Bitvavo review

Bitvavo charges 0.25% on a market order at its entry tier, takes euro deposits by SEPA transfer for free and has held a MiCA licence from the Dutch market regulator since June 2025. That combination makes the Amsterdam exchange one of the cheaper licensed places in Europe to buy crypto with euros. This Bitvavo review checks those claims as of 21 October 2026, along with the catches: 1% on card and PayPal deposits, a steep cut of staking rewards and a chief executive who left abruptly in July 2025.

It is a spot exchange first, with no futures or options, though short selling and leverage arrived in 2026.

Bitvavo says it has more than 2 million active users and calls itself the largest euro spot exchange, a claim The Block repeated in June 2025 without figures. We could not check it.

What is Bitvavo? A Dutch exchange built around the euro

Mark Nuvelstijn, Tim Baardse and Jelle de Boer founded Bitvavo in Amsterdam in 2018. The operating company, Bitvavo B.V., sits at Keizersgracht 28. On 18 February 2020 the Dutch central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), registered it as a crypto service provider under national anti-money-laundering rules, a regime MiCA has since replaced.

The Netherlands drove the growth. By 2023 Bitvavo claimed about one million customers and roughly 40% of the Dutch crypto market. Its homepage now puts active users above 2 million and links to a list of 453 assets, while CoinGecko counts 423 coins and 433 trading pairs. We use “more than 400”.

Most markets are quoted in euros, with a smaller set quoted in the USDC stablecoin. Beginners get a plain buy and sell screen. Active traders switch to Pro Mode, a web interface with charts and keyboard navigation; Bitvavo announced a version for its mobile app in April 2025.

The country list we read on 21 October 2026 names 25 European countries, from Austria and France to Norway and Sweden. The United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States are not on it.

Bitvavo MiCA licence: authorised by the AFM on 26 June 2025

Bitvavo B.V. is a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) authorised under MiCA by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). The ESMA interim register of CASPs gives 26 June 2025 as the authorisation date, under Article 63 of the regulation. Bitvavo announced the licence the next day; The Block and Cointelegraph covered it on 28 June.

The register entry lists three services: custody and administration of crypto-assets for clients, operation of a trading platform, and transfer services. It passports the licence to 30 countries, the whole European Economic Area, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway included.

France: on the AMF white list since 14 July 2025

The French regulator’s white list of crypto-asset service providers shows Bitvavo B.V. as “Licensed MICA”, working under the free provision of services, with “N/A – Passport” in place of a licence number. The date on the entry, 14 July 2025, marks the start of Bitvavo’s intended services in France, not the Dutch authorisation. The AMF lists the same three services as ESMA. It shows no French PSAN registration number, so we leave out claims of an older French registration that we could not trace there.

Italy: services continue under MiCA passporting

Bitvavo’s Italian MiCAR disclaimer says it keeps serving Italy under the passporting regime of Article 65 of the regulation, and Italy is on the ESMA passport list. We could not confirm whether Bitvavo was on the OAM’s register of virtual asset operators before MiCA applied. Today it relies on the Dutch licence.

What the licence covers, and what it does not

A MiCA authorisation means a national supervisor, here the AFM, has vetted the company and supervises the services it authorised, and that one licence is valid across the EEA. Our guide to the MiCA regulation explains the capital, governance and complaint rules that come with it.

Some products sit outside it. Bitvavo’s own homepage disclaimer says staking, provided by Bitvavo B.V., and lending, provided by a sister company, Bitvavo Custody B.V., “are currently not regulated under MiCA”. No licence protects anyone from a fall in the price of what they buy.

Founder Mark Nuvelstijn left as CEO on 4 July 2025

A week after announcing the licence, Bitvavo lost its best-known face. On 4 July 2025 the company said that Nuvelstijn was stepping down as chief executive with immediate effect. He had stepped aside temporarily the day before, when Bitvavo opened an internal review, according to the Dutch broadcaster NOS.

The trigger was an article in the financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad (FD) about his private dealings with Max R., an investor convicted of fraud. NOS summarised the FD’s allegations: that Nuvelstijn gave ING a misleading account of large transfers to Max R. several years earlier, calling them a loan, and that the money went into options on a listed company, allegedly bought on inside information. These are press allegations. We found no ruling by a court or regulator on them, and NOS reported that he did not address the specific points.

“I do not want Bitvavo to be burdened by an issue from the past relating to my private investments,” Nuvelstijn said in the company’s statement, adding that he intended to take responsibility for his actions. Johan van Olffen, the chief financial officer, became interim CEO while keeping his finance role. As of 21 October 2026 we could not confirm whether that appointment has become permanent.

The reported allegations concern the founder’s private affairs, not the exchange’s handling of client money.

How safe is Bitvavo? No hack found, a €100,000 guarantee

Bitvavo’s security page lists two-factor authentication, an anti-phishing code and device and IP management. These are optional, so switch two-factor authentication on yourself. It says the “vast majority” of assets sit in cold storage, without a percentage, held with two custody providers, and transfers out of cold storage need several signatures. The custody providers are insured for up to $755 million, a sum the page does not break down per customer.

The ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1 and SOC certifications on the same page belong to the data centres Bitvavo uses, not to Bitvavo itself.

The homepage advertises an Account Guarantee that “may reimburse you for up to €100.000” after unauthorised access to an account. Bitvavo’s help centre says it covers crypto or euro withdrawals made by someone who got into your account without permission, only for eligible users and after an investigation. Sending coins to a wrong address yourself is not covered. The scheme was introduced in 2022.

Bitvavo’s proof of reserves page, read on 21 October 2026, gives reserve ratios dated 31 March 2026, attested by The Network Firm LLP. Bitcoin, ether, solana, cardano and XRP stand at 100%, dogecoin at 104% and euros at 113%. Customers can check their own balance against a Merkle tree. The page contradicts itself on frequency, saying “annually” in its body and “quarterly” in its description.

We found no hack or theft of customer crypto in the sources we checked, and no DNB fine against Bitvavo. Two data incidents have been reported: in September 2022 a misconfiguration exposed the personal data of eight users for about 15 minutes, with no funds touched, and in April 2024 a breach affected a limited number of customers. An outage at an infrastructure provider left the platform temporarily unreachable in November 2023.

Bitvavo wallet: custodial balance, plus a Web3 wallet since September 2026

The ordinary “Bitvavo wallet” is your account balance, and Bitvavo and its custodians hold the keys. On 22 September 2026 Bitvavo added a separate Web3 wallet inside its app. It is self-custodial, so the user controls the private key, and it covers more than 15,000 tokens on chains including Ethereum, Solana and Base.

The Web3 wallet comes from a different company, Vavo Web3 Limited, and Bitvavo says it is not a regulated service under MiCA. Moving coins off the exchange to a wallet of your own costs only the withdrawal fees listed below.

Bitvavo fees: 0.15% maker and 0.25% taker at the entry tier

Bitvavo uses a maker-taker model. A maker’s order waits in the book; a taker’s, such as a market order, fills at once. The tier depends on trading volume over the previous 30 days, and trades on stablecoin pairs such as USDC/EUR do not count towards it. The table shows crypto pairs on euro markets, from the official fees page.

30-day volume (EUR)	Maker	Taker
0 to 99,999	0.15%	0.25%
100,000+	0.10%	0.20%
250,000+	0.09%	0.18%
500,000+	0.08%	0.16%
1,000,000+	0.05%	0.14%
2,500,000+	0.03%	0.12%
5,000,000+	0.01%	0.10%
10,000,000+	0.00%	0.08%
25,000,000+	0.00%	0.04%
100,000,000+	0.00%	0.02%

Those are the rates as of 21 October 2026. Crypto pairs on USDC markets cost 0.05% for makers and takers up to the €1 million tier. Stablecoin pairs such as USDC/EUR start at 0.10% for both sides and fall to 0.01% from €1 million. EURC/EUR costs nothing for makers and 0.01% for takers.

We could not pin down the cost of the simple buy screen. The homepage advertises trading fees “ranging from 0.00% to 0.25%”, and the fees page lists no separate charge or spread for instant purchases. Read the confirmation screen before you tap.

What a €1,000 buy costs on Bitvavo

Entry-tier examples, ignoring price movement while the order fills:

• A market order for €1,000 of bitcoin pays the taker rate: 0.25% × €1,000 = €2.50.
• The same order placed as a limit order that waits in the book pays the maker rate: 0.15% × €1,000 = €1.50.
• Funding by card first costs 1% × €1,000 = €10, so €990 reaches the account; buying with it as a taker adds 0.25% × €990 = €2.48, for €12.48 in total, about 1.25% of the original €1,000.
• Going through USDC costs 0.10% × €1,000 = €1.00 to buy the stablecoin, leaving about €999 worth of USDC; buying bitcoin with it on a USDC market adds 0.05% of that, about €0.50, so roughly €1.50 in all, before any move in the euro-dollar rate.
• A trader above €100,000 of monthly volume pays 0.20% × €1,000 = €2.00 as a taker.

Deposit fees: free by SEPA, 1% by card or PayPal

Method	Fee	Maximum per deposit
SEPA transfer	Free	€5,000,000+
iDEAL / Wero	Free	€50,000
Bancontact	Free	€10,000
Apple Pay	1%	€10,000
Google Pay	1%	€10,000
Credit card	1%	€10,000
PayPal	1%	€10,000
EPS transfer (Austria)	1.75%	€1,000
Crypto	Free	n/a

These are the fees page rates on 21 October 2026. iDEAL and Wero are Dutch payment methods, and Bancontact is Belgian. PayPal used to cost more: a Cryptoast review updated on 20 March 2026 gave 2%, and the page now shows 1%.

How to withdraw from Bitvavo, and what it costs

Each crypto withdrawal has its own fee and minimum, set per asset and network. A sample from the fees page on 21 October 2026:

Asset	Withdrawal fee	Minimum withdrawal
Bitcoin (BTC)	0.000017 BTC	0.000017 BTC
Ether (ETH)	0.00032 ETH	0.00046 ETH
Solana (SOL)	0.0058 SOL	0.011 SOL
XRP	0.34 XRP	10 XRP
Cardano (ADA)	2 ADA	5 ADA
Dogecoin (DOGE)	4.1 DOGE	14 DOGE

To withdraw crypto, pick the asset, paste the receiving address, choose the network and confirm with your second factor. Get the network right. A token sent on a network the receiving wallet does not support can be lost, and the Account Guarantee does not cover mistakes of that kind.

Euro withdrawals go back to a bank account by SEPA. The fees page lists no charge for them; check the amount in the app before confirming.

Products: spot, staking, short selling and leverage

Spot trading is the core business. Recurring Buy, launched in January 2024, buys a chosen asset at a set interval and is the nearest thing Bitvavo has to a savings plan. Convert, added on 3 March 2026, swaps one asset for another in a single step across more than 350 assets, for one trading fee, though Bitvavo says the quoted price may include a spread. Bitvavo offers no futures, perpetual contracts or options. Launches are listed on its product features page.

Staking: Flex and Fixed, with a large commission

Bitvavo offers two kinds of staking. Flex keeps the coins available to trade or withdraw. Fixed locks them for a set term in exchange for a higher rate, then returns coins and rewards to Flex at the end.

Bitvavo keeps a large part of the yield. Its pricing policy says the commission depends on what the protocol actually pays: 10% to 40% of the protocol yield for Fixed staking and 50% to 80% for Flex, with the rate shown in the app being what the customer receives. If a network pays 4% a year and Bitvavo keeps 60%, the customer gets 1.6%. Bitpanda, by comparison, takes 20% of staking rewards, according to our review.

Short selling since February 2026, leverage later in the year

Short selling launched on 18 February 2026 without leverage. Bitvavo’s announcement described isolated positions backed by euro collateral, from €10, on more than 15 assets including BTC, ETH and XRP. The most a customer can lose is the collateral posted. Bitvavo can close a position automatically, possibly at a poor price, once its health ratio falls too far; an alert goes out below 120%.

Leverage came afterwards. A Bitvavo explainer published on 8 July 2026 describes trading with up to 10x, and the homepage now offers up to 10x on 20 assets. The fees page lists a borrowing rate of 0.0023% per hour for 29 assets, the euro stablecoin EURC among them, and a 2% fee when Bitvavo closes a position automatically.

Borrowing €1,000 for a full day therefore costs 0.0023% × 24 hours = 0.0552%, about €0.55, or about €16.56 over 30 days. The fees page does not say what the 2% liquidation fee is calculated on; applied to a €1,000 position, it would be €20 on top of the loss that triggered it. Bitvavo’s own example shows 10x turning a 10% favourable move into a 100% return on margin. The same move the other way wipes the margin out.

Bitvavo app review: good store ratings, support that starts with a bot

Cryptoast reported ratings of 4.6 out of 5 on the App Store and 4.2 on Google Play, the latter from nearly 26,800 reviews, in a review updated on 20 March 2026. We could not open the stores to confirm today’s figures. Bitvavo’s homepage shows a Trustpilot score of 4 out of 5 from 17,600 reviews.

Support runs through chat in the app or on the website, where an AI assistant answers first and hands harder cases to a human agent, plus email at [email protected]. Bitvavo’s help centre says phone calls happen only by appointment: a customer asks by chat or email and receives a link to book a slot. There is no public number to call. The website exists in French and Italian, but we could not confirm agents who answer in those languages.

Bitvavo vs Kraken and Bitpanda: entry fees compared

At the entry tier, Bitvavo costs less than Kraken, Bitpanda and Coinbase, using the figures in our own reviews and the platforms’ fee pages.

Exchange	Entry maker / taker	MiCA regulator	Futures
Bitvavo	0.15% / 0.25%	AFM (Netherlands)	No
Kraken Pro	0.40% / 0.80%	Central Bank of Ireland	Yes
Bitpanda Fusion	0.25% / 0.25%	BaFin, MFSA and FMA (three entities)	No

At the 0.80% taker rate in our Kraken review, a $1,000 market order on Kraken Pro costs $8, against €2.50 for a €1,000 order on Bitvavo. In return Kraken offers futures, licences in the United States and the United Kingdom, and a history going back to 2011.

Our Bitpanda review found broker fees of 0.99% to 2.49% in the main app, about $14.90 on a $1,000 purchase of ether at 1.49%, while its Fusion interface charges 0.25% to makers and takers alike. Bitpanda adds stocks, ETFs and precious metals. Coinbase, licensed under MiCA in Luxembourg, does not compete on price either, according to our review.

Bitvavo for readers in France and Italy

French and Italian residents are served under the same passported Dutch licence. The country pages for both list SEPA transfer, credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, EPS and PayPal as deposit methods, so a French or Italian bank account funds the account for free by SEPA.

Belgian and Spanish visitors are sent to bitvavo.be and bitvavo.es, whose local terms we did not research.

Who should use Bitvavo, and who should look elsewhere

Bitvavo suits EEA residents who trade crypto against the euro, fund their account by SEPA and want a MiCA-licensed platform with low fees from the first euro.

Look elsewhere if you want futures, if you can only pay by card or PayPal, or if staking income is the main reason you are choosing a platform. Residents of the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States are not on its country list. Our guide to choosing a crypto exchange lists the checks to run before opening any account.

Our Bitvavo review score: 7.9 out of 10

Fees score 8.5. Entry rates beat Kraken, match Bitpanda Fusion on market orders and undercut it on limit orders, but the staking commission and the unclear cost of the simple buy screen hold the score back. Deposits also get 8.5: free SEPA, iDEAL and Bancontact against 1% for cards, wallets and PayPal.

Security gets 8.0. The Account Guarantee, a proof of reserves dated March 2026 and no known hack outweigh the two data incidents. The app also gets 8.0, mainly for its store ratings. Support scores 6.5, with an AI assistant first, phone calls by appointment only and no confirmed French or Italian agents.

The 2025 leadership change does not enter the score, as the allegations concern private affairs and remain unproven. When we next update this review, we will look at the next proof-of-reserves report and whether Bitvavo names a permanent chief executive.