Neon Invest vs Swissquote 2024 – Which is the best broker?

We can start by comparing the features of Neon Invest vs Swissquote. Again, I only focus on the brokerage features and not the banking features. Keep in mind that my comparison is from the perspective of a simple passive investor.

Swissquote is a very complete brokerage solution with access to:

• Stocks
• Bonds
• ETFs
• Options
• And even more

Stocks and ETFs can be traded on multiple stock exchanges. Moreover, Swissquote will support multiple stock market order types, such as market orders, limit orders, stop loss orders and more.

On the other hand, Neon Invest is much more limited. It only offers stocks and ETFs on a single stock exchange, the BX Swiss stock exchange. This comprises about 270 stocks and close to 100 ETFs. All these securities traded on the BX Swiss stock exchange are traded in CHF. Therefore, Neon Invest does not support any Forex trading.

Finally, Neon Invest only offers market orders. This is not a big limitation because market orders are fine as long as you trade stocks with high volume.

As for access to the broker features, this is quite different for these two brokers. Indeed, Swissquote offers multiple trading platforms on desktop and mobile. Neon, on the other hand, only offers his mobile app.

These two brokers do not lend your shares by default. And they both support the three national languages and English, which is great.

Overall, Swissquote has many more features than Neon Invest. However, you may not need these features. Personally, I only trade with market orders, so this is not a real limitation for me. If you can make yourself a good portfolio with the ETFs offered by Neon Invest, you will not need any extra feature.

When you invest, it is essential to consider trading fees. Indeed, if you use the same portfolio at two different brokers, trading fees are what will make a difference in the long term. Therefore, we must compare the fees of Neon Invest vs Swissquote.

Neon Invest is simple in terms of fees. There are no custody fees. If you do not trade at all, you will not pay any fees. And for trading, you will pay:

• 0.50% for all ETFs and Swiss stocks.
• 1.0% for international stocks.

Neon Invest has a minimum of 1 CHF per transaction and no maximum. Since you can only trade in CHF, there is no currency conversion fee. However, if you receive dividends in a foreign currency, an interbank surcharge of 1.50% will be charged.

For Swissquote, things are a bit more complicated. First, Swissquote will charge a custody fee of 0.025% per quarter, with a minimum of 20 CHF and a maximum of 50 CHF. So, you will pay a minimum of 80 CHF per yer and a maximum of 200 CHF per year. Additionally, you will also get charged an extra 0.03% custody fees on assets above one million CHF.

Then, for trading, you will pay a tiered fee, different for each stock exchange and different amounts. For instance, you will pay 3 CHF for an operation on the Swiss stock exchange between 0 and 500 CHF. And you will pay 10 USD for an operation on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) between 1000 and 2000 USD.

If you need to convert currencies, you will pay a 0.95% currency conversion fee.

Both brokers are Swiss brokers, so they will both charge Swiss stamp duty fees.

Neon will provide eTax and tax statements for free at the beginning of the year. But Swissquote will charge 100 CHF for that. This is not mandatory, but eTax statements can make filing your taxes easier, so it is up to you to decide whether 100 CHF is fair or not. But obviously, Neon has an advantage since it offers free e-tax statements.

Overall, Neon Invest is generally cheaper than Swissquote for most operations. All small operations are cheaper with Neon Invest. Large operations on international stocks are typically cheaper with Swissquote.

However, we need to take more things into consideration, so we will consider multiple scenarios and options.

To be complete, we must compare the fees of Neon Invest vs Swissquote in multiple scenarios. The standard scenario is a simple portfolio of 2 ETFs, one Swiss shares ETF and one world shares ETFs. We can then compare multiple portfolios, multiple monthly investments and multiple portfolio values. I only consider monthly investment in these scenarios.

We will start with a portfolio 100% in CH ETFs and these scenarios:

• A: 1000 CHF in portfolio, 100 CHF in monthly investment.
• B: 10000 CHF in portfolio, 500 CHF in monthly investment.
• C: 50000 CHF in portfolio, 1000 CHF in monthly investment.
• D: 100000 CHF in portfolio, 2000 CHF in monthly investment.
• E: 500000 CHF in portfolio, 5000 CHF in monthly investment.

And here are the results:

In each of these scenarios, Neon Invest is significantly cheaper than Swissquote. Since it has no custody fees, it has a significant over both the minimum and maximum custody fees of Swissquote. Moreover, its transaction fees are cheaper than Swissquote for almost all transaction sizes. The advantage is more pronounced with smaller monthly investments.

We can run the same scenarios with a portfolio with a single 100% world ETF:

Again, Neon Invest is cheaper than Swissquote, in each scenario. And this time, the difference is even more significant. The reason for this significant difference is we now pay a hefty currency conversion fee with Swissquote. In fact, the only difference with Neon Invest in this case is that the prices are pricier because of the Swiss stamp duty.

Finally, we can use a diversified portfolio with 80% World ETF and 20% CH ETF:

Unsurprisingly, Neon Invest is still much cheaper in this scenario. Since we still invest each month in a foreign ETF, we must pay heavy currency conversion fees with Swissquote.

Overall, in this standard fee comparison of Neon Invest vs Swissquote, we can see what Neon clearly wins.

It is important to mention that here I am using a world ETF on a European stock exchange with Swissquote. This could be cheaper by using an ETF on Six in CHF. In this case, you could save on the currency exchange and a little on the trading fees. But you would get a worse spread. On the other, with Neon, you also get worse spread by using BX Swiss. Therefore, by using Swissquote differently, one could save a lot on fees, at the expense of spread.

One difference that we did not yet discuss is the fact that Neon Invest does not offer access to US ETFs. Swissquote, on the other hand, provides access to them. And US ETFs are more tax-efficient than European ETFs.

So, we can run again the same scenarios with an 80/20 portfolio but this time, we will use US ETFs:

These results are quite interesting. The fees of Swissquote are not changing (since they have US ETFs), but the fees of Neon Invest are going up much quicker than before. What is interesting is that even in our larger scenario, Neon Invest still does not go above Swissquote.

In fact, only at around 570’000 CHF, Neon Invest becomes pricier than Swissquote because of the fees lost to US dividends withholding. We can see that by increasing the portfolio size of scenario E:

With these larger portfolio sizes, we can see that Swissquote becomes significantly cheaper than Neon Invest, and the difference only grows as the portfolio size increases.

So, once we take US ETFs into account, Neon Invest is still cheaper than Swissquote for small to medium-large portfolios, but Swissquote becomes cheaper than Neon Invest for large to very large portfolios. This is an interesting result because it shows that both solutions have merit.

However, some people are not willing to use US ETFs. In most cases, they are afraid that US ETFs may complicate estate handling when somebody passes away.

With Neon, you can also use an investment plan. This lets you automate your investment on up to three shares or ETFs. It is a great way to make your investing easier.

However, there is an extra twist with the Neon investment plan. If you use one of their eight partner ETFs in your plan, all purchase fees will be refunded. It means you can invest for free in a portfolio of ETFs. Only the purchase fee is refunded, not the selling fee. But that will already make your investing much cheaper.

Of course, you are limited to these eight ETFs. So, if you cannot make a good portfolio out of them, you will have to use other ETFs and pay the purchase fees. And of course, this does not waive the stamp duty fee or help you recover from the lack of US ETFs. But this can still make Neon Invest easier for investing.

While it is not life-changing, the Neon Invest investment plan is a nice feature.

It is always important to ensure the safety of your investments. So, we must compare the safety and security of Neon Invest vs Swissquote.

Swissquote is a licensed Swiss bank, regulated by FINMA. Neon itself is not a bank, but is using Hypothekarbank Lenzburg (HBL) as a custody bank. And HBL is also a licensed Swiss bank, regulated by FINMA. In both cases, your cash is protected by Esisuisse up to 100’000 CHF in case of bankruptcy. And your shares should be safe since they are segregated from the bank’s assets.

Both products are technically as safe as the device you use them on. If you use them well, they should be safe. For instance, Swissquote is protected by a password, and you can use a second factor of authentication. And Neon is protected by your phone protection and by a PIN or fingerprint. If you use strong passwords, PINs and second factors, these two apps should provide the same level of security. I am not aware of any technical issue with these two apps.

Overall, both Neon Invest and Swissquote provide the same level of safety.

Finally, we must look at the reputation of Neon Invest vs Swissquote.

Personally, I sense that both brokers have more or less the same reputation, from what I hear from my readers. Swissquote is generally regarded as a broker with a solid technical foundation and many features. People think Swissquote is very stable and safe. On the other hand, people feel like Swissquote is not very innovative and can be expensive. Neon Invest, on the other hand, is viewed as extremely friendly, affordable and innovative. On the other hand, Neon is often not considered very mature, especially technically.

When we look online, we can see that Neon has 3.2 stars (out of 5) on Trustpilot, while Swissquote has 3.8 stars.

The negative reviews about Neon are almost all about the technical difficulties. Neon has been growing rapidly and has had related issues along the way because they were unable to scale to that many issues. For instance, it used to be difficult to access the app on the 25th of the month (salary day) because there were too many people trying. This issue has now been mostly resolved. On the other hand, people are thrilled about the fees and the use of the card.

When we look at Swissquote, we can see that almost all negative reviews are about the customer service. This is regularly the case for large companies, where it is difficult to get hold of someone. But positive reviews mention mostly that the service is easy to use and works well without technical issues.

Overall, it looks like Swissquote reputation is slightly better than Neon. Neon started with an excellent reputation, but the technical difficulties have put a dent on that reputation.

We can make a summary of Neon Invest vs Swissquote:

Best broker to start investing	Best Swiss Broker
Neon Invest	Swissquote
4.5	4.5
No custody fees	Affordable
Very low fees Savings plan Easy to use	Swiss broker Easy to use Good reputation Access to US ETFs
Lack of US ETFs Some technical issues	Relatively expensive
Invest with code thepoorswiss	Invest with MKT_THEPOORSWISS code
Read our review	Read Our Review
(Swiss residents using thepoorswiss code get 100 CHF in trading credits)	(Swiss residents using MKT_THEPOORSWISS code get 100 CHF in trading credits)

Best broker to start investing

Neon Invest

4.5

No custody fees

• Very low fees
• Savings plan
• Easy to use

• Lack of US ETFs
• Some technical issues

Invest with code thepoorswiss

Read our review

(Swiss residents using thepoorswiss code get 100 CHF in trading credits)

Best Swiss Broker

Swissquote

4.5

Affordable

• Swiss broker
• Easy to use
• Good reputation
• Access to US ETFs

• Relatively expensive

Invest with MKT_THEPOORSWISS code

Read Our Review

(Swiss residents using MKT_THEPOORSWISS code get 100 CHF in trading credits)

We can draw a few conclusions for Neon Invest vs Swissquote:

• Neon Invest is much cheaper for small to medium portfolios.
• Swissquote is significantly more tax-efficient on large portfolios thanks to the use of US ETFs.
• Neon Invest lets you waive purchasing fees on some ETFs.
• Swissquote is more technically mature.
• Swissquote has many more features.