Degiro Review 2026

What you need to know about DEGIRO

If you are a UK investor weighing DEGIRO before opening an account, this review walks through what the service looks like from a British seat today. The firm sits inside flatexDEGIRO SE, a European group whose operating entity, Flatexdegiro Bank SE (Dutch Branch, trading as DEGIRO), carries a full banking licence. Supervision runs at group level with BaFin in Germany, and at branch level with De Nederlandsche Bank and the AFM in the Netherlands. Banking status of that kind gives the platform a stronger institutional footing than most retail brokers can claim, which is worth weighing before you look at any fee table.

The picture from a UK angle is less straightforward. On 18 July 2023, the former UK entity DEGIRO B.V. had its FCA registration cancelled, and UK clients now contract with Flatexdegiro Bank SE as an overseas firm. Practically, that removes you from FCA authorisation and takes the Financial Services Compensation Scheme off the table for cash held with the broker. The protection you fall back on instead is Germany's statutory deposit guarantee scheme, with its own limits and procedures.

Product scope also sets expectations, and DEGIRO is a stockbroker covering a specific range of instruments:

• Shares
• ETFs
• Bonds
• Options
• Futures
• Structured products
• Mutual funds

CFDs, forex and spread betting are outside the product scope entirely. For a UK investor whose plan is to buy and hold global equities and ETFs at low cost, that absence is not a problem and DEGIRO is a serious candidate on price alone. Anyone whose strategy depends on leveraged short-term trading will need to look at a different kind of broker.

Regulation and Safety

Regulatory Licences

As a UK client, you deal with Flatexdegiro Bank SE (Dutch Branch, trading as DEGIRO), which operates in the UK as an overseas firm. Supervision sits with BaFin, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, at group level. The Dutch branch is also supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank on prudential supervision and by the AFM on conduct supervision. That is a credible EU regulatory stack, and the group holds a full German banking licence.

FCA authorisation is no longer part of the setup for UK clients. The removal of DEGIRO B.V. from the FCA register on 18 July 2023 is the dividing line, so any article or forum thread still describing DEGIRO as FCA-regulated for UK retail clients is working from outdated information. On the DEGIRO UK site the change is disclosed in plain terms, which counts in favour of the firm's transparency even when the underlying news is unwelcome.

Client Fund Protection

FSCS cover of up to £85,000 does not apply to you as a UK client of DEGIRO. The protection that does apply is Germany's statutory deposit guarantee scheme, which operates through Flatexdegiro Bank. The limits, procedures and currency conversion in a claim scenario are different from the FSCS, and you should read the German scheme's terms before opening an account.

There is a second detail that often surprises first-time users. Uninvested cash on the DEGIRO platform is swept into a Money Market Fund, so it is not held as a straightforward bank deposit. The MMF is intended to protect the cash position from the broker's own balance sheet risk, although it is a fund with its own characteristics and not a deposit. Treating it as equivalent to a UK cash account is a mistake. If you want cleaner cash protection, hold minimal idle balances and move money across only when you intend to invest.

Company History and Reputation

DEGIRO was founded in 2008 as an institutional broker and launched its retail service in the Netherlands in 2013, with the UK platform following in 2015. Flatex AG acquired DEGIRO in December 2019 for around €250 million. In May 2021, DEGIRO B.V. was legally merged into Flatexdegiro Bank AG and became its Dutch branch. The group reports more than three million customer accounts and more than 100 international broker awards.

The regulatory record is not spotless. In April 2018, the AFM imposed an order subject to periodic penalty payments on DEGIRO B.V. for breaches around governance, compliance, conflicts of interest, fair treatment of clients and segregation of client assets, resulting in a payment of €300,000. In June 2022, the AFM fined Flatexdegiro Bank AG €2 million for late or incorrectly dated unusual-transaction reports relating to 36 reports; after objection and court proceedings, the fine was ultimately reduced to €797,500 in 2025. A further AFM fine was announced in January 2025 for a 2019 transaction-reporting format breach. In July 2023, the Kifid Appeals Committee ruled that DEGIRO had failed to execute a Dutch consumer's orders as agreed and had provided incorrect information about execution method, concerning the use of a Morgan Stanley smart order router from February 2020. None of these events reach UK clients directly, although they are worth factoring into your own risk assessment of execution and controls.

Account Types and Fees

Two main account families are on offer at DEGIRO. The Regular account comes in three sub-types, selected according to the features you want:

• Basic
• Active
• Trader

The Custody account sits alongside those three as a separate family. Its defining distinction is how it treats your holdings: Regular accounts allow securities lending, where your shares can be lent out to third parties, while Custody accounts do not permit lending at all.

Lending counterparty risk is therefore a feature of Regular accounts, with the compensating benefit that it helps keep the headline fees as low as they are. Investors who would rather their holdings never left their own custody can choose the Custody account for that reason, bearing in mind that it carries its own fee schedule for certain services.

For UK beginners, the headline service terms are attractive:

• Minimum deposit: £0
• Inactivity fee: £0
• Deposit fee: £0
• Withdrawal fee: £0
• Custody fee on Regular accounts: £0

A couple of nuances deserve care before you fund the account. Uninvested cash is swept into a Money Market Fund, so the DEGIRO cash balance should not be treated as a bank deposit paying bank interest. The Regular account structure also opens the door to your shares being lent out to third parties. Decide which of those trade-offs sits more comfortably with you, and pick the account family accordingly.

Trading Platforms and Tools

DEGIRO runs its own web platform (WebTrader) and a proprietary mobile app for iOS and Android. Login security includes Touch ID or Face ID on mobile and two-factor authentication for the desktop platform. The interface is deliberately clean and order entry is quick, which suits buy-and-hold investing well.

A few things you may expect are simply absent from this ecosystem. MT4, MT5 and cTrader are not supported, so traders who build their workflow around those platforms for automated strategies or custom indicators will struggle to make DEGIRO fit. There is also no demo account, which cuts off the usual way to practise before committing real money. Should you still want to start here, keep initial positions small and treat the first few weeks as a learning phase.

Research and charting sit at a basic level by comparison with providers such as Saxo Bank or Interactive Brokers. The essentials for placing and managing trades are all there, though professional-grade screeners, deep fundamental data and advanced analytics are not part of the package. For a long-term investor who already has a reasonable idea of what to buy, the toolkit is sufficient to work with. An active trader who needs integrated research alongside execution will quickly find the environment too thin.

Markets and Instruments

The product list on DEGIRO covers the main building blocks for a long-term portfolio:

• Stocks (equities)
• ETFs, including a Core Selection with reduced fees
• Bonds
• Options
• Futures
• Structured products
• Mutual funds

Reach is a real strength, since you get access to more than 50 global exchanges across 30 countries, with notable coverage including:

• Australia
• Japan
• Hong Kong

That level of coverage is unusual for a low-cost broker. For anyone wanting to diversify beyond the LSE and the US majors, the geographic breadth is a meaningful advantage.

What DEGIRO does not offer is worth being equally clear about. CFDs, forex pairs and spread betting are all outside the product range. For UK retail clients that carries a specific regulatory consequence, since the FCA's CFD leverage caps (1:30 on major forex, 1:20 on major indices, 1:5 on individual equities) and the FCA prohibition on CFDs on crypto for UK retail clients do not directly apply here, simply because the products themselves are not on the shelf. Anyone looking for leveraged currency or crypto exposure will have to find a different venue for it.

Trading Costs and Conditions

DEGIRO fees are the main reason most UK investors look at the platform. The structure is a small commission plus a flat handling fee per transaction, with a modest FX conversion fee layered on top where relevant.

The published headline fees are:

• UK shares (London Stock Exchange): £1.75 commission + £1 handling fee per transaction
• US shares (NYSE, NASDAQ): €1 commission + €1 handling fee per transaction
• Core Selection ETFs: €0 commission + €1 handling fee per transaction, subject to a Fair Use Policy
• Non-Core ETFs: €2 commission + €1 handling fee per transaction
• Options: €0.75 per contract
• Structured products: €2 + €1 handling fee per trade
• Currency conversion fee: 0.25% per transaction

Imagine a UK investor buying a single blue-chip LSE share. The all-in cost on commission and handling would be £2.75, with no inactivity or custody fee eating into the position later. Should the same investor then buy a US share from a GBP-funded account, the 0.25% FX conversion on the currency leg would be added to the €2 total trading cost. Those are low numbers by UK standards, especially on small ticket sizes where percentage-based commissions elsewhere add up quickly.

There are secondary costs you should factor in. Connectivity to external exchanges is capped at 0.25% of your total portfolio value per annum per exchange, with a cash cap of €2.50 per exchange, so if you trade on multiple venues the yearly bill is modest but not zero. US options data connectivity is €5.00 per exchange per calendar month, which is relevant if you trade US options actively. On UK share purchases, 0.5% Stamp Duty Reserve Tax applies on eligible stocks (1.0% on Irish shares); that is a government charge, not a DEGIRO fee, and it is excluded from AIM stocks and ETFs. DEGIRO may also apply surcharges when you place an order by phone or email.

Execution routing is worth a brief note. In 2021, DEGIRO introduced order routing to Tradegate Exchange in Germany. Across the EU, MiFIR Article 39a bans payment for order flow, with a temporary exemption for member states where the practice was previously used that runs to 30 June of its final year. The Kifid ruling cited earlier concerned best execution and smart order routing for a Dutch consumer. For a UK investor, the practical takeaway is that pricing on liquid names in liquid hours is competitive, and anyone who places execution quality near the top of their priorities should compare prints against a reference venue in the first weeks of trading.

Deposits and Withdrawals

Funding is deliberately narrow: DEGIRO accepts bank transfer only, and the transfer must come from a bank account held in your own name. Debit cards, credit cards and e-wallets are not supported. Withdrawals follow the same rule and are sent back to the originating bank account.

Costs on the funding side are low. DEGIRO does not charge a deposit or withdrawal fee, so your transfer costs amount to whatever your own bank applies at its end. In exchange for that narrower setup, instant funding of the kind newer app-based brokers offer is off the table, and currency conversions will carry the 0.25% FX fee whenever you deposit GBP and buy securities priced in another currency.

One reminder bears repeating here. Any uninvested cash on your account sits inside a Money Market Fund rather than as a bank deposit, so the cash line in your dashboard should be treated as a short-term holding place for money you intend to invest soon, and not as a long-term savings pot.

Customer Support and Education

UK-facing support runs on two channels:

• Email: clients@degiro.co.uk, with a 24/7 inbox
• Phone: +31 20 261 3072, weekdays 07:00 to 21:00 CET (Amsterdam time)

Separate addresses exist for the order desk (orders@degiro.co.uk), corporate actions (ca@degiro.co.uk) and account security (accountsecurity@degiro.com). Bear in mind that a surcharge may apply if you place an order by phone or email, so keep order entry online where you can.

The service model is execution-only. DEGIRO does not provide investment advice or portfolio recommendations, which is standard for a low-cost broker and helps keep costs down. For UK clients, support is in English.

Education comes through a help centre and basic learning materials covering the mechanics of the platform, order types and general concepts. The absence of a demo account is a real limitation for anyone who wants to practise the workflow before committing capital. Complete beginners would do well to read the help centre thoroughly, then open with a very small live position and scale up only once they are comfortable with how orders behave in practice.

DEGIRO vs The Competition

In a DEGIRO vs Interactive Brokers comparison, Interactive Brokers offers a materially broader toolkit that spans equities, ETFs, bonds, options, futures, forex and advanced margin products, along with a stronger platform suite (TWS, IBKR Desktop and APIs) and deeper market data. The counterpoint is that the IB environment is complex, with a steeper learning curve, and some fee structures (data subscriptions, inactivity on certain tiers) can bite into smaller accounts. Active or multi-asset traders tend to find more of what they want in IB; buy-and-hold UK investors who want shares and ETFs at a very low per-trade cost often find DEGIRO both simpler to handle and cheaper on the invoice.

Set against Saxo Bank, the comparison takes a different shape. Saxo offers better research, more polished platforms (SaxoTraderGO and SaxoTraderPRO) and strong charting, plus a wider product universe that includes FX and CFDs for suitable clients. Commissions on share and ETF trades are higher for most UK retail profiles. Investors who put a premium on integrated research and professional tooling will see Saxo as a clear step up, and those whose priority is low cost on simple share and ETF trades will usually find DEGIRO ahead on the invoice.

The core picture is consistent across all three. DEGIRO sits at the cost-leader end with a credible EU banking parent, carrying a weaker regulatory footprint for UK clients now that FCA authorisation has gone. Interactive Brokers suits active and multi-asset traders who want professional tools in exchange for complexity. Saxo appeals to investors who want research and platform depth and are willing to pay for them. Choosing between the three is as much about which set of weaknesses you can live with as it is about which set of strengths you most want on your side.

Conclusion

DEGIRO is a sensible choice if you are a cost-conscious long-term UK investor who wants cheap access to global shares, ETFs and funds, and you are comfortable contracting with an overseas firm regulated in the EU. The headline per-trade costs are low, the fee menu is transparent, there is no inactivity or custody charge on Regular accounts, and the parent bank is supervised by BaFin.

There are several profiles for whom DEGIRO is not the right fit:

• Investors who need FCA authorisation and FSCS cover on their broker
• Active CFD or forex traders
• Those who want advanced research and professional-grade tools
• Anyone who expects a demo account before funding a live one

The product scope is cash equities, ETFs, bonds, options, futures, structured products and mutual funds only, with no CFDs, no forex and no spread betting on the menu.

One last reminder before you decide. DEGIRO is execution-only, which means no advice service and no promise of returns, and investing in securities always carries risk including the risk of losing capital. The Money Market Fund structure for uninvested cash behaves differently from a UK bank deposit, so read the terms carefully, start with a small position, and judge from there whether the DEGIRO trade-off fits the way you want to invest.