Trade Republic vs Smartbroker+ — which broker is better?

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.

Pros

• EUR 0.00 order commission on gettex for shares, bonds, ETFs, ETPs and funds from EUR 500 of order value, and EUR 1.00 below that
• 29 exchange venues plus eight OTC issuer desks - all German exchanges and eighteen foreign ones, so most securities can be bought on their home market in the home currency
• Genuinely broad range: roughly 40,000 shares, 40,000 bonds, 2,500 ETFs, 18,000 funds at net asset value and 4.6 million derivatives
• More than 10,800 savings plans on shares, ETFs, ETCs, funds and crypto ETPs, all free, from EUR 1.00 up to EUR 5,000 per instalment, at monthly to half-yearly intervals
• Zinskonto pays 2.25% p.a. variable up to EUR 100,000 and 2.00% from EUR 100,000 to EUR 1m, indexed to the ECB deposit facility rate
• VIP tiers trigger automatically at 45, 1,500 and 6,000 trades a quarter, cutting Tradegate and L&S to EUR 1-2 and including the EUR 29.90-a-month trading API
• Baader Bank as custodian means the full German tax service: automatic Abgeltungsteuer and church tax, Freistellungsauftrag, loss offsetting, Vorabpauschale, US withholding relief and Swiss tax vouchers
• Free custody, free sub-accounts, free foreign-currency accounts, free deposits and withdrawals, no inactivity fee

Cons

• The zero-commission promise applies to exactly one venue above one order size; Xetra costs EUR 4 plus 0.01%, Nasdaq EUR 4 plus 0.02% with a USD 8 minimum, and a small foreign order can easily cost EUR 12-15
• Crypto at 0.90% of market value plus the venue mark-up is expensive against German rivals charging a fraction of that for equivalent spot exposure
• The October 2023 migration from DAB to Baader Bank produced weeks of malfunctions and unreachable support; Finanztip pulled its recommendation until October 2024 and legacy DAB accounts that never moved now pay about EUR 9 per German exchange order
• Support is German-language business hours only, and the published fee list includes some hostile line items - EUR 100 for a copy of a recorded call, EUR 100 an hour for an address trace
• Onboarding is app-only and requires iOS 16 or Android 10 or newer; there is no browser-only route in
• The published Konditionen page and the July 2026 price list disagree on at least one venue charge (Stockholm: 0.03% versus 0.10%), which is not what you want from a fee schedule