Trade Republic Fees Explained: What You Really Pay (2026)

Trade Republic is one of Europe’s most popular neo-brokers, with free ETF savings plans and a clean mobile app that has pulled in millions of first-time investors across Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. The headline is “commission-free”, which is largely true, but as with any broker the full cost picture has a few more lines than the marketing. Here is everything you actually pay at Trade Republic, in plain English, and how it stacks up for the way most people invest. None of it is hidden or sinister, it is simply how a low-cost mobile broker is priced.

For the general principles behind each of these costs, read broker fees explained first. This page applies them to Trade Republic specifically.

The short version

What you pay	Trade Republic
ETF savings plan	€0 per execution, from €1 a month
Manual buy or sell	€1 flat per order
Account or custody fee	€0
Explicit FX fee	None (any cost sits in the spread)
Deposit protection	€100,000 statutory on cash; securities held in custody
Regulator	BaFin (Germany)

Figures as of 2026. Always check Trade Republic’s current price list before you act, since broker pricing moves over time.

Savings plans: genuinely free

The heart of Trade Republic’s appeal is its ETF savings plan, which costs €0 per execution and starts from just €1 a month. For a buy-and-hold investor drip-feeding money into a broad index fund every month, this is about as cheap as recurring investing gets. There is no percentage cut on each contribution, which matters: some banks charge around 1.5% on every savings-plan execution, and that quietly compounds against you month after month. Trade Republic does not.

The €1 manual trade fee

If you place a one-off buy or sell yourself, rather than through a savings plan, Trade Republic charges a €1 flat fee per order (described as an external settlement cost). It is small, and it is the same whether you trade €100 or €10,000, but it is worth knowing it exists. The practical takeaway: if you are a regular investor, routing your buying through the free savings plan rather than manual orders keeps even that euro off your bill.

No platform or custody fee

Trade Republic charges €0 to hold your investments. There is no monthly account fee and no annual custody charge, so a small portfolio is not nibbled away by a percentage platform fee the way it can be on some traditional providers. It also pays interest on uninvested cash sitting in your account, within limits it sets and adjusts over time.

FX and the spread: the cost you will not see on a statement

This is the line most people miss. Trade Republic has no explicit currency-conversion fee, but it trades on a single venue (LS Exchange) and prices in euro. Two things follow from that:

• If you buy a euro-denominated UCITS ETF, there is effectively no FX cost to worry about, which is the normal case for most European index investors.
• If you buy something priced in another currency, any conversion cost is built into the price (the spread) rather than shown as a separate fee. You do not see a line for it, but it is there. Independent estimates put that embedded cost at roughly 0.25% for non-euro assets, though it varies with the spread at the time.

Using one venue keeps things simple, but it also means you take the price offered there rather than picking across competing markets. For liquid, mainstream ETFs during market hours the spread is typically small. To understand this cost in general, see FX fees explained, and compare what brokers charge to convert currency with our FX fee comparison tool.

”If it is free, how does Trade Republic make money?”

A fair question, and the answer is openly disclosed rather than mysterious. A commission-free broker like Trade Republic earns through a mix of interest on uninvested cash, the margin in its market-making and spread arrangements, optional premium features, and historically payment for order flow (PFOF), where a broker is paid for routing orders to a particular market maker.

That last one is worth understanding rather than worrying about. The EU is phasing out PFOF, with a ban taking effect in 2026, and the brokers that used it are adapting their models. The point for you is not outrage, it is simply knowing what a free model can imply, such as a single execution venue rather than your pick of the market. A broker earning a fair, disclosed margin is entirely normal. For the detail, see payment for order flow and the EU’s 2026 ban.

What it costs a typical saver

For the most common case, a beginner or buy-and-hold investor drip-feeding into a broad euro-denominated UCITS ETF, Trade Republic’s all-in cost is very low: €0 on the savings plan, €0 to hold, and the fund’s own TER as the main ongoing charge. The big lever on your long-term returns is that fund TER plus any FX, not the broker, which is exactly why a free savings plan into a cheap index fund is such a strong starting point. Put your own numbers into the fee calculator to see how much keeping costs this low is worth over 30 years.

Who it suits, and who might want more

Trade Republic fits beginners and regular savings-plan investors who want a simple, low-cost, mobile-first way to build a portfolio. It may feel limiting if you want multi-venue execution, a desktop platform, a very wide instrument range, or specific account wrappers: the single trading venue and the €1 manual fee matter more to active traders than to monthly savers. That is a trade-off to weigh, not a flaw.

How Trade Republic compares

The honest way to choose is on the costs that apply to your investing, not a headline. Read our full Trade Republic review, then line it up against other European brokers on savings-plan cost, FX and platform fees with Brokerlens.

Last fact-checked 22 June 2026 against Trade Republic’s published pricing and independent broker reviews. Educational information, not personal advice. Fees change over time, so always confirm against Trade Republic’s current price list before you commit.