Avanza vs Wealthsimple Trade — 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

• CAD 0 commission on Canadian and US stocks and ETFs, plus USD 0 per US-listed equity and ETF options contract on every tier, including free assignment
• Futures at USD 1 per contract with free real-time futures market data — no Canadian competitor matches that combination
• CAD 0 to transfer your account out, where Questrade, Qtrade and the banks all charge CAD 150
• Best-rated broker app in Canada at 4.6 on the App Store across roughly 130,000 ratings, with real-time streaming quotes free to everyone
• 24/5 trading on eligible US stocks and ETFs and 24/7 on gold and crypto — the longest trading hours available in Canada
• Margin priced by total loan size, from 5.70% CAD under CAD 10,000 down to 3.24% from CAD 10 million, below the big banks' standard margin rates
• CIRO-regulated with CIPF coverage of CAD 1,000,000 per account category, backed by Power Corporation of Canada with a 52.4% stake
• Interest on chequing balances of 1.25% to 2.25% by tier, against effectively 0% on idle cash at most brokers

Cons

• The 1.5% CAD/USD conversion is the same as Questrade's. A USD account (CAD 10 a month on Core, free on Premium from CAD 100,000) removes it on the US trades themselves but not on the CAD you convert into it, which still costs 1.5% per transaction under CAD 10,000 and falls to 0% only from CAD 100,000; journalling at CAD 9.95 is the other way round it
• Crypto costs a flat 0.5% per trade plus a market-order spread for anyone without Active Trader status (50+ trades a month), every crypto order under CAD 100 carries a CAD 1 surcharge, and the 0% fee needs CAD 15 million of 30-day volume; staking takes 30% of rewards before validator fees
• No bonds, no GICs and no mutual funds anywhere in the self-directed account, so a fixed-income allocation has to be built entirely from ETFs
• No desktop platform, no Level 2 depth, no API and no paper-trading account; the research stack is news and basic charts rather than screeners and analyst coverage
• The crypto assets themselves sit outside CIPF protection and are held in trust instead — only the cash balance in a crypto account is covered, and the cold-storage insurance cited is USD 75 million per custodial partner, not per client
• Meaningful benefits are gated behind CAD 100,000 and CAD 500,000 balances, so the sticker price a small account actually pays is the least attractive version of the offer