Costs you do not see right away: service fees, currency costs and external costs

Why the cost per order is only part of the story

Many investors look at the cost per order first. That makes sense: you see it on every fee page. But there are more cost items. Some you only pay after months. Others come with an action you do not think of as “trading”, such as withdrawing money or using another currency.

In this article we explain the main cost types. The examples come from the fee schedules we checked against official sources in October 2026. Amounts can change, so always check the broker’s current fee schedule.

This is not a ranking and not advice. It is help to read fee schedules better.

The cost types at a glance

Order commission

This is what you pay per buy or sell order. It can be a fixed amount, a percentage of the order amount, or a mix. Examples:

• ABN AMRO (Zelf Beleggen Basis): €5 plus 0.05% of the order value.
• ING: €1 plus 0.10% for shares and bonds.
• LYNX: 0.06% of the transaction value, with a minimum of €6 and a maximum of €45.

External costs or handling costs

These are costs for settling your order, often with a third party. They are sometimes listed separately in the fee schedule.

• Trade Republic: no order commission, but €1 in external costs per transaction (not on savings plans).
• DEGIRO: €2 plus €1 handling costs for Dutch shares. “Handling” here means processing the order.

Service fees or custody fees

This is a charge for keeping and managing your investments. You usually pay a percentage per year of the value you hold, even if you do nothing.

• ABN AMRO (Basis): 0.20% per year of your portfolio value up to €100,000.
• ING: 0.24% per year, falling at a higher portfolio value.
• Rabobank: 0.24% per year (0.06% per quarter) up to €100,000, with a minimum of €5 per quarter.
• Saxo: no custody fee for Dutch clients, but a service fee of 0.01% per month (maximum €40), which you can get back as credit towards transaction costs.
• Bolero: no custody fee. Bolero is only for residents of Belgium.

Currency costs

If you buy a share in another currency, such as US dollars, your money is converted. A markup on the exchange rate may apply.

• ING: a surcharge or discount of 0.25% on orders in foreign currency.
• Rabobank: currency costs of 0.25%.
• Easybroker: with automatic conversion (AutoFX), a markup of at most 0.03% on the exchange rate. Easybroker, like Daytraders.nl, is part of DMA Europe B.V.

Spread

The spread is the difference between the buying price and the selling price. It is not a fixed fee set by the broker, but it does affect you. DEGIRO’s fee page says that besides exchange fees, currency, connectivity, product and spread costs may apply. At Scalable Capital, crypto ETPs (exchange-traded crypto products) carry a spread surcharge of 0.99% on the FREE plan and 0.69% on PRIME+.

Deposit and withdrawal costs

• Easybroker: the first withdrawal per calendar month costs nothing. After that it is €1 for a SEPA withdrawal or €8 for an international transfer.
• Bitvavo: depositing via iDEAL or SEPA costs €0, but by credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal it is 1.00%.
• Trade Republic: depositing by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay costs 1% of the amount.
• Scalable Capital: an instant deposit costs 0.99% on FREE and 0.69% on PRIME+.
• Finst: withdrawing crypto costs the network fee plus €2.50 in third-party costs per withdrawal.

Inactivity fees

These are costs if you do little or nothing. Most brokers in our check do not charge them, but there are exceptions. At LYNX there is a monthly minimum activity fee of €5 minus the commission you paid that month. The amount is €0 if your commissions are €5 or more, or if your portfolio is €100,000 or more. Saxo charges no inactivity fee.

Staking commission on crypto

With staking you lock up crypto to receive rewards. The provider can keep part of them. Finst keeps 25% to 45% of the rewards received. Rewards can vary and are not fixed.

A worked example: a €1,000 order

Take a purchase of €1,000 in a Dutch share. We only use the order fees from our data of 10 October 2026. The order is alphabetical.

Note what this example does not show. It covers one order. Fees for other order sizes, exchanges or products differ. Service fees, currency costs and spread are not included. A difference in order costs therefore says little about total costs.

What does holding €10,000 cost per year?

Suppose you keep €10,000 invested and do nothing for a year. This is the service cost according to the fee schedules we found:

These are only the brokers whose service fees are in our data. For the other brokers in our check we could not establish a comparable custody fee. That does not mean there is none. Find out yourself in the fee schedule.

If you trade a lot, order commission may weigh more. If you trade little, service fees often weigh more. That differs per person.

Tip: read the fee schedule yourself

A fee page on a website is a summary. The full schedule, often a PDF, holds the details: which exchanges the fee applies to, what happens with other currencies and which costs come on top. During our check this is how we found differences with what we had noted earlier.

A short checklist:

1. Find the PDF or the full fee schedule.
2. For order costs, look at the fixed amount, percentage, minimum and maximum.
3. Look for service fees or custody fees, and whether they fall at a higher portfolio value.
4. Look for currency costs and costs for depositing and withdrawing.
5. Note the date of the schedule.

Further reading

• What changed in our data? Read Check October 2026.
• Put brokers side by side in the comparison tool.
• On each review page you will find the source of every fee, for example for ING, Easybroker and Saxo.
• Terms unclear? See the glossary.

Risk warning: Trading financial instruments carries significant risk. You can lose (part of) the money you invest. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. This article is educational and is not personal investment advice.