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The best broker for Swiss investors in 2025

Baptiste Wicht | Updated: |

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)

I have talked about several brokers on this blog. But I have not yet answered the question of which one is the best broker in Switzerland!

This article answers this critical question. There are many Swiss brokers, and most Swiss banks have their broker service. However, some international brokers are also available in Switzerland.

You need a broker account to invest in the stock market. So, before investing, you need to choose a broker account. You need to decide carefully since changing brokers is neither easy nor free. Therefore, it is essential to pick the best broker possible.

By the end of this article, you will know which broker you should use as a Swiss passive investor in ETF!

How to choose a broker?

Choosing a broker is not very difficult but critical!

You are likely to use the same broker for many years. You can always switch to a new broker. But moving your shares to a new broker is neither free nor straightforward. So, it is better to start with the right decision directly. Ideally, you want to start with the best broker for your needs.

You first need to ensure that you only trade with a reputable broker. You will entrust your investments with this broker. So you want a broker with a good reputation and excellent security.

You must ensure the broker will hold your assets separately from the broker’s legal entity. You can reclaim your assets through the secondary entity if the broker defaults. This separation is called asset segregation, something that any proper broker will do.

Second, you should check whether the broker gives you access to the exchanges you need. For instance, you will need access to the Swiss Stock Exchange (SWX) if you want to trade in Swiss stocks.

For Swiss investors, US ETFs are the most efficient. They have a better tax efficiency (we save 15% of US dividends), lower fees and are larger and more stable.

However, due to a bad set of laws, it is currently challenging to access Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) from the U.S. Indeed, European investors cannot currently invest in these funds. Only Interactive Brokers (among the affordable brokers) will offer Swiss investors access to these U.S. ETFs. So, your choice is highly limited if you want to invest in these funds.

Finally, you need to look at the prices of transactions. Price is the main issue with most Swiss brokers. They are expensive. As we will see later, there can be a vast difference in fees between different brokers. Most people do not realize this! When you compare brokers, you will see that the difference is too big to ignore!

Out of these three criteria, the third one is the one that requires the most research. Finding reputable and safe brokers is not very difficult. But, finding an affordable broker giving you access to the stock exchanges you need is not always easy. If you research correctly, you will directly start using the best broker for your needs.

The best brokers in Switzerland

As I said before, there are many options. You can probably trade directly with your bank. However, Swiss banks are costly for trading. It would be convenient to trade directly with your bank. Unfortunately, they are too expensive. So, you should not trade with your bank.

In Switzerland, we have a few good options for online brokers. My favorite Swiss online brokers are Swissquote (my review of Swissquote) and Saxo (my Saxo review).

These are already much more interesting than trading with your bank. But they are not cheap either. Finally, there are several international online brokers available for Swiss investors:

These two brokers are the best options available for Switzerland. They are significantly cheaper than most other options available in Switzerland. They may not be Swiss, but they offer their services to Swiss investors. This makes them the two best brokers in Switzerland.

To see if this is the case, we will compare the fees of the different brokers. We can also consider that you do not have to pay Swiss Stamp Tax with them.

Comparison of the brokerage fees

We can quickly compare the fees of some of these brokers for some operations.

I cannot compare all the brokers available because there are too many. So, I picked the most popular brokers in Switzerland. I included two bank brokers, three online Swiss brokers, and two international brokers.

This should be a good set of brokers for comparison. This should help to show what are the best brokers in Switzerland.

For information, I am using the tiered pricing of Interactive Brokers for this comparison. It is generally cheaper than the fixed pricing.

Here are the fees for these brokers for a few examples of Swiss and American stock exchange operations. I used the share prices of April 16th, 2022, for the comparison. Here is all the data I have collected:

Fees of brokers in Switzerland
Fees of brokers in Switzerland

As expected, the traditional bank brokers are in a poor position. Swiss online brokers are already significantly better. For instance, Saxo is quite affordable in most cases. The worst would be Migros since they do not have a maximum on their custody fees, which is a terrible drag once you have an extensive portfolio.

In all cases, Interactive Brokers is the cheapest broker. In most cases, DEGIRO follows quickly. However, DEGIRO can become expensive when you take currency conversion into account. So our two online foreign brokers are cheaper than the others. It is good to note that Saxo is often as cheap as DEGIRO. In the worst case, IB is hundreds of times more affordable than Swiss brokers!

On average, if you are doing big enough transactions, IB will be much cheaper than the other brokers. They are consistently among the most affordable and are never among the most expensive options. These results indicate that IB is the best broker available in Switzerland. If you do not want a broker from the US, DEGIRO becomes interesting. And if you want a Swiss broker, Saxo is the cheapest one available.

If you want more brokers included in this comparison, please let me know. I can extend the list if many people are interested. I understand that some people want to have a Swiss broker. For them, I have an article comparing the best Swiss brokers.

Currency exchange fees

Brokerage fees are important, but many often forget about currency exchange fees. This is the fee you pay for exchanging one currency for another.

This fee is essential because most Swiss investors will invest in foreign products in a foreign currency. For instance, 80% of my portfolio is in US ETFs in USD. So, every time I invest, I need to convert my CHF to USD.

So, again, we can compare the currency exchange fees for all these brokers.

Exchange fees of brokers in Switzerland
Exchange fees of brokers in Switzerland

In the lead, we have Interactive Brokers, followed by Saxo and DEGIRO. Interactive Brokers is always cheaper than any other alternative. After it, both DEGIRO and Saxo have a 0.25% currency conversion fee. So, IB is the cheapest foreign broker, while Saxo is the cheapest Swiss broker.

So, we come to the same conclusion as for the previous tables. IB will be much cheaper than the other brokers. And Saxo is once again the cheapest Swiss broker.

Swiss Stamp Tax and brokers

Switzerland has a Swiss Stamp Tax (or Swiss Stamp Duty). This tax is also called the Swiss Securities Transfer Tax. The stamp duty is a federal tax.

This system levies a tax on each transfer of securities when a Swiss securities dealer is involved. By “Swiss securities dealers”, the tax means Swiss banks and brokers.

The amount of the tax depends on the exchange:

  • Swiss securities: 0.075% fee
  • Foreign securities: 0.15% fee

This tax only applies to Swiss securities dealers, not foreign securities dealers! Choosing a non-Swiss broker will save on the Swiss Stamp Tax! Since this tax is levied in both directions (buy and sell), you are effectively losing 0.30% of your transactions by using a Swiss Broker! Over the years, this can quickly add up to a large amount!

This tax effectively moves people away from Swiss brokers. This law officially makes foreign brokers the best brokers for Swiss investors.

For more information, read my article on the Swiss Stamp Tax Duty.

The best broker in Switzerland is not Swiss

As we can see from the comparison, the choice is relatively easy. From a fee perspective, only Interactive Brokers and DEGIRO are good choices. All the others are too expensive. Interactive Brokers is the cheapest of the available brokers.

For me, Interactive Brokers is the best broker available in Switzerland. Even though DEGIRO is cheap, it cannot compare with IB. Moreover, Saxo is almost as cheap as DEGIRO, so it would make more sense to use Saxo instead of DEGIRO.

There is one big difference currently between these two brokers. Only Interactive Brokers currently offer access to U.S. ETF. So, if you want to invest in U.S. ETF, you must use IB. This is only the case for ETFs. Both brokers provide access to all other U.S. securities.

IB is cheaper and offers excellent foreign exchange trading. And it provides tons of features and analysis tools. This comes at the price of complexity. At first sight, Interactive Brokers is quite intimidating. But it has become better and better over the years. As a simple investor, you will only need a small portion of all the features of IB.

If you want more data points, you can use my broker comparator. This comparator will let you compare brokers for your needs exactly.

Interactive Brokers – The best broker

The best broker
Interactive Brokers
5.0
No custody fees

The broker you need to buy stocks and ETFs reliably and at extremely affordable prices. Trade U.S. stocks for as little as 0.5 USD!

Pros:
  • Extremely affordable
  • Wide range of investing instruments
Invest your money Read My Review

As mentioned before, Interactive Brokers is the only one of the two best brokers to provide you with access to U.S. ETFs. So, if you plan to invest in them, IB should be your choice. It is my favorite broker, the one I use and recommend!

Interactive Brokers is a broker from the United States. But if you are in Europe, you will use its United Kingdom subsidiary. But this remains the same broker. It is a very well-established broker founded in 1978. It has many customers all over the world.

Although it is a low-cost broker, it offers many features. They offer access to almost all instruments available in many stock exchanges. You can trade in stocks, contracts, options, and other derivatives. And they have an excellent platform for FOREX trading. For passive investors, you will have many more features than you need.

The most significant disadvantage of IB is that it is sometimes a little obscure to use. IB has many user interfaces. Initially, it is unclear which one you should use.

Other than that, IB is an exceptional broker!

If you are interested, I have a guide on opening an account at Interactive Brokers and a guide on trading ETFs with Interactive Brokers.

What if you want to use a Swiss broker?

As you can see, Swiss brokers cannot compare with IB. Using Interactive Brokers will let you save some money. And I do not think we will see any Swiss broker cheaper than IB soon.

However, Swiss brokers are not all bad. Some Swiss brokers are bad. But that is not the case for every Swiss broker. They are pricier for several reasons:

  1. They have to obey different regulations.
  2. They have to pay Swiss employees (they cost more).
  3. They have to deal with Swiss banks (they cost more).

There are several good Swiss brokers. So, if you are uncomfortable having your shares in a foreign broker, you can check out the best Swiss brokers. I would personally use Saxo or Swissquote if I were to use a Swiss broker.

You can still invest successfully with a Swiss broker, which will be more costly. If this brings you peace of mind, you should accept the price. Peace of mind is better than optimization!

Conclusion

Interactive Brokers is the best broker available in Switzerland. They are a reputable and safe broker. And it is the cheapest broker available in Switzerland. Moreover, you will save on the Swiss Stamp Duty that you only have to pay with Swiss brokers.

Swiss brokers are working fine, and they have nothing fundamentally wrong. But they are much pricier than online foreign brokers.

And when you add the Swiss Stamp Duty, the difference is significant. You do not want to waste your returns on fees when you invest. So, you need to minimize the fees. And for that, you need to choose the best brokers.

I firmly believe that Interactive Brokers is the best broker for Swiss investors in all cases.

And IB is a much more complete solution for investors. It also has a great reputation. Finally, given that they offer access to U.S. ETFs, IB can help you save a lot of money. If you like, here is a guide on how to get started with Interactive Brokers.

And again, if you want a Swiss broker, I got you covered with my comparison of the best Swiss brokers.

What about you? What is the best broker for you?

Recommended reading

Photo of Baptiste Wicht
Baptiste Wicht started The Poor Swiss in 2017. He realized that he was falling into the trap of lifestyle inflation. He decided to cut his expenses and increase his income. Since 2019, he has been saving more than 50% of his income every year. He made it a goal to reach Financial Independence and help Swiss people with their finances.
Discover Swiss Financial Secrets That Maximize Your Money!

Learn easy ways to optimize your finances and save thousands in Switzerland with our exclusive e-book. Learn about the most cost-effective financial services tailored for savvy residents and expats!

Get Your FREE Swiss Money-Saving Guide

243 thoughts on “The best broker for Swiss investors in 2025”

  1. Hello Baptiste, thanks for the great work.
    Have you heard anything about Swiss brokers applying US state tax? Apparently in case of a decease, your heir will have to pay taxes of 40% on US assets over 60k… Since IB is a US broker they comply with the US law.
    Thanks a lot,

  2. Hi Baptiste,

    Many thanks for writing about these super relevant topics. Here is a bit about my investing profile:

    I am a long term investor and in most cases, I keep my assets for atleast 3 years or more. I do invest in US markets.

    I have two key questions and would appreciate your guidance given your extensive experience.

    – Given my usual long term investment horizon, would IB still be a far better option or do you think players like Swissquote or Saxo will close the gap.
    – I am particularly concerned about safety of the investments. Do you know anything about the risk in case the brokerage company goes bankrupt? Will my investment protected fully say at IB and Degiro or are swiss brokers safer in that aspect?

    Thanks,
    Patrick

    1. Hi Patrick,

      The gap will be quite significant, but not life-changing if you use a Swiss broker with access to US ETFs, like Saxo or Swissquote.
      If you do not have a massive portfolio, DEGIRO is okay, but since it’s also a foreign broker, and it’s pricier than IB, there is not much point in using DEGIRO.
      You can see the numbers using our broker comparator.

      For safety, it should make little difference. However, it will likely take longer for a foreign broker to give you back your shares than for a Swiss broker. You can read the story of FlowBank’s bankruptcy for details.

  3. would you still recommend IB or DEGIRO for day trading ? in and out, potential multiple buy and sell trades etc. ? is the UI easy ?
    Thanks

  4. Baptitse, I wanted to sincerely thank you for taking the time to explain all this. It’s one thing to do the work. It’s another thing to so clearly and thoroughly explain it all for non-financial people to easily understand. You’re making moving to Switzerland as an expat that much easier. Thank you!

  5. Hi Baptiste,

    Thank you for your comprehensive review.

    I’m currently investing with Swissquote, but the evidence you’ve presented is definitely compelling, and I’m seriously considering switching to IB. However, one concern is holding the majority of my wealth in a foreign country and in a different currency.
    Given the current unstable geopolitical climate, I worry about the potential for restricted access to assets in the event of a major crisis. While I understand this might be an unlikely scenario, history does tend to repeat itself. In such situations, I would prefer not to find myself in a vulnerable position regarding my investments.

    How do you and others in the investment community feel about this?

    Thanks in advance for your insight and for the quality of your work!

    1. Hi Thom

      I think this is fair concern. If you are worried about that, you have two choices:
      * Either you do not use a foreign broker
      * Or you use both a Swiss broker and a foreign brokers. I think this is the best solution.

      I will soon talk about using multiple brokers on the blog.

      1. Thanks for your reply.
        Looking forward to reading it!

        Also, with IB, are you not worried about the USD depreciating against the CHF long term (-0.5-1% per year historically).
        I’ve been contemplating switching to hedged ETFs lately..

      2. USD does not worry me. When investing for the long-term, hedging does not work well. It works well in the short to medium term, but it is not enough for the long-term. So, we have to assume that our returns are lower than the returns of an American investor and that’s alright.

  6. Hi Baptiste,

    Do you also recommend IB to buy index funds? Which index funds in IB do you recommend to track S&P 500, emerging brokers or gold?

  7. Hi Baptiste,

    Interactive Brokers are US-based. If I’m not wrong there’s this withholding tax that US authorities hold on one’s stock market gains. Will such a tax be applied if investment is made with IB vs. a Swiss-based broker? And how to get the withheld money back?

    Thanks a ton for your helpful advice here!

      1. Thanks a lot Baptiste. Yes, it’s about the dividend withholding tax. I reclaim it with Swiss tax authorities and not the US ones, correct?

  8. Hello Baptiste,
    What about VZ based in Zug?
    Are they worth considering? From what I see Swiss shares cost Fr 39.- while foreign shares cost Fr 59.-.
    Do you know if they trade ETFs?

    1. Hi Matt

      Yes, they trade ETFs, but their fees are really not very interesting.
      The custody fee is 0.1%, without maximum, which can be expensive for large portfolios.
      And if we compare their fees (ticket fee model), you would need to trade at least 10’001 CHF to be cheaper than Swissquote (and even much higher to be cheaper than Saxo, not even talking about IB) and even 15’000 USD for foreign shares.

      So, if you are trading very high tickets, this may be interesting, but otherwise, it’s not really interesting.

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