Grab a seat, get your coffee, and take a deep breath.
I know exactly how you are feeling right now. I remember my first few years living here in Germany. You finally get your registration sorted, you figure out how to rent an apartment without losing your mind, and you finally have a bit of extra money from your salary that you want to invest. But the moment you look at the German financial system, it feels like staring at a brick wall. The language barrier is intimidating, the tax letters arriving in those dreaded yellow envelopes make your heart drop, and the fear of doing something wrong and getting on the bad side of the Finanzamt (the German tax office) is completely real.
You want to build wealth. You want to invest in the global markets. And I know you have been spending the last week obsessively googling your options. The two big names that completely dominate the scene here are Scalable Capital and Trade Republic. They both market themselves heavily to us expats. They promise English apps, zero-commission trading, and a stress-free experience.
But look, as your friend who has been through the wringer with both of these platforms, I need to tell you the truth. A lot of that marketing is just a shiny coat of paint over a very rigid, very German banking structure. Choosing the wrong broker for your specific passport and visa situation can lead to frozen accounts, terrifying tax headaches, and money stuck in a void where nobody answers your emails.
Today, we are going to sit down and tear apart the facts. I have looked at their official pricing lists, the regulatory filings under the BaFin (the German financial watchdog), and the real-world horror stories and success stories from our expat community. I am going to walk you through exactly what happens behind the scenes so you know exactly what you are signing up for.
By the time you finish your coffee, you will know exactly whether scalable capital or trade republic is the right home for your money.
Both of these brokers realized a few years ago that expats in cities like Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt have money to invest. So, they translated their apps.
Trade Republic is heavily focused on being a mobile app. It looks beautiful on your phone, and the English translation for buying stocks, tracking your portfolio, and setting up your account is great. Scalable Capital also gives you a fantastic English mobile app, plus a really detailed web-based dashboard on your computer, which I personally love when I want to sit down and really look at my portfolio’s math.
But here is the massive catch they don’t put on the billboards. The English stops the moment the law gets involved.
Any time there is a legal disclosure, an update to the terms of service, or an invitation to a company’s annual general meeting, you are going to get a wall of dense German text. This isn’t because the developers are lazy; it is because German financial law legally requires binding contracts to be in German.
The most terrifying moment for any expat investor is tax season. In Germany, brokers are legally required to be automated tax withholding agents for the state. At the end of the year, they generate a document called the Jahressteuerbescheinigung—the Annual Tax Certificate.
Even if your app is set to English, this tax document will be generated almost entirely in bureaucratic German. You are going to be staring at a PDF trying to figure out words like Kapitalertragsteuer (capital gains tax), Solidaritätszuschlag (the solidarity surcharge), and Kirchensteuer (church tax). Scalable Capital actually uses third-party providers or their partner bank to make this document, and Trade Republic generates their own standard format, but both are strictly in German.
If you don’t speak the language, you are almost always forced to pay for bilingual tax software like Taxfix or SteuerGo, or hire a Steuerberater (tax advisor) just to read the PDF. You need to be mentally prepared for that.
Support Systems: Is Scalable capital or Trade republic better when things break?
This is where things get really serious, man. When it comes to customer support, the difference between these two platforms is like night and day, and it is a huge factor when you are an expat.
Let me be blunt: Trade Republic’s customer support is virtually non-existent if you have a real, complex problem. Because they grew so fast to over ten million users, they automated almost everything to save money. If your account gets frozen, or you have a weird tax issue, you are forced to deal with an AI chatbot and an automated email ticketing system. People in our community regularly report getting trapped in endless automated email loops. You get copy-pasted templates that do not answer your specific question, or worse, you hear nothing for weeks.
Do you want to call them? You can’t. Trade Republic does not have a customer service phone line for trading support. The only phone number they have is a Spanish/German emergency hotline strictly for locking a lost or stolen debit card. There are real stories of expats having their accounts glitch out showing negative balances, or having transfers blocked, and they literally had to send physical, registered letters through the mail to Trade Republic’s headquarters in Berlin just to force a human being to look at their account. It is a terrifying feeling when your life savings are behind an app and no human will talk to you.
Scalable Capital is much better on this front. They actually have a live online chat with real human agents. They have a direct customer service email that gets answered. And most importantly, they have a working telephone support line where you can usually reach an English-speaking agent. If you have a standard question, they usually sort it out in one to three business days.
But—and this is a big but—Scalable Capital has a massive hidden bottleneck. Scalable isn’t actually holding your money; they are just the pretty app on the front end. Your actual cash and stocks are held by their custodian bank, which is mostly Baader Bank.
If you need something highly specific done—like submitting a W-8BEN form so you don’t get heavily taxed on your American dividend stocks—the Scalable support team cannot do it for you. They have to forward your email to Baader Bank’s back office. I have seen expats wait up to five agonizing months for a simple tax form to be processed because it gets stuck in the custodian bank’s old, slow IT system, and you cannot contact the bank directly.
So, it is a trade-off. Trade Republic leaves you to the robots, while Scalable gives you humans who are sometimes handcuffed by a slow partner bank.
The Hidden Fee Traps You Need to Dodge
Okay, let’s talk about the money. You see ads everywhere for “zero-commission” trading. Do not fall for the marketing. Both of these companies make millions of euros, and they are making it off your trades through something called Payment for Order Flow (PFOF). Basically, they route your buy and sell orders to specific market makers who pay them a kickback.
Let’s look at the upfront, explicit fees first.
Trade Republic keeps it simple: Every single trade you make—buying or selling a stock or an ETF—costs a flat €1.00. That is it. No monthly subscription fees.
Scalable Capital is a bit more complicated because they have tiers:
FREE Tier: You pay exactly €0.99 per trade. But, if you buy ETFs from their “PRIME partners” (like huge companies such as Invesco, iShares, and Xtrackers), the trade is totally free, as long as you are investing at least €250 in that single order.
PRIME+ Tier: You pay €4.99 a month. For that, you get unlimited free trades on all eligible stocks and ETFs. If you are a heavy trader making lots of moves every month, this pays for itself quickly
| Feature / Fee Type | Trade Republic | Scalable Capital |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Order Fee | €1.00 flat | €0.99 (FREE) / €0.00 (PRIME+) |
| ETF Savings Plan (Sparplan) | Free (Minimum €1) | Free (Minimum €1) |
| Crypto Spread Markup | ~2.0% Hidden Markup | 0.99% (FREE) / 0.69% (PRIME+) |
| Instant Deposit Fee (Apple/Google Pay) | 0.7% (after 1st deposit) | No fee (Relies on SEPA Instant) |
The After-Hours Danger (Please listen to me here)
This is the single most important piece of advice I am going to give you today. This is the hidden trap that drains expats’ accounts without them ever noticing.
Trade Republic routes all your standard trades through an exchange called Lang & Schwarz (L&S). Scalable Capital routes your trades through an exchange called Gettex.
By German financial law, these two exchanges have to match or beat the prices of the main, massive German exchange called XETRA. But—and pay close attention here—they only have to match XETRA prices while XETRA is actually open.
XETRA is open from 09:00 to 17:30 CET (Central European Time). During those hours, the spread (the hidden difference between the buying price and the selling price) is incredibly tight and fair on both apps. Honestly, during the day, they are both great, though Scalable sometimes has a tiny micro-markup of maybe 5 to 10 cents more per share on Gettex compared to Trade Republic on L&S.
But what happens when you finish work, come home, eat dinner, and sit on your couch at 7:30 PM to buy some stocks? XETRA is closed. Because the main market is closed, L&S and Gettex are allowed to widen their spreads to protect themselves from risk.
If you trade in the evening, that “free” or “one euro” trade might actually carry a hidden spread penalty of 0.5% to 2.0% of your total money. If you buy €5,000 worth of stock at 8:00 PM, you could be losing up to €100 invisibly in the spread.
Rule number one: Only execute your trades between 09:00 and 17:30 CET. Never trade on your couch at night.
Crypto and Deposit Traps
If you want to buy crypto, please understand that neither of these apps gives you a real crypto wallet. You cannot move your Bitcoin to cold storage. You are just buying exposure to the price.
And they charge you heavily for it. Trade Republic charges the €1.00 fee, but they hide a massive 2.0% markup in the price of the crypto. If you are doing a monthly crypto savings plan, that 2% drain will destroy your long-term profits. Scalable Capital is a bit better—charging a 0.99% markup on the free tier, and 0.69% on the PRIME+ tier—but honestly, if you want crypto, use a real crypto exchange.
There is also a sneaky deposit trap. Sending money from your bank via a normal SEPA transfer is totally free on both. But Trade Republic heavily pushes you to top up your account instantly using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or a Credit Card. Your first deposit is free. But after that? Trade Republic hits you with a 0.7% fee on every instant deposit. If you get your bonus and Apple Pay €5,000 into your account to invest quickly, they just pocketed €35 of your money.
Scalable Capital does not have this trap. They rely on standard SEPA transfers, or SEPA Instant if your bank supports it, which avoids percentage fees entirely.
🟢 Must Read
Making German Taxes Actually Bearable
I know I scared you earlier talking about German tax letters, but here is the absolute best part about using a German broker instead of an international one like eToro or Interactive Brokers.
In Germany, the baseline tax on your investment profits and dividends is the Abgeltungsteuer (25%), plus the Solidaritätszuschlag (5.5% of the tax amount), plus church tax if you are registered for it (8% to 9%). It totals out to roughly 26.375%.
If you use an international broker, you have to calculate all of this yourself and file a massive, complex tax form called the Anlage KAP at the end of the year. If you mess it up, you are in trouble.
Because Trade Republic and Scalable Capital are German, they act as your automated withholding agents. Whenever you sell a stock for a profit, or get a dividend, they automatically do the exact math, take the tax out of your cash balance, and send it straight to the Finanzamt. They also automatically balance your losses against your gains in background “loss pots” (Verlusttöpfe). You literally don’t have to do anything. It is peace of mind that is worth its weight in gold.
The Magic of the Freistellungsauftrag
Germany also gives every single person a tax-free allowance on investments. It is called the Sparer-Pauschbetrag, and it gives you €1,000 of tax-free investment profit every year (or €2,000 if you are married and filing jointly).
To tell the government to not tax your first €1,000 of profit, you have to file an exemption order called a Freistellungsauftrag.
Both apps make this incredibly easy. In Trade Republic, you just open the app (mostly in English), type in your 11-digit German Tax ID (Steueridentifikationsnummer), and move a slider to €1,000. Done. Scalable Capital also lets you do this in the app, though because it processes through Baader Bank, you might see some scary-looking German legal confirmation text pop up. Just accept it; it works perfectly.
One warning about taxes: Germany has a complex advanced tax on accumulating funds called the Vorabpauschale, which is usually deducted in January. You need to make sure you have a little bit of uninvested cash sitting in your account in January to pay this. Trade Republic has had algorithmic glitches in the past where, if users didn’t have enough cash, the system reported weird numbers to the tax office and users couldn’t reach a human to fix it. Keep a buffer of cash in January, always.
Savings Plans and Earning Interest on Your Cash
If you are smart, you are going to set up an automated ETF Savings Plan (a Sparplan). You pick a broad global index fund, set an amount, and the app automatically buys it for you every single month on payday.
Both apps are incredible for this. They both offer around 2,700 ETFs from massive providers like Vanguard, iShares, and Amundi. They both let you start with just €1.00 minimum investment. And they both let you automate the whole thing by pulling money via a SEPA direct debit from your normal bank account.
A quick note on your bank account: If you use N26 (which has a German DE IBAN), both platforms will pull the money flawlessly. If you use Revolut (which has a Lithuanian LT IBAN), EU law says they must accept it. Both do, but Trade Republic’s incredibly aggressive anti-money laundering (AML) software sometimes flags recurring transfers from foreign IBANs and can freeze your account out of nowhere. Scalable seems much more relaxed and handles the Revolut transfers smoothly.
Who Pays You More Just to Hold Your Cash?
Right now, in 2026, both platforms are using interest rates to fight for your money. They both offer a 2.0% annual interest rate on your uninvested cash (tied to the European Central Bank rates).
But the way they pay you is different:
Trade Republic pays the 2.0% on an unlimited amount of cash, and they calculate it daily and pay it out to you monthly. This is mathematically superior because your interest starts earning interest immediately the next month.
Scalable Capital pays the 2.0%, but on the FREE tier, it is capped at €100,000. If you want the rate on unlimited cash, you have to pay the €4.99/mo PRIME+ fee. Also, Scalable only pays the interest out quarterly.
How safe is that cash? Scalable keeps your money in a direct clearing account in your name at Baader Bank. It is protected up to €100,000 by standard European laws. It is slow sometimes, but very safe.
Trade Republic sweeps your cash into massive “Omnibus Trust Accounts” spread across huge banks like Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, and Citibank. It is also protected up to €100,000 per partner bank. But because their internal software is routing money across all these different bank trusts, the app sometimes glitches out. People open their phones and see their cash balance has vanished or turned negative for a day. It always gets fixed, but the psychological panic of seeing €20,000 disappear because of a software glitch is something you need to be prepared for if you use them.
The Passport Problem: Why your visa dictates your broker
Listen to me, because this is the absolute dealbreaker for so many of our expat friends. When people ask me if they should choose scalable capital or trade republic, the very first thing I ask them is: “What passport are you holding?”
German financial laws require brokers to do intense identity verification (KYC – Know Your Customer).
Trade Republic relies 100% on automated VideoIdent platforms (like taking a selfie and a video of your passport in the app). These digital systems are trained primarily on European ID cards and modern biometric EU passports. If you hold a non-EU passport—and I see this happen constantly with Indian, South American, and certain Asian passports—the optical scanner in the Trade Republic app simply fails to read the holograms or the security zones.
If the Trade Republic video scanner rejects you, you are done. There is no backup plan. They do not offer manual verification. You just cannot open an account.
Scalable Capital is a total lifesaver here. They offer VideoIdent, but they also have a partnership with Deutsche Post for a system called PostIdent.
If your non-EU passport fails the video check on Scalable, the app gives you a QR code. You take that QR code, your physical passport, and your German residence permit (Aufenthaltstitel), and you walk into any physical post office in Germany. You hand it to a human clerk. They look at your face, look at the holograms, stamp a paper, and you are verified. It bypasses the racist algorithms completely. If you are from outside the EU, Scalable is vastly easier to get into.
The Visa Renewal Nightmare
Here is another reality of expat life: visa renewals. Sometimes you transition from a student visa to a Blue Card, and you have to wait months for an appointment at the Ausländerbehörde (Immigration Office). During that time, they give you a green folded paper called a Fiktionsbescheinigung to prove you are still legally here.
Trade Republic’s software demands a valid, unexpired plastic residence permit card. If your card expires in the app, the system locks you out and demands a new one. If you upload a Fiktionsbescheinigung, the robot often rejects it because it isn’t a plastic card. Trade Republic has frozen accounts and forced people to sell all their stocks just because they were waiting for their immigration appointment. It is heartless and terrifying.
Scalable Capital is much more tolerant during onboarding because of the human element at the post office. However, you must know this: Scalable is strictly locked to the European Economic Area (EEA). If you use Scalable for three years, and then take a job in London (UK) or back in the US, Scalable will officially terminate your account. You will be forced to either transfer your assets to a new broker or sell everything and pay heavy taxes before you leave.
Trade Republic is also strict about residency, and they have shut down accounts of expats just trying to move from Germany to Austria, refusing to update the tax residency and forcing a total portfolio liquidation.
Both of them want you to stay in Germany, permanently.
The Final Verdict: Which one should you actually use?
We’ve covered a massive amount of ground here, and your coffee is probably getting cold. Let’s make this simple and practical.
I am not going to give you a generic answer. The choice between scalable capital or trade republic entirely depends on your personal life situation right now.
You should choose Trade Republic if: You are an EU citizen, or you have a passport that passes digital scanners flawlessly. Your visa situation is permanently stable, you don’t plan on moving out of the EU, and you have a totally standard digital footprint. If you want the absolute mathematically cheapest way to invest, and you want that sweet 2.0% interest compounding monthly, they are fantastic. But you must accept the golden rule: If something goes wrong, you are entirely on your own with the robots. You cannot call them.
You should choose Scalable Capital if: You hold a non-EU passport (especially an Indian passport) and need the safety net of walking into a post office to verify your identity. You should use them if you want the comfort of knowing you can open a live chat or pick up the telephone and speak to a human being if the tax office sends you a scary letter or if your visa is in a weird transition period. Yes, their partner bank is a bit slow, and yes, you have to be careful about upgrading to PRIME+ if you hold massive cash reserves, but the peace of mind of human support and physical verification is priceless for most expats.
Whichever you choose, remember the rules we talked about today. Set up your Freistellungsauftrag on day one. Never trade after 5:30 PM to avoid the spread traps. And set up an automated monthly savings plan so you don’t even have to look at the app.
You’ve got this. Dealing with German finance is scary at first, but once you set the machine up, it works for you while you sleep. Let me know which one you decide to download tonight, and we can set up your first ETF together. Drink up, let’s get out of here.
