justTRADE vs Trade Republic — which broker is better?

Pros

• Three competing exchange venues (LS Exchange, Quotrix, Tradegate BSX) with a quote-request order that executes at exactly the price you confirmed - no market orders, no execution surprises
• EUR 1.00 per stock or ETF order at LS Exchange and Tradegate BSX, with no minimum order value: you can buy a single share
• No custody fee, no account fee, no inactivity fee, no charge for dividends, corporate actions or transfers out
• Savings plans on ETFs, ETCs, commodities, crypto and wikifolios cost EUR 0 order commission from EUR 25 a month
• Real spot crypto in the same account - 65+ coins held by BaFin-supervised Tangany GmbH in Germany, tradable 24/7 from EUR 25 at 0.125%
• Sutor Bank (founded 1921) holds the banking licence, so cash falls under the statutory EUR 100,000 guarantee plus the private banks' voluntary fund
• Full German tax agency: Abgeltungsteuer and church tax withheld automatically, FIFO cost basis, free annual tax certificate and loss certificate
• About 1.75 million certificates and warrants from seven issuers, with EUR 0 commission at the four Gold partners

Cons

• Account opening requires German citizenship AND German tax residence - a residence permit is explicitly not sufficient, which excludes a large share of German residents
• You cannot transfer an existing securities portfolio into justTRADE. Incoming Depotuebertraege are not supported at all, so switching means selling and realising tax
• The public marketing still says 'ab 0 EUR Orderprovision' while the 08.06.2026 price list charges EUR 2.90 as standard and EUR 1.00 at two venues - the cheapest German neobrokers are now cheaper on the same order
• Support is email only: no telephone hotline, no live chat, German only
• No individual bonds, no mutual funds, and French, Italian, Spanish and Greek shares (plus their ADRs) are untradable because of local financial transaction taxes
• Uninvested cash pays 0.00% p.a. while a tolerated overdraft costs 9.00% p.a.; the broker's answer is to sell you money-market ETFs instead

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.