What they actually charge
Everyone compares the headline trading fee. It is almost never the number you pay. The cost has moved into two places nobody puts side by side: the markup on the simple “buy” button, and the currency conversion on the way in and out.
The cheap rate is real. It’s just on a different product.
Each of these providers advertises a low rate that genuinely exists, on their pro platform. The app most people actually download charges this instead.
The in-app flow costs 1.49% per side on Standard, plus an unquantified embedded spread. The 0%/0.09% rate belongs to the separate Revolut X platform.
The cheap 0.25% belongs to the separate Fusion product. The retail broker charges 0.99% on Bitcoin, 1.49% on other coins and 2.49% on small-cap assets.
Kraken Pro starts at 0.40%/0.80%, but the consumer app charges 1% on instant trades, 1.5% on custom orders. On top of an unquantified spread, and that volume doesn't count toward tier discounts.
Now that commission is free, currency conversion is the fee
Almost every broker here charges £0 or €1 to trade. Then they charge this to turn your euros into dollars, a 33× spread between the cheapest and the dearest. On a round trip into US stocks, it dwarfs any commission you saved.
Crypto exchanges
Headline rates are what you pay on the pro interface. The retail column is what the app on your phone charges for the identical trade.
| Provider | Headline rate | Retail flow | Currency conversion | What they say about spread | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coinbase has a signup offer | 0.6% | not stated | not stated | Discloses a spread of "about one-half of one percent" on simple buy/sell, and warns it may be higher | Coinbase Help ↗ |
| Kraken has a signup offer | 0.8% | 1% | not stated | Fee schedule says the instant-buy price "includes a spread", the size is never stated | Kraken ↗ |
| Binance | 0.1% | not stated | not stated | nothing published | Binance ↗ |
| OKX | 0.1% | not stated | not stated | Convert and P2P are marketed as "zero trading fees, no slippage", with no markup published | OKX Europe ↗ |
| Bybit | 0.1% | not stated | not stated | nothing published | Bybit Help Center ↗ |
| Bitpanda has a signup offer | 0.25% | 0.99% | not stated | Retail prices are struck against Bitpanda's own "firm quote", whose spread is nowhere quantified | Bitpanda Cost Transparency v4.0.0, 8 Jul 2026 ↗ |
| Bitvavo has a signup offer | 0.25% | not stated | not stated | nothing published | Bitvavo ↗ |
| Crypto.com has a signup offer | 0.5% | not stated | not stated | The consumer app publishes no trading fee at all. The cost lives entirely in the buy/sell spread | CryptoSlate ↗ |
| Revolut has a signup offer | 0.09% | 1.49% | 1% on exchanges over £1,000/month (Standard); 0.5% over £3,000 (Plus); none on Premium and above | States the spread is "already included in the price quoted to you and is not an additional fee", never quantified | Revolut Retail Crypto Fees ↗ |
Brokers
Commission has converged on roughly zero, so the difference between these is almost entirely currency conversion, handling fees and inactivity charges.
| Provider | Headline rate | Retail flow | Currency conversion | What they say about spread | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trading 212 has a signup offer | 0% | not stated | 0.15% on Invest/ISA/SIPP; 0.5% on CFD | No spread markup documented on Invest, ISA or SIPP accounts | Trading 212 Help Centre ↗ |
| eToro has a signup offer | 1% | not stated | 0.75% converting local currency to USD on trades; 150 pips on EUR/GBP/AUD deposits | Crypto spread fee 1.00% at entry tiers, falling to 0.10% at the top; stock CFD spread 0.15% per trade | eToro ↗ |
| Interactive Brokers | 0.05% | not stated | 0.03% on auto conversion. The cheapest here by a wide margin | Commissions capped at 0.5% of trade value; exchange and clearing fees passed through | Interactive Brokers ↗ |
| Trade Republic has a signup offer | not stated | not stated | None; Visa rate applied directly | The €1 settlement cost is published as covering "spreads and third party costs". The spread itself is never given a number | Trade Republic Support ↗ |
| Scalable Capital has a signup offer | not stated | not stated | None, euro-only broker | Crypto ETP surcharge of 0.99% on the free plan, 0.69% on PRIME+ | Scalable Capital ↗ |
| DEGIRO has a signup offer | not stated | not stated | 0.25% AutoFX; €10 + 0.25% for manual conversion | nothing published | DEGIRO ↗ |
| Fineco has a signup offer | 0.19% | not stated | No commission; spread only, 0.30-0.35% typical (up to 0.825% weekends) | Currency exchange has no commission at all. The entire cost is a spread of 0.30-0.35% on weekdays, up to 0.825% at weekends | FinecoBank ↗ |
| XTB has a signup offer | 0% | not stated | 0.5% margin on the exchange rate, 0.8% at weekends | Minimum CFD spread of 0.5; no spread markup documented on real stocks and ETFs | XTB ↗ |
| Freetrade has a signup offer not available in the EU | 0% | not stated | 0.99% on the free plan, 0.59% on Standard, 0.39% on Plus | The FX fee is charged on top of the exchange rate itself | Freetrade ↗ |
Who actually tells you about the spread
Of everyone here, Coinbase is the only one that puts a number on its retail spread. About 0.50%. Kraken, Revolut, Bitpanda and Trade Republic all state in writing that a spread exists and then decline to size it; Trade Republic goes furthest, publishing that its €1 fee “covers spreads” without ever saying how much. Crypto.com is the outlier: its own fee page returns an empty shell containing no fee text at all, which is why the figure in our table had to come from a third party.
Spread is the one cost that can’t be scraped from a page, measuring it properly means comparing live quotes against a reference price. Until we do that, this column reports what each provider is willing to admit, which is itself informative.