comdirect

comdirect's Preis- und Leistungsverzeichnis, valid from 15 July 2026, is the document that decides whether this broker is right for you.

Domestic orders cost a EUR 4.90 base fee plus 0.25% of order value, with a minimum of EUR 9.90 on orders up to EUR 2,000 and a maximum of EUR 59.90. A venue fee is charged on top: 0.0025% with a EUR 2.50 minimum at Xetra, Tradegate, gettex, LS Exchange, Quotrix, Stuttgart and Börse Frankfurt Zertifikate AG, or 0.005% with a EUR 5 minimum at Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover and München. LiveTrading — comdirect's off-exchange direct trading — carries no venue fee at all, which is the single most useful cost lever the platform gives you. Exchange orders may also carry broker courtage of roughly 0.08% of turnover.

Foreign exchange execution is dearer again — EUR 7.90 base plus 0.25%, minimum EUR 12.90, maximum EUR 62.90, plus foreign charges and a EUR 2.90 settlement fee for securities outside German collective custody.

Savings plans cost 1.50% of the amount invested per execution for ETFs, shares and certificates. That is EUR 7.50 on a EUR 500 monthly rate — EUR 90 a year against EUR 0 at flatex and Consorsbank. Rotating ETF- and Fonds-Specials cut this on selected products, and crypto certificate plans from 21Shares, Bitwise, VanEck, nxtAssets and Invesco are fee-free until 31 December 2027, but the standing tariff is expensive.

What is free: custody for depots opened from 15 July 2026 (older depots pay EUR 1.95 a month unless waived by two trades a quarter, a Girokonto or one savings plan execution), the second depot, limit orders and trailing stops, order changes, depot transfers in and out, the electronic post box and coupon redemption. What costs extra: a EUR 14.90 surcharge on telephone, fax or letter orders, EUR 5 for relief at source, EUR 20 per withholding tax reclaim and EUR 14.90 per tax voucher.

Two mitigations are worth knowing. From 125 trades in a half-year you get a 15% Viel-Trader discount on commissions in the following half-year, and new depot customers currently pay a promotional EUR 3.90 per trade for 36 months. Both help. Neither changes the underlying tariff.

comdirect is not a separate bank. Since the November 2020 merger it has been a brand of Commerzbank AG, and your depot contract is with Commerzbank. That is the most important safety fact about the account, and it cuts in comdirect's favour.

Commerzbank AG is registered at the Frankfurt commercial register under HRB 32000, carries BaFin institution number 100005, and is supervised jointly by BaFin and — because it is classified as a significant institution — directly by the European Central Bank under the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Direct ECB supervision applies only to the largest euro-area banks; most brokers never come near it. Commerzbank is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under CBK, so its capital position, loan book and audited results are public every quarter.

Deposit protection runs on two layers. The statutory Entschädigungseinrichtung deutscher Banken (EdB) covers cash up to EUR 100,000 per depositor. On top of that Commerzbank belongs to the voluntary Einlagensicherungsfonds of the Bundesverband deutscher Banken, which currently protects private individuals up to EUR 3 million per bank. Bearer bonds issued by the bank itself are explicitly excluded. That EUR 3 million ceiling is materially better than flatex's statutory-only position and is the strongest argument for keeping a large cash balance here rather than at a discount broker.

Securities are not deposits. Your shares, ETFs, bonds and funds are your property, held in collective custody, and remain outside Commerzbank's insolvency estate. Deposit protection is about cash, not portfolio value — it does not and cannot protect you against markets falling.

Client money is segregated, retail negative balance protection applies to the CFD account under EU rules, and the O&F derivatives account is margined and gated behind an approved risk level. None of this makes any broker guaranteed safe; it makes the failure scenarios well-defined and well-funded.

comdirect's platform stack is the best of the three German incumbents and is the main thing you are paying for.

The web platform carries a single order mask covering off-exchange trading, domestic and foreign exchanges, fund orders and Soforthandel, with real-time push quotes and a set of comfort orders — trailing stops, one-cancels-other and combined entry-and-exit tickets — that automate a strategy rather than merely placing an order. Soforthandel gives a firm price quote before you commit across six German venues, which is genuinely useful in fast markets.

ProTrader is the serious desk: a browser-based real-time front end with order book, depot overview, watchlists, news, times and sales, market depth and a powerful charting module, all in freely configurable panels including multi-monitor layouts. It does not require a download and it does not cost extra on the full depot.

O&F-Trader covers Eurex options and futures with free real-time quotes, a margin calculator that simulates the margin impact of an order before you place it, contract search with filters, position widgets and an order book. The margin simulator is a better tool than most retail derivatives platforms offer.

CFD Trader is a panel-based platform with detachable charts and watchlists, one-click ordering from the watchlist, a saved chart gallery and free Guidants expert commentary, available as a mobile app and with a free demo account.

On mobile there are two apps — the comdirect App for banking, depot and savings plans, including voice- and chat-initiated transfers, and a separate trading App for real-time trading. Finally, comdirect exposes a REST API for account, depot and trading functions, and lets you drive the depot from stock3, TraderFox (free real-time quotes on around 12,000 instruments) and Quant4you (quantitative pre-market signals).

The criticism: it is a lot of surfaces. Four order entry points and three third-party desks is more choice than most investors want, and finding the right one is a real onboarding cost.

This is where comdirect earns its price. The depot reaches essentially every instrument a German retail investor can legally buy.

• Shares and ETFs on Xetra, Tradegate, gettex, LS Exchange, Quotrix, Börse Frankfurt Zertifikate AG, the regional exchanges in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover and München, and international venues, plus LiveTrading off-exchange with no venue fee
• Funds bought on-exchange, in LiveTrading, or directly from comdirect as a fixed-price transaction, plus the in-house comdirect All World ETF covering around 90% of the global equity market at preferential rates
• Bonds, including new issues, with subscription free online
• Certificates and warrants, with Trading Specials giving permanently preferential terms on premium partners' derivatives both on- and off-exchange since 1 April 2026
• CFDs with Société Générale as market maker: over 1,000 share and index-future CFDs from EUR 4.90 with a EUR 59.90 cap, and commission-free index, currency, precious metal, commodity and rate-future CFDs, plus Mini CFDs for smaller position sizes
• Eurex options and futures directly, on euro-denominated shares, indices and ETFs, with covered and uncovered writing both possible
• cominvest, a digital discretionary portfolio at 0.75% a year all-in, in classic and green variants

The gaps are narrow but specific. There is no spot cryptocurrency and no wallet — comdirect is explicit that you buy a certificate tracking the coin, not the coin. There is no spot forex outside the CFD account. By default the depot settles foreign trades in euro, at Commerzbank reference rates rather than a published percentage markup — a genuine transparency weakness when Consorsbank and flatex both publish their conversion margins to four decimal places. comdirect's own cost disclosure puts the conversion at 1% of the amount, as an estimate and only in its example for customers on legacy EUR 7.90 conditions. The alternative is a Währungsanlagekonto, free to hold, which comdirect says can serve as the settlement account for foreign trading; buying or selling currency on it costs 1% of the amount.

Opening a comdirect Depot is a three-step online flow: complete the application, verify identity, then set a PIN and activate the photoTAN app. It takes minutes, there is no minimum deposit, and the Girokonto can be opened in the same journey. The O&F derivatives account is the exception — it requires a paper application by post, review by comdirect's derivatives specialists, and separate approval of a trading limit and risk level (level 2 for uncovered options, level 3 for futures). Existing customers upgrading also file forms by post. That is old-fashioned, and it is the slowest part of the comdirect experience.

Funding is by SEPA transfer to the Verrechnungskonto, or instantly from a comdirect Girokonto held under the same customer number — which is precisely why comdirect pushes the current account so hard, and why holding one also waives the legacy custody fee. Withdrawals go back to the reference account in one to two business days and are free.

The tax question. As a German bank, comdirect is fully steuereinfach:

• Abgeltungsteuer of 25% plus solidarity surcharge and, where you declare it, church tax is withheld automatically on realised gains, dividends and the annual Vorabpauschale on accumulating funds
• Your Freistellungsauftrag is applied against the Sparer-Pauschbetrag without any action from you
• The statutory Verlustverrechnungstöpfe for shares and for other securities are maintained and offset automatically, and a loss certificate is issued on request
• The annual tax certificate arrives in the electronic post box; you copy two or three numbers into your return, or nothing at all if you have no other capital income

comdirect will also handle foreign withholding tax for you, but not free: EUR 5 per relief-at-source or reduction event, EUR 20 per reclaim and EUR 14.90 per tax voucher, each plus VAT. Consorsbank charges EUR 19.95 for a reclaim; flatex charges EUR 5.90 for a tax voucher. If you hold Swiss or French dividend payers directly, budget for this.

comdirect invests more in editorial and community than any other German broker, and it shows.

The comdirect Informer is the research hub: market data, security detail pages, screeners for ETFs and funds, analyst data, a Musterdepot for tracking a hypothetical portfolio, and news feeds. Real-time push quotes are included across the web platform and ProTrader, with times and sales and market depth available in ProTrader — none of which is metered the way flatex meters real-time queries. Through the third-party integrations you can add TraderFox with free real-time quotes on around 12,000 instruments worldwide and Quant4you's quantitative signals, published before the open, at no additional platform cost from comdirect's side.

The comdirect Magazin is a genuine finance publication rather than a content-marketing shell, and the comdirect Community is one of the few active German-language investor forums attached to a broker, which is a real asset when you want to know how another customer solved a settlement problem.

Education runs through free online seminars covering platform mechanics, derivatives and trading strategy, a structured knowledge section, and a set of explainer formats aimed at newer investors. comdirect first, the premium service tier, adds personal support and additional functions for larger relationships.

The honest limitation: much of the research is aggregated and much of the education is framed as encouragement to invest. This is a bank selling its own products alongside its explainers — the crypto certificate pages and Trading Specials sit next to the risk education, and the All World ETF is comdirect's own product promoted on comdirect's own pages. The material is good; read it knowing who wrote it.

comdirect advertises a 24/7 customer service by telephone, e-mail and live chat, with a dedicated CFD desk Monday to Friday 08:00–22:00, Saturday 10:00–18:00 and Sunday 12:00–20:00, and an active customer community as a self-help channel. On paper this is the best coverage of the three German incumbents and better than most brokers anywhere.

The lived experience, as far as public evidence goes, is very different. comdirect scores 1.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot across 4,117 reviews. The recurring themes are not subtle: extremely long telephone hold times, difficulty reaching a person who can actually resolve an issue, unfriendly handling, slow response times and delays in processing payments. Trustpilot's own AI summary of the recent sample concludes that most reviewers were disappointed with the overall experience.

Set against that, comdirect keeps winning German industry awards — it was ranked first as online broker for 2026 — and those awards weight product breadth, platform quality and pricing structure rather than call-centre performance. Both things are true at once: comdirect builds excellent products and, on the evidence of thousands of reviews, answers the phone badly.

We have scored support at 2.4, which is deliberately harsh but not the raw 1.4. Trustpilot skews toward people with a grievance, and German retail banks in particular attract complaint-driven review profiles. What makes the number hard to dismiss is the comparison: flatex scores 3.7 from 3,561 reviews on the same platform, more than two points ahead, and Consorsbank scores 1.6. Three brokers, one measurement method, a consistent ranking.

Practical advice: use the live chat or the secure message system rather than the phone for anything that is not urgent, keep your account number and a single precise question ready if you do call, and check the community first — for platform and fee questions it is frequently faster than any staffed channel.