LYNX

LYNX publishes a full Preis- und Leistungsverzeichnis, and the honest summary is that it is the most expensive route to an Interactive Brokers account in the German-speaking market.

German equities and ETFs cost 0.14% of trade value with a EUR 5.80 minimum, capped at EUR 99.00 on Xetra. Tradegate and gettex carry the same schedule. Frankfurt and Stuttgart are quoted as EUR 4.90 plus 0.14% and add third-party exchange, regulatory and custody fees on top. For comparison, the same EUR 10,000 Xetra order costs EUR 14.00 at LYNX, EUR 10.00 at CapTrader and EUR 5.00 at Interactive Brokers direct.

US shares are USD 0.01 per share with a USD 5.00 minimum, capped at 2.0% of trade value. A 200-share order therefore costs the USD 5.00 minimum, where CapTrader would charge USD 2.00.

Derivatives are a different story. Eurex equity and index options are EUR 2.00 per contract — the same as CapTrader — US options USD 3.50, Micro-DAX futures (FDXS) EUR 0.99, Mini-DAX (FDXM) EUR 1.50, CME Micro E-minis USD 2.50 and full E-minis USD 4.00. If your activity is concentrated in options and futures, LYNX's headline equity pricing barely touches you.

The recurring costs deserve scrutiny. Currency conversion is 0.005% with a EUR 5.00 minimum — every conversion below EUR 100,000 pays the minimum, which is two and a half times what Interactive Brokers charges its direct clients. Bonds and funds are 0.20% with a EUR 8.00 minimum. Requesting a German withholding-tax certificate costs EUR 30.00 per line, a French Form 5000/5001 EUR 125.00. Business accounts pay a EUR 15.00 monthly minimum activity fee whenever commissions fall short, waived for the first three full calendar months. Individual and joint accounts pay nothing at all to keep the account open.

LYNX is structurally similar to the other Interactive Brokers introducing brokers, but with one more entity in the chain than most.

LYNX B.V. is the Dutch parent — Herengracht 527, 1017 BV Amsterdam — an investment firm supervised by the Autoriteit Financiële Markten (AFM), trading since 2006. German clients contract with the LYNX B.V. Germany Branch, Charlottenstraße 68, 10117 Berlin, registered at Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg under HRB 115523 B and supervised in Germany by BaFin. LYNX does not publish its AFM registration number on the German site, so this record does not carry one.

Crucially, LYNX holds no client assets. Every account is booked at an Interactive Brokers entity: EEA residents at Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited under the IBIE customer agreement, non-EEA residents including Swiss clients at Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited. That determines the compensation available. EEA clients fall under the Irish Investor Compensation Scheme: 90% of an eligible net loss, capped at EUR 20,000 per investor, administered by the Investor Compensation Company DAC, covering retail clients only and applying to firm insolvency rather than market losses. Non-EEA clients get FSCS cover up to GBP 85,000.

LYNX is explicit about a nuance many brokers bury: because IBIE is not a bank, client cash sits either at a custodian bank or in a qualified money-market fund, held on an omnibus basis. Your individual balance is not attributed to a specific institution. IBIE does not bear the risk of one of those banks failing, so in that scenario the loss would be shared pro rata across affected clients. That is standard for the model, and it is worth understanding before assuming that "segregated" means "guaranteed".

Fully paid securities are held at custodians in accounts designated for clients, IBKR runs no proprietary trading book, retail negative balance protection applies, and login is protected by mandatory two-factor authentication. LYNX is privately held and does not publish audited financials of its own.

For German investors this is the deciding factor, and LYNX markets it as a benefit rather than hiding it.

Because the account is held in Ireland through Interactive Brokers, LYNX does not withhold the German Abgeltungsteuer. Unlike a German direct bank, which deducts roughly 26.4% (25% plus Solidaritätszuschlag, plus church tax where applicable) after every profitable trade, LYNX credits gains in full and the tax is settled the following year through Anlage KAP in your income tax return.

LYNX quantifies the effect on its own site with worked examples: on EUR 15,000 of starting capital across 40 trades averaging 5% each, the compounding difference between paying tax per trade and paying it once a year runs to roughly EUR 17,500 in the account by year end. Those examples assume an unbroken run of winners and no losing sequence, so treat them as an illustration of the mechanism rather than a forecast — but the mechanism itself is real, and it favours high-turnover traders.

The costs are administrative. You reconcile a foreign-currency transaction statement yourself, there is no Verlustverrechnungstopf managed on your behalf, no Freistellungsauftrag can be filed, and loss offsetting follows German per-asset-class rules. LYNX explicitly states it does not offer tax advice. And unlike most intermediaries, LYNX charges for one of the documents you may need: a withholding-tax certificate on German shares costs EUR 30.00 per line, with Spanish shares at EUR 50.00 and the French Form 5000/5001 at EUR 125.00 per line. If you hold a diversified European dividend portfolio and want to reclaim foreign withholding tax, budget for it.

For an investor who buys three ETFs and files a simple return, this is friction with no benefit. For someone trading actively — which is exactly who LYNX targets — the deferral usually outweighs the work.

LYNX's central commercial argument is that it fixes Interactive Brokers' worst problem, and on the platform side it largely does.

LYNX+ is LYNX's own browser platform. It runs on any device and any mainstream browser, and covers instrument analysis, order entry, portfolio monitoring, watchlists and currency exchange in an interface designed for investors rather than for trading desks. Converting a currency, for instance, is a two-click flow inside the Portfolio tab instead of a manually typed EUR.USD pair in a watchlist. For anyone who has bounced off Trader Workstation, this is the difference between using an IBKR account and abandoning one.

Trader Workstation remains available in full for clients who want it — over 100 order types, multi-leg options tickets, algorithms, Risk Navigator and the whole professional apparatus. The combination is the point: start on LYNX+, move to TWS when a specific need appears, keep the same account, routing and commissions throughout.

The LYNX Trading App covers mobile: chart analysis, order entry and modification, watchlists, portfolio monitoring and alerts. It is competent rather than remarkable, and less complete than the web platform.

For automation, the Interactive Brokers API in Python, Java, C++ and C# is available, as is FIX connectivity for larger accounts, and IBKR's Client Portal sits behind LYNX for statements, tax documents and market-data subscriptions.

LYNX claims platform redundancy across independent servers with automatic failover, and reports stability since 2006. Real-time market data remains a separate paid subscription per exchange, requiring a USD 200 minimum account equity to subscribe, with free delayed data as the default and snapshot pricing at USD 0.01–0.03 per quote.

Through Interactive Brokers, LYNX reaches more than 100 exchanges in over 30 countries and more than 20 currencies from a single account.

• Shares and ETFs across German, Austrian, Swiss, European, UK, North American and Asian venues, with fractional shares available
• Options on Eurex, Cboe and more than thirty other market centres, at EUR 2.00 and USD 3.50 per contract respectively
• Futures including the Micro-DAX, Mini-DAX, CME Micro E-minis and the full E-mini complex
• Warrants and certificates — over a million instruments, cheapest on gettex at 0.20% with a EUR 8.00 minimum, and commission-free for UniCredit products in the EUR 1,000–10,000 order range as part of a premium-partner arrangement
• Bonds at 0.20% of nominal with a EUR 8.00 minimum, and mutual funds at 0.20% with a EUR 8.00 minimum and EUR 99.00 cap
• CFDs on shares, indices, forex and metals, including UK and US crude oil at 0.03% with a USD 3.00 minimum and London Gold and Silver at 0.05%
• Spot forex at 0.005% with a EUR 5.00 minimum
• Pre- and after-market trading on US venues, and share lending through the Stock Yield Enhancement Program

Two gaps are worth naming. First, despite a marketing page positioning LYNX as a crypto broker, EEA clients get futures and exchange-traded products, not spot coins in a wallet. Second, the Stock Yield Enhancement Program pays you 50% of the lending revenue your shares generate — the other half is split equally between LYNX and Interactive Brokers, so LYNX takes a quarter of the income earned on your own securities. That is disclosed clearly in the price list, but it is a cost most clients never notice.

Account types cover individual, joint and corporate structures. The corporate account is the only one carrying the EUR 15.00 monthly minimum activity fee.

Opening is fully online with no minimum deposit, although LYNX recommends at least EUR 3,000 to trade economically — a sensible caveat given the EUR 5.80 per-order minimum. The application covers identity, tax residence and a trading-experience section per asset class, and typically completes in one to three business days.

Funding is bank transfer only — SEPA in euros, wire otherwise. No cards, no e-wallets, no instant rails. Deposits are free. One withdrawal per calendar month is free; after that EUR 1.00 by SEPA and EUR 8.00 by wire, with equivalent tariffs in other currencies. Outbound position transfers are free unless a non-standard method (DWAC, DRS) or an exotic listing is involved.

Support is a genuine strength. The German service team is reachable Monday to Thursday 08:00–20:00 and Friday 08:00–18:00 CET on a free German landline number (0800 5 969000) or internationally on +49 30 303 28 66 90, plus email and a contact form. LYNX states that emails are answered personally and usually the same day during service hours, and that staff will walk you through order entry by phone at no charge. Outside those hours you fall back to Interactive Brokers' English-language 24-hour desk in the US — a meaningful downgrade if something breaks on a Sunday. Public sentiment is strong: 4.8 on Trustpilot from more than 760 reviews.

Education is where LYNX genuinely outclasses its peers. Börse LYNX is a large free German-language library of market data pages, analysis, instrument guides and a regular webinar programme, alongside a cost calculator, worked tax examples and a full service centre documenting the platforms. It is content marketing, and it is also better than most paid alternatives.

Note that this record describes the German branch. LYNX also serves Austria and Switzerland from its own country sites and the Netherlands and Belgium from the parent; pricing and the booking entity differ by country.