Broker comparison Switzerland

Stock investors need a securities dealer, often simply called a broker, online broker or discount broker. Here we help you select one for yourself.

Swiss brokers sometimes have large cost differences between one another. It is therefore worth taking a closer look at the different offers available to you. However, it can happen that you are overwhelmed with the many possibilities available to you. Many Swiss brokers have complicated cost models, but most of the time they only make a difference when you are a pro traders (several trades per day).

Swiss investors who use the Obermatt investment method have it easier because they only buy new stocks a few times a year. If you only trade a few times a year, choosing a broker in Switzerland doesn't look so complicated anymore.

How to use the broker comparisons

On the Swiss website moneyland.ch, you can compare all Swiss brokers by entering your personalized details on the first page. Investors who invest with the Obermatt method do not have to fill out the whole form, only the values for "Total amount of Swiss equities", "Number of transaction of Swiss equities" and "Value per transaction Swiss equities". These three values are enough to start your comparison. If you want to be more precise, you can differentiate by region. However, this is not really necessary, because the prices for foreign stocks are relatively similar to Swiss stocks, so they do not carry much weight.

How to find the right broker for the long term?

What you have to bear in mind when making this selection is that a portfolio can increase in value and in the number of transactions over the years. Therefore it is worthwhile to start a second or third query to see what the prices look like in the future, i.e. whether the broker is still cheap even if the portfolio and the activities have grown.

Are there differences in terms of international exchanges and stock coverage?

Most Swiss brokers provide all the most relevant international stock exchanges and thus have similar offers. Therefore, the choice of broker is not particularly important in this regard. There are some brokers who offer a wider range of stock exchanges, but this is mostly not particularly important for the occasional investor. The Swiss branch of Interactive Brokers with its parent company in the US but with Swiss license and regulations, stands out, covering by far the largest number of stock exchanges worldwide.

So, which brokers do we recommend?

We have calculated the costs of the various Swiss brokers using typical investor profiles at moneyland and come to the conclusion that you are on the right track with any of these brokers:

Swissquote (listed on the Swiss stock exchange, 70% in free float)
Postfinance (based on the Swissquote platform)
TradeDirect (belongs to a Swiss cantonal bank with state guarantees)
CornerTrade (based on the platform of Saxo, which is 50% owned by China)
Cash (100% owned by a Brazilian family with little publicly available information)

Degiro and Interactive Brokers are not available on moneyland because they are not based in Switzerland and therefore not regulated by Swiss authorities. However, these two brokers are the cheapest in Switzerland. With Interactive Brokers it should be noted that registration and operation are somewhat more complicated than the others. This is actually a broker for professionals and could intimidate a beginner. But the cost / benefit ratio is the best out of all the comparisons. There is caveat. Interactive Brokers charges heavily for cash accounts. If you have a couple of ten thousands on your account, it gests quickly more expensive than with the other versions.

Swiss tax statements are not unimportant

Virtually all of the above brokers also provide a tax statement, which costs between CHF 50 and 150+ (sometimes depending on the amount of shares). Degiro and Interactive Brokers are the only ones that do not provide this, as they ompany is based abroad. In principle, it is also possible to collect the information that is important for tax purposes from the brokers' document file yourself. This is the cheapest option. If you want to do this yourself, you can just as well use Degiro. The more shares you have, the more labor-intensive this task becomes. A simpler way is just to orders the tax excerpt in January. This makes it easier to fill out your tax returns.

Which broker do we suggest?

Our recommendation is simple. From the brokers mentioned above, all are possible. You can enter your specific data yourself at moneyland and see which broker suits you best, you can hardly make a wrong choice.

However, you can also simply select one of the brokers listed here because the differences are not particularly large and the prices can always change in the future anyway.