The best broker for Swiss investors in 2024
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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 several Swiss brokers, and most Swiss banks have their own 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 choose 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.
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 broker is Swissquote (my review of Swissquote). FlowBank (review) and Corner Trader (review) also have acceptable prices.
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 all the 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, two 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 six 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:
| Action | Postfinance | Migros | Cornèrtrader | Swissquote | DEGIRO | Interactive Brokers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Custody Fees | 90 CHF / year | 0.23% / year Min 50 CHF |
10 CHF / quarter If inactive |
0.025% / quarter Min 15 CHF Max 50 CHF |
0 CHF | 0 CHF |
| Buy 10 CHSPI shares | 25 CHF | 40 CHF | 20 CHF | 9 CHF | 3 EUR | 5 CHF |
| Buy 100 CHSPI shares | 50 CHF | 40 CHF | 23 CHF | 9 CHF | 3 EUR | 5 CHF |
| Buy 10 NOVN shares | 15 CHF | 40 CHF | 20 CHF | 20 CHF | 6 CHF | 5 CHF |
| Buy 100 NOVN shares | 35 CHF | 40 CHF | 20 CHF | 30 CHF | 6 CHF | 5 CHF |
| Buy 10 MSFT shares | 35 USD | 40 CHF | 25 CHF | 25 USD | 2 EUR | 0.35 USD |
| Buy 100 MSFT shares | 70 USD | 40 CHF | 25 CHF | 80 USD | 2 EUR | 0.36 USD |
Or, if you prefer, here is the data in graphical format:
As expected, the traditional Swiss brokers are in a poor position. Swiss online brokers are already significantly better. For instance, Swissquote 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. 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. This shows that IB is the best broker available in Switzerland. If you do not want a broker from the US, DEGIRO becomes interesting.
If you want more brokers included in this comparison, let me know. I can extend the list if many people are interested. I understand that some people want to have a Swiss broker. I have an article comparing the best Swiss brokers for them.
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 important 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.
| Conversion | Postfinance | Migros | Cornèrtrader | Swissquote | DEGIRO | Interactive Brokers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 CHF to EUR | 1.2 | 1 | 10 | 0.95 | 0.25 | 2 |
| 500 CHF to USD | 6 | 5 | 10 | 4.75 | 1.25 | 2 |
| 1000 CHF to EUR | 12 | 10 | 10 | 9.5 | 2.5 | 2 |
| 2000 CHF to EUR | 24 | 20 | 10 | 19 | 5 | 2 |
| 5000 CHF to USD | 60 | 50 | 25 | 47.5 | 12.5 | 2 |
| 10000 CHF TO USD | 120 | 100 | 50 | 95 | 25 | 2 |
And here on a graph:
Once again, the two foreign brokers are much better than the Swiss brokers. Interestingly, IB can be relatively expensive for small operations because it has a fixed 2 USD fee. On the other hand, DEGIRO has a 0.25% fee. So, below 800 CHF conversion, DEGIRO will be slightly cheaper than IB.
For small operations, the cheapest Swiss broker will be Swissquote. For larger operations, Cornèrtrader is only twice more expensive than DEGIRO (but much more expensive than IB).
So, we come to the same conclusion as for the previous tables. If you do big enough currency conversions, IB will be much cheaper than the other brokers.
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. This is a federal tax.
This 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 two best brokers in Switzerland
As we can see from the comparison, the choice is relatively easy. From a fee point of view, 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.
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 are giving access to all other U.S. securities.
Aside from these two differences, they are both good brokers. DEGIRO is much more expensive for currency exchange. This makes it more expensive for a Swiss investor.
On the other hand, DEGIRO is slightly cheaper for European securities. So, it makes DEGIRO interesting for European investors. European investors do not have access to U.S. ETFs anyway, so they have more choices of brokers.
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.
Interactive Brokers – The best broker
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!
- Extremely affordable
- Wide range of investing instruments
As mentioned before, Interactive Brokers is the only one of the two best brokers to give you 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 excellent 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.
DEGIRO – The simplest broker
DEGIRO is the broker I have started with. It is a good and cheap broker. It is relatively simple to use. However, they are much less professional than IB.
DEGIRO is a broker from The Netherlands available to most European countries. It started in 2008, and they have been growing fast since then. Now, they are one of the major brokers in Europe.
One disadvantage of DEGIRO is that it does not offer proper FOREX trading. You cannot hold different currencies in your account. Your cash is converted automatically when you trade in a foreign currency.
And you will have to pay fees for these transactions. This makes it more expensive than IB when your base currency is not the currency of your primary ETF.
It can also be more expensive on some transactions than Interactive Brokers. But this should not be a big difference unless you are doing substantial transactions.
A significant limitation is that DEGIRO does not let Swiss investors invest in U.S. ETFs. This is probably fine for starting investors and people who do not plan to invest much money. But with an extensive portfolio, you can save significant money investing in these U.S. ETFs.
Finally, you need to be aware that, by default, DEGIRO will lend your shares to other investors. On IB, you can choose to do so, and they will distribute half of the profits to you, another significant advantage for IB.
If you are interested, I have a tutorial on how to open an account with DEGIRO.
What if you want to use a Swiss broker?
Everything you need to start investing in the stock market! Open an account with Swissquote and get 100 CHF in trading credits with my code MKT_THEPOORSWISS.
- Swiss broker
- Easy to use
As you can see, Swiss brokers cannot compare with these international brokers. Using Interactive Brokers or DEGIRO will let you save some money. And I do not think we will see any Swiss broker cheaper than these two soon.
However, Swiss brokers are not all bad. Some Swiss brokers are bad and only try to get money out of you. But that is not the case for every Swiss broker. They are more expensive for several reasons:
- They have to obey different regulations
- They have to pay Swiss employees (they cost more)
- 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 Swissquote if I were to use a Swiss broker. You can check out my review of Swissquote for more info.
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 both reputable and safe brokers. And they are the cheapest brokers 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 more expensive than online foreign brokers.
And when you add the Swiss Stamp Duty on top of that, 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. There are a few cases where DEGIRO is slightly cheaper than Interactive Brokers.
And IB is a much more complete solution for investors. It also has a better reputation. Finally, given that they offer access to U.S. ETFs, IB can help you save a lot of money. If you want, 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?
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Hello Sir,
Very informative article. IB indeed is the best broker for swiss investors.
I have just one question from swiss tax filing perspective. For swiss income tax/ weath tax calculation purposes, does IB provides any certificate for swiss customers? Or is there an alternative?
Thanks and Regards
Hi Aby,
It does not provide any certificate, but an annual statement. I have always used the annual statement for my needs. And I have never had any issues with the tax office with them.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Mr. The Poor Swiss,
With IB if you have ETFs like VT (US based), do you need to do any extra work while filling the taxes in Switzerland? Could you point me to a good reference to understand better what’s expected to be done?
Thanks a lot! and great work behind the blog! like it!
Hi,
It’s slightly more complicated if you want to reclaim the taxes paid in the U.S. for the dividends. But it’s really not rocket science.
I do not have a good reference for that. But you just have to fill the DA-1 form and insert the dividends withholding paid to the U.S.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hello,
which broker in Switzerland offers penny stocks?
Postfinance and Degiro not, since i tried…
thank you for your feedback.
Paolo
Hi Paolo,
Sorry, I have no idea, I have never invested in penny stocks and probably never will.
Thanks for stopping by!
hi Mr. The Poor Swiss,
Happy New Year.
In the article above you mentioned if there is a need to update (extend your bank/trader) comparison table you would like to know about it.
I have to applicants for your list please.
Would you please check and update your table above by adding the following two options:
Firstrade
Strateo
Thank you in advance.
Regards,
Roland
Hi Roland, Happy New Year!
Thanks for your suggestion. I will try to do more research on these platforms in the future. But this will take a while.
Thanks for stopping by!
After being 1hr waiting on the phone I gave up…but they just replied to my email:
Dear XXX XXX, Thank you for bringing this to our notice. Please note that this is a known issue and has currently been escalated to our developers. We shall be responding to you as soon as we have an update. Regards, Suryakumar I. IBKR Business Development
Not sure why there is html in there :)
Thanks for sharing wavemotion!
Hopefully, they will be able to fix this soon!
P.S. I removed your name ;)
Hi. Wonder if you ever heard back on the outcome of this issue? Was it resolved or is it really no longer possible to sign up from Switzerland? (Hope not!)
Hi David,
I have not heard back about this issue. Hopefully, this has been resolved. Since I have not heard any more issues, I am assuming it works now. But there is only one way to find out :)
IB does not seem to accept a new Swiss based private client anymore.
This is what I got yesterday:
“Currently we do not accept applications of this type from your jurisdiction.”
Hi Ben,
This is a known issue (see wavemotion comment) and IB is working on it.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hello there and happy new year!
What do you think about IB and Brexit? It’s quite unclear what will happen about protection.
Do you think it’s still fine if they move your account to Ireland?
Have a nice day from Tessin!
Hi Wavemotion,
If an account is moved from IB UK to IB IE (or LUX), this account would lose the protection of SIPC that is provided by IB UK as a special protection. So basically, we go from a 500K protection to a 20K protection.
Now, for Swiss investors, we should apparently not be moved because we are not part of the European Economic Area (EEA). So, nothing should change.
I do not think it’s a huge disaster since this protection would not always help. But it’s definitely a hit for protection for people that get moved. IB would still be the best broker since all other brokers will have the same protection at this stage.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hello again,
wow, I just tried to open an “individual” account and :
Currently we do not accept applications of this type from your jurisdiction.
:(
Just dropped them an email.
Sorry to hear that. Let me know if you get an answer. I would also like to know what is going on.
I really like your analysis.
I‘m a beginner in trading and I haven‘t decided which broker I want to use.
I d‘like to invest not more than 5000.- CHF. I think DEGIRO is the best broker for this?
I don‘t think I will invest more than 100k.
Have you some „articles“ how to start with trading?
Hi Bröker,
DEGIRO is a good broker to start investing. However, if you want to invest in the long-term with large amounts of money, IB will be a better broker for you.
I have an article on getting started investing. Hopefully, it should contain everything you need.
DEGIRO – The simplest broker
DEGIRO is the broker I have started with. It is a good and cheap broker. It is relatively simple to use. However, they are much less professional than DEGIRO.
Thanks for pointing this out, it’s fixed!
Hi,
Have you looked at TD Ameritrade? Great platform and $0 commission on trades.
Steve
Hi Steve,
I have never looked into details. It seems to be on the same level as IB, maybe even cheaper if you only use stocks and ETFs.
I never tested it but since they do not have a CH IBAN, you’ll probably pay fees on deposits of CHF.
Thanks for stopping by!
Fantastic post! Very comprehensive and super informative!
I am trying to find a Swiss-registered broker that offers the ability to trade RFQ ‘Request for Quote’ on broker-driven stocks e.g. London list AIM stocks. Degiro & Interactive Brokers do not offer this and the Int’l brokers that do not have an entity here in Switzerland.
If you or someone else know any Swiss broker that offers this, please could you let me know?
Regards
Hi Daren,
Thanks for your kind words :)
I am afraid I have no idea regarding your question. I really only trade stocks and never made much research into brokers for other features.
Hopefully, somebody else will know?
Thanks for stopping by!