- An exchange may serve customers in Germany only with a MiCA authorization from BaFin, a notification as a bank, or an authorization from another EU country that includes Germany. ESMA’s register of 7 October 2026 listed 100 firms supervised by BaFin and 185 from other EU countries that may serve Germany.
- Costs differ a lot: from 0.125% plus spread to 2.5% or more for a simple purchase. Not every app says whether you can move coins in or out.
- Binance, Bitget, Nexo and MEXC were not in the EU register of authorized providers on 7 October 2026.
- Crypto is not covered by the German deposit guarantee. MiCA does require providers to keep customers’ crypto separate from their own assets.
This page compares the crypto exchanges and apps that serve residents of Germany and explains how to check one. We do not rank or recommend any provider, and there are no affiliate links. Fees change often: the figures below are what each provider published on its own pages on 7 October 2026. Whether a provider is authorized comes from the ESMA register and BaFin. The rules behind this are on regulation.
Who may serve you
Under MiCA, nobody may provide crypto-asset services in the EU without an authorization (Article 59) or, for firms that are already regulated such as banks, a notification (Article 60). A provider authorized in one EU country may serve others after notifying them (passporting). ESMA’s interim MiCA register shows each provider’s home regulator and the countries it may serve. These are providers widely used by consumers in Germany, as listed in the ESMA file of 7 October 2026; all of them include Germany:
| Provider | Legal entity | Supervised by | Date in ESMA register |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bison | Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody GmbH (custody and transfers) and EUWAX AG (exchange) | BaFin (Germany) | 17 January 2025 and 1 April 2025 |
| Bitpanda | Bitpanda GmbH | FMA (Austria) | 9 April 2025 |
| Bitvavo | Bitvavo B.V. | AFM (Netherlands) | 26 June 2025 |
| Bybit EU | Bybit EU GmbH | FMA (Austria) | 28 May 2025 |
| Coinbase | Coinbase Luxembourg S.A. | CSSF (Luxembourg) | 20 June 2025 |
| Crypto.com | Foris DAX MT Limited | MFSA (Malta) | 27 January 2025 |
| justTRADE | JT Technologies GmbH; custody by Tangany GmbH (BaFin, 8 August 2025) | BaFin (Germany) | 14 July 2026 |
| Kraken | Payward Europe Solutions Limited | Central Bank of Ireland | 25 June 2025 |
| N26 | N26 Bank SE (a bank; listed for receiving and transmitting orders) | BaFin (Germany) | 14 May 2025 |
| OKX | OKX Europe Limited | MFSA (Malta) | 27 January 2025 |
| Scalable Capital | Scalable Capital Bank GmbH (a bank; listed for advice on crypto-assets) | BaFin (Germany) | 2 March 2026 |
| Trade Republic | Trade Republic Bank GmbH (a bank) | BaFin (Germany) | 28 April 2025 |
The date is the authorization or notification date in the ESMA file. Bitstamp (CSSF), eToro and Revolut (CySEC), Gemini (MFSA) and KuCoin EU (FMA) also list Germany. Of the 100 firms supervised by BaFin, most are banks (many of them cooperative banks) that offer crypto to their own customers. N26 says its crypto trading is provided with Bitpanda. For BSDEX, the trading venue of Börse Stuttgart, we found no entry under that name in the ESMA file; check it in BaFin’s company database. A listing also shows which services a firm may provide, so check that the service you want is included.
Not in the register
- Binance, Bitget and Nexo were not in the ESMA register of authorized providers on 7 October 2026.
- MEXC is on ESMA’s list of non-compliant entities: on 16 September 2025 the Dutch AFM found that it provided crypto-asset services in the Netherlands without the required MiCA authorization. It was not in the register of authorized providers either.
Fees compared
MiCA requires providers to publish their prices, costs and fees “in a prominent place on their website” (Article 66(4)). The table shows what each provider’s own pages said on 7 October 2026, for a normal customer at the lowest fee level. “Simple buy” is the buy button in the app; “advanced” is the order book (maker / taker). A spread is the difference between the buying and selling price and is an extra cost. “Not found” means we could not find or read the figure on the provider’s own pages.
| Provider | Simple buy | Advanced (maker / taker) | Euro deposit | Euro withdrawal | Coins to your own wallet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bison | No fee; spread of on average 1.25% for bitcoin and ether, 1.75% for other coins | – | Free (card, Apple Pay or Google Pay 2.49%) | Free | Yes, free |
| Bitpanda | 0.99% for bitcoin, 1.49% for other coins, included in the price | 0.25% (Fusion) | Not found | Free | Yes, 0.00000598 BTC |
| Bitvavo | Taker fee, at most 0.25% | Maker not found / at most 0.25% | Not found | Free | Yes, 0.000017 BTC |
| BSDEX | – | 0.20% / 0.35% (at least €0.01 per order) | No other costs, in its own words | No other costs, in its own words | Not found |
| Bybit EU | Spread 1.30% on weekdays 07:31–20:59 UTC, 1.80% at other times | 0.25% / 0.25% | Not found | Not found | Yes, fixed fee per coin |
| Coinbase | Fee plus spread; rate not found | From 0.0% maker (its own claim) | Not found | Not found | Yes, network fee |
| Crypto.com | 0.80%, other fees and spread may apply | Not found | Free by bank transfer | €1 | Yes, 0.0002 BTC |
| justTRADE | 0.125% plus a spread of at least 0.175%; minimum order €25 | – | Not found | Not found | Not found; coins cannot be transferred in |
| Kraken | 1% plus spread | 0.40% / 0.80% | Not found | €1 | Yes, fee not found |
| N26 | 1.5% for bitcoin, 2.5% for most other coins, 3.5% for some low-liquidity coins; minimum €1 | – | Via your N26 account | Via your N26 account | Not found |
| OKX | Spread 1.00% | 0.08% / 0.10% | Not found | Free | Yes, fixed fee per withdrawal |
A few things the table does not show:
- Trade Republic and Scalable Capital publish their crypto prices on pages we could not read without a browser, so we give no figures for them.
- N26 gives lower rates (1% for bitcoin, 2% for other coins) on its Metal plan, up to a monthly volume.
- justTRADE keeps customers’ coins in a pooled wallet at Tangany and says that moving coins to justTRADE is not possible.
- Bybit EU introduced its single 0.25% fee for trades from 5 October 2026. Card payments usually cost extra at most providers.
Features compared
| Provider | Number of coins (its own claim) | Staking | Recurring buy | Bitcoin Lightning | German-language pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bison | 70 | Ether and Solana, 27% of rewards; not regulated under MiCA, in its own words | Yes (savings plan without fees) | Not found | Yes |
| Bitpanda | 650+ | Yes (20% of rewards) | Yes | Not found | Not checked |
| Bitvavo | 400+ | Yes | Yes | No | Not checked |
| BSDEX | Not found | Not found | Not found | Not found | Yes |
| Bybit EU | 115+ | Earn (unregulated, in its own words) | Yes | Not found | Not checked |
| Coinbase | “Hundreds” | Yes | Yes | Not found | Not checked |
| Crypto.com | 400+ | Yes | Yes | Not found | Not checked |
| justTRADE | 73 | Ether, Solana and Cardano (“Flexible Staking” via Tangany) | Yes (savings plans) | Not found | Yes |
| Kraken | 600+ | Yes (20% commission on flexible staking) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| N26 | 300+ or 400+ (its page names both) | Not found | Not found | Not found | Yes |
| OKX | Not stated | Yes | Yes | Yes (up to 0.05 BTC per withdrawal) | Yes |
Staking and lending are not regulated under MiCA; Bison and Bybit EU say so themselves. Staking rewards are taxable income; see personal tax.
How to check a provider
- Look the provider up in BaFin’s company database (Unternehmensdatenbank). Check that the legal entity you sign up with is the one listed, and which services it may provide.
- For providers from other EU countries, the ESMA register shows the home regulator and whether Germany is among the countries it may serve.
- Check BaFin’s warnings (Warnmeldungen). BaFin says they can never be complete, and that criminals often misuse the names of real, supervised firms, so check the website address and contact details as well.
- Read the fee page before you deposit: look at the spread as well as the fee, and at the cost of withdrawing coins.
BaFin warnings
BaFin publishes warnings about firms it suspects of offering financial or crypto-asset services without authorization. Recent examples include a series of near-identical “AI trading platform” websites (29 September 2026), bitbucks(.)space (30 September 2026) and de-capitalus(.)com (7 October 2026). Most concern websites run by unknown operators, not the licensed providers in the table above. How these scams work is on regulation.
If an exchange fails
There is no guarantee scheme for crypto. The German Deposit Guarantee Act (EinSiG) protects deposits at banks up to €100,000 per customer per bank, but deposits are money balances (section 2(3) EinSiG), not crypto. Euro balances held as deposits at a bank, such as an account at a bank that also offers crypto, can be covered; the coins are not. What MiCA does require:
- Separation. A provider that holds your crypto must keep it separate from its own and legally separate from its estate, “so that creditors of the crypto-asset service provider have no recourse to crypto-assets held in custody … in particular in the event of insolvency” (Article 75(7)).
- Your euros. Customer money must be placed with a bank or central bank by the end of the next business day, separate from the provider’s own (Article 70(3)). This does not apply to providers that are themselves a bank, payment or e-money institution.
- Liability. The provider is liable for crypto lost through an incident attributable to it, up to the market value at the time of the loss (Article 75(8)).
- Statements and wind-down. You get a statement of your holdings at least every three months (Article 75(5)), and custodians must have a plan for an orderly wind-down (Article 74).
These rules lower the risk but do not remove it. Coins in your own wallet do not depend on an exchange at all; the rules for that are on regulation.
Where to complain
- The provider first. Under MiCA every provider must have a published complaints procedure, free of charge, and must investigate complaints “in a timely and fair manner” (Article 71). BaFin also advises writing to the firm first and asking for a written reply.
- An arbitration body. BaFin’s own arbitration body (Schlichtungsstelle) handles disputes about banking and financial services under the Banking Act and about funds, and only if no recognized private arbitration body is competent. The Federal Office of Justice keeps the list of recognized bodies, including those of the banking associations. For disputes that none of these covers, the Universalschlichtungsstelle des Bundes can help: it is usually free for consumers and handles disputes worth €10 to €50,000, but only if the provider is willing or obliged to take part. For a provider in another EU country, the FIN-NET network of arbitration bodies can point you to the right one. We found no arbitration body specifically for MiCA crypto providers.
- BaFin. You can complain about a firm BaFin supervises with its online form. BaFin uses complaints in its supervision but does not decide individual cases, and deadlines keep running while it looks at your complaint.
- Court. Only courts can decide a dispute bindingly, for example to make a firm pay.
Sources
- ESMA: Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), interim MiCA register (CASP and non-compliant entities files of 7 October 2026) (last checked October 2026)
- BaFin: Unternehmensdatenbank (last checked October 2026)
- BaFin: Warnmeldungen (last checked October 2026)
- BaFin: Warnung vor Plattformreihe „KI-Handelsplattform“ (29 September 2026) (last checked October 2026)
- BaFin: Warnung vor bitbucks(.)space (30 September 2026) (last checked October 2026)
- BaFin: Warnung vor de-capitalus(.)com (7 October 2026) (last checked October 2026)
- BaFin: Bei der BaFin beschweren (last checked October 2026)
- BaFin: Streit bei der BaFin schlichten (last checked October 2026)
- Bundesamt für Justiz: Liste der Verbraucherschlichtungsstellen (last checked October 2026)
- Universalschlichtungsstelle des Bundes: Schlichtung (last checked October 2026)
- Gesetze im Internet: Einlagensicherungsgesetz, § 2 (last checked October 2026)
- Gesetze im Internet: Einlagensicherungsgesetz, § 8 (last checked October 2026)
- EUR-Lex: Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA), Articles 59, 60, 66, 70, 71, 74 and 75 (last checked October 2026)
Exchange pages (not official sources)
Fees and features come from each provider’s own pages, checked on 7 October 2026. They are the providers’ own statements, not checked by a regulator.
- Bison: Gebühren und Kosten (last checked October 2026)
- Bison: Krypto-Features (last checked October 2026)
- Bitpanda: Cost transparency, crypto (last checked October 2026)
- Bitvavo: Fees (help center) (last checked October 2026)
- BSDEX: Entgelte (last checked October 2026)
- Bybit EU: Trading fee structure (last checked October 2026)
- Coinbase: User agreement (EEA) (last checked October 2026)
- Crypto.com: Fees and limits (EEA) (last checked October 2026)
- justTRADE: Kryptohandel (last checked October 2026)
- Kraken: Gebührenplan (last checked October 2026)
- N26: Krypto (last checked October 2026)
- OKX: Gebühren (last checked October 2026)
This page is general information, not financial advice. Fees and licenses change, so check the register and the provider’s own fee page before you open an account.