Avanza vs Fidelity Investments — which broker is better?

Pros

• Start class: 0% courtage on Stockholmsbörsen and 100% of fund fees refunded for customers who have never had SEK 50,000 in total savings at Avanza, until SEK 50,000 or more than 500 free trades in 12 months
• Mini class from 0.25% with a SEK 1 minimum on Stockholmsbörsen and First North, and a USD 1 minimum on US shares
• Avanza Bank AB is a Swedish bank supervised by Finansinspektionen, and the parent Avanza Bank Holding AB is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm as AZA
• Two Swedish schemes: the deposit guarantee covers uninvested cash up to SEK 1,150,000 per customer and institution, the investor compensation scheme covers securities up to SEK 250,000
• SEK 0 annual, management and deposit fees on every account type in the price list, ISK, kapitalförsäkring and pensions included, and no minimum deposit
• Wide range for a domestic bank: shares in the Nordics, North America and nine further European markets online, desk orders on most other exchanges, funds without courtage, ETFs, options, futures, certificates, warrants and bonds
• Avanza calculates the ISK flat-rate income and reports it to Skatteverket, and the pre-filled K4 form costs SEK 0 since January 2026
• Free real-time prices for the Nordic markets, Nasdaq and NYSE, and US trading from 11:00 to 22:30 Swedish time

Cons

• The website and app address residents of Sweden; residents abroad cannot trade European shares online, and we found no route in from Germany, Austria or Switzerland
• Automatic currency exchange costs 0.25% in each direction, 0.5% on a round trip; the manual service at 0.125% per direction does not cover funds and, according to Avanza, cannot be added to an ISK and needs an approved securities credit on the aktie- och fondkonto
• One courtage class applies to all orders on all accounts: a SEK 10,000 order costs SEK 25 in Mini but SEK 39 in Small, SEK 69 in Medium and SEK 99 in Fast Pris
• We found no demo account and no source for fractional shares; crypto exposure is limited to exchange-traded certificates, and Avanza does not sell crypto assets directly
• Support in Swedish, by phone and by secure message in the logged-in area; we found no live chat and no email address, and general opening hours were not readable on the pages we could open

Pros

• USD 0 online US stock and ETF commissions, and Fidelity does not accept payment for order flow on equity orders
• Zero-expense-ratio index mutual funds (the FZROX family) — no other major US broker matches this on fund cost
• Options exercise and assignment cost USD 0, and buy-to-close orders at USD 0.65 or less are free
• No outgoing account transfer fee, no domestic wire fee and no account fee; the only dormancy charge (a Residual Balance Maintenance Fee of up to USD 5 a quarter) is limited to accounts under USD 100 with no activity for a year
• Idle cash defaults into the SPAXX money market fund rather than a near-zero bank sweep, so uninvested balances earn a market-linked yield without manual intervention
• International trading in 25 markets with settlement in 16 currencies, at GBP 9 for the UK and EUR 19 for euro-zone markets
• Best-in-class research: roughly seven third-party report providers plus the proprietary Equity Summary Score, and consistently rated first for research and education
• Fractional share investing from USD 1 across a broad US universe, not just large-cap index constituents

Cons

• No futures, no futures options and no retail forex — a hard stop for macro and commodity traders
• No paper trading or simulator, so there is no way to rehearse a strategy inside the platform
• Crypto is limited to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Litecoin (plus Fidelity's FIDD stablecoin) at a 1% trading fee on every buy and sell, and is not SIPC-protected
• New accounts are effectively US residents only; Fidelity states it does not open accounts for customers residing outside the United States and restricts existing accounts when clients move abroad
• Charting and drawing tools in Trader+ are weaker than thinkorswim's, and there is no backtesting engine
• The FX markup on international trades settled in USD starts at a full 100 basis points below USD 100,000 — expensive for small foreign orders