PostFinance E-Trading vs flatex — which broker is better?

Pros

• PostFinance Ltd holds a Swiss banking licence, is wholly owned by Swiss Post and has been designated a systemically important bank by FINMA — an unusually strong counterparty for a retail brokerage account
• CHF 18 of trading credits every quarter exactly offsets the CHF 18 quarterly custody fee, so a lightly traded account pays no ongoing platform cost
• Brokerage starts at CHF 6 for SIX orders up to CHF 500, which is competitive for genuinely small tickets and savings-plan style investing
• Access to more than 20 venues including SIX, BX Swiss, Xetra, Frankfurt, Euronext Paris/Amsterdam/Brussels, Borsa Italiana, Madrid, Vienna, Nasdaq OMX, the LSE, NYSE, NASDAQ and Toronto
• Fully integrated with e-finance and the PostFinance App: instant funding from your everyday account, one login, and the Swiss tax statement ordered directly in e-trading (CHF 97.30)
• Over 20 cryptocurrencies with Swiss custody at 0.95% trading fee and a 0.15% annual portfolio fee, plus ETH staking — unusual for a mainstream retail bank
• ETF and equity savings plans from CHF 1 per execution with fractional trading, at 1% per execution
• Four-language support with a dedicated e-trading order desk open until 10 p.m. Swiss time on weekdays

Cons

• Mid-size orders are expensive: CHF 30 on a CHF 10,000 SIX order is 0.30%, and USD 35 on a USD 10,000 US order is 0.35% — several times what specialist brokers charge for the same execution
• The currency conversion cost is not disclosed as a percentage anywhere in the published price list, which makes the true cost of buying US or euro-denominated securities impossible to calculate in advance
• No options, no futures, no forex, no CFDs and no margin: the product range stops at shares, ETFs, funds, bonds, structured products, warrants and crypto
• The trading interface is an e-banking module, not a trading platform — no depth of book, no advanced order types, no serious charting and no API
• Debit interest on the e-trading account runs at 9.50% per year while credit interest is zero, so an accidental overdraft is punitive
• Effectively Swiss-residents-only, with no demo account and no way to evaluate the platform before opening a banking relationship

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