Having been founded in 2008 and 2004 respectively, Plus500 and Trading212 are counted amongst the most experienced online brokers for shares, commodities, forex, crypto and various other tradable assets. While Plus500 continues to offer crypto trading outside of the UK, Trading212 has paused all its crypto offerings since November 2020. Both the platforms have a loyal following and enjoy solid reputations in the trading world today.
In this detailed article, we’ll compare these two online brokers on various parameters, including security measures, supported countries, regulation, payment methods, customer support and fees.
When it comes to trading or investing in cryptocurrencies, you should give maximum importance to the security aspect of your crypto assets. The online world is full of fraudsters and hackers, relentlessly trying to rob people of their hard-earned money. Both Plus500 and Trading212 are yet to witness any noteworthy security breach, implying that it’s fairly secure to do business on these trading platforms.
Both the service providers facilitate Two Factor Authentication (2FA) for their trading accounts, allowing investors/traders to create an extra security layer. With 2FA, the account access is allowed only after you personally authenticate it via the Authentication app on your mobile device.
Plus500 permits withdrawal of funds through multiple well-known payment methods including PayPal, Skrill, bank transfer and credit/debit cards. Trading212, however, makes it compulsory to withdraw funds using the same payment medium that was earlier used for deposit. Its withdrawal methods include credit/debit card, PayPal, bank transfers, Dotpay, Giropay, iDEAL and Carte Bleue. All these payment modes are widely recognised in the market for their high security.
Though the KYC (Know Your Customer) process implemented by various financial institutions may seem like a pain, it is necessary to comply with the global Anti Money Laundering (AML) laws, and for the creation of a safe trading environment for everyone.
Plus500 will require you to submit a valid government-approved identity proof and a separate address proof, to complete the registration process. It is only after you submit these documents that you’ll be able to completely use their services.
At Trading212, apart from submitting a proof of address and a valid government-issued ID, you may also be asked to upload a selfie, to complete the signup process.
Please keep in mind that the regulatory and other requirements across the world make it difficult for online brokers to be operational in every country. Hence, it’s always good to check during the early stages of your due diligence if a specific broker is serving your country or not. Below we have provided details on the countries where Plus500 and Trading212 currently offer their services.
At the time of writing, Plus500 is operational in the following nations: Andorra, Argentina, Asia/Pacific Region, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Guiana, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Malta, Martinique, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Reunion, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Uruguay. It’s worth noting that Plus500 doesn’t cater to the US market.
If we look at the Trading212’s official website, it doesn’t provide any clear list of countries where it actively offers its services. However, as per some third-party sources, the broker is operational in 100+ nations, including Romania, UK, Japan, UAE, Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Australia and Singapore. Notably, it can’t be used in countries like Canada, China and the United States. We’d also like to mention that Trading212 is not accepting new account registrations at the time of writing, citing huge demand and an ongoing capacity expansion as reasons.
Plus500 is a fully-compliant and regulated broker in Europe, UK, Israel, Singapore, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, and is licensed by leading financial authorities like the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission (CySEC), Bulgaria’s Financial Supervision Commission (FSC), New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority (FMA), South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority and Monetary Authority of Singapore.
It’s not surprising that owing to such stringent regulation, Plus500 is a popular choice amongst Asian and European crypto traders. Even though it actively offers CFD trades, the availability of crypto CFDs may vary from country to country, depending upon the local laws. For instance, while you can execute crypto CFD trades on Plus500 in Denmark, it’s disallowed in the UK, as per a FCA ban on crypto derivatives in the country.
Trading212 is regulated by the Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission (CySEC), UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Bulgaria’s Financial Supervision Commission (FSC).
Both Plus500 and Trading212 protect their clients’ funds through government schemes like the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) of the UK, thus offering a higher level of confidence to the investors/traders.
Having crossed the significant $2 trillion market capitalisation milestone in 2021, the crypto market is buzzing with a lot of activity nowadays. Its rapidly growing popularity has made many reputed brokerage portals to emerge over the past few years.
While Plus500 allows you to invest in or trade 6 popular crypto coins, mostly with large market caps, Trading212 doesn’t have any cryptocurrencies on offer. It used to allow crypto trading up until 27 November 2020, after which it suspended all kinds of crypto trading activity, to comply with a FCA policy statement.
With Plus500, you can trade or invest in the following prominent cryptocurrencies:
Apart from these, Plus500 allows you to trade a ‘Crypto 10 Index’ that tracks the 10 biggest cryptocurrencies based on market capitalisation, and also has an ETH/BTC pair on offer.
As highlighted above, there are no cryptocurrencies available for investment or trading purposes, on the Trading212 platform at the time of writing.
On Plus500, the crypto prices are listed in USD, however, the assets are traded through Contract for Differences (CFDs) and you can effectively open positions in your native fiat currency. In contrast, Trading212 facilitates hassle-free CFD, ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) and stock trading with all well-known fiat currencies including the US Dollar (USD), Euro (EUR), Swiss Franc (CHF) and Pound Sterling (GBP).
Brokers generate revenue and stay in business by charging different types of fees to their customers. Crypto brokerage platforms are known to charge lower fees than their counterparts that deal in stocks, forex and commodities.
Plus500 charges a flat $10 inactivity fee per month if you don’t log in to your trading account for a time period of 3 months. No such inactivity fee is charged by Trading212.
Plus500 doesn’t levy any charge on the deposits to and withdrawals from the trading accounts.
Trading212 also doesn’t charge anything for withdrawals, but certain charges may come into play in case of deposits. To elaborate, it doesn’t collect any deposit fee for regular or instant bank transfers. However, deposits of EUR 2000 and above, made via Google Pay, credit card, debit card, Apple Pay or Skrill attract a deposit fee at the rate of 0.7%.
Neither of the two platforms charges any trading fee or commission for the trades executed through them, however, they apply something referred to as a ‘Bid/Ask Spread’. It is essentially the difference between the buying and selling prices of the tradable assets listed on the portal. Bid prices are always lower than the Ask prices and it’s the difference between them that generates revenue for the brokers.
Plus500 has very competitive spreads. For instance, it is well under 2% for Bitcoin Cash and an impressive 0.3% for Bitcoin. Trading212 also features very tight spreads on all kinds of markets available on their platform. The exact spreads may vary based on the instrument and asset under consideration.
On Plus500, you can deposit or withdraw funds through bank transfer, instant bank transfer (only deposit), credit/debit cards, Skrill and PayPal.
Trading212 gives you the choice of depositing and withdrawing funds through multiple payment methods including: bank transfer, instant bank transfer, Carte Bleue, Direct eBanking, debit card, credit card, Dotpay, Skrill, PayPal, Giropay, iDeal, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
However, please keep in mind that the exact payment methods offered may vary from country to country.
A complicated user interface (UI) can prove to be highly intimidating for the new traders, and scare them away to better service providers. Both Plus500 and Trading212 have technical and sleek dashboards, with easy to navigate and clear layouts. They come across as very professional brokerage platforms, positioned aptly towards all levels of traders.
Source: Plus500.co.uk
The Plus500 landing page shows you various trading pairs in the top-half section. Clicking on any of the pairs will show you its price chart in the bottom-half area. Crypto traders can make effective use of this chart and carry out detailed technical analysis, using a wide set of features. Trades can be executed fairly easily through the available ‘Buy’ and ‘Sell’ buttons. The account details and settings can be accessed through the tabs lined up in the bar on the extreme left.
Source: Trading212.com
Apart from providing a regular view that gives you a nice glance at all your investments and a comprehensive look at the price chart of any, Trading212 also offers an Advanced View that displays price charts of 3 different assets, for simultaneous and comparative technical analysis. You can play around with various chart properties and easily switch between different tabs on the left.
Plus500 as well as Trading212 offer countless chart options to the traders, allowing easy incorporation of a wide range of indicators.
Plus500 is extremely popular in the market for its CFD trading facility. Crypto traders can borrow funds from the broker and place leveraged trades, by expanding their position size by up to 10 times. So, a trade for $50 can be easily converted to $500, by using the 10x leverage. This can significantly boost your profits, however, your losses will also get amplified by an equal factor.
Trading212 provides the CFD trading facility as well but only for conventional assets like stocks, commodities and forex.
A trading platform’s liquidity gives you a good idea if you’ll be able to buy and sell assets through it in a timely manner or not. Volume is an indicator of the quantity and number of trades executed on the portal for any given asset. A higher liquidity and trading volume generally translates into a problem-free trading experience, as you'll be able to open and close your market positions in time, whenever you deem fit.
As Plus500 deals mainly in CFDs, it doesn’t require liquidity of any underlying asset. You simply speculate on the price movements of the tradable assets, without actually owning or transferring any. Spreads are usually tighter for markets that witness high volume trades such as BTC/USD and ETH/USD.
On the other hand, Trading212 claims to have around 1.5 million customers, £3 billion worth of customer assets and close to 1.5 million orders executed per day. All these figures suggest comfortably high liquidity and volume.
Both Plus500 and Trading212 deliver excellent customer service experience to their users, thereby enjoying continued business success over the years.
Plus500, besides providing a live chat feature for all the users, has a conventional ticketed support service on offer too.
Trading212 also provides 24/7 customer support and promises an impressive 29 seconds average response time. You can reach their customer service via their mobile app or website.
It won’t be wrong to state that though both Plus500 and Trading212 provide a wide range of customer-centric features to their clients, making it convenient for each one of them to place timely, well-informed and potentially profitable trades, Plus500 holds a clear edge when it comes to crypto trading. This is simply because of the fact that no crypto trades are offered by Trading212 at the time of writing.
Plus500 has been operating in the crypto market for well over a decade. Though it may come across as more suitable for intermediate to advanced level traders, it may take only a few trades for you to get used to and be comfortable with their platform. Unsurprisingly, it has emerged as the first choice for a large number of speculative crypto traders over the years. Plus500’s tight spreads compared to other platforms give it an upper hand too.