Comparison of cryptocurrency savings plans: Detailed explanation of the fees, minimum installments a

A savings plan is an investment decision that you only need to make once. After that, the plan will run automatically month after month, year after year without you participating. Because of this, the cost of a single execution goes almost unnoticed: taking a 50-euro installment as an example, one percentage point is only equivalent to 50 euro cents, but ten years later it becomes 120 executions. Therefore, instead of asking which cryptocurrency savings plan is the best, we explore what terms are disclosed by each service provider.

This survey was completed by cryptoticker.io on August 14, 2026.

Method Description: Searching the fee, savings plans and terms pages disclosed by nine service providers promoted in Germany, using only the data contained on the day of the survey. A total of nine objects were reviewed: three of them could be fully evaluated, two were partially evaluated, and four were completely unable to be evaluated.

Comparison of cryptocurrency savings plans: Nine service provider pages, three complete record models

First of all, it was found that only three of the nine service providers provided sufficient complete data on their pages, which can be used to deduce the cost of savings plan execution. The three are Bison, justTRADE and Kraken. The other two companies, finanzen.net zero and Scalable Capital, listed the terms of the deal but did not provide details of a full savings plan for cryptocurrency assets. For the remaining four companies, reliable data could not be obtained on the day of the investigation.

This in itself is the first practical conclusion. If you want to understand the cost of a savings plan, checking the product page is often not enough. You will end up in the Help section, price and service list PDF, or you will find no information at all. If you want to weigh each service provider, refer to the continuously updated overview.

Bison: Savings plans start with 0.01 euros and a 1.25% bitcoin spread

Bison is an application for the Stuttgart Stock Exchange that lists proportional spreads on its fees page: 1.25% Bitcoin, 1.25% Ethereum, and 1.75% for all other cryptocurrencies. No separate transaction fees are listed on this page. According to the same page, account opening, account maintenance, custody (including insurance), euro withdrawals, cryptocurrency withdrawals, and deposits and withdrawals through standard SEPA and instant SEPA are free. Bison charges a 2.49% fee for instant deposits via credit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay.

The savings plan page itself does not mention any costs, only describes the mechanism. The plan can be invested starting from € 0.01 and purchases can be set to be executed weekly, monthly or quarterly. You can choose the day of the week for weekly execution; you can choose between the 1st or 15th of the month for monthly execution; you can choose between the 1st or 15th of the new quarter for quarterly execution. According to this page, one or more savings plans can be created for each cryptocurrency and can be suspended or cancelled at any time. The spread is the measured spread, not the list price on the bill.

Kraken: 1% for repeated purchases, 0.40% for spot order books

In the Kraken app's fee schedule, a transaction fee of 1% for instant and repeat purchases, and a 1.5% for custom orders. According to the page, for Kraken+ program members, these fees are waived if the monthly transaction volume does not exceed US$10,000, but it is clearly stated that spreads and card fees will still apply. In the spot order book, the pending order rate is 0.40%, and the taking order rate is 0.80%.

The gap between the two approaches is an actual discovery. Based on the rates listed, the cost of repeated purchases through the convenience feature is 2.5 times the cost of pending orders in the order book. People who value automation need to pay for it. The fee page we retrieved did not show the minimum installment amount for repeated purchases.

justTRADE: Cryptocurrency ETP savings plans start at 25 euros with no execution fee

On its savings plan page, justTRADE lists a total of 290 securities that support savings plans, including 177 ETF plans, 15 ETC plans, more than 55 wikifolio plans, and 43 available cryptocurrency ETPs; Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana are mentioned. According to the page, the minimum installment payment is 25 euros, and the maximum per ISIN and execution is 5,000 euros. The execution time starts from 16:00 on the first exchange trading day of each month. In terms of cost, the page shows: the savings plan execution fee is 0 euros, plus the spread of the trading place.

Spreads in lieu of transaction fees: Why free executions have little explanation of price

Several service providers in this review mainly collect fees through spreads (i.e. bid-ask spreads). This cost has an embarrassing feature: no expense items appear in the portfolio statement, only the purchase price. Whether the price is 1.5% higher than the reference price will be difficult to restore afterwards.

This leads to a simple rule of comparison: Service providers that claim an execution fee of 0 euros plus a spread are not necessarily cheaper than those that charge a 1% fee but a smaller spread. The model is comparable only when the two components are added, and the second component does not appear as a fixed number on the pages of the nine service providers.

How to spot spreads when purchasing

However, you can check before the first savings plan rather than after the 100th. In the application, open the Buy and Sell dialog boxes for the same currency in turn, and record the two prices. Divide the difference by the purchase price to get the current spread. This measurement takes only a few minutes and can replace the estimates in any comparison article, including this one.

Cryptocurrency ETP or actual currency: What differences mean for custody and holding periods

The service providers in this review are divided into two groups, and this division is more important than any decimal point in percentage. Bison and Kraken sell you currencies that are held internally and can in principle be extracted to your own address. justTRADE and Scalable Capital offer cryptocurrency ETPs, tradable securities that track prices. At Scalable Capital, cryptocurrency ETP is clearly listed as a tradable category on the terms page; the transaction fee via gettex is € 0.99, while in the PRIME+ tariff, the transaction fee is € 0 when the order amount reaches € 250. This page does not display details of savings plan costs or minimum installments.

For custody, this means that the ETP belongs to the securities portfolio and cannot be transferred to the wallet. Anyone who aims to self-manage falls into the wrong group, and pure cost comparisons will reliably conceal this. Please refer to the relevant overview of which companies have obtained German authorization in this field. Minimum installments and small order surcharges are like narrow entrances.

Minimum installments and execution dates: How small installments hit a wall in the face of small order surcharges

There is a wide gap between the minimum installments: 0.01 euros for Bison and 25 euros for justTRADE. finanzen.net zero sets the minimum order size for cryptocurrency trading at 0.01 euros and promotes investing starting from 1 euro. At the same time, a 1% commission plus a lower spread is listed there, and an additional small order surcharge of 1 euro is charged for orders under 500 euros. The page lists 59 tradable cryptocurrencies.

This surcharge is why small installments become expensive when there is a fixed cost component. A 50-euro installment is added with 1 euro, equivalent to 2%; a 400-euro installment is added with 1 euro, equivalent to 0.25%, and a percentage commission is added in both cases. Therefore, anyone who wants to start small should first check whether the model contains a fixed cost component. On the retrieved cryptocurrency page, it was not possible to confirm whether finanzen.net zero provided a savings plan for cryptocurrency assets.

Execution day is often ignored, but it is the easiest setting to control yourself. For monthly execution, Bison allows a choice between the 1st and 15th, while justTRADE executes from 16:00 on the first exchange trading day of each month. People who save there always buy at the beginning of the month and cannot change the date.

Bitpanda, Trade Republic and Bitvavo: What cannot be verified in this investigation

On August 14, 2026, four of the nine targets did not provide available information. This is as important as the data from the other five companies.

On Bitpanda, the fee page could not be found. The website bitpanda.com/de/preise returns a 200 status code, but displays a stock price list; the cryptocurrency sub-page contains explanatory text on price formation, but does not provide fee or spread details. Several obvious fee and savings plan paths encountered error pages. The support area support.bitpanda.com refused automatic retrieval with a 403 status code, while help.bitpanda.com did not respond at all. As a result, this article does not provide any data about Bitpanda, although the company promotes savings plans on its page.

In the Trade Republic, the cryptocurrency page returned a 200 status code, but in the retrieved status it contained only the navigation bar and no terms; the checked price list and cost path did not exist under the expected address.

Both Bitvavo and Coinbase rejected automatic searches with a 403 status code. In the browser, these pages are normally accessible; our surveys cannot evaluate them, and we avoid filling in gaps with data from other comparison articles.

Significant methodological findings in this survey

The most obvious is a pattern in page architecture. The savings plan page explains the mechanism but avoids talking about prices; while the expense page lists prices but does not mention the savings plan. Bison is the most typical: both pages are complete and public, but only by reading them together can you get an explanation of the cost. People who only open the savings plan page see a seemingly free product.

Taxation of cryptocurrency savings plans: Each installment payment is calculated separately for a one-year holding period

Over the years, savings plans have generated multiple independent investments rather than one. Each execution is an independent acquisition with its own date, and tax treatment depends on this. Article 23, paragraph 1, sentence 1, item 2, of the German Income Tax Code covers "the disposal of other economic assets, provided that the interval between acquisition and disposal does not exceed one year." For directly held currencies, this means that the holding period is calculated separately for each instalment, and that instalment payments for this period are not subject to this restriction after twelve months from the date of execution of the period.

Article 23, paragraph 3, sentence 5 of the Act establishes the tax exemption limit as follows: "If the total proceeds from private disposals during a calendar year are less than 1,000 euros, the proceeds remain tax-exempt." Tax exemptions are not tax exemptions. Once exceeded, all proceeds will be subject to tax, not just the excess.

For cryptocurrency ETPs, this framework does not necessarily apply because ETPs are securities and not economic assets themselves. The tax treatment of a specific product depends on its structure and cannot be generalized and should be determined before the first savings plan. On August 11, 2026, we derived the mechanism for the holding period for monthly purchases.

Choosing a cryptocurrency savings plan: Summary of Points

Add the two cost components before investing. An execution fee of zero euros does not explain the spread, and the claimed percentage does not explain the price at the time of purchase. Use the above method to measure the spot differences yourself and then compare them.

First, decide whether the currency or the ETP, and then consider the price. These are two different products with different custody and tax treatments; comparing prices in the wrong groups can lead to finding a cheap savings plan that won't meet your needs. Please refer to the relevant overview of which companies directly provide currencies.

Create documentation immediately, rather than waiting until you file your taxes. Export execution lists every month or collect them automatically so that dates and prices can be recorded in documents for each installment payment. Please refer to the relevant overview for relevant tools.

(As of August 14, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Price and fee structures may change; please check terms with your service provider before purchasing.)