Trade Republic Review 2026: The German Broker That Actually Pays You Interest

The short version

Who this review is for

I'm writing this for European investors choosing between Trade Republic, DEGIRO, eToro, and Scalable Capital — the four brokers that show up in basically every "best European broker" article — and want a non-promotional read on what Trade Republic actually does well and what it doesn't.

I'll assume you already understand brokerage basics. The question I'm answering is: where does Trade Republic fit in a serious investor's setup, given that it can't really compete with DEGIRO on raw cost-per-trade, doesn't have eToro's social-trading layer, and doesn't have IBKR's product breadth.

Three groups should keep reading. First, anyone setting up a monthly savings plan and wondering whether Trade Republic is genuinely the best place to do it (yes, in most cases). Second, anyone with cash sitting in a bank earning 1-2% who wants to know if 3.5% at Trade Republic is real and safe (mostly yes — caveats below). Third, anyone considering Trade Republic as a primary broker and wondering whether it can replace DEGIRO outright (rarely — usually you want both).

What Trade Republic is in 2026

Trade Republic is a German neobroker founded in 2015 in Berlin by Christian Hecker, Thomas Pischke, and Marco Cancellieri. Operationally, the company holds a German banking license through its subsidiary Trade Republic Bank GmbH (formerly partnering with Solarisbank, now its own credit institution), which means it sits under BaFin's full credit-institution oversight rather than just broker-only regulation.

The product launched as an app-first low-cost broker — "free trading" was the original tagline, though that's now €1 per manual trade. The platform expanded to include savings plans (free), bonds, derivatives, ETFs, fractional shares, and crypto. By 2024-2025 it had broken into the major European broker league, with around 10 million customers across multiple EU countries.

The financial model has two big pieces. The first is payment-for-order-flow (PFOF) on stock and ETF trades — Trade Republic routes most orders to a single execution venue (LS Exchange) and receives kickback payments for that order flow. The second, since 2023, is net interest margin on customer cash balances — Trade Republic pays customers interest on uninvested cash but earns a higher rate from the ECB and overnight money markets, keeping the spread.

The 2024 rule changes around PFOF in the EU put some pressure on the first revenue stream; the rate-hike cycle since 2022 boosted the second. As of 2026, both businesses are still real but the cash-interest model is increasingly the more important one.

How Trade Republic actually works

The app is the entire interface — there's no full-featured web platform, just a basic web view that shows your portfolio. This is intentional and aligns with the target audience (mobile-first investors), but it's worth knowing if you prefer a desktop-trading workflow.

When you fund the account, your money lands as a deposit at Trade Republic Bank GmbH (BaFin-regulated, €100,000 insured). When you place a manual trade, the order is typically routed to LS Exchange (Lang & Schwarz Exchange) for execution — Trade Republic's primary venue partner, with whom it has a payment-for-order-flow arrangement. The trade settles into your custody position, held in segregated custody under the same legal entity.

For savings plans, the mechanics are slightly different. You set up a recurring purchase of an ETF or stock at a frequency (weekly, biweekly, monthly), an amount (€1 minimum), and a date. Trade Republic batches all customers' savings-plan executions for that ETF on the chosen date and runs a single aggregated trade — this is why savings plans are free (the per-trade cost is amortized across thousands of customers) while manual trades cost €1.

Fractional shares are supported on most US-listed and some European-listed ETFs and stocks. You can buy €25 of a €200 ETF — it lands as 0.125 fractional shares in your portfolio.

Cash interest is paid on uninvested EUR balances, calculated daily, deposited monthly. Currently 3.5% (mid-2026) for amounts up to €100,000; balances above that earn no interest by default but you can opt in to keep earning by waiving deposit insurance on the excess (most investors should not do this).

The 3.5% interest rate, in plain numbers

This is what's pulling people to Trade Republic in 2026, so it deserves a careful read.

The headline: 3.5% per annum on uninvested EUR cash, capped at €100,000 per customer, paid monthly. As of when this article was written, that's the highest cash-interest rate among major European brokers and meaningfully above what most German banks pay on standard savings accounts (typically 1-3% in 2026).

Where the rate comes from: Trade Republic deposits customer cash with the ECB (currently paying around 3.75% in mid-2026) and overnight money markets, takes a small spread, and passes most of it to customers. The rate is not contractually fixed — Trade Republic adjusts it broadly in line with ECB rates. When the ECB cuts rates, Trade Republic's customer rate will fall too. Most other European broker cash interest rates work the same way; the difference between brokers is how aggressively they pass through ECB rates vs. keep as margin.

Real example: €10,000 sitting in your Trade Republic account at 3.5% earns €350 per year before tax, paid as monthly increments of about €29. That's genuinely meaningful for cash that would otherwise sit in a bank account at 1.5%.

The €100,000 cap: amounts above €100,000 earn no interest by default. This isn't a Trade Republic limitation — it's because German deposit insurance covers up to €100,000 per depositor, and Trade Republic doesn't want to pass through interest on cash that sits outside the insurance limit (where customers would be exposed to bank-failure risk). You can opt in to earn interest above the cap by accepting the insurance gap, but I wouldn't.

The honest comparison to a bank savings account: Trade Republic is a regulated bank with the same deposit insurance as any German bank. The 3.5% rate is typically 100-200 basis points above what major German banks pay on their standard savings accounts in 2026, with similar liquidity. Functionally it's a high-yield savings account that lives next to your investment portfolio.

Savings plans: the real reason most people use Trade Republic

For me, savings plans are the actual killer feature, more than the cash interest.

The mechanics: pick an ETF or stock, pick an amount (€1 minimum, no maximum), pick a frequency (weekly, biweekly, monthly), pick a date. On the chosen date, Trade Republic automatically buys for you. The trade is free — €0 commission. Dividends from the position are automatically reinvested if you toggle that setting on. You can pause or modify the plan at any time.

Why this matters: most successful long-term investing is consistent monthly contributions to a small set of broad-index ETFs. Doing this manually on DEGIRO requires you to log in every month, hit the €1,000 minimum for free Core Selection, and remember to do it. Doing it on Trade Republic happens automatically forever, with no friction, at €1 minimum. The behavioral lock-in is the whole point.

My personal setup: monthly savings plans into VWCE (Vanguard FTSE All-World), VHYL (Vanguard FTSE All-World High Dividend Yield), and a small basket of European-listed individual stocks. Total monthly contribution flow runs automatically; I check the dashboard once a quarter to confirm everything's working and adjust amounts based on income. This is the boring compounding engine that does most of the actual work in my long-term portfolio.

The trade-off vs. DEGIRO: DEGIRO's Core Selection gives you free ETF trades but requires manual execution and a €1,000 minimum trade size. Trade Republic gives you free trades at €1 minimum but routes through one venue (slightly worse fills than DEGIRO's multi-exchange execution). For monthly savings plan use, Trade Republic wins decisively. For one-off larger trades or wider product range, DEGIRO wins.

Payment-for-order-flow, explained

This is the controversial part of the Trade Republic business model and it's worth a clear explanation rather than a defense or attack.

What PFOF is: when you place a market order on Trade Republic, the order isn't sent to a public stock exchange like Frankfurt or Xetra. It's sent to LS Exchange (Lang & Schwarz Exchange), a specialized German market-maker that pays Trade Republic a small per-share fee for receiving that order flow. LS Exchange then matches your order against its own inventory or other client orders, typically at the prevailing market price.

Why PFOF is controversial: critics argue it creates a structural conflict of interest — Trade Republic is paid based on order flow, so it has an incentive to route orders to wherever pays the most rather than to the venue that gives the customer the best execution. In practice, PFOF venues are required to provide "at-or-better" execution compared to the public market, but enforcement is patchy and the spread differential is real for active traders.

What MiFID II reform discussions said: in 2023-2024 the EU debated banning PFOF outright; the final decision was to allow individual member states to ban it, with Germany (Trade Republic's home market) keeping it legal but with stricter execution-quality reporting requirements. The Netherlands banned it; some other countries are considering it. Trade Republic continues to operate under the German rules.

What this means for retail investors: for monthly savings-plan investors buying broad ETFs at €1-€500 per trade, the execution-quality difference is functionally nil. For active traders placing €10,000+ orders, the difference between LS Exchange and a public exchange can be a few basis points per trade — small in absolute terms but potentially material if you're trading frequently.

My take: PFOF is a structural quirk worth understanding but not a dealbreaker for the typical buy-and-hold European investor. If you're trading actively and execution quality matters, use DEGIRO or IBKR for those trades and Trade Republic for the savings-plan automation.

Is Trade Republic safe?

Yes — operationally and structurally — with the standard caveats.

Regulation: Trade Republic Bank GmbH is BaFin-regulated as a credit institution, the strictest German financial-regulatory framework. Senior management is German-based and the company has been in continuous operation since 2015 with a clean regulatory record.

Cash protection: €100,000 per depositor under the German deposit insurance scheme (EdB / Entschädigungseinrichtung deutscher Banken). Same as any German bank. If Trade Republic Bank failed, your cash up to €100,000 is recoverable through the insurance scheme.

Securities protection: stocks, ETFs, and bonds are held in segregated custody and don't form part of Trade Republic's balance sheet. In a hypothetical insolvency, they'd be transferable to a successor custodian; the €100,000 limit doesn't apply (that's for cash deposits).

The PFOF risk: not a safety risk in the catastrophic sense, but a quiet drag on execution quality for some trades. Quantified at roughly 1-3 basis points per trade based on independent EU studies. For monthly savings plans this is functionally nothing; for larger one-off trades it's a real (if small) cost.

The neobroker generation risk: Trade Republic, like other 2015-2020-vintage European neobrokers, hasn't been tested through a major financial crisis. Its 2020 COVID-period performance was fine; its 2022 rate-volatility performance was fine. But the platform hasn't seen a 2008-style stress event. The mitigation is the same as for any broker: don't put 100% of your portfolio at one institution.

Fees, withdrawals, and taxes

Fees: €1 per manual stock or ETF trade. €0 for savings plans. €0 deposit and withdrawal. €0 inactivity. ~25 basis points FX on non-EUR trades.

Withdrawals: free, SEPA, typically same-day or T+1.

Tax reporting: this is where Trade Republic genuinely shines for German residents. The platform automatically handles Abgeltungsteuer withholding (25% + Soli + church tax) on dividends and realized capital gains, and the year-end tax statement is at the level of a domestic German bank — pre-filled, ready to paste into your German tax return. Freistellungsauftrag works automatically if you've set it up in the app. For French, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch residents, the year-end statement is comprehensive but doesn't pre-fill your local tax return — you (or your accountant) translate it manually.

For German residents, the tax-handling alone is a meaningful reason to use Trade Republic over DEGIRO — saves an hour or two of manual entry every April.

Trade Republic vs DEGIRO vs eToro

The three brokers most often compared, with different sweet spots:

• Trade Republic wins on: savings-plan automation, cash interest on uninvested EUR, app UX, German tax handling.
• DEGIRO wins on: cost-per-trade for one-off larger trades, breadth of exchanges (32 vs Trade Republic's effectively one), Core Selection free ETFs without €1,000 minimum constraint mattering as much.
• eToro wins on: social/copy-trading, fractional US-stock variety, overall app polish for casual investors.

My personal stack: Trade Republic for monthly savings + cash, DEGIRO for one-off larger trades + ETF Core Selection, occasional eToro account for fractional US stocks I can't easily get elsewhere. Most readers do not need three brokers; for the average European investor, DEGIRO + Trade Republic is the optimal pair and covers 95% of practical needs.

Country-specific notes

• EU residents (most countries) — Trade Republic is available across the EEA. Native EUR. €100,000 BaFin deposit insurance. Year-end tax statement provided in PDF; integration into your country's tax return depends on the country.
• Germany — full Abgeltungsteuer handling, automatic Freistellungsauftrag, year-end Steuerbescheinigung at native-bank quality. The single best country-specific tax experience among the brokers I've reviewed.
• France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland — operates under freedom of services. Year-end statements are comprehensive but don't auto-populate your local tax form — handle manually.
• United Kingdom — Trade Republic launched UK operations in 2024 via Trade Republic UK Ltd, FCA-regulated with FSCS protection. UK product feature parity is still catching up to the EU version; verify before opening if you need specific functionality.

Pros and cons

FAQ

Verdict

Trade Republic isn't trying to be the cheapest broker — it's trying to be the easiest broker for the boring compounding work that most successful long-term investing actually consists of. The savings-plan automation is genuinely best-in-class, the 3.5% cash-interest rate makes uninvested money productive, and the German tax handling saves real time at year-end if you're a German resident.

What stops me from calling it "the only broker you need" is the single-exchange execution and the narrower product range. For one-off larger trades, DEGIRO's multi-venue execution and 32-exchange access matter. For multi-currency or US-focused trading, IBKR's lower FX and product breadth matter. Trade Republic is at its best when paired with one of those: monthly savings + cash interest on Trade Republic, larger one-off trades and broader needs on DEGIRO.

If you're starting from zero and need one broker, Trade Republic is the right answer for most European buy-and-hold investors — the savings-plan automation alone justifies it, and the cash interest is a free bonus. If you already have DEGIRO, opening Trade Republic alongside it for monthly automation and cash interest is one of the highest-leverage broker decisions a European investor can make in 2026.