Revolut Invest vs Trade Republic — 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

• Flat EUR 1.00 external settlement cost per order with no percentage, no minimum and no maximum - a EUR 50,000 trade costs the same as a EUR 50 one.
• Savings plans in stocks, ETFs, bonds and crypto execute at EUR 0 from EUR 1 per instalment, with fractional shares across roughly 4,900 assets.
• Full ECB banking licence held directly since December 2023, with cash covered to EUR 100,000 by the German statutory deposit guarantee.
• Interest paid on uninvested cash - 2.5% p.a. in Germany and around 3% p.a. in several other markets - instead of the zero most brokers pay.
• One app carries the securities account, a personal German IBAN, a Visa debit card and Saveback of up to 1% of card spend, capped at EUR 15 per month.
• Around 500 bonds tradable in small denominations, giving retail investors direct access to a market that usually starts at EUR 100,000 tickets.
• German residents get Abgeltungsteuer withheld and remitted automatically, so no capital gains filing is required.
• Transferring securities out to another broker costs nothing, so a portfolio built here is not locked in by exit fees.

Cons

• Since the EU banned payment for order flow in June 2026, the default 'Best Price' route fills against Trade Republic's own book - it sets the price it profits from, and publishes no spread data.
• Customer support is started from inside the app - by phone or live chat, 24 hours a day, according to Trade Republic - and there are no branches to walk into; stalled transfers and locked accounts are the dominant complaint in a Trustpilot score of roughly 3.3.
• FX cost on US shares is embedded in the quoted euro price on the default route rather than itemised, and a Direct Price order to Nasdaq or NYSE is converted at execution with no disclosed markup, so the real cost of a foreign-currency trade cannot be verified from Trade Republic's documents.
• No options, no futures, no mutual funds and no direct exchange access on the default route - the product range stops well short of a full-service broker.
• The price list we could obtain is the April 2023 edition; the current version is only reachable inside the app, so any fee you read elsewhere should be checked against the schedule in your own account.
• Tax is handled at source for German residents only; investors in the other 17 markets file everything themselves.