flatexDEGIRO had a record quarter — and what DEGIRO actually costs you

flatexDEGIRO — the German company behind the DEGIRO investing app and the flatex broker — published preliminary second-quarter figures on Tuesday, and nearly every line was a record. Group revenue reached €166.5 million, up 26% from €132.1 million a year earlier; net income jumped to €61.3 million, up 55% and the first quarter in the company's history above €60 million. On the back of it, management raised its full-year net-income guidance to €200–230 million. These are preliminary, unaudited group numbers covering both flatex and DEGIRO together.

That's a healthy business. But if you hold a DEGIRO account, the more useful question isn't how much the broker made — it's where the record came from, because two of the engines behind it run straight out of customer accounts.

The two engines behind the record — both of them yours

The first is the obvious one: the fees you pay to trade. Commission income rose 29% to €107.3 million on 21.9 million settled trades. Buried in that is a number worth reading twice — the average revenue the broker booked per settled trade rose to €4.64, up 6% from €4.39 a year earlier. Nothing on the published price list changed to cause that (more on that below); it moved on what people traded and in which currencies.

The second engine is quieter. Interest income rose 23% to €52.7 million — interest the broker earns on the cash its customers leave sitting in their accounts. Client cash grew to about €6.5 billion, from €5.1 billion a year earlier. That's real money, and here's the part that matters for you: DEGIRO's own helpdesk states plainly that it "does not currently pay interest on uninvested cash" — so the broker earns on that balance and the customer earns 0%. A record chunk of the quarter is, in part, the return on cash that's doing nothing for the person who owns it.

What changed for you: nothing on the price — so check these two

No fee changed. DEGIRO's schedule is still the one dated "Rates from 01-01-2026," so this isn't a "prices went up" story. It's the opposite: the record was set without raising the sticker price, which makes it a good moment to look at the two costs a customer rarely notices.

• The ancillary charges on your own trades. The quiet ones are the €1 handling fee per order, the 0.25% AutoFX charge every time you trade in a currency you don't already hold, and the €2.50-a-year connectivity fee per exchange you use. DEGIRO's Core Selection ETFs still carry no handling fee — the concrete way to keep the per-trade cost down. Exact figures vary a little by country, so check your own market's fee schedule.
• The cash you leave idle. It earns you 0% while it sits there. The inverted lesson from a broker whose interest income is climbing on your deposits is simple: don't leave balances you're not using parked in the account. What you actually do with that cash — leave it, move it, invest it — is entirely your decision and depends on your own plans; this isn't advice.

If you want to see how that compares with brokers that do pay something on idle balances, that's the whole point of our cash-interest pages — and it's the mirror image of the Interactive Brokers quarter we looked at yesterday, where the broker pays a rate on idle cash and the job was to check what that rate is. At DEGIRO there is no rate to check; there's only the balance to not leave sitting.

Where your money sits

One reassurance the record does underline: the company holding your money is in solid financial shape. Cash sits with flatexDEGIRO Bank SE and, for customers onboarded from 1 April 2024, is covered up to €100,000 under the German Deposit Guarantee Scheme; your securities are held separately through a segregated legal entity, not on the broker's own balance sheet. That protection is a different mechanism from the €100k cash cover, and the deposit scheme's conditions depend on when and how your account was set up — worth confirming for your own account.

This is a summary of what flatexDEGIRO reported, not investment advice. All Q2 2026 figures are preliminary and unaudited, and cover the flatexDEGIRO group as a whole.