DEGIRO costs for ETFs clearly explained

The different costs with DEGIRO

Summary

In a nutshell, you pay a €1.00 transaction fee for ETFs in the DEGIRO core selection. For all other ETFs, you pay €3.00 per transaction. On top of the transaction fee, there's a connectivity fee of €2.50 per stock exchange per year.

When looking at it more in detail, DEGIRO charges different types of fees:

• transaction costs
• connectivity costs
• incoming transfer costs
• outgoing transfer costs
• taxes

Transaction costs

The transaction cost is the fee you pay for every purchase or sale you make on the stock market. DEGIRO charges €1.00 or €3.00, depending on the inclusion of the ETF in the core selection and the exchange you trade the ETF.

DEGIRO's core selection of ETFs

For the ETFs in the core selection, you only pay the €1.00 handling fee. There's a caveat though: you need to buy the ETF on the right exchange. ETFs are traded on stock exchanges. Famous ones are the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or Nasdaq, or Xetra and Euronext Amsterdam in Europe. Because of DEGIRO's rule, the iShares MSCI World Accumulating ETF (also known as IWDA) for instance costs €1 only on Euronext Amsterdam. If you buy it on the London Stock Exchange, DEGIRO will charge you €3.

There's also a fair use policy that you have to oblige to in order to benefit from the free cost. Every month, the first transaction of the ETF on the right stock exchange will cost €1 instead of €3. Subsequent transactions that same month will also cost €1 provided:

• the transaction is in the same direction (that is buy/sell) as the first transaction
• the value of the transaction is at least €1,000

Make sure you keep these important rules in mind when selecting and buying your ETFs on DEGIRO!

Other ETFs

For the ETFs that are not in the core selection, you pay €3.00 per trade. DEGIRO breaks it down in a €2.00 commission fee and the €1.00 handling fee.

Note that you will pay €3.00 also if you buy an ETF from the core selection from the wrong exchange. For instance, if you buy the IWDA ETF on the London Stock Exchange instead of on Euronext Amsterdam, you will pay €3.00 instead of €1.00. So pay attention to this important detail!

Connectivity costs

A peculiarity of DEGIRO is that they charge a connectivity fee of €2.50 per stock exchange per year. This means that you need to pay €2.50 in a given year for each stock exchange where you've purchased or sold an ETF.

DEGIRO waives the connectivity cost for the home exchanges though:

• 🇳🇱 DEGIRO.nl: no fee for Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Brussels.
• 🇫🇷 DEGIRO.fr: no fee for Euronext Paris and Euronext Brussels.
• 🇮🇹 DEGIRO.it: no fee for the MTA Italian exchange.

Incoming transfer costs

Each country-specific DEGIRO charges different fees if you wish to transfer your assets from another broker to DEGIRO:

• 🇳🇱 DEGIRO.nl: free if the value of your portfolio exceeds €3,000, or else €10 per position.
• 🇫🇷 DEGIRO.fr: free if the value of your portfolio exceeds €3,000 and only for the first 10 positions, else it's €10 per position.
• 🇮🇹 DEGIRO.it: €10 per position.

Outgoing transfer costs

Just like for incoming transfers, each country-specific DEGIRO charges different fees from transferring your assets to another broker:

• 🇳🇱 DEGIRO.nl: it's unclear how much they charge.
• 🇫🇷 DEGIRO.fr: €10 per position, with an unclear "external costs" fee.
• 🇮🇹 DEGIRO.it: €10 per position, with an unclear "external costs" fee.

Taxes

Taxes are local and specific to your country of residence.

For Italians 🇮🇹

DEGIRO operates under the declaratory regime. Essentially, this means they do not handle the taxes related to investing for you:

• Capital gains: equal to 26%, due if profitable positions were closed out during the year
• IVAFE: equal to 0.2% of the value of financial assets held

However, DEGIRO pays the Italian Financial Transaction Tax (also known as the FTT). DEGIRO automatically calculates, withholds, reports, and pays on behalf of clients the Italian FTT due.

We wrote a guide to help you with the relevant taxes when investing through DEGIRO.

For Belgians 🇧🇪

DEGIRO declares and pays the Belgian transaction tax. However, they do not handle the other taxes related to investing:

• Tax on dividends (“roerende voorheffing” or “précompte mobilier”). A 30% tax on the dividends you perceive through the stock ETFs that you hold. You need to make sure that you calculate and declare them in your yearly tax declaration.
• Tax on capital gains on bond funds (also known as the Reynders tax). There’s a 30% tax on the profits you make when you choose to sell the bonds in your portfolio. Again, DEGIRO pushes the responsibility to you for declaring the right amounts in your tax declaration.

You also need to declare your DEGIRO account to the National Bank of Belgium and on your yearly tax form.

Cost of DEGIRO for example ETFs

As an example, we calculate the cost of DEGIRO for buying €1,000 of two of the most popular ETFs in Europe:

• Vanguard FTSE All-World Accumulating (VWCE)
• iShares MSCI World Accumulating (IWDA)

You can also calculate the transaction cost for any ETF of your choosing below.

Vanguard FTSE All-World Accumulating (VWCE)

VWCE (ISIN: IE00BK5BQT80) is popular in the index investing community. The fund was launched by Vanguard in 2019 and currently holds more than €5 billion under management. Vanguard is one of the largest asset managers in the world, and its founder Jack Bogle is often credited as the inventor of the index fund.

VWCE tracks the FTSE All-World index, a combination of the FTSE Developed Markets index and the FTSE Emerging Markets index. The index consists of over 4,000 stocks. Because it's so diversified, investors can find in VWCE a great way to follow the global stock market by holding a significant portion of the world's stocks. Companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc… are represented in the index. The FTSE All-World index has delivered an average of 8.4% per year since 2005.

VWCE is part of DEGIRO's core selection. So you will pay €1.00 per transaction on XETRA and a connectivity fee of €2.50 per year.

iShares MSCI World Accumulating (IWDA)

IWDA (ISIN: IE00B4L5Y983) is an ETF that tracks the MSCI World index, an index composed of about 1,500 stocks from 23 countries that economists qualify as "developed": United States, Germany, Japan… The fund is offered by iShares, a brand of BlackRock. BlackRock is an immense asset manager, just like Vanguard, with over $2 trillion invested.

The returns of IWDA have also been excellent throughout the years. Since 1979, the MSCI World index has delivered an average yearly return of 10.8%! If you had invested €10,000 in 1979, you would have had around €900,000 today.

This fund is also part of DEGIRO's core selection of ETFs! You need to purchase IWDA on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange though.

Other ETFs

Use our calculator below to find the cost of any ETF on DEGIRO:

Price of DEGIRO vs other brokers

We mentioned earlier that DEGIRO is one of the cheapest brokers on the market. Let's see it by comparing DEGIRO to the transaction costs for other brokers.

Vanguard FTSE All-World Accumulating (VWCE)

The table below shows the transaction cost of buying €1,000 of VWCE for different brokers. Nothing can beat free, as VWCE is in DEGIRO's free selection of ETFs!

iShares MSCI World Accumulating (IWDA)

The table below shows the transaction cost of buying €1,000 of IWDA for different brokers. We can draw the same conclusion that DEGIRO has the cheapest transaction costs.

Other ETFs

Compare the transaction cost of DEGIRO to the other brokers for buying €1,000 of the ETF of your choosing.

Price is not the only criteria when selecting a broker

We tend to focus just on price when comparing brokers. But safety, ease of use or convenience are also important criteria. You can learn about these in our in-depth comparisons:

• DEGIRO vs Bolero
• DEGIRO vs MEXEM
• DEGIRO vs LYNX
• DEGIRO vs eToro
• DEGIRO vs Interactive Brokers
• DEGIRO vs Trade Republic
• DEGIRO vs BUX

How to pay less with DEGIRO

There are some guidelines you can follow to pay less when investing with DEGIRO:

• Selects ETFs in DEGIRO's core selection.
• If you are investing monthly, bundle the investments for several months in a single transaction. The relative cost of the broker fee goes down as the transaction amount is higher. Unfortunately you are unable to automate your investments using DEGIRO.

The challenges of investing in ETFs through a broker

When managing your own investments through a broker, you have to figure out what to buy, when to buy, understand the tax implications of your decisions, rebalance your investments and make sure they stay in line with your goals and risk tolerance. There are quite a few challenges:

• The allocation of your portfolio is in your hands: figure out how to build the right allocation that meets your long-term goals.
• You need to do your homework: figuring out how to start and understanding the intricacies of investing in ETFs takes an effort. Yet it's important, because in investing the details matter.
• It takes time: send money to your broker monthly and then make the purchases.
• Costly for monthly contributions: if you wish to invest on a monthly basis, you’ll have to pay a lot in broker fees. Also, as you buy units and can’t buy fractions, you’ll always be left with cash on your account.
• Learn how to rebalance your portfolio: if you have multiple funds in your portfolio, how will you rebalance? Quarterly or yearly? How do you decide?
• Keep track of your portfolio: you may have to set up a spreadsheet to stay on top of things!
• Understand taxes: this can be complicated and they also often change.
• Discipline: it requires self-confidence and discipline to stay the course.
• Brokers want you to trade: the majority of brokers make money on you trading so a “passive” approach isn’t in their best interest.

Curvo: the easier alternative to DEGIRO for ETF investing

We realised the difficulties of investing through brokers like DEGIRO. So our approach is different: the right investment decisions are made for you so you don't have to worry.

Rather than having to pick the right stocks or ETFs among the thousands available through these brokers, through Curvo you invest in a portfolio that is tailored to you and your goals. Each portfolio is managed by NNEK, a Dutch investment firm licensed by the Dutch regulator (AFM). They're composed of globally diversified index funds, meaning you earn a piece of the growth of the global economy, and they're best suited to make the most of your savings long term. Brokers push you to trade and to pick individual companies to invest in. Rather than picking individual stocks such as Amazon or Tesla, index funds are a way to buy the whole market, across all sectors and regions of the world. Essentially, you own a small portion of thousands of companies throughout the world. Instead of betting on a particular company, you are placing a bet on the global economy.

We believe that investing is an important tool for our generation to improve our financial well-being and to prepare for our future. We are building Curvo to fulfil that vision and make good investing easy and accessible to all. Find out more about Curvo.