plus external costs on its Dutch, French, Irish, UK and Swiss schedules, and nothing at all on the German one. Trade Republic prices outgoing portfolio transfers at zero, with third-party costs able to be added.
External costs are generally unpublished, vary by exchange, and are passed on to the client — so a “free” transfer is rarely free end to end.
Can I transfer fractional shares to another broker?
Usually not. Lightyear states plainly that fractional positions cannot be transferred and must be sold or topped up to whole shares first, and its transfers accept whole shares only with a minimum of EUR, GBP or USD 1,000 per position. On Mintos, fractions may only be sold through the platform to other users.
If you intend to move brokers one day, fractional accumulation quietly creates work — and a taxable disposal — that you will have to deal with at a moment you did not choose.
Is securities lending worth opting into?
It is a decision with real trade-offs, not free money. At DEGIRO it is opt-in and off by default, available only in the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Italy. DEGIRO itself is the client’s counterparty: it receives the borrowing fees, deducts fees payable to its service providers, and pays 50% of the remaining amount to the client. Legal ownership and therefore voting rights transfer to the borrower for the duration of the loan.
IBKR runs an opt-in programme enrolled through Client Portal. Lightyear does not lend client money or investments at all, so the question does not arise there. No broker publishes an actual lending rate, so no income figure can be projected in advance.
Why is Mintos in this guide if positions cannot be transferred out?
Because it is the clearest illustration on this page of why exit friction is a genuine cost. Mintos has the lowest published holding cost of any platform here, with zero ETF commission, zero custody and no inactivity charge while ETFs are held.
Its terms also state that fractions may only be sold through Mintos to other platform users, and that the platform is the sole place of purchase and sale. That makes it a reasonable satellite account and a poor primary home for a portfolio you expect to hold for a decade.
What is US estate tax and why does it matter for non-US ETF investors?
US-domiciled ETFs such as VTI or SPY are US-situs assets. The IRS sets a filing threshold of USD 60,000 for the estate of a nonresident who is not a US citizen: above that value of US-situated assets, together with the gift tax specific exemption and adjusted taxable gifts, Form 706-NA must be filed. The threshold is not indexed for inflation and estate tax rates reach 40%.
The US holds estate tax treaties with 17 countries, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland and the UK, which changes the picture considerably for readers domiciled there. UCITS ETFs domiciled in Ireland or Luxembourg are generally not US-situs assets. Confirm your own position with a cross-border tax professional.
If I’m in Europe and can’t buy US ETFs, am I stuck?
No. UCITS ETFs track the same underlying indexes, so the exposure is the same and only the wrapper differs. Under the PRIIPs regime a key information document must be available in the required form before a retail client can buy a packaged product, which is why most US-domiciled ETFs are unavailable to EU retail investors.
Your decision moves to which UCITS listings your broker offers, what a trade on those venues actually costs all-in, and what it costs to hold and to leave.
Should I choose the cheapest broker or the safest?
Neither in isolation. For a decade-long ETF position, look at the combination of holding cost, exit cost, the legal entity you are contracting with, and the compensation scheme that applies to it.
Compensation schemes cover the failure of the firm, not investment losses, so they are not a substitute for cost discipline and they are not a guarantee against a falling market.
Is a local broker better than IBKR for tax reporting?
Sometimes. A local broker may produce country-specific reports or handle certain local obligations directly, which removes annual work. IBKR produces detailed statements but leaves more of the assembly to the investor.
For a small portfolio where your own time is the binding constraint, the local option can be entirely rational. For a large one, recurring cost differences usually dominate.
Is IBKR always the best broker for non-US long-term investors?
No. It leads this page because it combines no custody fee, no inactivity fee, broad venue access and whole-share transferability at scale. But its per-trade minimums differ sharply by market — EUR 3.00 Fixed in the main euro markets, EUR 6.00 in Portugal, EUR 10.00 in the Baltics — and fractional trading is unavailable in eight European countries.
A simpler platform you will actually operate consistently can be the better outcome. The ranking here is on cost to hold and cost to leave, not on universal fit.
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.