Best Broker Cash Rates in Europe After the ECB Hike

The European Central Bank raised rates on 11 June 2026, its first hike since 2023, pushing the deposit facility rate to 2.25%. For the first time in over a year, broker cash interest rates in Europe are moving up instead of down. If you have uninvested euros sitting in a brokerage account, this is the month to check what they are actually earning.

The short version: some brokers now pay 2.5 to 3% on idle cash, and some pay nothing. The gap is wider than most investors realise, and on a five-figure cash balance it adds up to real money.

Why the ECB hike matters for your cash

For most of 2024 and 2025 the ECB was cutting. Eight consecutive cuts dragged cash yields down across the board, and a lot of investors stopped paying attention to what their cash earned because the answer kept shrinking.

That reversed on 17 June 2026, when the new rates took effect. The hike was a response to an energy-driven inflation shock tied to the Strait of Hormuz disruption, with staff projections now pointing to headline inflation near 3.0% for the year. We covered the portfolio side of that decision in our breakdown of what the ECB hike means for your portfolio.

The practical effect on cash is direct. Brokers that pass the ECB deposit rate through to customers raise their cash interest within days of a hike. So the rate on your idle euros is no longer a rounding error worth ignoring.

The hidden cost of idle cash

Cash drag is the return you give up by leaving money uninvested. It is one of the quietest costs in a portfolio because it never shows up as a fee. It just sits there as money not working.

Say you keep 20,000 euros in cash between trades, or as dry powder waiting for a dip. At 0% that cash earns nothing. At 2.5% it earns 500 euros a year. Same balance, same broker account in many cases, and the only difference is whether the broker pays interest and whether you bothered to check.

This is where the broker you use suddenly matters a lot. Degiro, the low-cost favourite of European retail investors, does not pay any interest on uninvested cash. That is a deliberate trade-off. Degiro keeps trading costs low partly by not running a cash-interest programme, which is fine if you stay nearly fully invested and bad if you park large balances there. If Degiro is your main broker, it is worth knowing exactly what Degiro charges and how it makes money so you can decide where your cash belongs.

Broker cash interest rates in Europe (late June 2026)

Here is where the major European brokers stand right now. Rates are variable, often country-specific, and sometimes promotional, so treat this as a starting point and confirm on each broker's own page before moving money.

A few things stand out. Trading 212's cash interest leads the pack in the countries where the top rate applies, though the headline number drops for investors outside those 13 markets. Trade Republic is the clearest example of a pass-through model: its official interest page shows the German rate sitting at 2.25%, exactly matching the new ECB deposit facility, while promotional rates in southern Europe run higher to attract new clients.

The brokers clustered around 2% are not doing anything wrong. They simply keep a slice of the spread or run a more conservative cash programme. The real outlier is Degiro at zero, which is the price you pay for one of the cheapest trading platforms in Europe.

Deposit or money market fund? Read the fine print

Not all broker cash is the same kind of cash, and this matters more than the headline rate.

When a broker pays interest on a bank deposit, your money is held at a partner bank and is typically covered by a national deposit guarantee scheme up to 100,000 euros per bank. That is the same protection a regular savings account gets.

When a broker sweeps your cash into a qualifying money market fund, you are technically holding an investment, not a deposit. Money market funds are low risk, but they are not guaranteed the way a deposit is, and the tax treatment can differ from interest income depending on your country. Neither structure is bad. You just want to know which one you are in, because "2.5% on cash" means something different in each case.

Tax is the other variable. Interest, fund distributions, and capital gains can be taxed differently across the EU, and a Dutch, German, or Portuguese investor will each see a different outcome on the same balance. For anything beyond a rough estimate, check your national rules or a tax advisor.

See your cash and your investments as one number

The awkward truth is that most investors do not actually know how much idle cash they hold. It is scattered. A bit in Degiro, a bit in a Trade Republic account opened for the high rate, some in a savings account. Each sits in its own app, and none of them shows you the total or what that total is costing you in lost return.

This is the gap a portfolio tracker closes. Zune.Money treats cash as a real asset class alongside your stocks and ETFs, so your uninvested balances show up in the same view as everything else. When you can see that you are holding 18,000 euros in cash across three accounts, two of them at 0%, the decision to move it gets a lot easier. If you have never set this up, our guide to getting started with portfolio tracking walks through the basics.

For Degiro users specifically, the comparison that keeps coming up is whether to add a second account purely for cash interest. We dug into that trade-off in Trade Republic vs Degiro, and the short answer is that many investors now run both: Degiro for cheap trades, a pass-through broker for the cash that is waiting to be invested.

What to do this month

A quick checklist now that rates have turned:

1. Find your idle cash. Add up uninvested balances across every broker and account. Most people underestimate the total.
2. Check what each one pays. Confirm the current rate on the broker's own page, not last year's number.
3. Flag the 0% balances. Anything sitting at zero, including most Degiro cash, is the first to move.
4. Decide deposit vs fund. Make sure you know whether your cash is a guaranteed deposit or a money market fund.
5. Track it in one place. Put cash next to your investments so the drag stays visible, not hidden across five apps.

Cash rates will not stay here forever. The ECB hiked because of an inflation shock, and the same pass-through that lifted broker rates this month will lower them the day the ECB cuts again. The point is not to chase the top rate every week. It is to stop leaving real money on the table at 0% when 2.5% is sitting one transfer away.

Want to see your idle cash and its drag on your total return in one view? Track your full portfolio with Zune.Money for free, cash included.