Yuh vs flatex — which broker is better?

Pros

• Free Swiss IBAN, free account management, free custody and a free physical and virtual Debit Mastercard — the recurring cost of holding the account is genuinely zero
• Recurring 'buy' orders on eligible ETFs carry no trading fee at all, which makes a monthly ETF savings plan effectively commission-free apart from stamp duty and TER
• Fractional trading from CHF 10 on any available product, so an expensive share like Lindt or an S&P 500 tracker is reachable on a small budget
• Banking services are provided by Swissquote Bank Ltd under a FINMA licence, with esisuisse cover up to CHF 100,000 and the Swissquote group listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange under SQN
• Real digital assets rather than CFDs — coins listed on Swissquote's SQX exchange with Coinbase and Bitstamp for liquidity, at 1% per trade with free custody and 24/7 access
• Multi-currency account in 13 currencies with free CHF and Liechtenstein transfers and free SEPA transfers in euros
• Pillar 3a wrapper at 0.50% per year all-in including fund TER, FX, administration and unlimited strategy changes, which is competitive for a Swiss 3a solution
• Account opening is fully in-app and takes minutes, with free phone, message and chat support afterwards

Cons

• The 0.95% currency exchange markup is the dominant hidden cost: a CHF 5,000 purchase of a US share costs about CHF 47.50 in FX versus CHF 25 in commission, and you pay it again when you sell
• Percentage-only commission scales badly — CHF 50 on a CHF 10,000 order and CHF 70 on a CHF 20,000 order, with no cap, against tiered Swiss brokers charging a fraction of that at the same size
• App-only: there is no web platform, no desktop client, no API and no way to review or manage a portfolio from a computer
• Product range stops at shares, ETFs, Themes, bonds and digital assets — no options, no futures, no forex, no CFDs, no margin and no mutual funds
• Research is close to non-existent: no screener, no fundamentals suite, no analyst estimates; the marketing site outsources charts to embedded TradingView widgets
• Cash in saving projects earns 0% in CHF, EUR and USD as published, and transfers outside the SEPA area are not supported at all

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