Nordnet vs Qtrade Direct Investing — which broker is better?

Pros

• Commission from 0.25% with a SEK 1 minimum on Nordic orders up to SEK 15,600 — small monthly share purchases are genuinely viable
• New customers start in the 'Kom igång' class with commission-free Nasdaq Stockholm trading (up to 500 share transactions a year) and fund fees refunded
• Nordnet Bank AB holds a Swedish banking licence under Finansinspektionen, and parent Nordnet AB (publ) is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm as SAVE
• Two separate protection layers: the Swedish deposit guarantee on cash and the Swedish investor compensation scheme on securities
• Broad for a domestic broker — shares, ETFs, mutual funds with no dealing charge, options, futures, warrants, certificates and bonds
• No custody fee, no platform fee, no inactivity fee and no minimum deposit
• Nordnet reports to the Nordic tax authorities and the ISK wrapper removes per-trade capital gains declarations entirely
• Scale that is easy to verify: 2.5 million customers, SEK 1,374 billion of savings capital and 17.6 million trades in a single quarter

Cons

• Residents of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland only — there is no route in from Germany, Austria, Switzerland or the rest of the EU
• Automatic currency exchange costs 0.25%, and the 0.075% route needs a free currency account — open to everyone only on an ordinary aktie- och fonddepå, restricted to private banking and active trading clients on an ISK or KF, and never available on fund orders
• Commission classes step by order size, and the Nordic minimum jumps from SEK 1 to SEK 39 at SEK 15,600 — though a SEK 15,000 order already costs SEK 37.50 at 0.25%, so the real step at the boundary is small
• Support is weekday office hours only, in Nordic languages plus English; there is no 24/5 desk and Trustpilot sentiment is markedly weaker than app-store sentiment
• The Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish price lists have different structures and different numbers, which makes cross-border comparison genuinely confusing
• No fractional shares on ordinary orders, no demo account, no spot forex and no CFDs — active traders will find the toolkit thinner than a specialist platform

Pros

• CAD 0 commission on equities, ETFs and mutual funds alike — the only Canadian broker of the three to make mutual funds free as well
• Morningstar analyst recommendations, target prices and fundamental research bundled free on every company page, with no data subscription
• Portfolio Analytics scores your portfolio, compares it against benchmarks and breaks it out by valuation, performance and allocation
• Consistently top-ranked customer service in independent Canadian reviews, with knowledgeable staff on registered-account and tax questions
• A genuine 30-day trial account with no obligation — neither Questrade nor Wealthsimple offers paper trading
• Backed by Aviso Wealth, owned 50% by Desjardins Financial Holding and 50% by the five provincial credit union centrals and CUMIS, with CIRO regulation and CIPF cover of CAD 1,000,000 per account category
• ECN fees are absorbed rather than passed through, except for repeated high-volume active-side Canadian trading, and Qtrade says it will contact you before charging

Cons

• Cash pays 0.00% on every balance up to CAD 2,000,000 — on a CAD 25,000 cash buffer that is roughly CAD 1,100 a year of foregone interest against a Wealthsimple chequing balance
• Qtrade publishes no foreign-exchange percentage; its FAQ says CAD/USD conversion is done at a mark-up from the Bank of Canada spot rate (a markdown on sales) but not how large that mark-up is, which makes the true cost of US investing impossible to model in advance
• The mobile app is rated 3.7 on the Canadian App Store against Questrade's 4.7 and Wealthsimple's 4.6, and independent reviewers consistently flag mobile as the weak link
• No fractional shares, no spot crypto, no futures, no forex or CFDs, and no international market access beyond Canada and the US
• USD registered accounts cost USD 15 per quarter (USD 60 a year) unless you hold CAD 500,000 or trade 150 times a quarter, and de-registration costs CAD 125 in full or CAD 50 in part
• Support offers no live chat at all and closes at 20:00 ET with no weekend cover, where Questrade runs weekends and Wealthsimple runs chat around the clock