Start with the cost of buying and selling
Every provider charges on two sides of a trade, and the gap between a cheap trade and an expensive one decides what a frequent buyer pays over a year. Across the providers in our rankings, taker fees run 0% to 5.5%. That is the whole spread, from the lowest charge to the highest, across a wide field of accounts. A long read of the rankings is the fastest way to find where each provider sits inside it.
Look at the numbers on your own screen before trading, because the fee shown at signup can differ from the one applied to a specific coin or trade size.
Count the coins, not the promises
A large coin list looks generous, but a wide list is only useful if the coins you actually want are tradeable at a sensible cost. Across the providers we cover, the number of coins runs 1 to 9,000,000. That range counts the most and least coin choices in our data, so a provider offering a few coins sits at one end and one offering a very long list at the other.
Check the coin count for the specific account, because a figure on a landing page may cover a different plan or region.
bunq pairs crypto with a euro account
bunq is built as a daily money account first, with crypto added to a wider set of assets. Its markets include stocks, etfs and crypto, and the platform runs on the bunq app alongside a mastercard card, which is a debit card of the credit type. The trading venue is a cex setup, so orders go through a central exchange rather than peer to peer.
On cost, the maker fee is 0.25% to 1.99% and the taker fee is 0.25% to 1.99%. The account side is light: the monthly fee is €0 and the annual fee is €0, with a minimum deposit of €10.
bunq suits readers who want crypto to sit alongside ordinary spending, and the details are in our bunq review.
eToro treats the balance as cash
eToro is set up differently, as a cash-management account where the USD balance earns interest. The access terms are simple: interest on the USD cash balance, no lock-in, withdrawals at any time, calculated daily and paid monthly. The account fee is $0, and the account kind is cash management.
That structure favours readers who want to hold a cash balance alongside investments, and our eToro review covers how the account works in practice.
Where your money sits and who backs it
The safety question is not about the coins but about the account holding the cash. bunq is regulated by De Nederlandsche Bank and SIPC, and the legal entity is bunq B.V., based in the NL.
Two separate schemes apply. Deposits sit under EU DGS up to EUR 100,000, while investments sit under EU ICS up to EUR 20,000. The distinction matters: the deposit limit covers cash you hold, and the investor limit covers the value of securities or crypto exposed to the platform.
bunq also publishes its banking licences, including SIREN 893970970, W0086933I, 909737 and MI - 2628476. Providers that publish licence numbers in this way make it easier to check the register yourself.
How the balance behaves before you trade
The account type shapes what happens to money that is not yet invested. bunq runs as an easy access account with a variable rate and a headline rate of 3.01%, with access terms that allow free withdrawals within a limited monthly allowance and interest paid weekly. A credit card means spending and saving draw on the same balance.
eToro takes the other approach and pays on the USD cash balance without any lock-in, calculated daily and paid monthly. Comparing these two models matters as much as the trading fee, because it decides when money is available and how the idle balance is treated.
Costs outside the trade
Trading fees are rarely the only charge. bunq adds an FX fee of 0.5% to 3% and covers 8 currencies, and its feature set includes crypto, fractional shares and mobile app. Support runs through email and help centre, and monthly payments are available on the account.
Add the minimum deposit of €10 to the picture. A low minimum and no monthly fee make small, regular investments easier, while a higher minimum suits larger one-off buys.
A section-by-section routine
Compare in the same order every time. Fees first, and note whether the maker and taker rates are the same, since a flat rate keeps costs predictable. Coins second, and check the specific coins you plan to hold. Safety third, and separate deposit protection from investor protection rather than treating them as one number. Account behaviour fourth, including withdrawal terms, whether a minimum deposit applies and what happens to idle balances. Access fifth, covering the app, card and support routes, and check that the provider suits your market, since bunq lists expats among the groups it serves.
Then read the individual write-ups. Our bunq review and eToro review set out the detail behind these figures, and the crypto rankings show where each provider falls against the rest. Providers built around self-custody work differently from a euro account, so the Trezor review and Bitpanda review are worth reading if holding keys yourself matters to you.