The Best Brokers for European Investors in 2023

Since my last European broker comparison was over two years ago, an update is long overdue.

This time I’m comparing a total of 12 brokers for stocks and ETFs in Europe, way more than last time. After all, quite a bit changed since then and you’ve asked me about my opinion on several other options over the years – which I want to address as well.

The video above goes into a lot more details you won’t find here, but in short, here are my current top 3 for European investors, followed by how I would rate the others:

Best Brokers for Europeans🇪🇺

These are the three best brokers in Europe as of right now. There are no account fees, your shares are never lent out, all three of them offer recurring investments and have very low fees. And if you ever decide to transfer your stocks or ETFs somewhere else (or to one of these brokers), you pay zero fees for that as well (already tested!):

• Interactive Brokers – My personal #1 due to its long history, size and financial strength (my review and comparison with Degiro)
• Trade Republic – Now with 4% interest p.a. on € deposits secured by a 100k bank deposit guarantee! (Here’s my review)
• Scalable Capital – (limited to Germany, Austria, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands)

Best Broker in Austria🇦🇹

If you’re based in Austria, where taxes are a lot more complicated, I highly recommend going with a local broker that takes care of these for you. Due to no account fees, free saving plans on 300 ETFs and only 1,5€ in fees for other ETFs, this is by far the best option (more details in the pricing table):

• Flatex

You can of course also use one of the German broker options below, both of which provide you with yearly tax reports for Austria, which makes dealing with them easier. But you’ll still need to file them yourself on a yearly basis.

Best Brokers in Germany🇩🇪

Germany has similarly complex tax laws like Austria, so going with a local option that takes care of them for you makes your life a lot easier. Luckily, you have some excellent options in the country, all of which have no account fees, offer free savings plans and have low order fees of only 1€.

• Trade Republic – Now with 4% interest p.a. on € with a 100k bank deposit guarantee (my review)
• Scalable Capital

Good but not great Brokers🇪🇺

Due to a share lending policy you can’t opt out of, yearly exchange connectivity fees, high fees if you ever decide to transfer your shares somewhere else and a lot more competition in the space, Degiro is not among the best options any more. My comparison with my #1 Interactive Brokers goes into a lot more detail. Trading 212 is a similar story – while it doesn’t have trading commissions, you can’t transfer shares to another broker (a major no-go for long-term investors), so you’re stuck and forced to sell if you ever decide to leave the broker.

• Degiro
• Trading212 (promo code: ANGELO for a free share up to 100€)

These are just ok🇪🇺

I think there are better options than the following three brokers overall, so I would personally use them for short-term trades rather than long-term investments. Among these, Freedom24 sticks out by offering something you can’t find anywhere else: The ability to physically buy & hold US-based ETFs like SCHD and VTI. Meanwhile, eToro and XTB have a strong focus on CFDs and try to motivate their users to trade as much as possible, which I’m not a fan of.

• Freedom24
• eToro
• XTB

Video time-stamps:

• 00:00 Broker Comparison (incl. my ETF-Portfolio after 6 years)
• 01:02 A good broker needs to meet these requirements!
• 02:49 Best Long-Term Brokers for Europeans
• 02:58 Interactive Brokers
• 04:34 Trade Republic
• 05:22 Scalable Capital
• 07:01 Degiro
• 08:15 What about Saxo Bank?
• 08:50 Best Broker in Austria: Still Flatex?
• 10:09 Best Brokers in Germany
• 10:40 Trade Republic, Scalable Capital, Smartbroker
• 11:52 Short-Term Brokers (here’s why)
• 12:25 Trading 212
• 13:09 Lightyear
• 14:33 Freedom24 (US ETFs)
• 16:34 eToro
• 17:38 XTB
• 18:31 Do you agree with my assessment?

Make sure you watch the full video to find out what I think of each of them and why I don’t consider all of them to be good long-term brokerage options.

Note: My time is limited right now, which is why I’m currently unable to spend hours and hours converting every video to a blog post – I hope you understand. Especially since the number of readers on the blog is several times smaller than the number of you watching my videos on YouTube.