Consorsbank vs tastytrade — which broker is better?

Pros

• All ETF savings plans run at 0% of the savings rate on more than 1,700 ETFs, permanently — the partners cover the fee, replacing the old 1.50% charge
• The deepest derivatives access of any German retail bank: Eurex options and futures with volume rebates down to EUR 2.00 per contract, plus CME, CBOT and OCC options and futures on a dedicated Margin account
• ActiveTrader professional software and the Trading API are both free, with real-time monitoring, one-click ordering and Iceberg orders on Xetra in the Pro version
• Free depot, free Verrechnungskonto, free sub-accounts and free depot transfers, with no inactivity fee
• Transparent, published FX conversion margins — Bloomberg BFIX plus USD 0.0030, GBP 0.0020, CHF 0.0030 — roughly 0.26% on the dollar (0.30% if the price page's percentage margin applies to securities trades), better than flatex's 0.35% and more transparent than comdirect, which publishes no percentage at all
• Free foreign-currency sub-accounts in eleven currencies plus EUR, so US or Swiss proceeds do not have to be converted back at a spread
• Backed by BNP Paribas S.A. under ECB, BaFin, ACPR and AMF supervision, with the voluntary BdB fund protecting private individuals up to EUR 3 million
• From the second partial execution only the percentage commission applies — base fee and venue cost drop away, which materially cuts the cost of large orders that fill in pieces

Cons

• The tiered pricing starts unremarkable and Consorsbank does not publish the volume thresholds for Silver, Gold and Platinum status on its public price pages, so a new customer cannot calculate what they will actually pay next year
• Direct foreign exchange access is priced punitively: EUR 34 for London, EUR 41 for Zurich, EUR 72 for Tokyo, EUR 121 for Singapore and EUR 136 for Wellington in venue costs per order, plus a EUR 21 USA Smart Order fee and EUR 69 for Canada
• Customer service scores 1.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot across 300 reviews, with reviewers reporting online-banking failures that blocked access to accounts and depots for weeks, and slow, unhelpful responses
• Share, certificate and ETC savings plans still cost 1.50% of the rate, so only the ETF plans are genuinely free once the twelve-month new-customer promotion expires
• ActiveTrader Pro costs up to EUR 119 a month for standard-status customers, and US derivatives market data adds EUR 5–29 a month — the professional tooling is only free once you are already trading heavily
• No CFDs, no spot forex and no spot crypto, and the Tagesgeld pays 1.00% p.a. outside promotional periods

Pros

• Equity options are USD 1 per contract to open, USD 0 to close and capped at USD 10 per leg — large multi-leg orders scale for free
• Futures at USD 1.00 per contract per side and micro futures at USD 0.75, with options on micro futures also USD 0.75
• No inactivity fee, no annual IRA maintenance fee and free ACH deposits and withdrawals
• Desktop, web and mobile all support full multi-leg order entry, rolling and curve analysis — the mobile app is not a stripped-down afterthought
• tastylive produces roughly eight hours of live options programming every trading day, plus a searchable research archive on strategy mechanics
• Stocks, ETFs and fractional shares trade commission-free, and Treasury bills carry no transaction fee
• Accepts clients from around 50 countries directly onto the US entity, including most of the EU, Switzerland, the UK and Singapore

Cons

• FINRA censured and fined tastytrade USD 850,000 in 2026 for failing to run adequate best-execution reviews on equity orders routed to five payment-for-order-flow market makers between 2020 and 2023
• Margin interest starts at 11.00% on debits under USD 25,000 — materially more expensive than the cheapest US brokers
• USD-only accounts with no multi-currency balances, so non-US clients pay their own bank's FX spread on every deposit and withdrawal
• Product range stops at US-listed instruments: no foreign exchanges, no mutual funds, no corporate or municipal bonds, no spot forex
• Crypto costs 1.00% per side (0.75% for BTC and ETH) and is held at Zero Hash, outside SIPC protection
• Broad-based index options such as SPX are excluded from the USD 10 commission cap and carry an additional exchange proprietary index fee