Best online brokers for beginners in Europe

A European beginner has a slightly different list from an American one. Commission is still part of it, because not every European broker charges zero. Currency is the newer item: most people here buy at least some US stocks or US-listed funds, and every conversion from euros to dollars costs something.

• Low or no commission on what you will actually buy. A broker can be free on ETFs and charge on stocks, or the other way round.
• Fractional shares or a savings plan. Without one, a €50 monthly amount may not buy a single share of the fund you want.
• A low currency conversion fee. Quoted as a percentage of the amount converted, from 0.15% to 0.75% among the brokers here.
• No custody or inactivity fee. A beginner who invests once and then forgets the account should not be charged for it.
• A regulated entity in the EU, and segregated client assets. Your shares should be held apart from the broker's own, with a compensation scheme behind them.
• A plain investing account, not only CFDs. Several European apps offer both. The investing account holds real shares; a CFD account holds leveraged contracts.

Tax wrappers matter too, and they are national: a Belgian, a Dutch and a German investor face different rules on dividends and gains. No pan-European broker solves that for you, so check how your country taxes a foreign broker account before you open one.

The table uses each broker's own fee pages as of October 2026. DEGIRO's figures are from its Irish site in euros; BUX's are for its free Basic plan.

Two things in this table surprise beginners. DEGIRO is not the most expensive simply because it charges per trade: someone buying one Core Selection ETF a few times a year pays €1 each time and nothing else. And BUX's free plan carries a yearly fee of 0.20% on invested assets, which the paid plans remove.

Fee tables are hard to compare in the abstract, so here is one beginner habit priced at each broker: €100 a month into a single ETF for a year, €1,200 in total. The figures are the published fees above and leave out tax, fund costs and price moves.

• Trading 212. No commission and no custody fee. If the ETF trades in euros there is no conversion, so the year costs €0. Buying a US-listed fund instead adds the 0.15% FX fee, about €1.80 over the year.
• DEGIRO. A Core Selection ETF carries no commission but a €1 handling fee on each order, so twelve monthly buys cost €12. Because DEGIRO sells whole shares, a fund priced above €100 means some months buy nothing and the cash waits for the next order.
• BUX Basic. Investment Plan buys are free. The 0.20% yearly fee on invested assets comes to about €2.40 a year once the full €1,200 is invested, and less while the balance builds.
• eToro. ETF trades are free. The cost to check is conversion: depositing euros into a USD account carries a fee that eToro says depends on your country, payment method and Club level.

For this habit the spread runs from nothing to about €12 a year. Selling, a larger amount, or a monthly buy of a US stock would order the brokers differently, which is why the habit you plan to keep is the useful starting point.

Trading 212's help centre lists free commission and no custody fee on its Invest and ISA accounts, and calls the 0.15% FX fee the only fee it can charge on them. It sells fractional shares, so a small deposit can be split across a fund and a few stocks.

Which company holds your account depends on where you live. German clients sit with Trading 212 EU GmbH, regulated by BaFin, whose investor guarantee sheet names the German EdW scheme and a cap of 90% of a claim up to €20,000. UK clients sit with Trading 212 UK Ltd under the FSCS. The app also offers a CFD account; the investing account is the one that holds real shares.

DEGIRO, the Dutch branch of flatexDEGIRO Bank SE, publishes €0 commission on its Core Selection ETFs and €1 commission on US stocks, each plus a €1 handling fee per trade. It charges no custody or inactivity fee. Two smaller costs sit on top: an exchange connectivity fee of 0.25% of account value a year, capped at €2.50 per foreign exchange, and 0.25% on automatic currency conversion.

DEGIRO's helpdesk says it sells whole shares only. That is the main limit for a beginner with a small monthly amount: the smallest buy is one share. On protection, DEGIRO says client assets sit in a separate legal entity, the German investor compensation scheme covers up to 90% of non-returned assets to a maximum of €20,000, and uninvested cash at flatexDEGIRO Bank is covered to €100,000 by the German deposit guarantee. The DEGIRO broker page has the full fee table.

BUX, a subsidiary of ABN AMRO regulated by the Dutch AFM, is offered in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria and Ireland. Buy orders inside an Investment Plan are free on every plan, which makes it a natural fit for someone who wants to put the same amount into the same ETF each month.

Outside the plans, costs depend on the tier. Basic is free each month but charges 0.20% a year on invested assets, €3.99 for an EU share market order and a 0.75% FX markup on US shares. Plus, at €2.99 a month, drops the asset fee below €250,000 and pays 1.75% on cash up to €100,000. Prime, at €7.99, cuts EU orders to €0.99, the FX markup to 0.20%, and pays 2.00% on cash up to €100,000. BUX says your shares and money are held in BUX Custody, a separate foundation, apart from BUX's own capital. See the BUX broker page.

eToro's fee page lists free ETF trades for all users, a stock commission of $1 or $2 per trade outside the US depending on your country and the exchange, and a 1% fee on crypto trades for most members. Withdrawals from a local-currency account in euros or pounds are free; from a USD account they cost $5, with a $30 minimum. Currency conversion fees are not quoted as one rate: eToro says they vary by location, payment method and Club level.

What sets eToro apart is CopyTrader and its social feed. That is easy for a beginner to start with and easy to lose track of, since copying someone can leave you holding names you never chose one by one. eToro's entities page lists eToro (Europe) Ltd under CySEC with the Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund to €20,000, and eToro (UK) Ltd under the FCA with the FSCS to £85,000. Short and leveraged positions on eToro are CFDs, not shares. More on the eToro broker page.

The three cover the same beginner job (buying shares and ETFs cheaply) for different investors. DEGIRO and Trading 212 open accounts across Europe. Public is a US broker whose brokerage agreement says its services are intended for US residents, so for a European reader it is the reference point rather than an option.

For a European beginner with a small monthly amount, the deciding line is usually fractional shares: Trading 212 offers them and DEGIRO does not. For someone buying a single Core Selection ETF a few times a year, DEGIRO's €1 handling fee is a small cost. Public's fractional disclosure sets a $5 minimum for a one-off fractional order.

BUX and DEGIRO are both Dutch in origin and both aimed at long-term investors, but they solve the small-amount problem differently. BUX buys fractions inside free Investment Plans; DEGIRO keeps per-trade costs low and sells whole shares.

The 0.20% yearly fee on BUX Basic is the figure to compare. On €10,000 invested it is €20 a year, which is more than several DEGIRO ETF trades and less than a year of BUX Plus at €2.99 a month (€35.88). flatexDEGIRO said in its February 2026 results release that it is preparing ETF and stock savings plans for DEGIRO in the fourth quarter of 2026, which would narrow the gap with BUX's plans.

All three are app-first and pitched at newer investors. eToro is the one most Europeans can open. Robinhood's US brokerage and Public are for US residents; in Europe, Robinhood offers stock tokens rather than a share brokerage account. Robinhood announced in June 2025 that customers in 30 EU and EEA countries can trade more than 200 US stock and ETF tokens, with no commission or added spread from Robinhood and other fees possible. A token tracks the share price and pays dividends in the app, but it is a different product from owning the share at a broker.

eToro's social tools are the reason to pick it, and also the thing to watch. Robinhood and Public keep a short buy screen and no copy feature, which some beginners find calmer.

A European beginner who searches for a well-known US index fund often finds the broker will not sell it. The reason is a document, not the fund. The EU's PRIIPs Regulation requires a Key Information Document before a packaged investment product can be sold to a retail investor, and most US fund issuers do not publish one for their US-listed ETFs. Brokers serving EU retail clients therefore tend to block those funds.

What they offer instead are UCITS ETFs: funds built under the EU's fund rules, usually domiciled in Ireland or Luxembourg and listed on European exchanges, often in euros. Many track the same indexes as the US funds. Two choices come up with them that an American beginner never meets.

• Accumulating or distributing. An accumulating share class reinvests dividends inside the fund; a distributing one pays them out to you. How each is taxed depends on your country, so it is worth checking before choosing.
• Which listing to buy. The same fund can trade on several exchanges and in several currencies. Buying the euro listing on an exchange your broker covers cheaply avoids a conversion fee on every purchase.

For the account side of the decision (account types, minimums and fees in general), the guide to which brokerage is best for beginners covers the US picture, which is the reference point most comparisons start from.

• Ignoring currency. A €100 monthly buy of a US stock at a 0.75% markup costs €9 a year in conversion alone. Buying a euro-listed ETF that holds the same companies avoids most of it.
• Opening the CFD account by mistake. Several apps put the CFD and investing accounts side by side. ESMA's 2018 restrictions cited national regulators' finding that 74% to 89% of retail CFD accounts typically lose money.
• Assuming the protection is the same everywhere. The cap depends on which group company holds your account, not the app's logo. The guide to whether your brokerage account is protected in Europe walks through each scheme.
• Choosing by sign-up offer. A free share is worth a few euros; the wrong fee structure costs that every year.
• Copying without checking. On a copy-trading account, look at what you now hold and how much of it sits in one name.
• Skipping the tax question. Some countries treat a foreign broker account differently from a domestic one at tax time.

Walnut is an AI investing app that sits on top of the brokerage accounts you already have. It connects to DEGIRO, Trading 212, BUX, eToro, Interactive Brokers and other brokers, reads every holding, puts each one against the S&P 500 and gives it a keep, trim or exit read with a short reason. Any single name over a quarter of the portfolio is flagged. An assistant answers questions about what you actually own, in Walnut or through Claude and ChatGPT, and you can turn an idea into a basket of stocks with target weights.

When you want to buy, Walnut splits an amount across a basket and sends the orders only after you approve the plan. It places those buys at Public and at Robinhood, where buys go into a Robinhood Agentic account and the main Robinhood account stays view-only to outside apps. E*Trade, tastytrade, Webull (US and Canada), moomoo, Questrade, Wealthsimple, Trading 212 and Stake also take orders you approve; at Trading 212, sells are placed in the Trading 212 app. DEGIRO, BUX and eToro are read in full: holdings, the keep, trim or exit read, and the assistant on your real positions, with orders placed at the broker.

Walnut never sees your broker password, holds no money and moves none. Returns are shown as price returns against the S&P 500, since the connection does not carry your purchase cost. The what Walnut does guide covers the rest.

Broker pricing and protection from each firm's own pages, checked October 2026: Trading 212 fees and Trading 212 EU investor guarantee sheet; DEGIRO Ireland fees, DEGIRO protection, DEGIRO fractional shares and DEGIRO UK onboarding notice; flatexDEGIRO FY 2025 release; BUX fees, BUX security and about BUX; eToro fees and eToro entities; Public brokerage agreement and fractional disclosure; Robinhood stock tokens announcement and Robinhood fractional shares. Regulation: Investor Compensation Schemes Directive 97/9/EC, the PRIIPs Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 and ESMA's 2018 CFD restrictions. Prices change, so confirm on the broker's site before opening an account. Walnut is not a registered investment adviser, and this guide is educational rather than personalized advice.