The best free accounts for students

Test

Once you are a customer, you will stay that way for a long time. At least that’s what the banks hope. That is why the banks are still making cheap offers to young professionals and students. While older customers are confronted with rising fees or even negative interest rates, the younger ones are still being wooed with good terms for checking accounts.

The analysis company Tetralog has on behalf of stern examined the market for the second time after 2020. We have increased the number of offers that have been scrutinized to 83, also in order to take more into account offers in university cities. The test criteria have been tightened and adapted to changing usage. The table shows the providers that could be awarded at least four stars. 18 banks received the highest rating of five stars. The results are available here as a PDF download.

Golden card included

Only accounts that are available up to at least their 25th birthday were taken into account. Some providers allow usage for up to 30 years. It is particularly worthwhile to take a look at the conditions for the credit card. It is free at a third of the institutes, but some also charge 40 or 60 euros a year. The Berliner Volksbank even has a golden credit card with many additional services free of charge. For example, it is possible to withdraw cash from ATMs abroad without any fees. This is one of the reasons why the Berliner Volksbank performed best overall in the test. The Hypovereinsbank has the highest rated supraregional offer among the branch institutes. With the direct banks, the DKB is ahead and with the pure mobile banks O2. In individual university cities, however, the local savings banks have also put together the best package.

“Some of the offers are very attractive,” says Christan Apelt from Tetralog, “many banks offer very good-priced account models.” However, if you regularly overdraw your account, you should pay attention to the overdraft interest. The amount of the overdraft interest differs greatly – from 4.3 percent at PSD Bank Karlsruhe Neustadt to more than eleven percent at some savings banks and Volksbanks.

Up to a four euro fee for deposits

While the free current accounts for older customers are offered less and less or with increasingly strict conditions, there are still plenty of options for people under 30. Only 41 percent of banks require proof of training, others set a maximum age. You don’t have to worry too much about the transfer costs. With the exception of one institute, nobody asks for money for digital money transfers. More attention is required when paying with a credit card in a foreign currency when traveling abroad or online. Usually the costs are less than one percent, some institutes charge more than two percent. This can be a problem during a long trip or larger orders. While cash is almost everywhere free of charge (even if in some cases only three times a month), it is not at all possible to deposit bills or coins with four providers. Another five institutes charge more than four euros per deposit. Paying in the tip from the part-time job can quickly become expensive.

Many banks come up trumps when it comes to additional services and service ideas. Savings banks and Volksbanks in particular make it relatively easy to split bills in restaurants or for gifts among friends.

The depot is also often free of charge

As interest in the stock market is growing, Tetralog also looked at the opportunities for securities trading this year. At 37 percent of the institutes, keeping a custody account is free and only very rarely tied to conditions that are difficult to meet. If that’s important to you, you should look into the fine print. Then almost 40 percent of the banks have to pay a deposit fee of EUR 20 for an investment of EUR 5,000. With two mobile banks (Vivid and Revolut) you can even invest in crypto currencies. However, since they perform less well on other terms, they are not among the excellent institutes.

All tables are available here as PDF downloads

This is how the star tested

According to the specifications of the stern The analysis company Tetralog determined 83 free accounts for students / young professionals in April / May 2021 and compared them in six differently weighted areas:

A maximum of 100 points could be achieved. The overall rating is based on the following scale:

The stern only works with test partners with a high level of expertise. This means that Tetralog is also in demand as a service provider in the financial sector. However, the neutrality of data collection and analysis is always guaranteed. The winning companies have the opportunity to become one stern– Acquire seal. More detailed information on the conditions of these seals can be found here.