Lightyear vs flatex — which broker is better?

Pros

• Zero commission and zero custody fee on ETFs, so a monthly ETF plan costs nothing to execute or hold
• US stock orders cost 0.1% capped at USD 1 — a USD 20,000 trade still costs a single dollar
• No account fee, no platform fee, no inactivity fee and no withdrawal fee, in a genuinely short fee schedule
• Fractional shares from EUR 1, with multi-currency EUR, GBP and USD balances held free of charge
• Cash earns interest through AAA-rated BlackRock and J.P. Morgan money market funds, quoted around 2.2% APY on euros
• Two regulators: EFSA in Estonia (licence 4.1-1/31) and the FCA in the UK (FRN 987226), with US securities held at SIPC-member Alpaca
• Mobile app is genuinely well built — earnings-call audio, fundamentals and Auto-Invest plans without clutter

Cons

• 0.35% FX conversion is fine against a bank but expensive against Interactive Brokers, and it applies every time you buy a US stock from a euro balance
• No options, futures, CFDs, forex or margin, and no commodities — the product list is short by design
• Only market, limit and recurring orders. No stop-loss, no good-till-cancelled, no conditional orders
• No demo account and no structured education, which is an odd gap for a platform aimed at newer investors
• Support is email and in-app chat only, with no phone line and reported response times of several days on complex queries
• Founded in 2020 and privately held, with no track record through a full market cycle — audited accounts are filed publicly for all three entities

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