Bitpanda vs flatex — which broker is better?

Pros

• Tax on Real Securities is handled by Bitpanda for customers based in Austria and Germany — the single most valuable feature for a DACH investor
• Real share ownership: more than 7,500 stocks and 2,500 ETFs and ETCs at a fixed EUR 1 per trade, executed on the Quotrix exchange with dividends, splits and corporate actions passed through
• Four separate Austrian and German licences — MiCAR CASP with the FMA and with BaFin, a WAG 2018 investment-firm licence, and an e-money institution with PSD2 permissions
• Securities business is covered by the Austrian investor compensation scheme (AeW), which pays 90% of an eligible claim up to EUR 20,000
• Free EUR SEPA deposits and withdrawals, and ten fiat currencies supported including CHF, PLN, CZK and HUF
• Bitpanda Fusion gives a published fee ladder from 0.25% to 0.02%, aggregated liquidity from 12+ venues, over 2,000 pairs and native TradingView charting on the same balance
• One of the highest-rated investing apps in the DACH region — 4.70 from roughly 55,000 German App Store ratings
• Precious metals with no storage or custody fee, VAT-free, physically stored and insured, with gold at a 0.5% buy premium

Cons

• The standard broker product hides its cost in the price: Bitpanda quotes a 0.99% premium on Bitcoin but admits the per-trade fee spans 0.00% to 2.49%, so you cannot predict what a given order will cost before opening the summary screen
• Silver and platinum carry a 2.5% buy premium and a 2% sell premium — a 4.5% round trip before any price movement
• Cheap crypto trading requires knowing that Fusion exists and switching to it; the default surface is the expensive one
• Privately held with no stock-market listing and no banking licence, so there is far less public financial disclosure than at Nasdaq-listed Coinbase
• The Austrian FMA fined Bitpanda GmbH EUR 70,000 in 2026 for breaching MiCAR Articles 7 and 8 on whitepaper and marketing-communication duties — the regulator’s first MiCAR sanction, and a disclosure obligation rather than a client-money failure
• No forex, no listed options, no exchange-traded futures and no bond market — leveraged exposure comes only from margin trading and leverage tokens
• Margin trading on stocks at up to 20x, with four-hourly borrowing fees and documented negative-equity repayment rules, is an aggressive product to place inside an app aimed largely at beginners

Pros

• EUR 5.90 flat commission on German, US, Canadian and other foreign orders with no percentage component up to EUR 40,000 — a EUR 10,000 trade costs the same as a EUR 1,000 trade
• All ETF and fund savings plans execute at EUR 0.00 commission with over 5,000 plans available and no cap on the savings rate
• No custody fee, no account fee, no inactivity fee, and free incoming and outgoing depot transfers
• Genuine spot crypto in around 25 coins at 0.6%–0.7% all-in, held inside the regulated German bank rather than as an ETN wrapper
• Full German banking licence under BaFin and Bundesbank supervision, with an MDAX-listed parent (flatexDEGIRO SE, ticker FTK) publishing audited accounts and over EUR 100 billion in customer securities under custody
• Tax-simple in both markets it serves: automatic German Abgeltungsteuer withholding and automatic Austrian KESt settlement at 27.5% on flatex.at
• Free foreign-currency sub-accounts, so USD or CHF proceeds can be held rather than converted back at a spread every time
• Fast onboarding — flatex advertises a five-minute fully digital account opening, and no minimum deposit applies

Cons

• 0.00% p.a. credit interest on cash balances. Competitors pay 1%–1.75% on the settlement or call account, so an investor holding EUR 20,000 in cash gives up EUR 200–350 a year that never shows up in any fee table
• Currency conversion costs an absolute margin of USD 0.0040 per euro — roughly 0.35% — which is worse than Consorsbank's published USD 0.0030 and far worse than a multi-currency specialist
• No Eurex or US options and futures trading at all. Certificates, knock-outs and Société Générale CFDs are the only leveraged instruments on offer
• Real-time quotes are metered: 25 free per month plus 10 per executed order, then EUR 0.01 per query, and the professional flatex trader 2.0 platform costs EUR 15–39 a month on top
• The EUR 5.90 floor makes flatex expensive for small orders — a EUR 300 purchase pays about 2% in commission before venue costs, where a EUR 1 neobroker charges 0.3%
• Direct foreign market access is narrow: US, Canada, Euronext, Vienna, Zurich and Milan (sell only). There is no direct London, Tokyo, Hong Kong or Nordic access, and stock savings plans cost 1.00% of the rate