CapTrader vs Estably — 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

• Self-directed Xetra orders at 0.14% with a EUR 3.90 minimum and a EUR 99.00 cap — the lowest per-order minimum among the German-market Interactive Brokers intermediaries
• 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, with EUR 1.80 / USD 3.00 option pricing available through partner sign-ups
• FMA-licensed Liechtenstein asset manager, audited annually by Grant Thornton, participant in the EAS investor compensation system and a member of the VUVL association of independent asset managers
• Managed portfolios can be custodied at Baader Bank, Liechtensteinische Landesbank or St. Galler Kantonalbank — and the Baader route withholds German tax automatically, with a Verlustverrechnungstopf
• Access to more than 150 exchanges in 33 countries and over 1.2 million instruments through Interactive Brokers, with no custody or account fee on the self-directed side
• Unusually deep German-language options material — an options guide, the wheel strategy for beginners, margin requirement explainers and a full TWS/Client Portal handbook
• Personal adviser model with a Liechtenstein phone line and a 4.6 Trustpilot rating from more than 420 reviews

Cons

• The self-directed account withholds no Abgeltungsteuer — German clients must declare everything themselves through their annual tax return, exactly as at any Interactive Brokers intermediary
• EUR 5,000 minimum deposit on the brokerage account and EUR 20,000 on a managed mandate; the margin account additionally requires a minimum age of 21
• Discretionary management costs 1.19% per year plus 0.30% bank charges plus a performance fee whose percentage is not disclosed on the cost page — an odd gap on a page titled 'Transparente Kosten'
• Above roughly EUR 2,860 of order value CapTrader's 0.10% schedule beats Estably's 0.14%: a EUR 10,000 Xetra order costs EUR 14.00 here against EUR 10.00 there
• No Estably-branded trading app — the mobile experience is Interactive Brokers' Mobile Trader, and there is no proprietary web platform equivalent to LYNX+
• Residents of the US, Canada, Australia and Iran cannot open the self-directed account, and Estably's own research output is marketing-led rather than an independent analysis desk