Saxo vs LYNX — which broker is better?

Pros

• Full Danish banking licence (Finanstilsynet licence 1149) and SIFI designation — a stronger structural safeguard than a broker-only permission
• US stocks and ETFs at 0.08% with a USD 1 minimum on the entry-level Classic tier, and 0.05%/0.03% at higher tiers
• Roughly 71,000 instruments including 23,000 stocks, 7,400 ETFs, 5,200 bonds, 3,100 listed options and 250 futures across 50-plus exchanges
• SaxoTraderGO and the mobile app are the best-designed retail trading interfaces in Europe, and the app is not a cut-down version of the web platform
• Mutual funds carry no transaction commission, no custody fee and no platform fee
• One of very few retail platforms with a genuinely usable bond offering — 5,200 government and corporate issues with live prices
• No inactivity fee, no minimum deposit on Classic, and free withdrawals
• Majority-owned by J. Safra Sarasin since 2026, adding a large private-banking group behind the balance sheet

Cons

• Currency conversion costs 0.25% over mid-market for EU and Swiss clients, and up to 0.60% at the UK entity's Classic tier — the single largest hidden cost for cross-currency investors
• A holding fee of up to 0.15% a year on shares, ETFs and bonds still applies at several booking entities; coverage varies by country and is easy to overlook
• No spot cryptocurrency trading — exposure is limited to exchange-traded products
• No fractional shares on ordinary orders, so building small positions in high-priced US stocks is awkward
• Bank transfer is the only funding route since card deposits were withdrawn in April 2025
• Trustpilot sentiment sits around 3.8 with responsiveness of support the recurring complaint, despite good published coverage

Pros

• LYNX+ is a genuinely good browser platform, and having it alongside full Trader Workstation access means you can start simple and grow into the terminal
• No minimum deposit and no custody or account fee for individual and joint accounts
• Eurex options at EUR 2.00 per contract, Micro-DAX futures at EUR 0.99 and CME Micro E-minis at USD 2.50 — the derivatives schedule is competitive
• Börse LYNX is one of the strongest free German-language education and analysis libraries any broker publishes, with a substantial webinar programme
• German-language service desk on a free number Monday to Thursday until 20:00, rated 4.8 on Trustpilot from over 760 reviews
• Trading since 2006 through a Dutch AFM-authorised entity with a BaFin-supervised German branch, and access to 100-plus exchanges in over 30 countries
• Free outbound transfers if you leave, which is rarer in Germany than it should be

Cons

• The most expensive of the German Interactive Brokers introducing brokers on equities: 0.14% with a EUR 5.80 Xetra minimum and a USD 5.00 minimum on US shares, against CapTrader's EUR 4.00 and USD 2.00
• Currency conversion costs 0.005% with a EUR 5.00 minimum — two and a half times Interactive Brokers' own rate, and a permanent drag on any multi-currency portfolio
• No Abgeltungsteuer is withheld, so German investors must declare everything through Anlage KAP; and a German withholding-tax certificate costs EUR 30.00 per line on top
• Investor compensation is the Irish scheme's 90% of EUR 20,000 for EEA clients — thin next to the EUR 100,000 German deposit guarantee investors expect
• Business accounts pay a EUR 15.00 monthly minimum activity fee whenever commissions fall short of that amount
• The Stock Yield Enhancement Program hands LYNX a quarter of your securities-lending revenue, and there is no spot crypto despite the crypto-broker marketing