Freedom24

Freedom24 runs two retail tariffs and neither carries a monthly subscription. The default is Smart, which charges EUR 2 per order plus EUR 0.02 per share on European and US stocks and ETFs. The alternative, All-Inclusive, charges 0.50% of trade value plus EUR 0.012 per share with a EUR/USD 1.20 minimum per order and bundles in a personal account manager and the DAS terminal. Every figure here is for the Smart plan in EUR at Freedom Finance Europe Ltd, the entity that serves EEA retail clients.

The per-share component is the thing to model before you commit. Two worked examples on the Smart plan:

• 50 shares at EUR 100 (a EUR 5,000 order): EUR 2 + EUR 1.00 = EUR 3.00, or 0.06% of the trade.
• 1,000 shares at EUR 5 (the same EUR 5,000): EUR 2 + EUR 20.00 = EUR 22.00, or 0.44% of the trade.

Identical order value, seven times the cost. Freedom24 is cheap when you buy expensive shares and expensive when you buy cheap ones.

Options are the standout: USD 0.65 per US contract on Smart, so a ten-lot costs USD 6.50. That is US discount-broker pricing from an EEA account, and it is the single strongest argument for the platform.

What you do not pay matters too. There is no custody fee, no account-maintenance fee and no inactivity fee, so a dormant portfolio costs nothing to hold. What you do pay outside trading: EUR 7 per bank withdrawal, 0.65% (minimum EUR/USD 2) on card withdrawals, EUR/USD 100 for an outgoing external free-of-payment securities transfer — or 5% of the transferred value, minimum EUR/USD 100, if those securities were delivered by MT599 within the previous six months — around EUR 1.25 a month per real-time exchange feed, and EUR 250 if you want the broker to represent you at a shareholder meeting. Closing the account is free, though a residual balance of up to EUR/USD 100 can be retained in full as a closing charge. Margin financing runs at roughly 0.041% to 0.049% per day, about 15-18% a year depending on tariff.

Freedom24 states that there is no charge or commission for currency exchange transactions. Conversions run at the rate shown in the platform, and only during trading hours. The broker's documents do not say whether that rate contains a spread.

The entity you contract with as an EEA client is Freedom Finance Europe Ltd, a Cypriot Investment Firm authorised by CySEC under CIF licence 275/15 since May 2015, registered at the Freedom Tower in Limassol. That licence passports across the EEA under MiFID II, which is why the same terms apply whether you open from Germany, France or Estonia.

CySEC sits in the mid tier of our regulatory framework: a real EU authority applying MiFID II, but without the supervisory record of BaFin, the FCA or FINMA. The practical consequence is the compensation ceiling. Freedom Finance Europe is a member of the Investor Compensation Fund for Customers of Cypriot Investment Firms, which covers up to EUR 20,000 per client if the firm fails and cannot return assets. That is a fifth of what a German or Dutch bank deposit would carry, and it covers firm failure only — never investment losses.

Structurally the picture is better than the licence alone suggests. Client securities are held in segregated accounts separate from the firm's own assets, retail clients get negative balance protection, and the parent — Freedom Holding Corp, listed on Nasdaq as FRHC — is an SEC registrant that files audited financial statements. Very few European discount brokers publish accounts to that standard, and it is a meaningful transparency advantage over privately held rivals.

Two disclosures belong in any honest assessment. In July 2023 Freedom Finance Europe paid a EUR 50,000 settlement to CySEC over potential non-compliance with anti-money-laundering rules, specifically client identification and due diligence and the monitoring of unusual or complex transactions. Separately, S&P rates Freedom Holding Corp in speculative-grade territory. Neither means client assets are at risk today, and no broker is ever guaranteed safe. They are facts to weigh against the breadth and the pricing.

Freedom24 runs on Tradernet, the group's own terminal, delivered as a web application, a downloadable desktop client for Windows and macOS, and mobile apps for iOS, Android and Huawei. There is no MetaTrader integration and no third-party platform bridge, so what you see is what you get.

The web terminal is the primary surface and it is genuinely capable. You get the full order book, options chains with strikes and expiries laid out properly, portfolio analytics broken down by sector and currency, and charting with trend lines, moving averages and the standard indicator set. Order types cover market, limit and stop, and the terminal handles multi-currency balances cleanly — which matters when you are holding EUR, USD and HKD against positions on Xetra, Nasdaq and HKEX inside the same account.

The weakness is presentation rather than function. The interface descends from a professional terminal lineage and it shows: dense panels, limited layout customisation, and an information hierarchy that assumes you already know what you are looking for. Nothing is hidden, but nothing is guided either. Someone arriving from Trade Republic or Revolut will find it busy; someone arriving from Interactive Brokers will find it familiar and slightly friendlier.

The mobile app is close to parity with the web terminal, which is unusual at this end of the market. You can trade options, browse the bond marketplace, manage the D-account and place orders from the phone without falling back to desktop.

A demo terminal is available before you fund an account, and it is worth using precisely because the platform is not self-explanatory. All-Inclusive clients additionally get DAS Trader, a professional-grade front end aimed at active order-flow traders.

This is where Freedom24 separates itself from the neobroker cohort. The platform advertises roughly one million tradable instruments across 15 exchanges: approximately 40,000 stocks, 3,600 ETFs, 145,000 bonds and a very deep US options book. Venues include NYSE, Nasdaq and US OTC, the London Stock Exchange, Deutsche Boerse, Euronext markets, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, CME for futures, and Central Asian venues including KASE.

Stocks and ETFs are the core. Coverage runs well past the S&P 500 and the usual European large caps into mid caps and thinner listings that discount apps simply do not carry. There are no fractional shares, so position sizing is constrained by the share price — a real limitation for anyone contributing a few hundred euros a month.

Bonds are the underrated part of the offer. A 145,000-instrument bond universe, plus a curated showcase of higher-rated issues accessible from around EUR/USD 1,000 per position, is something most European retail brokers do not provide at all. If you want to build an actual bond ladder rather than buy a bond ETF, this is one of the few realistic retail routes in the EEA.

Options are US-listed and priced at USD 0.65 per contract on the Smart plan. Futures are available on CME through the terminal at EUR/USD 1.50 per contract under the public fee schedule, with a further EUR/USD 1.50 per contract charged at expiration.

What is missing: no spot crypto, no CFDs, no retail forex, no spread betting and no copy trading. Freedom24 is a cash-and-derivatives securities broker, not a multi-asset trading app. For a long-term investor that is an advantage — there is nothing here designed to make you overtrade. For anyone who wants leveraged index exposure or a crypto tab, it is a hard stop.

Idle cash can sit in the D-account, which accrues interest daily against EURIBOR for euro balances and SOFR for dollars, with fixed-term plans quoted materially higher in exchange for locking funds for 3, 6 or 12 months.

Opening an account is fully digital and fast. You start with an email address and a phone number, complete identity verification electronically, answer the standard MiFID appropriateness questions about income, experience and objectives, then choose your tariff and base currency. Most applications take under 15 minutes of user time, with verification typically completing the same day. There is no minimum deposit — fund with any amount and start trading.

You pick a plan (Smart or All-Inclusive) and a denomination (EUR or USD) at opening. The plan can be changed later, but it is worth modelling your typical order first, because the two tariffs invert depending on whether you trade a few expensive shares or many cheap ones.

Bank and SEPA deposits are free. Card deposits credit immediately; SEPA and bank transfers take one to three business days. Digital-asset deposits are also supported. Do not assume every route is free, though: the fee schedule carries a separate "Payment processing fee for the incoming transfers" whose rate is set per payment route, jurisdiction and currency on the platform, so check what your chosen method costs before you fund by card.

Withdrawals are where the account gets expensive. Every bank withdrawal costs EUR 7 regardless of size, and card withdrawals cost 0.65% of the amount with a EUR/USD 2 minimum. On a EUR 500 withdrawal that EUR 7 is 1.4% of the money you are taking out. If you draw income from the portfolio, batch it quarterly rather than monthly.

The exit costs deserve emphasis. Closing the account itself is free, but if a balance of up to EUR/USD 100 is left behind, Freedom24 may keep it in full as a closing charge — sweep the account to zero before you close it. Moving securities out costs EUR/USD 100 per outgoing external free-of-payment transfer, charged per transfer rather than per ISIN, so a diversified portfolio moved in one instruction is not multiplied by the number of holdings. The expensive case is a different one: securities delivered in by MT599 within the previous six months and then transferred out again cost 5% of the transferred value, minimum EUR/USD 100. On a EUR 100,000 position that is EUR 5,000, which is far above European norms and belongs in your decision at the point of opening, not later.

Freedom24 does not act as a withholding tax agent for most EEA jurisdictions, so dividend and capital-gains reporting is your responsibility. Budget for that if you are used to a domestic broker filing on your behalf.

Freedom24's research offer is anchored on InvestIdeas, the group's in-house analyst stream. These are structured trade ideas with an entry rationale, a price target and a time horizon, published regularly and surfaced directly in the terminal. Quality is decent for a discount broker and the ideas skew toward US mid- and large-cap equities. Treat them as what they are: sell-side-style commentary from a firm that earns commission when you act on it, not independent advice.

Inside the platform you get company fundamentals, consensus analyst ratings, earnings calendars, dividend histories, corporate-action notices and an integrated news feed. Portfolio analytics break holdings down by sector, geography and currency, which is more than most low-cost brokers bother with. Charting supports the standard technical toolkit — moving averages, trend lines and the common oscillators.

Real-time market data is not bundled: exchange feeds cost from roughly EUR 1.25 per month each, with delayed data free. For a buy-and-hold investor that is irrelevant. For anyone trading options or working intraday it is a small but necessary line item to add to the running cost.

Education is the thinner half. There is a knowledge base, a blog and periodic webinars, and the demo terminal is the single most useful learning tool on offer because the platform genuinely needs practice. But there is no structured curriculum, no graded course path, and nothing approaching the education libraries at eToro or Trading 212. Freedom24 assumes you arrive already knowing what a limit order and an options chain are. If you do not, learn elsewhere first — particularly before touching options or margin, where the cost of not knowing is measured in real money.

Support runs Monday to Friday, roughly 09:00 to 21:00 CET, across phone, secure email and live chat, with social messaging channels available in some markets. There is no weekend cover, which is a fair trade given the platform trades cash securities on exchanges that are themselves closed.

Language coverage is a genuine strength. The website and platform are localised into more than 20 languages including German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Greek, Czech, Romanian, Bulgarian, Estonian and Lithuanian, and support is staffed multilingually rather than funnelling everything into English. For a Cyprus-based broker serving the whole EEA that matters more than it sounds: you can raise a corporate-action question in German and get a German answer.

Independent reviewers consistently describe response quality as better than the price point implies, and All-Inclusive clients get a named account manager. Trustpilot sits around 4.0 out of 5 across roughly 1,300 reviews, with about two-thirds five-star and a fifth one-star — a solid distribution rather than an exceptional one.

The critical thread running through the negative reviews is worth reading before you open an account. The recurring complaint is not slow first-line response; it is escalation. Several reviewers describe formal complaints, particularly around margin liquidations, where the firm declined to supply the execution detail needed to verify whether the liquidation had been carried out correctly, and where follow-ups went unanswered. Separately, the EUR 7 withdrawal fee is the single most common gripe in public reviews.

The practical read: routine questions get handled competently and in your own language. Disputes involving margin or execution quality may take persistence, so keep your own trade records rather than assuming you can reconstruct them later.