Scalable Capital vs Trading 212 (2026):
September pricing, recurring plans, tax and protection
Fees verified August 2026 against official pricing pages — see our methodology
Two things separating these brokers have changed in 2026, and both moved against the old verdict. From 1 September 2026 a manual order at Scalable Capital costs a flat €1.99 on both plans, while Trading 212 charges no commission at all. And since 5 January 2026 Trading 212 withholds German capital gains tax at source, which used to be Scalable’s clearest advantage. What still separates them is the shape of the automation, the cash product, and how each one holds your assets.
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TL;DR
- Recurring plans are the whole strategy. Executions cost €0 per plan from a €1 savings amount on both plans, and the September repricing does not touch them.
- You want breadth in the plan catalogue: 2,700+ ETFs plus shares, funds and crypto ETPs, across five intervals and nine execution days per month.
- You want a separate cash product — the Overnight account pays 2.60% p.a., variable, on unlimited cash on both plans.
- You want a discretionary robo portfolio alongside a self-directed account. Scalable Wealth is available to German and Austrian clients only.
- You prefer a German credit institution as counterparty, with cash under the German statutory deposit guarantee.
- You place manual orders as well as recurring ones. Trading 212 charges no commission; Scalable charges €1.99 flat per order from 1 September 2026.
- You want both shapes of automation — portfolio-level Pies and single-instrument recurring plans, the latter presented as a Savings Plan (Sparplan) under Trading 212 EU.
- You want fractional shares in ordinary lump-sum trades, not only inside a plan.
- You live outside Scalable Capital’s six markets, which is most of the EU.
- You are a German tax resident and want withholding handled at source with loss pots, the exemption order and a loss certificate all managed in-app.
Quick comparison
Scalable Capital figures reflect the pricing that applies from 1 September 2026. Trading 212 figures are for the Invest account under Trading 212 EU GmbH unless stated otherwise.
| Category | Scalable Capital | Trading 212 |
|---|---|---|
| Manual order fee | €1.99 flat from 01.09.2026 — both plans, PRIME ETFs and everything else | €0 commission |
| Monthly plan fee | FREE €0 / PRIME+ €4.99 | None |
| Recurring plan execution | €0 per plan from €1 (crypto ETPs carry a spread surcharge) | €0 commission |
| Shapes of automation | Per-instrument plans only — one plan per security | Pies (portfolio-level) and single-instrument plans |
| Plan catalogue | 2,700+ ETFs plus shares, funds and crypto ETPs | Stocks and ETFs; no total count is published by Trading 212 |
| Fractional shares | Via plans only; a position containing fractions must be sold whole | From €1 in ordinary trades |
| FX conversion | No conversion on EUR-priced holdings in a EUR account; the client documents carry a currency-conversion markup whose size is not published | 0.15% per conversion; avoidable via multi-currency — but multi-currency is not supported inside Pies |
| Cash interest | Overnight account 2.60% p.a., variable, unlimited, both plans. Broker balance 0% p.a. | Opt-in interest sharing; published rates are new-client rates and differ by entity — check the rate in the app |
| Where cash sits | FREE: Scalable, partner banks and qualifying money market funds. PRIME+: Scalable and partner banks. Either is also possible as the sole safekeeping method | Client money in omnibus accounts at partner banks, primarily J.P. Morgan; money market funds only with express consent |
| Deposit guarantee | €100,000 per depositor per credit institution; PRIME+ distributes across up to five banks plus voluntary guarantees | €100,000 per person per partner bank |
| If the broker itself fails | Securities held in custody, co-ownership via Clearstream | EdW covers 90% of value, capped at €20,000 per creditor. Your entitlement is a contractual right to delivery, not co-ownership at a CSD |
| Who executes your orders | Scalable Capital, across EIX, gettex and Xetra; you consent to OTC execution | Forwarded to Trading 212 Markets (Ireland) Limited, which executes on an exchange or its own systematic internaliser |
| German tax withholding | Yes — for clients taxable in Germany | Yes — Invest, German tax residents under Trading 212 EU, since 05.01.2026 |
| Robo-advisor | Yes — Scalable Wealth, Germany and Austria only | No |
| Country availability | DE, AT, metropolitan FR, IT, ES, NL | Almost all EU countries across two entities; not directed at Belgian residents |
| Custody fee | €0 | €0 |
| Inactivity fee | Not listed on the price schedule | No inactivity row appears on the price list |
Scalable Capital figures from its published Broker cost page and its List of Prices and Services. Trading 212 figures from its Terms & Fees pages, Invest Terms and Help Centre. Verified August 2026. Both providers can change terms; check each broker’s current documents before acting.
Recurring investing: savings plans vs AutoInvest
The usual framing of this comparison — Scalable does per-ETF plans, Trading 212 does portfolio Pies — is wrong in one direction. Trading 212 does both. AutoInvest runs on a Pie or on a single instrument straight from that instrument’s details page, and under Trading 212 EU GmbH the single-instrument version is presented as a Savings Plan (Sparplan). The real difference is that Scalable has no portfolio-level equivalent, and that each side’s mechanics have friction the other does not.
- €0 per execution from a €1 savings amount, on both the FREE and PRIME+ plans. Crypto ETPs are the exception — every plan execution carries the spread surcharge of 0.99% (FREE) or 0.69% (PRIME+).
- Eligible instruments are ETFs, shares, crypto ETPs and funds. Scalable states 2,700+ ETFs are available for plans.
- Five intervals — monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual — across nine execution days per month (the 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 19th, 22nd and 25th).
- One plan per security. The number of plans is unlimited; the number per ISIN is one.
- Changes need five banking days’ lead time. Adjustments made later than that are applied to the following execution instead.
- The savings rate is reserved from your broker clearing balance several days ahead. If the balance is short at the moment of reservation, SEPA direct debit from your reference account is used as a fallback — so a debit can appear that you did not choose.
- Fractions are bought to six decimal places and always rounded down, so the savings rate is never exceeded and a small remainder stays in the clearing account.
- On a Pie: you set target weights across up to 50 slices, minimum 0.1% each, and one recurring contribution buys fractional shares across them.
- On a single instrument: no Pie needed. Set it from the instrument’s own page. This is the Savings Plan (Sparplan) for Trading 212 EU clients.
- Pie schedules: daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, every two months or every six months. Single-instrument schedules: daily, weekly, every two weeks or monthly on the 1st to 28th.
- Two distribution types. Self-Balancing (the default) sends new money first to slices below target. By Targets splits exactly to your weights even where a slice is already overweight. Neither sells; rebalancing existing holdings is a separate manual action.
- Minimum order is €1 per slice, so the total contribution has to be large enough for the smallest slice to reach €1 — a 4% smallest slice implies a €25 minimum.
- AutoInvest runs at 08:00 CET, and at least half the chosen cycle must elapse before the next run, so the first contribution after setup or after any change is frequently skipped.
- Dividend reinvestment is on by default but reinvests only into the same share, and only above a threshold; below it, dividends accumulate as Pie cash.
If you contribute to one broad EUR-denominated ETF, the two are functionally identical and both cost nothing. The differences appear at the edges. With Scalable, a 70/30 split is two separate plans with their own dates and amounts, and any change needs five banking days’ notice. With Trading 212, a 70/30 split is one Pie and one deposit, and Self-Balancing steers new money toward whichever leg has drifted low.
Where Trading 212’s Pie is worse is currency. Scalable’s plan catalogue is deep and its executions are free, but the account is EUR and the plan is rigid. Neither is better in the abstract. What matters far more than the choice is that you pick one, automate it, and leave it alone.
Real cost for a passive ETF investor
For someone who only ever runs a recurring plan into a EUR-denominated UCITS ETF, both brokers are free and the fee comparison is a non-event. The gap opens the moment you place a manual order, or hold anything priced in a currency other than your account’s.
| Fee type | Scalable Capital (from 01.09.2026) | Trading 212 |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring plan execution | €0 per plan from €1 | €0 commission |
| Manual order | €1.99 flat — both plans, PRIME ETFs and all other instruments | €0 commission |
| Monthly subscription | €0 (FREE) / €4.99 (PRIME+) | None |
| FX conversion | None on EUR-priced holdings in a EUR account. The client documents contain a currency-conversion markup and its size is not published anywhere | 0.15% whenever the trade currency differs from the balance used — unavoidable inside a Pie on non-EUR holdings |
| Crypto ETP surcharge | 0.99% (FREE) / 0.69% (PRIME+) on every trade and every plan execution | Spot crypto is supplied by a different entity and is out of scope here |
| Deposits | €0 by transfer or direct debit. Instant deposits cost 0.99% (FREE) / 0.69% (PRIME+) of the first €5,000, every further euro free | Bank transfer free with no limit. Cards and wallets free up to €2,000 cumulative, then 0.7% on the amount above it |
| Custody fee | €0 | €0 |
| Withdrawals | Not priced in the fee schedule | Free — the receiving bank may charge |
| Inactivity fee | Not listed on the price schedule | No inactivity row appears on the price list |
A monthly contribution into a EUR-denominated UCITS ETF costs nothing at either broker. Scalable executes savings plans at €0 on both plans, and that is untouched by the September repricing. Trading 212 charges no commission and, on a EUR-priced holding bought with a EUR balance, no FX. On this use case, and it describes most long-term EU investors, price is not a differentiator at all.
Manual orders. €1.99 against €0, on every order, in both directions. There is no break-even to calculate: PRIME+ costs €4.99 a month and does not reduce the €1.99, so the subscription cannot be recovered through order pricing at any trade frequency. It is bought for the crypto and Instant rates, the cash distribution and the feature set.
Foreign currency. Trading 212’s 0.15% is 0.30% on a round trip, and inside a Pie it cannot be avoided.
Interest on uninvested money — and why one number cannot answer it
Comparison sites usually print two percentages here. That is not possible honestly for these two brokers, because only one of them publishes a rate that applies to existing clients.
| Feature | Scalable Capital | Trading 212 |
|---|---|---|
| Interest on the trading balance | 0% p.a., both plans | Paid daily where the interest programme is enabled |
| Separate cash product | Overnight account — 2.60% p.a., variable, on unlimited cash, both plans | None — interest is paid on the account balance itself |
| Opt-in required | Yes — the Overnight account is opened as a separate step | Yes — express consent to money market fund holding. Without it, no interest is paid to you and the firm keeps what it receives |
| Published rate | 2.50% p.a., published, variable | Published rates are new-client rates by Trading 212’s own disclosure; the applicable rate is shown in the app |
| Rate notation | p.a. | p.a. under the German entity, APY under the Cyprus entity — different compounding conventions, not comparable as printed |
| Protection of the cash | Statutory deposit guarantee, €100,000 per depositor per credit institution | €100,000 per partner bank on bank-held cash. Money market fund holdings are client assets, not client money, and are not deposit-guaranteed |
The Overnight account is a real product rather than a footnote: 2.60% p.a., variable, on unlimited cash, on both plans, and it sits inside a credit institution rather than an investment firm. On PRIME+, cash is distributed across Scalable and up to four partner banks for up to five times the €100,000 statutory guarantee, plus additional voluntary guarantees from participating banks. Without PRIME+, cash is distributed across banks with the €100,000 statutory guarantee per bank, or across qualifying money market funds under UCITS investor protection rules. Each of those is also possible as the sole safekeeping method, on either plan.
Interest is paid daily on the account balance with no separate product to open, which is simpler. Two conditions attach. It is opt-in and requires express consent to uninvested cash being placed in qualifying money market funds; if you never opt in, no interest reaches you. And money market fund holdings are client assets rather than client money, so they sit outside the deposit guarantee — Trading 212 discloses that if a fund holding your cash became insolvent you could lose some or all of it. We do not publish a Trading 212 rate here, because the figures on the price list are new-client rates and the rate that applies to an existing account is only visible in the app.
Where each broker operates — and the German tax gap that closed in 2026
- One legal entity, Scalable Capital Bank GmbH, serving six markets cross-border: Germany, Austria, metropolitan France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.
- Germany and Austria: the full product, including Scalable Wealth. The German-language client documents bind residents of both.
- France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands: broker only. Wealth is not available, and the English text of the client documents is the binding version.
- Outside those six countries, Scalable Capital is not available at all.
- Two client-facing EU entities. Trading 212 EU GmbH (BaFin) serves Germany, Austria, France, Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Nordics, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
- Trading 212 Markets Ltd (CySEC) serves Italy, Portugal, Poland, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, the Baltics, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
- Between them they reach almost every EU country, including all six Scalable Capital markets.
- Belgium is explicitly excluded. Trading 212 states its material is not directed at Belgian residents.
Until the end of 2025, Scalable Capital withheld German capital gains tax at source and Trading 212 did not, which made Scalable the obvious choice for a German resident. That changed on 5 January 2026, when Trading 212 introduced automatic tax withholding for Invest activity. Trading 212 states that automatic deduction applies only to German tax residents registered under Trading 212 EU GmbH, and that from the 2026 tax year a Steuerbescheinigung is issued for the Invest account.
Both brokers now let you set up the exemption order (Freistellungsauftrag) in the app against the €1,000 single or €2,000 joint allowance. Trading 212 additionally accepts a Non-Assessment Certificate to stop withholding, tracks realised losses in loss pots that offset future profits, carries those losses into the following year automatically, and issues a loss certificate on request up to 15 December so losses can be used against gains held elsewhere.
If the tax argument was the reason you were leaning toward Scalable Capital, it is no longer a reason. What is left is order pricing, the shape of the automation, the cash product and the custody structure.
How each one actually holds your assets
These two are not the same kind of company, and the difference matters more than either brand’s regulatory badge. One is a bank. The other is an investment firm sitting in front of a group of entities, and it discloses that structure itself.
- Scalable Capital Bank GmbH, a credit institution authorised by BaFin and supervised by BaFin and the Deutsche Bundesbank. One entity, no local subsidiaries, no tied agents.
- Securities are held in custody with co-ownership through Clearstream — the standard German collective custody model.
- Cash is covered by the German statutory deposit guarantee scheme at €100,000 per depositor per credit institution, with a stated payout period of seven working days.
- Distribution across banks and money market funds varies by client and by activity, and the contract states that a client’s funds can end up held with a single trustee bank or a single qualifying fund. That applies on every plan, not just on FREE.
- A concrete friction worth knowing: the account cannot be closed until the securities account is empty, and the plan fee continues until it is, with liquidation costs borne by you.
- Trading 212 EU GmbH (BaFin) holds the Invest contract, the custody relationship and your client money. It is an investment firm, not a bank.
- Every EU equity order is forwarded to Trading 212 Markets (Ireland) Limited, authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland, which executes it on an exchange or on its own systematic internaliser. That entity holds no client money.
- The custody model is not German collective custody, and Trading 212 says so itself: instruments sit in omnibus accounts at sub-custodians and your entitlement is a contractual right to delivery rather than a direct co-ownership right at a central securities depository. On an unreconciled shortfall, clients share pro rata.
- If Trading 212 EU fails, the EdW investor compensation scheme covers 90% of the value of securities-transaction claims, capped at €20,000 per creditor, with a three-month payout term. Accounts at the same firm are aggregated against that cap.
- Share lending exists only under the Cyprus entity (Italy, Portugal, Poland, Greece and other CySEC markets). Clients under the German entity — France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Austria and the Nordics — cannot participate at all. Where it does apply, lent shares are not held under the client-asset rules; collateral of at least 102% replaces that protection rather than sitting on top of it.
Who wins, and in which context
- Pure savings-plan investors who never place a manual order. The plan execution is free on both plans and the September repricing does not touch it.
- Investors who want breadth in the plan catalogue — 2,700+ ETFs plus shares, funds and crypto ETPs, at nine execution days a month.
- Anyone carrying a meaningful cash balance: 2.60% p.a. on unlimited cash, inside a credit institution, with multi-bank distribution on PRIME+.
- German and Austrian investors who want a discretionary portfolio (Scalable Wealth) alongside a self-directed account.
- Investors who prefer German collective custody and a German bank as counterparty.
- Anyone who buys manually as well as automatically. €0 against €1.99 per order, in both directions, with no subscription that changes it.
- Investors who want portfolio-level automation — Scalable has no Pie equivalent, and Trading 212 also does the per-instrument shape Scalable does.
- Investors who want fractional shares in ordinary trades rather than only inside a plan.
- Anyone in the roughly twenty EU countries Scalable Capital does not serve.
- German tax residents who want withholding, loss pots and the exemption order handled in-app — a capability Trading 212 only gained in January 2026.
If you are a German or Austrian investor whose entire strategy is a monthly plan into a EUR-denominated ETF, and you hold cash on the side, Scalable Capital is still the better fit — the plan catalogue is deeper, the Overnight account is a genuine cash product, and the bank structure is the stronger one for a large balance. Note that the FREE plan gives you everything that strategy needs. There is no order-pricing reason to pay for PRIME+ from 1 September 2026.
For everyone else — investors outside the six markets, investors who place manual orders, investors who want a whole portfolio automated in one contribution, or investors who want fractional shares in ordinary trades — Trading 212 is the more capable account, and the tax argument that used to hold German readers back from it has closed. The one thing to watch is currency: if your portfolio contains USD-priced instruments and you intend to hold them in a Pie, the 0.15% is unavoidable and it compounds.
Both brokers above are built around automation. If your pattern is lump sums into a handful of positions across a wide range of exchanges, DEGIRO answers a different question. It is execution-only and provides no investment advice.
Start with what it does not do, because it disqualifies DEGIRO for most readers of this page: there is no recurring order type and no savings plan feature, and DEGIRO facilitates whole shares only, with no fractional trading. A monthly automated contribution is not something you can set up there.
Where it does compete: all ETFs, ETCs and ETNs listed on Tradegate form the Core Selection — over 1,000 products by DEGIRO’s own count — and trade at €1 per transaction, made up of €0.00 commission plus the €1.00 handling fee, with no exchange connectivity fee on those products. Currency or external product and spread costs may apply. Outside the Core Selection an order is €2.00 commission plus the €1.00 handling fee. The exchange connectivity fee is €2.50 per exchange per calendar year, capped at 0.25% of your total account value, and you pay whichever of the two is lower. Automatic currency conversion is 0.25%, which is higher than Trading 212’s 0.15%. Home-market stock commission differs by country, so check the schedule for the entity that serves you rather than assuming a single figure. DEGIRO is the 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.
Compensation schemes at DEGIRO — the €100,000 deposit guarantee and investor compensation of 90% of losses capped at €20,000 — cover broker failure only. They do not cover investment losses.
Ready to open an account?
All three brokers accept eligible residents with no minimum deposit. Verify current country availability, pricing and terms on each broker’s official website before opening or funding an account.
Go deeper
Frequently asked questions
Which broker is better for German investors, Scalable Capital or Trading 212?
The tax argument that used to decide this has closed. Both brokers now withhold German capital gains tax at source for German tax residents, and both let you set up the exemption order (Freistellungsauftrag) in the app. Trading 212 introduced automatic withholding for Invest activity on 5 January 2026 and issues a Steuerbescheinigung from the 2026 tax year onward.
What is left is a cost and product question. Trading 212 charges no commission on manual orders; from 1 September 2026 Scalable Capital charges a flat €1.99 per manual order on both the FREE and PRIME+ plans. Scalable offers a wider recurring plan catalogue, a separate Overnight account at 2.60% p.a. on unlimited cash, and a discretionary robo option in Germany and Austria. Trading 212 offers both portfolio-level Pies and single-instrument recurring plans, plus fractional shares in ordinary trades. If your strategy is a monthly plan and a cash balance, Scalable. If you also buy manually or want portfolio-level automation, Trading 212.
What changes at Scalable Capital on 1 September 2026?
Scalable Capital’s published price table splits into two dated blocks. From 1 September 2026 the block headed for Xetra and gettex carries two rows and nothing else: PRIME ETFs from Amundi, iShares, Vanguard and Xtrackers at €1.99, and per trade at €1.99. Both rows are €1.99 on both the FREE plan and the PRIME+ plan.
The consequence most summaries miss is that no per-order break-even exists any more. PRIME+ costs €4.99 a month and does not reduce the €1.99 order price, so the subscription cannot be recovered through cheaper orders at any trade frequency. It is bought for the crypto ETP spread rate, the Instant deposit rate, the cash distribution and the feature set. Savings plan executions are unaffected and stay at €0 per plan from a €1 savings amount on both plans.
Does Trading 212 offer per-ETF savings plans, or only Pies?
Both, and this is the most commonly misreported thing about the platform. AutoInvest works on a Pie, where one recurring contribution is split across target weights, and it also works on a single instrument straight from that instrument’s details page with no Pie involved. Under Trading 212 EU GmbH the single-instrument version is presented as a Savings Plan (Sparplan).
Pie schedules run daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, every two months or every six months. Single-instrument schedules run daily, weekly, every two weeks or monthly on the 1st to 28th. Scalable Capital offers only the per-instrument shape, with monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual frequency across nine execution days, and one plan per security. So the genuine difference is that Scalable has no portfolio-level equivalent — not that Trading 212 lacks per-instrument plans.
Does Trading 212 handle German taxes automatically?
Yes, for Invest activity, since 5 January 2026. Trading 212 states that automatic tax deduction applies only to German tax residents registered under Trading 212 EU GmbH, and that from the 2026 tax year a Steuerbescheinigung is issued for the Invest account. The exemption order is set up in the tax overview inside the app, a Non-Assessment Certificate can be submitted to have withholding stopped, realised losses are tracked in loss pots and carried into the following year automatically, and a loss certificate can be requested up to 15 December if you want to use those losses against gains held at another broker.
One thing that trips people up: there is no 2025 Invest tax certificate, because Trading 212 did not act as German withholding agent for Invest stock and ETF trades that year. Invest clients received a Capital Income Statement (Erträgnisaufstellung) for 2025 instead, which is informational and not a tax certificate. Note also that Scalable Capital’s own wording is that it pays taxes only for clients taxable in Germany, so neither broker withholds for Austrian, French, Italian, Spanish or Dutch residents.
Which broker pays more on uninvested cash?
It cannot be answered with two numbers, and any page giving you two numbers is not reading the source carefully. Scalable Capital pays 0% p.a. on the broker clearing balance and 2.60% p.a., variable, on unlimited cash held in the separate Overnight account, on both plans.
Trading 212’s interest is an opt-in programme that requires express consent to uninvested cash being held in qualifying money market funds; without opting in, no interest is paid to you and the firm keeps what it receives. Its published rates are new-client rates by its own disclosure, the applicable rate for an existing account is only shown in the app, and the rate is quoted per annum under the German entity and as an APY under the Cyprus entity — different compounding conventions that cannot be compared as printed. Money market fund holdings are also client assets rather than client money, so they sit outside the deposit guarantee.
Which broker is safer, Scalable Capital or Trading 212?
They are structured differently, so the honest answer is that they fail differently. Scalable Capital Bank GmbH is a credit institution authorised by BaFin and supervised by BaFin and the Deutsche Bundesbank. Cash is covered by the German statutory deposit guarantee at €100,000 per depositor per credit institution, and on PRIME+ cash is distributed across up to five banks for up to five times that statutory cover plus voluntary guarantees. Without PRIME+ it is distributed across banks or qualifying money market funds, each also possible as the sole safekeeping method. Securities are held with co-ownership through Clearstream.
Trading 212 EU GmbH is an investment firm, not a bank. Client money sits at partner banks under the same €100,000 per bank guarantee. If Trading 212 itself fails, the EdW investor compensation scheme covers 90% of the value of securities-transaction claims capped at €20,000 per creditor — not a flat €20,000. Trading 212 also discloses that its EU custody model is not German collective custody: your entitlement is a contractual right to delivery rather than co-ownership at a central securities depository, holdings sit in omnibus accounts, and on an unreconciled shortfall clients share pro rata. Neither scheme, on either side, covers investment losses.
Is Trading 212 available in more countries than Scalable Capital?
Yes, substantially. Scalable Capital serves six markets from one German entity: Germany, Austria, metropolitan France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Full product depth, including Scalable Wealth, is limited to Germany and Austria.
Trading 212 covers the EU through two client-facing entities. Trading 212 EU GmbH under BaFin serves Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Nordics and Switzerland; Trading 212 Markets Ltd under CySEC serves Italy, Portugal, Poland, Greece, the Baltics and most of central Europe. Between them they reach almost every EU country. Belgium is the notable exception — Trading 212 states explicitly that its material is not directed at Belgian residents.
When does a plain exchange broker like DEGIRO make more sense than either?
When you invest in lump sums rather than on a schedule and want direct access to many exchanges. DEGIRO is execution-only and provides no investment advice. Start with the disqualifier: it has no recurring order type and no savings plan feature, and it deals in whole shares only with no fractional trading — so it is the wrong tool for anyone whose plan is a monthly automated contribution.
Where it competes is elsewhere. ETFs, ETCs and ETNs listed on Tradegate form the Core Selection — over 1,000 products by DEGIRO’s own count — and trade at €1 per transaction all-in, made up of €0.00 commission plus the €1.00 handling fee, with no exchange connectivity fee on those products. Currency or external product and spread costs may apply. Outside the Core Selection an order is €2.00 commission plus the €1.00 handling fee. The exchange connectivity fee is €2.50 per exchange per calendar year, capped at 0.25% of your total account value, with the lower of the two charged. Automatic currency conversion is 0.25%, higher than Trading 212’s 0.15%, and home-market stock commission differs by country, so read the schedule for the entity that serves you. Investing involves risk of loss.
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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.