Bison Review 2026: Fee-Free German Broker

What Bison Is in 2026

Bison is a German trading app built by Boerse Stuttgart Group, the operator of Germany's second-largest stock exchange. The pitch is narrow and clear: trade stocks, ETFs and crypto from a phone, pay no commission, and hold your crypto in custody without a custody fee. The provider states it has passed 500,000 users, which puts it in the same weight class as the smaller German neobrokers rather than the giants.

The exchange ownership matters more than the marketing copy. Boerse Stuttgart runs the trading venue that Bison routes orders to, and it also runs a regulated crypto venue. That vertical integration is the whole story of this app. Bison does not sell your order flow to a market maker the way a US-style commission-free broker does. It executes against its parent group's own venues. Whether that is good for you depends entirely on the spread you pay, which I will get to.

Bison is not a bank. It is not a robo-advisor. It does not offer savings plans with a fixed fee, it does not offer a debit card, and it does not try to be your current account. It is a brokerage and crypto custody app, and it stays in that lane. If you want a broker that also does your banking, this is the wrong product. If you want a clean execution venue with no commission line item, it is worth understanding.

The app is available in German and English, and it is aimed at retail investors in Germany and a handful of other European markets. The provider's disclosures list the supported countries, and they are worth checking before you download anything, because the list has changed over time.

Fees: Zero Commission vs Hidden Spread Cost

Bison's headline claim is zero commission. The fee schedule lists no order commission, no custody fee for crypto, and no account maintenance fee. That is a real claim and it is unusual in a market where most neobrokers charge either a flat per-order fee or a percentage, or both.

But zero commission is not zero cost. Every broker makes money somewhere, and Bison makes it on the spread. When you buy, you pay the ask. When you sell, you receive the bid. The gap between them is the spread, and on Bison that gap is the revenue. The provider does not publish a fixed spread schedule, because spreads move with the market and with the instrument. That is the honest answer, and it is also the reason a headline fee comparison between Bison and a flat-fee broker is close to meaningless.

Here is how I would grade it. Take a stock you actually want to own. Look at the bid and ask on Bison at the moment you would trade. Then look at the same stock on a venue where you pay a commission but get a tighter spread. Multiply the spread by your position size, add the commission on the other side, and compare the two totals. For a large position, a tight spread plus a commission can beat a wide spread with no commission. For a small position, the commission often dominates and the zero-commission broker wins. The crossover point depends on the instrument and the size, and no review can hand you a single number that covers every case.

What I can say from the published structure: Bison does not charge you a separate line item, so the cost is invisible unless you look for it. That is a design choice, and it is the same choice every spread-only broker makes. It is not dishonest, but it does mean you cannot audit your total cost from a fee page alone. You have to watch the execution price.

The crypto side has the same structure. The provider states there is no custody fee, which is a genuine differentiator against exchanges that charge an annual percentage to hold your coins. But the crypto spread on Bison is wider than on a high-volume global exchange, and the provider's own disclosures describe the pricing as spread-based. If you are moving size, that spread is the cost that matters, not the missing custody fee.

One more thing the fee schedule does not show: taxes and regulatory levies. German investors pay capital gains tax, and the broker handles withholding where required. That is not a Bison fee, but it shows up in your account and it is part of the total cost of owning anything. Check the provider's current schedule and your own tax situation; I am not going to pretend a review can replace either.

Available Markets: Stocks, ETFs, Crypto

Bison covers three asset classes: individual stocks, ETFs, and crypto. The stock and ETF universe is built around the instruments German retail investors actually buy, which means a lot of US large caps, a lot of European names, and a broad shelf of ETFs. The provider's disclosures list the tradable universe, and it is not the full global market. If you trade obscure small caps or niche exchanges, you will hit the edge of the list quickly.

ETFs are the interesting part for most users. Bison supports ETF trading without commission, and the provider has leaned into savings plans, which let you invest a fixed amount on a schedule. For a long-term index investor, that is the core use case. The spread still applies, and for a broad index ETF the spread is usually tight, which makes the zero-commission structure genuinely competitive for regular small contributions.

Crypto is where Bison differentiates itself from the stock-first neobrokers. The provider offers a set of major coins, and custody sits with the Boerse Stuttgart crypto arm rather than a third-party wallet provider. The provider states there is no custody fee. That combination, regulated venue plus no custody fee, is the reason a lot of users open a Bison account in the first place. The coin list is not exhaustive; it covers the majors and a rotating set of others, and the provider's site is the place to check what is live today.

What is missing matters too. There are no options, no futures, no margin trading, and no short selling. Bison is a cash-and-carry broker. If you want derivatives, this is not the app. That is a deliberate scope decision, and for a retail investor who wants to buy and hold, it removes a lot of ways to lose money.

Account Types and Minimums

Bison offers a single retail brokerage account, plus the crypto custody side. The provider does not publish a tiered account structure with premium levels, and it does not advertise a minimum deposit to open. That is consistent with the app's positioning: one account, no tiers, no relationship pricing.

Savings plans are the one place where a minimum matters, because a plan needs a recurring amount. The provider's disclosures state the minimum plan amount, and it is low enough that the product is clearly aimed at small regular contributions rather than lump sums. Check the current figure on the provider's site before you set one up, because these thresholds change.

There is no joint account, no corporate account, and no retirement wrapper. German investors who want a tax-advantaged structure will not find one here. Bison is a plain taxable brokerage account. That is not a flaw, but it is a limit, and it rules the app out for anyone whose main goal is a tax-sheltered retirement product.

Account opening is done in the app, and the provider states it uses video identification or a comparable digital process, which is standard in Germany. I have not opened an account, so I am not going to describe the flow beyond what the provider publishes. What I can say is that the regulatory setup is real: Bison operates under German supervision, and the provider's disclosures name the relevant entities. Anyone can check the BaFin register for the licensed entities behind the brand, and I would, before funding anything.

Bison vs Trade Republic vs Scalable Capital

This is the comparison that matters for a German retail investor, because all three compete for the same phone screen.

Trade Republic is the largest of the three by users and it also runs a commission-free model, but it has expanded into banking, cards and interest on cash. It is a broader product. If you want one app for brokerage and everyday money, Trade Republic is the more complete package. If you want a pure execution venue, Bison is narrower and that narrowness is the point. Our Trade Republic tool page breaks down its structure if you want the side-by-side.

Scalable Capital sits differently again. It offers tiered pricing, with a free tier and a paid tier that changes the fee structure, and it has a broader ETF and savings plan offering. The paid tier can be cheaper for high-volume traders, and the free tier is competitive for small ones. The trade-off is complexity: you have to model which tier you are on and what it costs.

Where Bison stands out against both is crypto custody. Trade Republic and Scalable both offer crypto, but Bison's custody sits inside the Boerse Stuttgart group, and the provider states there is no custody fee. For someone who wants regulated crypto custody alongside stock and ETF trading in one app, that is the clearest reason to pick Bison over the other two.

Where Bison falls behind is breadth. No card, no cash interest, no banking features, no derivatives. If those matter, one of the others wins. If they do not, Bison's simplicity is an advantage rather than a gap.

On the spread question, all three are spread-based to some degree, and none publishes a fixed spread schedule. That means the comparison is not decidable from fee pages alone. You have to sample live quotes. Anyone who tells you one of these is categorically cheaper without doing that is guessing.

Execution Quality and Order Routing

Bison routes orders to venues inside the Boerse Stuttgart Group. The provider's disclosures describe the execution model, and the key point is that Bison is not selling your order flow to an external market maker. That is a meaningful structural difference from the US commission-free model, where payment for order flow is the revenue engine and the broker's incentive is to route to whoever pays most, subject to best-execution rules.

Does that guarantee you a better price? No. It guarantees a different incentive structure. The venue still makes money on the spread, and the spread is still your cost. The difference is that the conflict is visible: the exchange that executes your trade is the same corporate family that owns the app. You can evaluate that relationship directly rather than guessing at a third party's arrangement.

For liquid instruments, execution on a German exchange venue is generally fine. For thin instruments, spreads widen, and that is where a spread-only broker gets expensive. This is not a Bison-specific problem; it is the structural cost of the model. The practical takeaway is to check the spread on the specific thing you want to trade, not on the app in general.

I am not going to quote latency or fill-quality numbers, because I have not measured them and the provider does not publish a benchmark I can cite. If execution speed is critical to you, this is not the broker for that use case anyway; Bison is built for buy-and-hold retail orders, not for active trading.

Who Bison Suits

Bison fits a specific profile. You are in a supported European market, you want to buy stocks, ETFs and crypto from one app, you invest on a schedule rather than trading actively, and you care about regulated custody more than about having a debit card attached to your brokerage.

It also suits the crypto-first user who wants exchange-grade custody without an annual custody fee. The provider states there is no custody fee, and custody sits with a regulated exchange group. For someone holding coins for years, that combination is the reason to be here.

It does not suit active traders. No derivatives, no margin, no shorting, and a spread-based cost model that punishes frequent small trades less than it punishes large ones but still adds up. It does not suit anyone who needs a joint account, a corporate account, or a retirement wrapper. And it does not suit anyone who wants one app for banking and investing; Trade Republic and Scalable both do more on that front.

If you are comparing across the market, our best stock apps roundup puts Bison next to the alternatives, and the eToro review covers a very different model if you are weighing a social-trading platform against a venue-based broker.

Verdict and Score

Bison is a clean, narrow product with a real structural story: exchange-owned execution, no commission, no custody fee, and regulated crypto custody. The catch is the same catch every spread-only broker has, which is that your true cost is invisible on the fee page and shows up in the price you get. Grade it on spreads, not on the zero.

For a long-term ETF investor making regular contributions, or a crypto holder who wants regulated custody without an annual fee, the structure is competitive and the simplicity is a feature. For an active trader, or anyone who needs banking features or a tax wrapper, it is the wrong tool and no amount of zero-commission marketing changes that.

I would not pick Bison for large one-off trades without sampling the spread first. I would pick it for small scheduled contributions into liquid ETFs, where the commission savings on the other side are real and the spread is tight.

How this review was researched

This review is based on Bison's published fee schedule, the provider's own disclosures and official site, Boerse Stuttgart Group's public filings, the BaFin register of licensed entities, and public app store and Trustpilot ratings. No account was opened, no funds were deposited, and no trades were placed. Fee types are described without figures because the provider's current schedule is the only authoritative source for numbers, and it changes. Check it directly before you act.

FAQ

Does Bison charge commission?

The provider's fee schedule lists no order commission and no crypto custody fee. The cost is built into the spread instead, so your real cost depends on the instrument and the moment you trade. Check the provider's current schedule for the latest terms.

Is Bison safe?

Bison is owned by Boerse Stuttgart Group and operates under German supervision. You can verify the licensed entities on the BaFin register. That is a regulatory fact, not a guarantee of investment outcomes.

Can I trade crypto on Bison?

Yes. The provider offers major coins with custody inside the Boerse Stuttgart group and states there is no custody fee. The tradable coin list changes, so check the provider's site for what is currently available.