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Flatex Review & Rating 2024

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Flatex is a German-based broker and is considered safe because it has a long track record. This brokerage firm is listed on multiple stock exchanges, has a banking background, and discloses its finances and is regulated by a high-level regulatory body. In this Flatex review you will find out all the details about this broker and whether it is worth opening an account there. It's going to be a neutral review. AtoZ Markets is not responsible for Any opinion given by the writer.

Company

Flatex has been active as a low-budget broker in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands since 2014. The predecessor of the German Flatex was founded in 1999 under the name PRE.IPO AG, after which the name was changed to Flatex in 2006. You have already won several awards in Germany. 

Handelsblatt has named Flatex the best online broker 6 times in a row, and Euro am Sonntag has awarded it the "Cheaper Broker" award 3 times in a row. Flatex has been a subsidiary of the listed Fintech Group AG since 2014. In Germany they already hold 25% of the market share. DEGIRO has been taken over by Flatex since 2020. However, recently there have been increasing negative reports of price increases. 

Read Also: Is XTB a Scam?

At Flatex you can trade CFDs in stocks, indices, commodities, interest rate products and forex.

Read in this Flatex review whether this broker is still suitable for you.

Flatex Pros and Cons

Pros and cons

Pros: Flatex has low fees for mutual funds and bonds . The company also has a banking license, is listed on several stock exchanges and has a strong parent company. It has many high quality educational tools.

Cons: On the flip side, the fees for stocks, ETFs, and forex are high. Opening an account for non-German residents is overly complicated and takes several days, even weeks. You can only use bank transfers for deposits and withdrawals. As most of the services are offered in German, a good knowledge of German is required.

Flatex Review: Trading Platform

Flatex trading platform

Flatex's web trading platform, WebFiliale, is well designed with different order types and a great search engine. On the other hand, there are no price alerts and it is only available in German.

Advantages:

  • User friendly
  • Registration in two steps (more secure)
  • Good search function

Disadvantage: 

  • No clear fee report available
  • Limited adaptability (for diagrams, workspace)
  • No price announcements

Flatex offers various trading platforms:

  • Web: WebTrader
  • Mobile: Flatex
  • Desktop: flatex dealer 2.0 or TeleTrader workstation
  • CFD and FX trading
  • Web: CFD-FX trading platform
  • Mobile: CFD2GO

Before writing this Flatex review, we tested WebTrader, Flatex's own web trading platform that is only available in German.

Ease of use and operation

Flatex's web trading platform is simple and great for doing trades. It's well designed, but the interface lacks customization options.

Registration and security

To log into the WebTrader, the platform only asks for your username and password. Nevertheless, you need either your physical iTAN card or a one-time generated code via flateXSecure app for each executable transaction. This is also required if you want to log into the CFD trading platform in order to trade CFDs and FX.

Search functions

The WebFiliale search engine works well: all you have to do is enter the name of the product you are looking for. If you click on 'All Results', you will be shown all related products separately according to their type such as stocks, bonds, etc. The results also tell you which exchange the product comes from and in which currency it is traded.

Open order

You can use the following order types, including some advanced order types:

  • market
  • Limitation
  • Market stop
  • Stop limit
  • Overrun stop
  • Overrun stop limitation
  • OCO
  • OCO limit

Order terms are also available to make your trading more convenient:

  • Good till time (GTT)
  • Fill or Kill (FOK)
  • Immediately or cancel (IOC)
  • All or none (AON)

You can also choose between different stock exchanges when placing your order. This is definitely an exceptional function, as it is generally not available with other brokers, except for Comdirect or Interactive Brokers.

Alerts and notifications

You can't set price notifications and notifications.

Portfolio and fee reports

Flatex has a clear portfolio report: just click on 'Tax Postings' to see the profit / loss and the taxes you have to pay.

On the other hand, you cannot see how much fees you paid for your business. This significantly reduces the transparency of Flatex's fee structure.

Flatex mobile trading app

Flatex mobile app

image credit: Flatex

Similar to the web trading platform, we tested Flatex's mobile trading platform, which is intended for stock, ETF, bond and mutual fund trading.

Flatex's mobile trading platform is available on both iOS and Android, we tested it on Android.

The Flatex mobile application can be thought of as a miniaturized version of WebFiliale: it is exactly the same as the web platform when it comes to functionality and available assets. This is a good thing, because brokers often severely limit the functionalities of the mobile trading platforms.

Flatex Review: Account Types

Depending on the ownership structure, you can choose between three types of accounts:

  • Individually
  • joint
  • Company account

When you open an account with Flatex, your account will by default be a cash and a securities account. After that, you can activate the Forex or CFD accounts separately if you want to trade those assets.

If you are new to the Forex and / or CFD market you should start with a free demo account in order to learn to trade with a specific strategy. If you have never acted before you will be overwhelmed by the opportunities to make or lose a lot of money in a short period of time.

Once you have learned a certain strategy and have good risk and money management with a live account start.

100 USD or EUR is enough to practice, but if you want to make a living from your trading, be prepared to fund your customer account with at least 10,000 USD / EUR / GBP. This is the time to open a Standard Account. If you do not have that much money to start with the micro account, you can trade a lot micro (0.01) and start trading with real money step by step.

People of Islamic faith can open a swap-free account, according to Sharia law. The spread on the swap free account is 2.5 pips and the minimum lot size is 0.1 (1 mini lot). You will not have any rollover or swap fees associated with this account. If you'd like to get in touch with your account manager to open a swap-free micro lot account please. 

All accounts can be held in EUR / USD / GBP. If you are a money manager and want to trade multiple accounts of your customers,friends and relatives, please open a MAM account.

How to Open Your Account

If you are from Germany, the account is opened completely digitally and conveniently via video identification.

Opening an account for non-German citizens is quite complicated. For us it took more than 2 weeks and involved notarial work. After registering online, we had to send our notarized documents to Flatex by post.

After checking, Flatex sent us our access data and an iTANCard by post. The iTANCard is a security card that contains codes that are required for business transactions and logins. The FlateXSecure app can replace the functions of the iTANCard, but it's safer if you have both available when you need it.

Account Base Currencies

At Flatex you can only manage your accounts in EUR. This can lead to expensive deposits: if you deposit from a non-EUR account, you will be charged a conversion fee.

Why is this important? For two reasons. If you fund your trading account in the same currency as your bank account, or if you trade assets in the same currency as the base currency of your trading account, you will not have to pay a conversion fee.

A convenient way to save currency conversion fees is to open a multi-currency bank account with a digital bank. Revolut or Transferwise offer bank accounts in multiple currencies with favorable exchange rates as well as free or cheap international bank transfers. Opening an account on the phone only takes a few minutes.

Flatex Fees & Commissions

Flatex's trading fees are high for Forex, stocks, and ETFs. CFD fees are average, while mutual fund and bond fees are low.

Stock and ETF fees

Flatex generally has high inventory and ETF commissions, but they are lower when you are trading German assets.

Commissions for stocks and ETF trades with €2,000:

US stocks - €17.5

German stocks - €6.5

You have to pay a flat fee to trade stocks, which is quite unusual as most European brokers use volume-based prices to trade stocks. Flat fees are great when you are trading higher volumes.

Flatex share fees

If you trade with ETFA savings plans, the fee is €1.5 per trade or is completely free for 350 selected ETFs.

If you prefer trading stocks on margin or short selling, you should check out Flatex financing rates.

When trading on margin or short selling a stock, funding or margin rates are charged. This basically means borrowing money or stocks from your broker in order to trade. You will have to pay interest on this borrowed money/share. This is the funding rate. It can be a significant part of your trading costs.

Flatex's financing rates are high.

Forex fees

Flatex forex fees are high.

To get a clear picture of forex fees, we have calculated a forex benchmark fee for the major currency pairs. This catch-all benchmark includes commissions, spreads and financing costs for all brokers.

Weekly Fees for a $20,000 Position and Leverage 1:30:

  • EUR USD - $ 24.6
  • GBP/USD - $20.5
  • AUD/USD - $20.5 

CFD fees

Flatex has average CFD trading fees: US and UK equity CFDs have lower fees than Comdirect. At Degiro, the commission for these products is even lower.

In order to have a clear understanding of CFD fees, we have calculated a CFD benchmark fee for the selected products. This catch-all benchmark includes commissions, spreads and financing costs for all brokers.

Other fees:

Surprisingly, Flatex doesn't charge any fees other than trading fees. This is a big plus in the rating.

No additional fees

  • No account management fees
  • No inactivity fees
  • No deposit fees
  • No withdrawal fees

What is the minimum deposit at Flatex?

There is no minimum deposit at Flatex. This is a good feature when you want to trade smaller amounts.

Customer Support

You can contact Flatex via:

  • phone
  • email

Flatex has great telephone support, but most of it is in German. We came across several operators who were able to help us in English which was a big surprise. We were connected within a minute and their responses were helpful.

The email support also provides relevant answers. The speed is great too as we received responses within 1 day.

Customer service is available Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. in the GMT + 1 time zone if you are already a Flatex user. If you are not yet a customer, the opening time is Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. We missed the 24/7 availability and a live chat service would also be helpful.

 

Is Flatex Regulated? 

Flatex regulations

Flatex is known as a reliable broker. The broker is fully regulated and authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under number 501320 and in England (Wales) as Ltd under number 6837942. Furthermore, Flatex is regulated in Australia (ASIC, registration number 421210), Japan, Hong Kong and Germany (BaFin). All customer funds are 100% segregated.

In the event of insolvency, the securities are safely deposited with a separate custodian bank and your bank balance is guaranteed up to an amount of 100,000 euros. 

Please note that this does not cover your investments. Flatex is prohibited from lending securities. The registration process takes place via its own security app called Flatex Xsecure. This works very quickly and makes the registry safe.

Conclusion

To summarize our Flatex review, we can say that this German broker is ideal because they offer fixed prices and therefore do not charge a fixed amount per month. Although prices have increased lately, Flatex is still an attractive broker with its good service and platforms. So if you are looking for a cheap and reliable broker with little educational needs, Flatex might be for you.

Overview

Company
8/10
Trust
7/10
Trading Platform
7/10
Account Types
7/10
Costs
7/10
Customer Support
7/10
Regulation
7/10

Reviewed By

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