Swissquote vs IG — which broker is better?

Pros

• FINMA-licensed Swiss bank listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SQN) with published annual results — CHF 88.7 billion in client assets and around 750,000 accounts
• esisuisse depositor protection covers cash up to CHF 100,000, and custodied securities remain client property outside the bank's balance sheet
• Custody fee is capped at CHF 50 per quarter (CHF 200 a year) for private clients, so large portfolios pay a flat rather than percentage cost
• ETF Leaders pricing caps SIX-listed ETF commission at CHF 9 above CHF 1,000, regardless of order size
• Real cryptocurrency custody across 50-plus coins inside a regulated bank, with crypto custody included in the standard fee since 2025
• One login covers trading, Swiss banking, debit cards, payments, savings plans and pillar 3a retirement accounts
• Complimentary eTax statement for Swiss residents, which removes a genuine annual chore
• Four-language Swiss support including German, French, Italian and English, with local offices rather than an offshore call centre

Cons

• Commission is high by international standards — CHF 29 on a CHF 10,000 order and CHF 190 above CHF 50,000, where global discount brokers charge single digits
• Currency conversion costs 0.95% on major currencies, one of the most expensive markups among European brokers and the dominant cost for anyone buying US assets from a CHF or EUR balance
• A custody fee applies from the first franc — CHF 80 a year minimum plus 8.1% VAT — which is proportionally heavy on small portfolios
• Zero interest on cash balances across every currency and tier, at a time when several competitors pay a money-market rate
• Card deposits cost 1.9% in Switzerland and Europe, and SEPA withdrawals cost EUR 2
• The securities platform and the CFD/forex platform (CFXD) sit on separate logins, which fragments the experience for multi-product clients

Pros

• Around 17,000 tradable markets in a single account — shares, indices, FX, commodities, bonds, ETFs, turbo warrants and crypto CFDs, subject to regional restrictions
• Six top-tier licences — FCA (FRN 195355), BaFin, FINMA, ASIC (AFSL 515106), MAS and JFSA — plus a mid-tier DFSA licence in Dubai; the FINMA licence among those six is a full Swiss banking licence at IG Bank S.A., which puts Swiss cash under esisuisse protection
• Zero commission on UK and international shares, and the GBP 24 quarterly custody fee was scrapped outright in January 2026 rather than merely waived for active traders
• Platform stack that scales with the trader: web and mobile for most, ProRealTime for charting and backtesting, L2 Dealer for full order-book DMA, plus MT4, TradingView and documented REST/streaming APIs
• US-listed options from USD 1.00 per contract to open with nothing to close, and futures at USD 1.00 per contract per side (USD 0.75 on micros) — rare for a European retail broker
• No inactivity fee at all, where most rivals start charging after three to twelve dormant months, and no minimum deposit on any account
• Weekend dealing on the FTSE 100 and Wall Street, plus published client-sentiment data showing how IG's own book is positioned

Cons

• The 0.8% currency conversion mark-up on foreign-currency CFD and spread bet trades is where much of the real cost hides — on a USD position round-trip it comfortably exceeds the spread
• EUR/USD at roughly 0.9 pips is mid-table; raw-spread brokers quote 0.1–0.3 pips plus a small commission and work out cheaper for anyone trading FX frequently
• The 0.49% share dealing conversion rate is a discretionary discount rather than a contractual one — IG has committed to it only until 4 September 2026 and can raise it afterwards
• No fractional shares on IG's own platform, which creates real cash drag when drip-feeding small sums into high-priced US stocks
• Pricing genuinely differs by entity and account type — UK GBP share dealing, multi-currency share dealing, IG Europe and IG Bank all run separate schedules, and the published tables are hard to reconcile
• Crypto CFDs are unavailable to UK retail clients under the FCA ban, so the headline market count overstates what a UK resident can actually trade