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The short answer#
Almost everybody who goes looking for an Interactive Brokers alternative has already decided that the problem is price. For somebody buying one global tracker a month, that is usually the wrong diagnosis. IBKR's commissions sit at the low end of what a European retail investor can get, and the difficulty is elsewhere entirely. An order ticket with eight fields on it. A market data subscription page. A currency ledger quietly holding four balances at once. An annual statement that has to be explained to an accountant before it can be filed.
So the first question is which of those you are actually escaping. If the platform intimidates you, the answer is a simpler interface, and several firms offer one over the same funds. If the January paperwork is the problem, the answer is a firm that files a report in your country, and that is a much shorter list. If cost genuinely is the problem, do the arithmetic on your own contribution before moving, because a flat charge and a percentage charge swap places somewhere in the low hundreds of euros a month.
There is no winner at the bottom of this page#
This site publishes no broker ranking and takes no commission from anyone, so what follows is criteria and examples. The order carries no meaning. Ranked broker lists are overwhelmingly monetised, and on most of them the sequence is the product being sold, which is the same reason the main guide gives seven checks and names no favourite.
What follows is the handful of things these firms genuinely differ on, verified in a public register where one exists, quoted from a firm's own document where it publishes one, and marked as unverified where this site could not open the page itself.
What you are actually leaving#
A European client of Interactive Brokers is generally a client of Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited, which the Central Bank of Ireland's register lists under reference C423427, authorised as an investment firm under the Irish regulations implementing MiFID.
That one fact settles three others. Complaints go to an Irish regulator. The compensation scheme attached to the account is the Irish one, wherever in Europe its holder lives. And the account is not the American broker whose name it shares, so the US protections quoted in half the forum threads on this subject cover none of it.
The frictions people describe are real, and they are worth separating from each other, because only one of them is fixed by changing firms.
The interface. The order ticket is built for somebody trading several instruments across several venues, and it asks every question that job requires before it will accept an order for one ETF.
The currency ledger. Holding four currencies at once is an advantage to a person who understands it and a source of accidental exposure to everybody else.
The paperwork. A firm that files a tax report where you live removes an evening in January, or an accountant's invoice. Establish whether yours does before you need the answer.
Four shapes of European broker#
Retail brokers in Europe come in four recognisable shapes, and the shape tells you more about the years ahead than any fee table will. The useful question about each is how it earns from you, because that determines what it will ask of you in return.
The firms named below are examples of a shape. They are not recommendations of one, and every one of them revises its terms, its pricing and occasionally its licensing entity faster than a guide gets rewritten.
The global broker
- How it earns from you
Commission on trades, interest on idle cash, and margin lending.
- What it asks in return
That you learn an interface designed for a professional workload, and handle your own tax reporting.
- Who it tends to suit
Somebody buying across several countries and currencies who will sit down with a fee schedule.
The neobroker
- How it earns from you
Spread, currency conversion, interest on cash and arrangements with trading venues, with commission small or absent.
- What it asks in return
That you accept a curated fund list, and read the terms closely enough to see where the revenue comes from.
- Who it tends to suit
Somebody paying a fixed monthly amount into one or two mainstream funds.
The discount broker
- How it earns from you
Per-trade commission, currency conversion, and in some account types a share of the revenue from lending out client securities.
- What it asks in return
That you check which account type you were signed up to, and what it permits.
- Who it tends to suit
Somebody who wants a broad fund list and is content to place trades by hand.
The domestic incumbent
- How it earns from you
An explicit running charge, often a custody fee, and a wider conversion margin.
- What it asks in return
The highest cost on this list, in exchange for the least homework.
- Who it tends to suit
Somebody who values a national tax report and support in their own language above the last basis point.
Where the names actually sit#
Interactive Brokers is the global broker everybody means by the term. Trade Republic and Trading 212 are the neobrokers European investors ask about most. DEGIRO is the discount broker, and the domestic incumbent is whichever bank or national broker advertises on your commute.
Two of those categories have been drifting into each other. Neobrokers have been acquiring banking licences and lengthening their fund lists, and the discount brokers have been building phone apps. A comparison written three years ago describes a market that has since moved, so treat any table of this kind, including the one above, as a starting point for questions and not as an answer.
Who is actually holding your shares#
A broker is a front end onto a custody arrangement, and the arrangement underneath decides what happens to your holdings if the firm fails. The UCITS rulebook protects the fund and says nothing about the broker, so this is a question about the firm and about the country that licensed it.
Trade Republic publishes its arrangement plainly. Its own support page states that the securities account is managed by Trade Republic Bank GmbH, that the securities are held in Trade Republic's own Clearstream account, and that the depositary is usually Clearstream in Frankfurt.
Trading 212's EU clients contract with Trading 212 Markets Ltd, and that entity's help centre states that it works with Interactive Brokers to help safeguard client assets, while client money sits with several large EU and UK banks.
An alternative to Interactive Brokers can turn out to be Interactive Brokers with a different app in front of it.
What that does to the decision#
If the interface is what you dislike, a different interface is a complete answer and the custodian underneath is beside the point. If the counterparty is what you dislike, read the new firm's custody page before you move, because you may be paying an afternoon of admin to arrive back where you started.
Either way the useful habit is the same. Find the page on the firm's own site that names the custodian, and read it before opening the account instead of after the first bad headline.
The one this page could not check#
DEGIRO is the fourth firm European investors ask about, and every page of its own describing its custody structure refused an automated request while this article was being written. What is repeated widely about it, that client securities sit in a separate Dutch foundation outside the broker's own balance sheet, has been confirmed here by no primary document.
So it stays named and uncited. Open the custody page in a browser yourself before relying on any of it. A plausible URL under this paragraph would be a fabricated citation, and an admission costs the reader far less than that.
The protection figure nearly everybody reads wrong#
Two separate schemes stand behind a European brokerage account, they cover different things, and their ceilings are an order of magnitude apart. Reading one figure and assuming it covers everything is the most common mistake in this whole subject.
The deposit guarantee covers cash held at a bank. The European Commission puts the protection at deposits of up to €100.000 per depositor, and that is the number most people have in mind.
The investor compensation scheme is the other one, and it is the one that reaches your fund units. It covers a firm failing to return money or instruments it was holding for you. Ireland's scheme, which is the one attached to an Interactive Brokers Ireland account, pays 90% of the amount lost with a maximum of €20.000 per investor.
The Irish consumer regulator is equally explicit about the other half. The scheme covers the firm's failure to return what it held. It does not cover an investment that performed badly, was poorly managed, or fell with the market.
A broker licensed in Germany or Cyprus brings its own national scheme, and the one that applies is set by the broker's home state and not by yours. This site has verified the Irish ceiling and prints no other. Look yours up on the scheme's own site before assuming it is generous.
A €20.000 ceiling is a real protection over a first year of contributions and a rounding error twenty years in.
What that ceiling should change#
Set the figure next to the balance you expect to hold and it stops being a reassurance and becomes an input. Below the ceiling, the compensation scheme genuinely covers the failure case. Comfortably above it, the thing protecting the bulk of your portfolio is the custody structure, because segregated securities held at a depositary are returnable property and were never the broker's to lose.
That is the argument for reading the previous section before this one, and the argument some investors reach for a second broker once the balance is large. Neither of those is about picking a cheaper firm.
What one monthly purchase actually costs#
Fee tables are built to be compared side by side, and side by side is the wrong unit. What decides your answer is the total cost of the purchase you will actually make, repeated for as long as you intend to make it.
Four things come out of the same contribution, and only the first appears in most comparisons.
Commission on the trade, flat or as a percentage. The two rank in opposite orders at €100 a month and at €2.000, so the winner of any comparison depends on a number that is yours.
Currency conversion, charged where the listing currency differs from the money funding the account. On a monthly plan this repeats for as long as the plan runs.
Custody or platform charges, quoted annually as a percentage of holdings, plus any inactivity fee.
The spread on the fund itself, which is set by the market and not by the broker, but comes out of the same purchase.
The one people miss#
The conversion charge is the one that hides. If the account is funded in euros and you buy a dollar listing, most brokers convert on every single purchase and take a fee for doing it. Buying the euro listing of the same fund removes the charge and changes your currency exposure not at all, because that exposure comes from what the fund owns and from nowhere else.
On small contributions that repeating charge can comfortably exceed the fund's own annual cost, which makes it the rare fee where a beginner is penalised more heavily than a large investor.
Twenty minutes in a public register#
Every firm on this page is entered in a regulator's public register, and the register is the only description of it that is not marketing copy. Two entries were opened for this article.
Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited appears in the Central Bank of Ireland's register under reference C423427, authorised as an investment firm and, separately, as a crypto-asset service provider under the EU's MiCA regulation.
Trading 212 Markets Ltd appears in the CySEC register under licence 398/21, granted on 1 March 2021, with safekeeping and administration of financial instruments listed among its authorised services.
Two things to take from any register entry. The legal entity is frequently not the brand on the app, and several of these firms have moved clients between entities in recent years. The list of authorised services matters too, because a firm permitted to receive and transmit orders is doing a different job from one permitted to hold your instruments.
The rest of the checks take an evening, once, on the decision that ends up holding everything else you own.
The exact legal entity your contract will be with, and its licence number.
The home state regulator, which sets the compensation scheme and, in practice, the language a complaint has to be made in.
Whether safekeeping of financial instruments is among the authorised services.
Whether client securities may be lent out, and which account type you were placed on.
Whether the firm files a tax report in your country or hands you a spreadsheet.
Whether you can transfer holdings out in kind, and what that costs per line.
Leaving is the expensive part#
A transfer in kind moves the units themselves between brokers. You keep the holding, the purchase price and the holding period, and in most European tax systems the move itself is invisible.
Selling at one firm and buying at the other is two trades and a disposal. What that disposal costs is decided entirely by where you live, and in a few countries it is large enough to make the whole exercise pointless. This site publishes no national tax rates. Ask your own authority what a disposal triggers before you place the sale, and not after the contract note arrives.
Transfer fees are usually charged per position, so a portfolio holding one global fund is cheap to move and a portfolio holding eleven is not. That is an argument for owning fewer funds that has little to do with diversification.
Ask both firms in writing before you begin. The receiving broker has to support the instrument, and a fund listed only on an exchange the new firm does not reach cannot arrive there.
Questions people actually ask#
“Is Interactive Brokers safe for a European investor?” The European account sits with Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited, and its authorisation is public in the register linked above. Safety in the sense the question usually means is a question about custody and about compensation, both answerable in an afternoon, and neither answered by a comparison site's score.
“Which one is cheapest?” It depends on the size and frequency of your purchases. Two readers of this sentence can get opposite answers from the same fee table, so run the arithmetic on your own contribution.
“Can I hold the same fund at any of them?” Usually, if it is a UCITS fund listed on an exchange the firm reaches. The neobrokers curate their lists, so check the ISIN on the new platform before you commit to moving, because a similar name is not the same fund.
“Do I need to move at all?” If the account is with a licensed firm, holds a fund you chose deliberately, and costs you little on the contribution you actually make, then the move is optional. Switching is an administrative afternoon with a possible tax event attached, and the gain has to be larger than both.
“Would a second broker be better than switching?” Splitting a portfolio across two firms halves your exposure to either failing and doubles the paperwork. Below the compensation ceiling it buys you very little. Well above it, it is among the cheapest protection available to a retail investor.
What to settle before you open anything#
Write down which of the three frictions sent you looking. Interface, paperwork, or cost. Each has a different answer and only one of them is fixed by a cheaper fee table.
Then look up the entity and the licence in the regulator's own register, read the custody page on the firm's own site, and find the compensation ceiling that its home state applies. Three documents, none of them long.
Then price one month's purchase at the new firm on the contribution you actually make, including the conversion charge if the listing currency differs from your account's. The mechanics of the purchase itself are the same at every firm on this page, which is the quiet argument for spending less time on this decision than the internet suggests, and more on the size of the monthly contribution.
