Saxo vs Swissquote 2024 – Which is the best Swiss broker?
| Updated: |(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)
Swissquote is one of the most well-known brokers available in Switzerland. And Saxo, while being less known, is a massive broker, with an entity in Switzerland as well.
So, which one should you use? What are the differences between these two brokers? In this article, I review Saxo vs Swissquote in depth. We will see when you should use one over the other. By the end of this comparison, you will know whether Saxo or Swissquote is for you.
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Cheapest Swiss Broker
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Best Swiss Broker
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Saxo
Saxo Bank (or Saxo for short) is an investment bank, founded in 1992. They have more than a million customers, and they operate in 28 different countries.
Saxo is a private company from Denmark. However, they have an entity in Switzerland (Saxo Bank (Switzerland) Ltd). This entity is a licensed Swiss bank. As such, Saxo is subject to the same rules as any other Swiss broker. Therefore, I consider it on the same level as a Swiss broker, but some people may argue that it is a Swiss-regulated broker.
In 2024, Saxo has greatly reduced its fees in Switzerland. While they were an expensive broker before, they are now a very valid candidate for Swiss investors.
For additional information, you can read my review of Saxo.
Swissquote
Swissquote is the Swiss broker with the highest number of users in Switzerland. As of 2024, they have more than half a million customers. Swissquote is quite profitable and is traded on the Swiss Stock Exchange.
Swissquote was established in 1996 alright. As of 2024, they have more than a thousand employees.
On top of the investing features we will focus on in this article, they also have a banking license and have banking packages.
If you want more details, you can read my review of Swissquote.
Features – Saxo vs Swissquote
Let’s start by comparing the investing features of these brokers. I will only focus on the stock market investing features and not on the other banking features.
Both brokers will provide you with access to the most used stock market instruments:
- Stocks
- Bonds
- ETFs
- Options
- and more
Since I only recommend people use stocks, bonds and ETFs, I think that both brokers have more than enough investing instruments for people. And they both have an excellent range of supported ETFs, including US ETFs.
They are both advanced brokers and will let you trade from a browser, from the desktop or from your phone. You can also use many stock market order types such as market and limit orders. And, they will both support more order types, but again, people rarely need them.
Neither of these brokers lend your shares by default. And both allow you to lend your shares and share the profits with you.
One very slight advantage to Swissquote is that it fully supports Italian, while Saxo bank only supports it in the app but not in the onboarding and website.
Another slight advantage of Swissquote is that they let you register shares in your name. If you want to register shares to attend shareholder meetings or to get some shareholder swags, you may want to consider that.
Overall, both brokers have all the features you need to implement a simple index investing strategy.
Fees – Saxo vs Swissquote
When you are investing in the stock market, it is essential to look at fees because reducing fees is a direct way to increase our returns. So, we will look in detail at all the fees of Saxo vs Swissquote.
First, we can look at custody fees. This is a fee paid each year, based on the amount in your portfolio. Saxo has a yearly 0.22% custody fee, capped at 10 CHF per month (120 CHF per year). Swissquote has a 0.025% quarterly custody, with a quarterly cap of 50 CHF (200 CHF per year).
Moreover, Swissquote has an extra 0.03% on assets above one million. So, Swissquote is pricier than Saxo for custody fees.
We should then look at transaction fees. I have put a few examples on the graph for a few operations on SIX, Euronext Paris and NYSE, the stock exchanges that interest us the most. This graph paints a clear picture of the difference of the fees. We can see that Saxo is much cheaper than Swissquote for transactions.
Both brokers will incur the same Swiss stamp tax duty.
Finally, we should not forget to look at currency conversion fees. Swissquote has a 0.95% currency conversion fee. Saxo only has a 0.25% conversion fee. So, Saxo is much cheaper than Swissquote for currency conversions.
You can also reduce Saxo fees by opting for securities lending. Indeed, this will waive your custody fees and generate some income while your shares are lent. Swissquote also lets you opt for securities lending, but does not waive any fee.
Overall, Saxo is significantly cheaper than Swissquote on all counts.
Fee comparison
We have noted that Saxo has significantly lower fees than Swissquote. We will run a few scenarios to see the difference in total fees between Saxo vs Swissquote. The idea is to see exactly how this translates in practice with different real-world scenarios.
First, we see what happens if you invest 200 USD per month and have different amounts of USD in their portfolio.
The results are already interesting in this case. Until you reach a large portfolio, Saxo is significantly cheaper than Swissquote. At higher levels, the difference is less significant. This comes from the high minimum fee at Swissquote.
We can see what happens with 1000 USD per month in investments.
These results are quite consistent with the previous results. The differences are larger because the transaction fees for investing are much lower at Saxo.
We can continue with 2000 USD invested per month:
Again, Saxo is always cheaper than Swissquote. It is almost always at least twice cheaper than Swissquote. We can do it once again with 5000 USD per month:
Once again, Saxo is significantly cheaper than Swissquote. On average, Swissquote is about twice more expensive than Saxo.
Overall, Saxo will always be cheaper than Swissquote, sometimes quite significantly.
Security
The security of your investments is crucial. Therefore, we must look at the security of Saxo vs Swissquote.
Both brokers are regulated in Switzerland, so they have to obey the same rules. This gives them the same level of safety (unless there is fraud involved, which we cannot really control).
Both brokers are quite profitable, large, and well established. It seems unlikely that any of them would bankrupt soon.
Overall, I think that Saxo and Swissquote have the same level of security.
Reputation
The reputation of a broker is also interesting to look at because it tells us how it works in practice for their users. We still need to be careful about this because most users are very subjective, and many reviews are very emotion-driven. So, we will see what users think of Saxo vs Swissquote.
Overall, I think both brokers have more or less the same reputation from what I heard from people directly. Most people are happy about them, but there are people who complain about them.
We can also look at their result on Trustpilot. This is not a perfect source of information, but it is the best we have. Swissquote gets a 3.6 rating out of 5 while Saxo gets a 3.7 rating.
When we look at the negative reviews, most of them (for both brokers) are about the customer service. This is generally (and unfortunately) quite common that large financial services cannot keep up with customer service.
When we look at the positive reviews, people mention that Swissquote is excellent at execution and trustworthy. With Saxo, people mostly mention the ease of use of the platform as well as good customer service.
Overall, the reputation of both brokers seems to be on the same level. They have very typical reviews compared to other brokers.
Summary – Saxo vs Swissquote
We can make a summary table of Saxo vs Swissquote:
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Cheapest Swiss Broker
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Best Swiss Broker
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4.5
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4.5
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Extremely affordable
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Affordable
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(Swiss residents using my link get 200 CHF in trading credits) |
(Swiss residents using MKT_THEPOORSWISS code get 100 CHF in trading credits) |
- Swiss-regulated broker
- Access to US ETFs
- Low transaction fees
- Low currency conversion fee
- Good execution
- Easy to use
- Not fully Swiss-owned
(Swiss residents using my link get 200 CHF in trading credits)
- Swiss broker
- Access to US ETFs
- Good execution
- Easy to use
- Expensive currency conversion
- Relatively expensive transaction fees
(Swiss residents using MKT_THEPOORSWISS code get 100 CHF in trading credits)
We can draw a few conclusions for Saxo vs Swissquote:
- Both brokers offer access to US ETFs
- Saxo has much cheaper currency conversions.
- Both are good brokers with good reputation.
- Saxo has cheaper transaction fees.
- Both brokers have good execution.
Conclusion
Both brokers have value for Swiss investors. Saxo offers significantly cheaper transactions and currency conversions. They both offer access to all features we would want as Swiss investors.
For me, the choice between Saxo vs Swissquote boils down to a few points:
- If you want to optimize for fees, use Saxo.
- If you want a broker entirely from Switzerland, use Swissquote.
- If you have a personal preference, choose accordingly.
Personally, since my goal is high (for financial independence) and I have a strong focus on optimizing fees, I would use Saxo, but Swissquote is great as well. You cannot go wrong with these two brokers.
As usual, I should mention that I am using neither of these brokers. I believe that Interactive Brokers is the best broker available to Swiss investors. However, many people would rather not use a foreign broker. As a result, it is important for them to use the best available Swiss broker.
What about you? Do you prefer Saxo or Swissquote?
Recommended reading
- More articles about Best Brokers
- More articles about Investing
- Swissquote vs Interactive Brokers 2024
- Guide to Interactive Brokers Multiple User Interfaces
- Trading 212 Review 2024 – Pros & Cons
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Hi,
I was just about to open an account at Saxo but before accepting the T&Cs and reading the first few lines I stopped the process.
Saxo reserves the right to send customer data to countries such as China or India!!! And they explicitly ask you to renounce your rights for banking secrecy!
I then went to Swissquote and had a read. All their Outsourcing partners are Swiss.
That made my decision in the end – Swissquote.
Maybe worth mentioning their data processing policy in the article too. A bank is all about trust.
Cheers.
Hi Damian
I am not very surprised since Saxo is an international company with an entity in Switzerland, while Swissquote is from Switzerland.
Does it really matter? Banking secrecy does not really exist anymore in Switzerland, so the country will share banking information with other countries when necessary.
Hi Baptiste,
True, but the below sentence is far more than renouncing historic banking secrecy.
„Der potenzielle Kunde verzichtet hiermit ausdrücklich auf seine Rechte und entbindet die Bank von ihren Verpflichtungen aus dem schweizerischen Bank- und Effektenhändlergeheimnis, den Datenschutzgesetzen sowie anderen Vertraulichkeitsgesetzen und -pflichten in Bezug auf die Offenlegung von Kundendaten.“
This is what they ask you to approve when opening an account. This would allow them to post your bank statements online and get away with it!
Data exchange with suppliers in countries where privacy matters (not China) or tax authorities is acceptable, but they should at least try to be discrete and specific with their T&Cs, it’s still a bank.
That’s a good point, this is a lot of rights being waived in one statement. They could make this more strict while allowing them to share with the partners they need. Good point!
Regarding security: If someone breaks into your Swissquote Account, they can sell all the shares and withdraw the money as a normal transaction. Same with Saxo, but only to IBANs used for deposits. A small detail that lets me sleep at night. :-)
Doesn’t Swissquote only lets you withdraw to an account in your name? If that’s not the case, that’s not a small detail.
As far as I know, Swissquote includes a fully-fledged e-banking service. The recipient (name, address, IBAN) can be freely defined. In the Mustachianpost forum[1] there are people who send payments to accounts that do not contain their own name in the recipient field.
[1] https://forum.mustachianpost.com/t/transfer-swissquote/8312/30
Unfortunately, I can no longer test this as I have terminated my Swissquote account.
Interesting. That’s very good to know. With IBKR, the withdrawal account must be in your name. And even deposits are quite strict.
Very useful. Thank you.
You are welcome :)
Hi, thanks for the always insightful analysis.
Regarding US ETFs, I noticed that with Swissquote if you try to buy it via mobile app, you get a warning message indicating that NACH funds can only be distributed in Switzerland to qualified investors – to transact you have to accept the Ts&Cs they outline. You don’t get that when trying to buy via the web application.
Is it the same as you describe on your post?
Hi Herbert
Normally, you should get the same warning on the web application. But maybe you get the warning only once and then it goes away.
I think it’s only because they are not allowed to advertise this product, but only execute orders on it and they have to be legally careful. I would not worry about it.
Swissquote has also special offers with lower fees for special ETFs and bundle offers where you buy several future trades in one go. If you buy every month, I believe this would significantly reduce the transaction fees, especially if trades are on the larger size. Drawback is they expire after a year if not used. Overall full agreement though, their transaction fees are still very much on the high end compared to Interactive Brokers and now, it seems, also Saxo. Perhaps the competition will help. As always, many thanks for your insights and the great article.
Hi Joerg,
Thanks! These packages are interesting for active traders. As you said, they expire after 12 months. If you trade once a month only like I recommend, they are not that interesting unless you trade huge amount per month.
I will mention these in my review of Swissquote, because they can be interesting.
Hi Baptiste,
The bundle is not just good for active traders (if good is allowed in this context) even though they are advertized this way. As you say, it can be worth it if one invests every month and if the amount is high enough. I have tried them also when I had to rebalance several positions but hated the expiry date pushing you to trade often or lose out. Generally, these fee systems seem to be designed in a way that every answer to a ‘What is better’ question necessarily starts with an ‘It depends on’. Thanks again for bringing some light into the jungle.
Yes, it depends :)
But it’s definitely worth mentioning!
You did not say anything about deposit costs, where SAXO is cheaper (120 CHF). Swissquote has 200 Chf until 1 Mio, and above 1 Mio there are supplementary costs of 0.03%. Maybe Swissquote will adapt their pricing features….
This fee is mentioned in the article already, under custody fees, with the exact numbers you are mentioning.