ETF broker comparison for the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Italy
Broker pricing is where a cheap fund quietly becomes an expensive position. A €2 commission on a €200 monthly contribution is 1% a year before the fund has charged anything — five times the ongoing charge of a typical world tracker.
The calculator
How it works
Each broker's published schedule is encoded as its actual fee structure — fixed component, percentage component, minimum and cap — rather than as a headline price, because that is what determines the cost at your contribution size. Switching country swaps the broker set, since the brokers available and the tax work they do for you both change at the border.
What it assumes
Fee schedules are accurate as of the date noted and change without much warning. What is not modelled is service quality, platform stability, or how painful a transfer out is — all of which matter and none of which is a number.
The background, in prose
Choosing a broker — the costs that depend on how you invest explains the rules this calculator applies, why they are shaped the way they are, and what they mean for choosing a fund.
Common questions
- Does the cheapest broker depend on how much I invest?
- Yes, and the crossover is often closer than people expect. A flat-fee broker wins at large trade sizes and loses badly at small ones; a percentage-fee broker is the reverse. The break-even calculator finds the size where the ranking flips for your own numbers.
- What does a broker's tax automation actually save me?
- In Germany a domestic broker withholds Abgeltungsteuer and handles the Vorabpauschale for you; a foreign one leaves you to declare it. In Italy the difference is regime amministrato versus dichiarativo — the latter means Modulo RW and self-declaration every year. The fee saving from a cheaper foreign broker can be real, and so is the annual paperwork it buys you.
- Is my money protected if a broker fails?
- Investments are held separately from the broker's own assets, so a failure is normally an administrative problem rather than a loss. Deposit-protection schemes cover uninvested cash, up to €100,000 in the EU, and the scheme that applies is the one in the broker's home country — not necessarily yours.