Freetrade is planning a new crowdfunding round and I’d like to compare the KPIs.
Any input is welcome, especially on daily active users. Here’s what I’ve found so far.
New users
Trading 212: 100,000/week
Freetrade: 2000 - 6000/week
Sources:
New net deposits
Trading 212: More than ÂŁ100,000,000 per month
Freetrade: couldn’t find anything
Source:
Brand Searches
I like that Freetrade exists. But they are such a small startup with very little progression on the platform. Their biggest update was to allow instant buys. Big freaking deal for us. Also these rounds of crowdfunding create shills that only promote the platform because they are invested in the company, not based on it’s merits.
It’s good that it exists because it challenges the notion of paying such high commision from the traditional brokers. It’s filling a large gap in the market for more ordinary people. But if it remains this uncompetitive, with a continual need to seek funding, I don’t see how it can survive. Healthy competition is good for us, the consumer, but it seems that there is only one company leading the way in Europe 
.
The business model of T212 has a much more professional business structure, generating their own private profits. I like it when a company says “we don’t need any funding” and have 0 debts. They have also been rolling out substantial improvements to their platform, with more to follow this month. Props to T212, it can’t be easy to shake up an industry all by yourself. Also shows what an incredible job they’ve been doing.
Edit: If a traditional broker like Fidelity, II, IG or a bank decides that they want a piece of this and go commission free, Freetrade will be dead in the water. Their only USP at that point would maybe be a nice UI on their phone only app. Their only USP now is that they are the only alternative to T212 if you want less features and want to pay money for your isa “because it makes you feel better”.
T212 will still maintain it’s edge with fractional shares and soon the “Pie update”. Moving broker would provide little benefit. The only one being, access to markets like Japan and Korea, which will hopefully come anyway.
indeed T212 is so far ahead and it’s like robinhood & m1finance combined which means its perfect and will be the best in europe
Think Freetrade’s CEO said only 50% are active users.
Interesting summary. Unfortunately, we can’t share our exact DAU metric but it’s a 6-digit number.
The app downloads ranking is also a very fundamental metric. Since March Trading 212 has been the #2 or #3 financial app for iOS for the most of the time.
Thank you AlexK. I will update the comparison with Trading 212 DAU>100,000 which is the lowest 6 digit number.
I just checked Play Store to see if the pie feature was available and saw T212 shows 5+ million downloads. Checked freetrade to compare, 50+ thousand
@AlexK could you please confirm the Trading 212 web traffic estimation from similarweb.com?
We can’t share the exact numbers but the trend is correct.
Who owns Trading212? Is it a subsidiary of Interactive Brokers? (that’s what they are saying on the Freetrade forum)
As far as I know T212 is no more of a subsidiary of Interactive brokers than FreeTrade is a subsidiary of DriveWealth. Both platforms utilise external infrastructure. Again, as far as I know.
KPIs are such depressing StartUps metrics that needs to flood their platforms with tons of thousand users.
That being said, T212 looks the best (and promising) platform that I managed to find for trading European and American stocks living in Germany.
I spoke with someone from M1 and unfortunately they aren’t not coming to Europe any time soon.
I still have same hopes on N26 join the party in a near future.
Cheers.
N26 had an “invest” feature which is discontinued due to low demand. I doubt they would enter this area anytime soon but who knows.
https://support.n26.com/en-de/app-and-features/savings-and-invest/update-on-n26-invest
“We made this decision as we feel the product no longer serves the needs of the majority of our current customers.”
It’s was a workaround partnership with another company when they were on the very beginning of N26, just to have something to offer you know, even if it was no attractive at all to anyone.
Trading 212 is 100% owned by its two founders.
We use Interactive Brokers for execution which gives us access to almost all global exchanges. Thanks to that we’ll be able to grow our stock universe to 10,000 stocks by the end of 2020.
Just curious, but did you try Trade Republic… German neobroker? If so, what’d you think of their service?
Thanks, I think I’ve inadvertently stepped on the T212/Freetrade turf war without meaning to! Very impressive how much T212 has achieved without needing any outside capital!
I didn’t try them to be honest, some colleagues at work like them and to be honest, since they are a Berlin based company, I can try to reach someone for a talk 
I will have a look again to see what is their current features matrix and what’s coming, for sure, at least for taxes they may provide something way easier for German residents.
Expect some great news about our operations and expansion in Germany soon.
Apologies @HolfolioBen I hope I didn’t come across as territorial. I was just trying to provide context.
