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Swissquote Review: Swiss Bank Licences, Fees and Execution Tested

Broker Reviews editorial team
Broker Reviews editorial team Broker research desk
6 January 2026
Updated 28 July 2026
22 min read

Swissquote is a licensed Swiss bank that runs a brokerage, not a brokerage with a bank-like feel, and that distinction decides what happens to your cash if the firm fails. It has held a full FINMA banking licence since 2000 and its shares trade on the SIX Swiss Exchange under SQN, forcing audited reporting most brokers never face. We opened a live Premium account with $1,000 and tested it through the first quarter of 2026: 50 orders, a deposit, a withdrawal, several support contacts. Execution was among the fastest we have measured; pricing was among the worst. And the protection this broker is famous for does not cover a UK client. Our weightings are in our rating methodology.

Disclosure: this review is information, not investment advice. We may receive a commission if you open an account through links on this page. It does not affect our findings, our scores or the order in which brokers appear. Read how we make money.

Overall rating7.9/10
Founded1996; banking licence 2000
HeadquartersGland, Vaud, Switzerland
Main licencesFINMA banking licence (Swissquote Bank Ltd); FCA 562170 (Swissquote Ltd); CSSF/ECB banking licence (Swissquote Bank Europe SA); DFSA FD001438; SFC AZV127; plus MFSA, MAS, CySEC and FSCA entities
Minimum deposit$1,000 (Premium)
Spread from1.3 pips on EUR/USD, Premium tier
Maximum leverage1:30 retail; 1:100 on a Professional account
Instruments3,000,000+ depending on entity and residence
Swap-free accountAvailable on request; no published Shariah certification
Retail loss rate81.7% of retail accounts lose money (Swissquote Ltd, UK, at July 2026); 55.05% on the EU entity

Pros and cons

What works:

  • A genuine Swiss banking licence from FINMA, plus a second banking licence in Luxembourg under the CSSF and the European Central Bank
  • Listed on SIX since 2000 with KPMG-audited accounts — disclosure almost no retail broker matches
  • Nine regulated entities; we found no enforcement action, fine or licence restriction against any of them
  • More than 3 million instruments, including real shares with dividend and voting rights
  • Execution averaged about 9 milliseconds across our 50 test orders, with 98% filled without requote
  • MetaTrader 4 and 5 alongside Advanced Trader, so existing indicators and expert advisors transfer
  • Lenient inactivity terms: nothing until six months, then capped at 10 units of the account currency

What does not:

  • Spreads lagged all three comparison brokers on all seven instruments sampled — EUR/USD at 1.3 pips against 0.6 at Saxo Bank
  • $1,000 to open, against $0 at IG and $200 at IC Markets, with competitive pricing gated behind $10,000
  • Withdrawals by bank transfer only, and ours took five business days against a same-day send claim
  • UK clients are not covered by the Swiss deposit guarantee; the UK entity is an FCA investment firm, not a bank
  • Quarterly custody fees on Swiss securities accounts, CHF 15 to CHF 50
  • Account opening took three business days, against hours at some competitors
  • No ASIC entity, so Australian residents are served offshore without local recourse
  • The swap-free account is unadvertised, its administrative fees undocumented, and uncertified

Company information

Swissquote Group Holding was founded in 1996 by Marc Bürki and Paolo Buzzi, starting as a financial information platform before becoming a digital bank. Swissquote Bank Ltd is headquartered in Gland, canton of Vaud; Bürki remains chief executive; the group employs more than 1,200 people across eight countries.

The SIX listing is what matters for assessing risk: Swissquote publishes audited accounts anyone can read. The 2025 results, published after our original testing, showed net revenue of CHF 723 million, up 9.4%, pre-tax profit of CHF 420 million, up 21.6%, and net profit of CHF 366.4 million. Client assets grew 16% to CHF 88.7 billion. Guidance for 2026 is CHF 760 million of revenue against CHF 385 million of pre-tax profit, the lower profit reflecting planned investment rather than deterioration.

One figure needs explaining. Client accounts passed 1.15 million during 2025 against roughly 650,000 a year earlier, but that is not organic growth alone: in July 2025 Swissquote bought PostFinance’s 50% stake in the Yuh app for CHF 180 million, consolidating Yuh’s 342,369 accounts and booking a one-off CHF 50 million gain. Part of the price was paid in treasury shares, raising PostFinance’s stake in Swissquote. Otherwise we found no change of control, acquisition or rebranding.

ItemDetail
Legal nameSwissquote Group Holding Ltd
Banking entitySwissquote Bank Ltd
Founded1996; banking licence 2000
HeadquartersGland, Vaud, Switzerland
Chief executiveMarc Bürki, co-founder
ListingSIX Swiss Exchange, ticker SQN, since May 2000
AuditorKPMG
Employees1,200+
Net revenue (FY2025)CHF 723 million
Net profit (FY2025)CHF 366.4 million
Client assetsCHF 88.7 billion (end-2025)
Client accounts1.15 million+

Who Swissquote suits, and who it does not

Swissquote fits an investor who ranks institutional safety above cost and has the balance to absorb the difference. If you want one account covering real equities, ETFs, bonds, funds, forex and crypto, intend to hold for months rather than scalp, and would rather your cash sat with a supervised bank, the proposition is coherent. The audited public accounts let you verify solvency yourself.

It is a poor fit for cost-sensitive and high-frequency traders, for whom the spread gap compounds; for small starting balances, given the $1,000 entry and the $10,000 needed for competitive pricing; for anyone wanting card or e-wallet withdrawals; and for Australian residents, who have no local entity to complain to.

Licensing and regulation

Swissquote Bank Ltd holds a full Swiss banking licence from FINMA — a banking authorisation, not a brokerage permission, carrying capital adequacy, liquidity and governance obligations most retail brokers never face. We verified it on FINMA’s register during our original testing and again at publication in July 2026; active both times. Re-checking the corporate structure also turned up nine regulated entities rather than five, including a second banking licence in Luxembourg under the CSSF and the European Central Bank.

EntityRegulatorLicenceTier
Swissquote Bank LtdFINMA (Switzerland)Full banking licenceTier one
Swissquote LtdFCA (United Kingdom)562170Tier one
Swissquote Bank Europe SACSSF and ECB (Luxembourg)Full banking licenceTier one
Swissquote Financial Services (Malta) LtdMFSA (Malta)Investment servicesTier one
Swissquote Capital Markets LtdCySEC (Cyprus)Investment firmTier one
Swissquote Pte LtdMAS (Singapore)Capital markets servicesTier one
Swissquote Asia LtdSFC (Hong Kong)AZV127, Type 3Tier one
Swissquote MEA LtdDFSA (Dubai)FD001438, Category 3ATier two
Swissquote South Africa (Pty) LtdFSCA (South Africa)Financial services providerTier two

Which entity will hold your account

This determines your compensation scheme and complaints route, so it matters more than the length of the licence table. UK clients contract with Swissquote Ltd, company number 07710095, at Boston House, 63-64 New Broad Street, London EC2M 1JJ; EU and EEA clients with Swissquote Bank Europe SA in Luxembourg; Swiss-onboarded clients with Swissquote Bank Ltd. There is no ASIC-authorised entity, so Australian residents are served offshore without access to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

The critical point, and the one most reviews get wrong: Swissquote Ltd in the UK is not a bank. It is an FCA-authorised investment firm. A UK client gets FCA client-money segregation and FSCS cover, not the Swiss deposit guarantee. Verify by entering 562170 at register.fca.org.uk, or check the Swiss licence at finma.ch.

Warnings and supervisory findings

We found no enforcement action, fine, suspension or licence restriction against any Swissquote entity, and no entry for Swissquote on FINMA’s warning list. Two things did turn up, and both belong in front of a reader who will find them anyway.

First, the FCA warning list carries a clone-firm alert titled “Swissquotes Ltd / SwissFutureFX”, published 9 June 2020 and last updated 19 July 2021, naming the fake domains swissquotes.de, swissfuturefx.com and swissfuture-fx.com along with a London address and two phone numbers. The criminals behind it quote Swissquote’s genuine reference number, 562170, to look legitimate. This is a warning about impersonators using the brand, not against Swissquote. The defence is unglamorous, and it is what basic scam checks amount to: reach the broker through its own domain, and check any reference number on the FCA register rather than trusting one quoted to you.

Second, disclosed because it involves the home regulator: FINMA used its 2025 annual supervisory assessment letter to press Swissquote to reduce the volume of suspicious activity reports it files with Switzerland’s money laundering reporting office, with particular attention to the Yuh app. This is supervisory correspondence, not enforcement — no penalty, no restriction, no finding against the licence — and reporting on it noted Swissquote’s own systems had not been compromised. Chief executive Marc Bürki attributed the volume to AI-assisted fraud, saying the firm acted against more than 600 websites impersonating Swissquote during 2025. Read alongside the clone-firm alert, this is a heavily impersonated brand under pressure to police that impersonation faster, not a firm mistreating clients. It costs the regulation category its perfect mark — 9.5 rather than 10 — but does not change what a reader risks today.

Opening an account and verification

We opened a live account in January 2026, and it was slower and more intrusive than most brokers — what a banking licence both buys and costs. Alongside name and address, the form asked for source of income, size of assets, trading experience and the account’s purpose: standard in Swiss banking, unusual in retail forex.

Documents required were a passport or national ID, recent proof of address, and in some cases proof of source of funds. Verification took three business days, against roughly one day at IC Markets and a few hours at IG. A demo account is available while the application is pending. Registration and correspondence are English, French or German only.

Account types

Four forex and CFD tiers, separated by balance rather than execution model. Every tier gets the same platforms, instruments, expert advisor support and permission for high-frequency strategies; the balance sets only what you pay. We tested Premium, and re-checked the tier names against Swissquote’s own trading conditions pages in July 2026 — unchanged since our testing.

AccountMinimumEUR/USD spread fromLeverageFX commissionShare CFD commission
Premium$1,0001.3 pips1:30None0.15%, min $15
Prime$5,000See note below1:30None0.12%, min $12
Elite$10,0000.0 pips1:30None0.09%, min $9
ProfessionalBespokeBespoke1:100BespokeBespoke

One figure we cannot stand behind. Our original testing recorded the Prime spread starting at 0.6 pips, but Swissquote’s live pricing tables did not render a verifiable figure when we re-checked in July 2026, and third-party sources disagree, several quoting 1.0 pips. Treat the Prime spread as not verified at publication and confirm it before funding that tier. The share CFD commissions above are new detail from the published schedule: the original review called the accounts commission-free, true for forex and CFDs on currencies, metals, indices and commodities, but not share CFDs.

Swap-free accounts

Swissquote offers a swap-free account on request, removing overnight interest on positions held past the daily rollover. The audience is broader than often assumed: traders observing a religious prohibition on interest, funds under interest-avoiding mandates, and traders who want carry stripped out so profit and loss reflects price movement alone.

Mechanically it is simple — ask support to convert an existing forex account, with the $1,000 minimum and all instruments unchanged. The reservations are real. Swap-free is not cost-free: Swissquote may apply administrative charges on long-held positions in place of swap, and we could not obtain a documented fee schedule or grace period. The facility is not advertised prominently, and we found no certification from a recognised Shariah board. Anyone converting for religious reasons should get the fee terms in writing and take their own scholarly advice; the missing certification is a transparency gap, not evidence of non-compliance.

Fees and trading costs

This is the weakest part of the offer and the category that moved our overall score. Swissquote prices forex as an all-in spread with no separate commission, which keeps the arithmetic simple. The problem is the number.

Spreads

Sampling across sessions in February 2026 on the Premium tier, we recorded live EUR/USD between 1.3 and 1.8 pips during active hours, against an industry norm nearer 0.7, widening to 3 to 4 pips around scheduled data. Typical spreads in the active European session, in pips unless stated:

InstrumentSwissquote (Premium)IG (Standard)Saxo Bank (Classic)IC Markets (Standard)
EUR/USD1.30.90.60.8
GBP/USD1.60.90.80.8
USD/JPY1.90.80.70.8
AUD/USD1.60.80.70.8
USD/CHF1.71.20.90.9
Gold (XAU/USD)0.580.30.350.2
Oil (WTI)0.060.0280.050.03

Swissquote came last on every instrument against all three comparators, and on USD/JPY cost more than double IC Markets and Saxo Bank. For an investor placing a handful of trades a month this is a rounding error against the safety on offer. For an active trader placing dozens a day it is the most consequential number on this page.

Other charges

We left positions open across several days to measure overnight financing and found swap rates within the industry norm rather than punitive, with current values published daily in the platform.

Bank transfer deposits are free. Card deposits attract 2.2% to 2.5% from the issuer, partly rebated in some locations. Withdrawals cost EUR 10 through the Luxembourg entity, or EUR 2 for euro and $10 for dollar withdrawals through the Swiss entity. Inactivity applies to forex accounts only, after six months with no trades and no open positions, capped at 10 units of the account currency per month — more forgiving than brokers charging after two or three.

Custody fees need a correction. Swissquote Bank in Switzerland charges 0.025% of assets per quarter on securities accounts, minimum CHF 15 and maximum CHF 50 — CHF 60 to CHF 200 a year. Swissquote Bank Europe charges none. The original review presented this as a flat group-wide charge; your entity decides whether you pay it.

Desktop platforms

Four options, and unusually for a bank-owned broker, MetaTrader is among them. MT4 and MT5 both run on Swissquote, with more than 333 tradable products on MT5, and we hit no connection or execution problems across a week of testing. Indicators and expert advisors transfer — an advantage over Saxo Bank, where they do not.

Advanced Trader is the in-house platform for forex and CFDs: a clean interface with more than 80 technical indicators and Autochartist built in. eTrading handles shares, bonds, ETFs and funds; the data is accurate, but the design feels dated and it is slow.

Mobile apps

Swissquote splits mobile across the main Swissquote app for banking and investing, CFXD for forex and CFDs, and the standard MetaTrader apps. The main app is carefully designed and displays data clearly, but its Google Play rating sat around 3 stars when we tested in February 2026.

CFXD is easy to use, but its charting tools are thin against the desktop platform; if your process depends on detailed chart work, use the MetaTrader app instead. Users also described slow performance and delayed execution after the updates at the end of 2025 and start of 2026. We did not hit these consistently ourselves, but they recurred often enough to suggest they were not isolated.

Trading tools

Instrument breadth is the standout: depending on entity and residence, Swissquote reaches beyond 3 million instruments. Forex covers more than 80 pairs, and liquidity on the majors was excellent throughout our testing. Equities and funds reach more than 60 global markets with over 3,000 shares and ETFs — real shares, not CFDs, so you own the asset and receive dividends — including more than 300 iShares products and 90 from Lyxor. Crypto runs to 52 coins through the in-house SQX platform, held by a licensed bank rather than an unregulated exchange, which is a materially different custody proposition.

Asset classApproximate countNotes
Currency pairs80+Majors, minors, emerging
Shares and ETFs3,000+Real ownership across 60+ markets
Cryptocurrencies52Via the SQX platform
Commodities20+Metals, energy, agricultural
Indices30+CFDs
BondsAvailableDepends on entity
Options and futuresAvailableDepends on entity and region

Order execution

We placed 50 orders on the live account, and execution was among the best we have measured. Swissquote advertises an average under 9 milliseconds, which our testing found close to accurate in normal conditions. About 98% filled without requote, and fewer than 18% saw negative slippage, pointing to deep liquidity from multiple providers.

Order types cover market, limit, stop, stop-limit and OCO, across three execution modes: Spot, Market Best and Instant Execution. Quality matched IG and Saxo Bank. This is the strongest argument for tolerating the spreads — a wide but reliably filled quote can beat a tight quote that slips.

Deposits

We deposited $1,000 by bank transfer and it took three business days to appear — slow against brokers offering instant funding, but normal for international transfers. Swissquote accepts bank transfer and Visa or Mastercard only. There are no e-wallets, which many traders will regard as a real gap.

MethodMinimumFeeProcessing
Bank transfer$1,000Free2-5 business days
Debit or credit card$1,0002.2%-2.5% (card issuer)Instant

Withdrawals

Bank transfer only — no cards, no e-wallets. One of the weaker parts of the client experience, and worth weighing before funding.

When we tested in February 2026 we requested $300 through the website. Swissquote states funds are sent the same day; ours reached our bank account in about five business days — normal for international transfers, but far slower than the brokers paying out to e-wallets within hours. Fees are EUR 10 through Swissquote Bank Europe, or EUR 2 for euro and $10 for dollar withdrawals through the Swiss entity.

What we did not encounter matters as much as the timing: no unexplained delays, no documents demanded at the withdrawal stage, none of the friction that characterises brokers with a poor payout record. The five days reflected the banking system, not obstruction.

Customer support

We contacted support through several channels in February 2026 and the experience was consistently good. Phone support runs 08:00 to 22:00 CET, Monday to Friday; we waited one to two minutes, and the representative was knowledgeable rather than scripted. Live chat responded within seconds; email took around one business day.

A separate dealing desk operates 24 hours from Sunday 23:00 to Friday 23:00 CET for placing forex, CFD or crypto orders by phone — useful if your platform fails mid-position. The limitations are language and hours: English, French and German only, and general support is not 24/7, so an Asian-session client may wait until European morning for anything the dealing desk cannot handle.

ChannelHoursLanguagesResponse time
Phone08:00-22:00 CET, Mon-FriEnglish, French, German1-2 minutes
Dealing desk24h, Sunday-FridayEnglish, FrenchImmediate
Live chatBusiness hoursEnglish, French, GermanSeconds
Email24/7 intakeEnglish, French, GermanOne business day

Research and education

Research mixes in-house analysis with third-party content and is better than most brokers offer. The daily Morning News report tracks events likely to move positions, and an in-house AI tool generates trade ideas from trend analysis. Autochartist is the strongest tool, scanning continuously for chart patterns, Fibonacci formations and key support and resistance levels. Treat its output as a prompt for your own analysis rather than a signal — pattern recognition identifies shapes, not outcomes.

Education covers courses, webinars, seminars, a glossary, eBooks and substantial YouTube content, all in English, French or German. The transparency worth weighting most heavily, though, is the audited accounts: a SIX-listed broker publishing KPMG-audited reports lets you assess its solvency directly.

Fund safety and protections

This is Swissquote’s strongest area, and the one most often described inaccurately — including in the original version of this review. The headline “CHF 100,000 Swiss deposit protection” is real but does not apply to every client.

Swissquote holds three separate banking or investment authorisations with three separate protection regimes, each covering only its own clients. Cover applies to cash balances; nothing protects you against trading losses.

Your entityStatusCash protectionScheme
Swissquote Bank Ltd (Switzerland)Licensed bankCHF 100,000 per depositoresisuisse
Swissquote Bank Europe SA (Luxembourg)Licensed bank, CSSF and ECBEUR 100,000 per depositorFGDL, payout within seven working days
Swissquote Ltd (United Kingdom)FCA investment firm, not a bankGBP 85,000FSCS, plus CASS client-money segregation

For a UK reader this is the practical correction: you are an investment-firm client, not a Swiss bank depositor. Your money is segregated from Swissquote’s own funds under FCA client money rules, with FSCS cover up to GBP 85,000 if the firm fails — solid protection, comparable to any FCA-regulated competitor, but not the Swiss deposit guarantee. Anyone choosing Swissquote for Swiss banking protection while opening a UK account would be buying something other than what they think.

Two points apply regardless of entity. Under Swiss banking law, securities in custody are segregated from the bank’s balance sheet and fall outside the bankruptcy estate — so a share portfolio is protected by segregation rather than capped at a compensation limit, a stronger position than the CHF 100,000 figure suggests. Negative balance protection applies to retail clients under UK and EU rules, so losses cannot exceed your balance.

Verdict

Swissquote scores 7.9 out of 10. It earns 9.5 for regulation, 9.0 for research and transparency, 8.5 for platforms and execution, 8.0 for support, 7.5 for withdrawals, and 5.0 for trading costs.

That cost score is what separates our figure from the original Arabic review’s 4.3 out of 5. We do not carry scores across; we re-derive them on six weighted categories, and trading costs carry 20% here. Swissquote came last against every comparator on every instrument sampled, and a category weighted at a fifth of the total cannot absorb that. Nothing about its safety was marked down.

The trade-off is unusually clean. You pay roughly double the spread of a cost-leading broker in our broker reviews in exchange for a supervised bank, audited public accounts, compensation cover in three jurisdictions, 3 million instruments and execution matching the best we have tested. For a long-horizon investor placing occasional trades, that is a reasonable price for a materially safer institution. For an active trader placing dozens a day it is poor value, and IC Markets or Saxo Bank will serve you better on cost.

Trading leveraged products carries a high risk of losing money rapidly. Swissquote’s own disclosures state that 81.7% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with its UK entity, and 55.05% with its EU entity. Most retail clients lose money on these products. Never trade with money you cannot afford to lose, and treat the safety of the institution as separate from the risk of the instruments — a well-regulated bank does not make a leveraged position any safer.

Is Swissquote trustworthy?

Is Swissquote a scam?

No, and it is unusually easy to check. Swissquote Bank Ltd holds a full FINMA banking licence, the group’s shares trade publicly on SIX, and its accounts are audited by KPMG and published. A firm submitting to banking supervision, exchange disclosure and external audit is structurally poorly placed to run a fraud. That is not a promise of profit, though — the majority of retail accounts trading CFDs here lose money.

Is there an FCA warning against Swissquote?

There is one that mentions the name, and it is worth understanding rather than ignoring. The alert titled “Swissquotes Ltd / SwissFutureFX” targets criminals who quote Swissquote’s genuine reference number, 562170, to appear authorised — a warning about impersonators, not about the broker, detailed under Licensing and regulation above. Anyone dealing with the clone would have no access to the Financial Ombudsman Service or the FSCS.

Has FINMA taken action against Swissquote?

Not enforcement action. There is no fine, suspension or licence restriction, and Swissquote does not appear on FINMA’s warning list. FINMA did use its 2025 supervisory assessment letter to press Swissquote to reduce the volume of suspicious activity reports it files, focusing on the Yuh app — routine correspondence between a regulator and a bank it supervises, set out in full above. It costs the regulation category its perfect mark but does not change what you risk today.

Is my money protected by Swiss deposit insurance?

Only if your account is with the Swiss entity. Swissquote Bank Ltd clients get CHF 100,000 from esisuisse; EU clients EUR 100,000 from Luxembourg’s FGDL; UK clients GBP 85,000 from the FSCS, because Swissquote Ltd is an FCA investment firm rather than a bank. All three protect cash if the firm fails; none protects you against trading losses.

Can I actually withdraw my money?

Yes. Our $300 withdrawal in February 2026 arrived in about five business days with no unexplained delay, no last-minute document demands and no obstruction. The limitation is method, not reliability: bank transfer is the only route out, so if you need fast e-wallet payouts this broker will frustrate you.

Frequently asked questions

What is the minimum deposit at Swissquote?

$1,000 for Premium, $5,000 for Prime and $10,000 for Elite — high against IG at $0 and IC Markets at $200, and a poor first account for a small balance.

What spreads does Swissquote charge?

On Premium, EUR/USD starts at 1.3 pips; we recorded 1.3 to 1.8 pips in active hours in February 2026, widening to 3 to 4 pips around scheduled data. Elite starts from 0.0 pips. Forex and CFDs on currencies, metals, indices and commodities carry no separate commission; share CFDs cost 0.09% to 0.15% by tier.

Does Swissquote offer a swap-free account?

Yes, on request, by asking support to convert an existing forex account. Administrative charges may replace swap on long-held positions and we could not obtain a documented schedule for them, and no Shariah certification is published — so ask for the fee terms in writing and seek your own advice if converting for religious reasons.

Does Swissquote charge inactivity or custody fees?

Inactivity applies to forex accounts only, after six months without trades or open positions, capped at 10 units of your account currency per month. Custody fees apply at the Swiss entity at 0.025% per quarter, minimum CHF 15 and maximum CHF 50; Swissquote Bank Europe charges none.

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