XTB rebuilt its Investment Plans — and now they can hold stocks, not just ETFs

XTB has rebuilt its Investment Plans — its tool for automated, recurring investing — and started rolling the new version out across Europe. The headline change is simple to state: a single plan can now hold individual stocks alongside ETFs, where the old version only did ETFs. Whether that's a big deal for you, or nothing you need to touch, depends entirely on how you invest. So here it is from both sides.

First, the plain facts. An Investment Plan (XTB's Auto Invest) is an automated recurring order: you pick an amount, how often — daily, weekly or monthly — and a funding method, and XTB buys your chosen instruments on that schedule so you don't place each trade by hand. Per Finance Magnates, the redesigned version rolled out on 6 July across five European markets (Germany and Spain first, then Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia), and the big addition is that one plan can now combine single stocks with ETFs — a single fund that holds a whole basket of stocks or bonds at once — plus new ready-made plans you can pick by sector or risk level.

If you're a passive ETF saver

You're the person the old Investment Plans were built for: drip-feed a fixed sum into a couple of ETFs every month and let it run. The good news is that nothing here is forced on you. Your existing scheduled ETF buys keep working exactly as before. The redesign only adds options — the ability to include individual stocks, and the ready-made sector or risk plans — and you're free to ignore all of it and carry on with your ETF plan untouched.

If you're curious, the ready-made plans are the one bit that might interest you: instead of choosing every holding yourself, you can start from a template XTB has already assembled (by sector, like tech, or by risk level, like cautious versus aggressive). That's aimed at beginners, but it's optional. For a committed passive investor, the practical takeaway is: this is a menu expansion, not a change to what you're already doing.

If you want to auto-buy individual stocks

This is the reader the redesign is actually for. Before, if you wanted a hands-off recurring plan, your only choice was ETFs. Now you can put individual stocks into the same automated plan — schedule regular buys of specific companies, mix them with ETFs, or build the whole thing from a ready-made plan.

One thing worth saying plainly, as a neutral observation rather than advice: a single stock and a diversified ETF behave very differently. An ETF spreads your money across many holdings, so one company stumbling barely moves it; a single stock concentrates everything on one company, which swings harder both ways. That's not a reason to pick one or the other — which you choose is up to you and your own risk tolerance and horizon. We're not licensed to recommend instruments, and this piece doesn't. It's just worth knowing what you're signing an automated plan up to buy, repeatedly, before you set it and forget it.

The fee footnote, and where it's live

Two things the coverage mostly glosses over, and both matter before you commit.

The fees. Investments inside a plan are commission-free up to €100,000 of monthly turnover — but read that carefully. It's a turnover threshold (the value of what you trade in a month), it's the equivalent in your account currency, and it's shared with your manual trades, not a separate per-plan allowance. Above it, a 0.2% commission (minimum €10) applies. Separately, a 0.5% currency-conversion cost can apply on instruments priced in a currency other than your account's base currency — on top of the commission. For most regular savers well under the threshold, plans stay free; just don't read "€100,000 commission-free" as a flat, per-plan number.

Where it's live. The rollout is phased. As reported, it went live in Germany and Spain first, with Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia following the same week — and at the time of writing XTB's international product page still describes the older ETF-only version. So check your own local XTB page for what's actually available to you rather than the global one, and note the minimum investment differs by market (around €15 / $15 / 75 RON).

Would being able to schedule individual-stock buys change how you'd use a plan — or is the ETF-only version all you ever wanted from one? That's the real question this update puts in front of you, and the answer is yours, not ours. This is a product observation, not a recommendation of XTB or of any instrument; investing carries the risk of loss, and an automated plan buys whatever you point it at, on schedule, regardless of price. For the exact terms and per-market availability, read XTB's own pages, linked below.