Lightyear review
7
(our review)
Lightyear is a young online broker where you can invest in stocks and ETFs at low cost. We rate it 7 out of 10. The platform offers commission-free ETF orders, low trading fees and multi-currency accounts to reduce foreign exchange costs. It also supports fractional investing and provides extensive info on stocks and ETFs.
Contents:
Please note: investing with Lightyear involves risk. You may lose some or all of your investment.
What is Lightyear?
The platform was founded in 2020 by Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, two former Wise employees. It raised growth capital from several well-known names in the European technology sector, including Taavet Hinrikus (Wise), Markus Villig (Bolt) and Richard Branson.
Lightyear was founded in Estonia, launched first in the United Kingdom and then expanded rapidly across continental Europe. Today, this online broker operates in 25 European countries. With more than 1 billion dollars in client assets, it is still relatively small, but its ambition is to become one of Europe’s largest brokers.
Investors often compare Lightyear with Trade Republic and Scalable Capital.
Open an account directly with a large European broker such as eToro, known for its beginner-friendly platform, or DEGIRO, which is popular for its low trading fees. Investing involves risks. You can lose your investment.
Offer
With Lightyear, you can invest in stocks, ETFs and money market funds. The current selection focuses on the most popular investments, including more than 6,000 stocks and ETFs listed on exchanges in the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom.
- Financial data and analyst expectations
Like most other brokers, you can create watchlists and set price alerts to receive a notification when a stock reaches your chosen price. Lightyear also provides extensive investment information, including key financial figures, analyst expectations, news and valuation ratios. - Investing in multiple currencies
Lightyear gives you separate accounts in euros, US dollars and British pounds. You decide when to exchange currencies. If you trade regularly in pounds or dollars, this can reduce foreign exchange costs. - Fractional investing and recurring investments
It offers Plans, allowing you to invest periodically in a custom portfolio or a pre-built model portfolio. Investments are executed automatically according to a fixed schedule. Fractional investing is also available for part of the selection. This offering has expanded significantly over the past year. - Money market funds
Cash that you are not yet ready to invest can be placed in BlackRock money market funds. Their expected return is usually close to current market interest rates. - Crypto
Lightyear currently offers 12 major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, with a trading fee of 0.45 percent. - Options, futures and CFDs
The platform does not offer trading in options, futures or CFDs. These products involve higher risk and are mainly used by experienced investors for leverage or hedging purposes.
Registration
You can register through both the desktop website and the mobile app. We chose the desktop version, where identity verification was completed on a mobile phone using Veriff, a widely used online verification service. After that, we still had to install the Lightyear app to complete the mandatory KYC questions, such as the origin of our wealth.
Once registration is complete, you can transfer money to your account. Lightyear offers a “recommended bank transfer”, but it option may have limited availability, depending on your country. In our case, The Netherlands, this option is only available to Revolut users.
Fortunately, you can also make a standard SEPA bank transfer. These deposits were consistently credited within a minute.
Ease of use
Lightyear has a clean and intuitive app and website. The platform is available in multiple languages such as French, German or Dutch, and simple enough for beginner investors. The dashboard initially highlights popular stocks, which also tend to show relatively strong price movements.
In the mobile app, you can immediately browse by country or category. From there, we quickly found European stocks, ETFs and more stable investments. On the desktop version, this takes a little more searching at first. The search function works well if you know the ticker symbols.
Investment information for stocks
For individual stocks, Lightyear provides more information than many other mobile brokers. This gives you a quick first impression of analysts’ price expectations, although you cannot explore the underlying data in detail. For example, you cannot see when those expectations were published or whether they are still up to date. However, you do get an immediate overview of the range of analyst estimates and the uncertainty surrounding a stock.
It also displays AI-generated summaries based on recent news articles. You can see both bullish and bearish arguments, including a link to the source, which is usually in English. How current the information is depends on how much recent news is available for that stock.
Placing orders and creating investment plans
Placing orders on the platform is straightforward. You can choose between market and limit orders and enter your order either by investment amount or by the number of shares.
You can also use Plans to set up recurring investments, such as automatically buying a specific investment every month for a fixed amount.
Open an account directly with a large European broker such as eToro, known for its beginner-friendly platform, or DEGIRO, which is popular for its low trading fees. Investing involves risks. You can lose your investment.
Fees
At the time of writing, Lightyear is one of the cheapest brokers in Europe. There are no monthly or account fees. ETF orders are commission-free, although, as with all platforms, fund management fees charged by the ETF provider still apply. Stock trades are subject to trading fees. These are low and depend on the market you trade:
- US stocks: 0.1 percent per trade (minimum 0.10 dollar, maximum 1.00 dollar)
- European stocks: 1.00 euro per trade
- UK stocks: 1.00 pound per trade
Spreads and foreign exchange fees
Spreads, the difference between the buying and selling price, appear competitive, although the selection is still smaller than at many larger brokers. For popular stocks and ETFs, spreads are generally limited, while less frequently traded securities may have wider spreads.
Lightyear charges a 0.35 percent foreign exchange fee when converting money between accounts or trading in another currency. By keeping separate balances in euros, US dollars and British pounds, you can reduce these costs. There are no custody or inactivity fees.
Safety and regulation
Lightyear Europe AS is authorised as an investment firm under MiFID II by the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority (Finantsinspektsioon, licence number 4.1-1/31). Thanks to this European licence, the platform is allowed to offer its services in the entire EU. For crypto, Lightyear also holds a MiCA licence.
Under its MiFID II licence, Lightyear is required to keep stocks and ETFs separate from its own assets. Invested assets are covered by the investor compensation scheme, up to 20,000 euro. Uninvested cash is protected through different safeguards, depending on how the funds are held.
Lightyear does not engage in securities lending. The platform does not lend customers’ stocks, ETFs or uninvested cash to third parties.
Review score: 7
In our review, we rate Lightyear 7 out of 10. For investors looking to build their own portfolio with mainstream stocks and ETFs, we consider Lightyear one of the more attractive European brokers. It is particularly well suited to long-term passive investing.
The broker combines low fees with fractional investing, multiple currencies and extensive stock information. Investors who trade actively or want to use options should instead consider brokers such as DEGIRO, Saxo Bank or Interactive Brokers.
Disclaimers
Investing involves risk. You may lose some or all of your investment.
This review was written by the editorial team of Investmentplatforms.EU and is based on our own experience and assessment. Our income comes from advertising and compensation from providers. More information about our editorial process is available on our About us page.
