DEGIRO vs. Interactive Brokers für europäisches Portfolio: Wer ist billiger in 2026?

Baptiste Wicht | Aktualisiert: 10 September 2026 |

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DEGIRO and Interactive Brokers are great brokers for European investors. But how do they compare exactly? Which one should you choose?

In this article, I compare DEGIRO vs Interactive Brokers in terms of price for a European ETF portfolio. I compare different scenarios that should cover the needs of most long-term investors.

We only compare the costs of both brokers, not the features and usability. If you are interested in the features, I have written reviews of both brokers.

And remember: Investing involves the risk of loss. Always do your research before you invest and know why you invest and what you invest in.

Our investment portfolios

For this comparison of brokers, we consider two different portfolios.

Since the fees do not change, we are not interested in the exact ETFs used. We are only interested in which exchange you purchase the ETFs.

For a choice of ETFs, I wrote about possible portfolios with European ETFs. To know why we must invest in European ETFs, you can read why we may lose access to superior U.S. ETFs. Swiss investors still have access to US ETFs, but European investors have already lost access.

The first portfolio is for a Swiss investor. This investor has 25% of his portfolio in a Swiss ETF (from the SIX stock exchange). The rest of the portfolio is from a European ETF (from the Euronext Paris stock exchange).

Our second portfolio, for a European investor, is even more straightforward. This investor has 100% of his portfolio in European ETFs (from the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange).

In both cases, each investor only invests once a month in one ETF. It is a perfect way to invest with low fees. Some people are investing every quarter. But it barely reduces fees, and it makes you keep more cash. Investing every month is also an excellent way to build an investment habit. So monthly investments make more sense.

For these two investors, we compare the prices of two brokers: DEGIRO vs Interactive Brokers. These two brokers are among the cheapest available in Europe. But which is more affordable for each scenario?

DEGIRO Fees

First, we study the fees for each service, starting with DEGIRO.

With DEGIRO, you pay a connectivity fee of 2.5 EUR (2.68 CHF) per year and per stock exchange on which you own shares. If you have an ETF on SIX and one on Euronext Paris, you pay 5 EUR per year. However, your local stock exchange is free. So, if you are a Swiss investor, you get SIX for free.

If you convert currency on your account, you pay a fee of 0.25%. It can quickly become expensive once you invest a large amount of money. A currency exchange happens if your base currency is CHF and you buy an ETF in EUR.

The fee system of DEGIRO is pretty simple. Unfortunately, it is slightly different for each country. I wish DEGIRO had the same prices regardless of which country you come from.

A collection of Core ETFs is also cheaper with DEGIRO. It used to be free, but the service fee still applies. You also still have to pay currency exchange fees if necessary, but the other expenses are waived. We do not use that for this comparison since that would significantly restrain our choice. But if you choose ETFs in the core selection, you can make it cheaper.

With DEGIRO, a Swiss investor pays 3 EUR (3 CHF) for each purchase of a Swiss ETF. The price is also the same (3 EUR (3 CHF)) for a European ETF. 2 EUR goes to DEGIRO while the other 1 EUR covers the third-party (the stock exchange) costs.

Now, for the European investor case, I take the example of DEGIRO France. The fees are a bit different from country to country. So, if you are not in France, you can check out the prices on your DEGIRO website.

Interestingly, this investor only pays 2 EUR (2 CHF) for each purchase of a European ETF. DEGIRO gets 1 EUR, and 1 EUR is for the third-party costs. It would be the same price for a Swiss ETF. However, European investors are unlikely to invest in Swiss ETFs. Interestingly, this is significantly cheaper than investing for a Swiss investor.

In the past, another account type was the DEGIRO custody account. But as of 2022, this account is not offered anymore to new customers.

Interactive Brokers Fees

Now, we also have to study the fees for Interactive Brokers. They do not have two account types but have two fee systems: Fixed and Tiered. So we compare these two. Other than the prices, there are no differences between the two pricing systems.

Regardless of where you live, you pay the same fees, which simplifies them a bit. In both cases, there are no custody or inactivity fees!

For both account types, you pay 2 USD (2 CHF) for currency exchange. The Swiss investor must exchange some CHF into EUR to buy European ETFs.

Fixed Pricing

The Interactive Brokers Fixed pricing is straightforward.

For buying an ETF on the Swiss Stock Exchange, you pay 0.05% of the total transaction. The minimum fee is 5 CHF, and there is no maximum fee.

For purchasing an ETF on the European Stock Exchange, you pay 0.05% as well. But the minimum fee is only 3 EUR (2.84 CHF), and there is no maximum.

I assume that you use the Smart Routing orders, which is the default. Only experienced investors should opt for Direct Routing which is more flexible but also more expensive.

Tiered Pricing

The Interactive Brokers Tiered system is more complicated.

First, you must pay some transaction fees to IB for each region. Then, based on the stock exchange, you must pay some extra fees. And they are entirely different based on the exchange.

For buying an ETF on the Swiss Stock Exchange (I took EBS), you pay 0.05% in transaction fees to IB (with a minimum of 1.50 CHF and a maximum of 49 CHF). You then pay a flat fee of 1.5 CHF for the exchange and an exchange fee of 0.015%. On top of that, you pay a 0.38 CHF clearing fee and a 1 CHF trade reporting fee.

For buying an ETF on the European Stock Exchange (Euronext Paris), you pay 0.05% in IB transaction fees with a minimum of 1.25 EUR and a maximum of 29 EUR. You pay a 0.01% exchange fee (with a minimum of 0.8 EUR). And the clearing fee is 0.10 EUR.

We can observe that it is much cheaper to trade on Euronext than on SIX. Switzerland has a reputation for being expensive!

As you can see, this is much more complicated than the Fixed system. But you do not have to worry about this; I do all the math for you!

Swiss Investor

Gewinner: Interactive Brokers

We can start with our Swiss portfolio, with 25% of a Swiss ETF and 75% of a European ETF.

In this case, our example investor invests once every four months in the Swiss ETF and the other months in the European ETF. The Swiss Investor has CHF as its base currency. It means that buying the European ETF incurs a currency conversion.

It is the kind of portfolio that most Swiss invest in. If you do not want a Swiss ETF, skip to the next section for a complete Europe ETF Portfolio. However, the following section uses EUR as a base currency.

We compare DEGIRO vs Interactive Brokers for this Swiss investor for several scenarios.

Starting investor

Our first scenario is with a person starting to invest.

The investor begins with 25’000 CHF and invests 1000 CHF every month. It is a typical scenario for someone just investing in the stock market. But this is only an example. There is no problem starting with zero CHF.

Here are the total fees for each broker account:

Schweiz - 1000 CHF monatlich - DEGIRO vs IBKR

In this case, Interactive Brokers Tiered and Fixed are slightly cheaper than DEGIRO, but it is not significantly different. We can see that the Tiered pricing of IB is more affordable than Fixed for small investments.

So, in this particular case, Interactive Brokers Fixed and Tiered are the best choices.

Standard Investor I

For the second scenario, we can take an investor who has 100’000 CHF and invests 2000 CHF monthly. After a few years of investing, this is the state that many investors can reach.

Here are again the total fees for each broker account:

Schweiz - 2000 CHF monatlich - DEGIRO vs IBKR

Both Interactive Brokers Tiered accounts are now significantly cheaper than DEGIRO.

So, in this particular case, Interactive Brokers Tiered is the best choice. However, it is only marginally cheaper than Interactive Brokers Fixed. Both are excellent choices for this scenario.

Standard Investor II

Here is what happens if we invest 5000 CHF monthly instead of 2000 CHF. It is still a typical investing case.

This scenario would give us the following totals:

Schweiz - 5000 CHF monatlich - DEGIRO vs IBKR

We can see that Interactive Brokers Fixed is the best option here. Interestingly, Fixed is now cheaper than Tiered. And Interactive Brokers is now twice as cheap as DEGIRO.

Once again, in this particular case, Interactive Brokers Tiered would be the best choice.

Advanced Investor

We should check the last scenario for our Swiss investor. This time, our investor has 500’000 CHF and is investing 10’000 CHF every month. This scenario is not typical since this is a lot of money. But this is still possible.

We get the following totals from this case:

Schweiz - 10000 CHF monatlich - DEGIRO vs IBKR

Not many things have changed in this scenario. We can note that the gaps between the different options are increasing. The Fixed account is still the best option. Tiered is still relatively cheap as well. However, Interactive Brokers is now more than three times cheaper than DEGIRO!

In this case, Interactive Brokers Tiered is the cheapest option.

Conclusion Swiss Investor

Bester Broker für die Schweiz

Interactive Brokers

5.0

Keine Depotgebühren

Der Broker, den Sie brauchen, um Aktien und ETFs zu kaufen! Und das alles zu unglaublich niedrigen Gebühren! Investieren Sie schon ab 0,50 USD in US-Unternehmen!

Pros:

Sehr günstig
Fehlerfreie Ausführung

Jetzt Investieren Meine Review

We can draw several conclusions for Swiss investors:

Interactive Brokers Tiered is the cheapest account for small investors
Interactive Brokers Fixed becomes cheaper for the higher amount invested per month.
The difference between Interactive Brokers Tiered and Interactive Brokers Fixed is relatively small.
DEGIRO can become several times more expensive than Interactive Brokers
Most of the fees of DEGIRO come from currency exchanges.

For Swiss investors, I recommend using Interactive Brokers.

It does not mean that DEGIRO is a bad broker for Swiss investors. In the worst scenario, you would pay 264 CHF more per year. This is not a considerable amount. DEGIRO is still a great broker, not just as cheap as IB. If you do not want a broker from the United States, go with DEGIRO!

European Investor

Gewinner: DEGIRO

If you live in Europe, you likely have a portfolio with only European ETFs.

In this case, the example investor invests monthly in a European ETF. It is a simple scenario. Since a European investor has euros, there will be no currency conversion in this scenario. It makes a significant difference!

This should be the case for most European Investors except for Swiss investors. It could also be different for people from the United Kingdom since they do not have euros.

Some of the prices from DEGIRO vary from country to country. For this example, I took the prices from France. Interactive Brokers has no difference based on where you come from.

We compare DEGIRO vs Interactive Brokers for the same scenarios for this European investor.