Revolut Invest vs finanzen.net ZERO — which broker is better?

Pros

• Fastest account opening of any broker we cover: six in-app steps, no minimum deposit, verified in about a business day
• Free trades inside the plan allowance — 1 a month on the free Standard plan, up to 10 on Metal and Ultra
• No custody fee, no inactivity fee and no withdrawal fee on the investment account
• Fractional shares from small amounts, so EUR 50 buys a slice of any covered US stock
• Free and instant funding by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, with roughly one-business-day bank withdrawals
• Pays interest on uninvested USD, EUR and GBP cash, tiered by plan and rated above average against 100-plus brokers
• Banking licences in the UK and Lithuania sit behind the group, alongside FCA and Bank of Lithuania oversight
• The minimum country fee is only EUR 1 in Germany and GBP 0.01 under the UK entity, and recurring ETP buy orders are exempt from it

Cons

• Narrowest product range of any broker we cover: about 1,500 US stocks, three stock markets, no options, futures or mutual funds
• Above the free allowance every order costs at least the EUR 1 minimum country fee, so a EUR 200 purchase still pays 0.5%
• Trading is USD-denominated, and once the monthly exchange allowance is spent (EUR 1,000 on Standard) conversion costs 0.5%, plus 1% more at weekends
• Customer service scored 1.1 out of 5 in independent testing — no email channel, pre-recorded phone menus, slow chat
• No demo account, no structured education and only basic in-app research; education rated 1.0 out of 5
• EEA clients moved from a EUR 100,000 deposit guarantee to EUR 22,000 investor compensation plus a shared SIPC pool

Pros

• EUR 0.00 order commission on shares, ETFs, funds, certificates and warrants, with no custody fee, no third-party cost surcharge and no venue fee
• Savings plans in shares, ETFs and funds cost EUR 0.00 from EUR 1.00 per instalment and carry no minimum-quantity surcharge
• Best-rated app in the German neobroker field - roughly 4.7 out of 5 across about 26,000 German App Store ratings - with limit, stop, stop-limit, trailing stop-loss and OCO orders
• Trading is embedded in finanzen.net, Germany's largest retail finance portal, so quotes, news and instrument data sit beside the order ticket at no extra cost
• Extended hours: securities from 07:30 to 23:00 on weekdays and 14:00 to 19:00 on Saturdays, crypto 24/7
• Real spot crypto in the same account - 59 coins held by BaFin-supervised Tangany GmbH in Germany, plus more than 50 crypto ETPs including staking products
• Junior account on identical terms with no running costs, and Swiss share trading is supported
• Full German tax handling through Baader Bank: automatic Abgeltungsteuer, Freistellungsauftrag, loss offsetting and annual tax documents

Cons

• One trading venue only. Every order goes to gettex, so you cannot compare quotes, and outside Xetra core hours (09:00-17:30) the spread is the entire cost of your trade with nothing to benchmark it against
• No telephone support of any kind - the only channel is a ticket system inside the login, which Finanztip also flags as the reason ZERO scores mid-table on service
• The Fair Use Policy explicitly reserves the right to terminate clients for automated or high-frequency trading, latency arbitrage, 'economically pointless' transactions, or simply never funding the account
• Crypto costs 1.0% of order value in commission (0.5% brokerage plus 0.5% settlement) on top of the spread, and coins can be neither deposited nor withdrawn - the wallet is a closed system
• Three-company structure: finanzen.net zero GmbH is only a tied agent with no licence, DonauCapital Wertpapier GmbH carries the liability, and Baader Bank holds the assets. It is legal and disclosed, but there is no single accountable balance sheet
• No individual bonds, no joint or second accounts, no business accounts, no demo account, and uninvested cash pays 0.00% p.a.