CapTrader vs Cornèrtrader — which broker is better?

Pros

• BaFin-supervised German investment firm (institution number 10156708) with a Düsseldorf address, German contract law and a free German hotline until 20:00
• Eurex options and futures at EUR 2.00 per contract, Mini-DAX futures at EUR 1.00 and CME Micro E-minis at USD 1.25 — competitive with anything available to German retail traders
• Access to over 160 market destinations, more than 1.2 million instruments, one million-plus bonds and 37,000 funds from a single multi-currency account
• No account fee, no custody fee, no inactivity fee, and free real accounts on TWS, CapTrader Desktop, AgenaTrader Andromeda and the TraderFox Trading-Desk
• German shares on Tradegate, gettex, Chi-X and Turquoise DE from a EUR 2.00 minimum — noticeably cheaper than the EUR 4.00 Xetra minimum for small orders
• Trustpilot rating of 4.9 from more than 800 reviews, with support consistently named as the reason
• Interactive Brokers' execution stack underneath: SmartRouting, real-time margining, more than 60 order types and a mature API

Cons

• No Abgeltungsteuer is withheld. German investors gain a compounding advantage but must declare everything themselves via Anlage KAP, and a Freistellungsauftrag is not possible — for many people that alone rules CapTrader out
• Commissions are a visible markup on Interactive Brokers' own schedule: 0.10% with a EUR 4.00 Xetra minimum against IBKR's 0.05% and EUR 1.25, and USD 0.01 per share against IBKR's USD 0.0035
• Currency conversion costs 0.3 basis points with a EUR 3.75 minimum — one and a half times what IBKR charges direct, and the minimum bites on every small conversion
• Investor compensation for EEA clients is the Irish scheme's 90% of EUR 20,000, thin against the German EUR 100,000 deposit guarantee investors are used to
• EUR 2,000 minimum deposit and per-order minimums make small, regular ETF purchases uneconomic; there are no free savings plans
• No spot crypto — only Bitcoin futures and exchange-traded products — and real-time market data is a paid monthly subscription per exchange

Pros

• Cornèr Bank Ltd is a FINMA-supervised Swiss bank founded in 1952 and ranked second in Switzerland for capital strength in The Banker's Top 1000 World Banks 2026
• A genuine multi-asset platform: shares, ETFs, ETPs, ETNs, ETCs, bonds, mutual funds, FX spot, FX options, futures and micro futures, listed stock options and CFDs on indices, single stocks, commodities, bonds and forex
• More than 40,000 tradable instruments and over 10,000 pieces of research covering technical, fundamental and momentum analysis, included rather than sold as a subscription
• Trading and banking in one relationship: multi-currency account, free Visa debit card, no separate cash transfer needed to move between investing and spending
• Free demo platform available without opening an account — rare among Swiss bank-owned brokers and the best way to test the terminal first
• Commissions fall sharply with portfolio size: SIX drops from 0.12% to 0.07% and US shares from 0.15% to 0.08% across the four tiers
• Securities lending is offered as an optional way to generate income from an existing equity portfolio

Cons

• The most expensive tier applies by default — Cornèrtrader states explicitly that if no other agreement is in place, the highest price category in the table applies
• The entry CONSISTENCY tier is limited to a single account currency, so a CHF-based client buying US or German shares is forced into a currency conversion on every trade
• Every conversion for a foreign-currency trade carries a 0.5% mark-up over the FX spot mid-price — more than the 0.15% commission on a US share order at the entry tier
• Incoming securities transfers require a minimum accepted amount of CHF 30,000 at every tier except ENERGY, which blocks smaller portfolios from consolidating here
• No spot cryptocurrency — only Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs and ETPs
• Cornèr Bank is privately held and not listed, so there is no share price or continuous market scrutiny of the counterparty, only periodic published accounts