justTRADE vs Smartbroker+ — which broker is better?

Pros

• Three competing exchange venues (LS Exchange, Quotrix, Tradegate BSX) with a quote-request order that executes at exactly the price you confirmed - no market orders, no execution surprises
• EUR 1.00 per stock or ETF order at LS Exchange and Tradegate BSX, with no minimum order value: you can buy a single share
• No custody fee, no account fee, no inactivity fee, no charge for dividends, corporate actions or transfers out
• Savings plans on ETFs, ETCs, commodities, crypto and wikifolios cost EUR 0 order commission from EUR 25 a month
• Real spot crypto in the same account - 65+ coins held by BaFin-supervised Tangany GmbH in Germany, tradable 24/7 from EUR 25 at 0.125%
• Sutor Bank (founded 1921) holds the banking licence, so cash falls under the statutory EUR 100,000 guarantee plus the private banks' voluntary fund
• Full German tax agency: Abgeltungsteuer and church tax withheld automatically, FIFO cost basis, free annual tax certificate and loss certificate
• About 1.75 million certificates and warrants from seven issuers, with EUR 0 commission at the four Gold partners

Cons

• Account opening requires German citizenship AND German tax residence - a residence permit is explicitly not sufficient, which excludes a large share of German residents
• You cannot transfer an existing securities portfolio into justTRADE. Incoming Depotuebertraege are not supported at all, so switching means selling and realising tax
• The public marketing still says 'ab 0 EUR Orderprovision' while the 08.06.2026 price list charges EUR 2.90 as standard and EUR 1.00 at two venues - the cheapest German neobrokers are now cheaper on the same order
• Support is email only: no telephone hotline, no live chat, German only
• No individual bonds, no mutual funds, and French, Italian, Spanish and Greek shares (plus their ADRs) are untradable because of local financial transaction taxes
• Uninvested cash pays 0.00% p.a. while a tolerated overdraft costs 9.00% p.a.; the broker's answer is to sell you money-market ETFs instead

Pros

• EUR 0.00 order commission on gettex for shares, bonds, ETFs, ETPs and funds from EUR 500 of order value, and EUR 1.00 below that
• 29 exchange venues plus eight OTC issuer desks - all German exchanges and eighteen foreign ones, so most securities can be bought on their home market in the home currency
• Genuinely broad range: roughly 40,000 shares, 40,000 bonds, 2,500 ETFs, 18,000 funds at net asset value and 4.6 million derivatives
• More than 10,800 savings plans on shares, ETFs, ETCs, funds and crypto ETPs, all free, from EUR 1.00 up to EUR 5,000 per instalment, at monthly to half-yearly intervals
• Zinskonto pays 2.25% p.a. variable up to EUR 100,000 and 2.00% from EUR 100,000 to EUR 1m, indexed to the ECB deposit facility rate
• VIP tiers trigger automatically at 45, 1,500 and 6,000 trades a quarter, cutting Tradegate and L&S to EUR 1-2 and including the EUR 29.90-a-month trading API
• Baader Bank as custodian means the full German tax service: automatic Abgeltungsteuer and church tax, Freistellungsauftrag, loss offsetting, Vorabpauschale, US withholding relief and Swiss tax vouchers
• Free custody, free sub-accounts, free foreign-currency accounts, free deposits and withdrawals, no inactivity fee

Cons

• The zero-commission promise applies to exactly one venue above one order size; Xetra costs EUR 4 plus 0.01%, Nasdaq EUR 4 plus 0.02% with a USD 8 minimum, and a small foreign order can easily cost EUR 12-15
• Crypto at 0.90% of market value plus the venue mark-up is expensive against German rivals charging a fraction of that for equivalent spot exposure
• The October 2023 migration from DAB to Baader Bank produced weeks of malfunctions and unreachable support; Finanztip pulled its recommendation until October 2024 and legacy DAB accounts that never moved now pay about EUR 9 per German exchange order
• Support is German-language business hours only, and the published fee list includes some hostile line items - EUR 100 for a copy of a recorded call, EUR 100 an hour for an address trace
• Onboarding is app-only and requires iOS 16 or Android 10 or newer; there is no browser-only route in
• The published Konditionen page and the July 2026 price list disagree on at least one venue charge (Stockholm: 0.03% versus 0.10%), which is not what you want from a fee schedule