P2P Lending Fees Explained: What Platforms Really Charge You

Most P2P platforms in Europe advertise zero fees for investors, and most of them are telling the truth. Depositing, investing and withdrawing are free on the majority of the 19 platforms we compare below. That is exactly why the phrase is worth a closer look: a business that charges its customers nothing still has to be paid by someone, and in crowdlending that someone is the borrower, whose cost sets the rate you receive before you ever see it. This guide separates the three layers of cost in P2P lending, the fees printed on the price list, the spread that never appears on it, and the side charges that only show up when you leave, sit still or pay by card. We use Maclear, which ranks #3 of the 44 platforms we track at 8.4/10, as the worked example throughout, because it has the shortest published fee table in the segment and also the most revealing set of accounts about who pays for it.

TL;DR

• “0% fees” is accurate for deposits, investments and withdrawals on 17 of the 19 platforms in our table. It says nothing about the two costs that actually decide your return: the spread between what the borrower pays and what you receive, and the cost of leaving early.
• The fees that do appear are of four kinds: portfolio management fees (Mintos 0.29-0.39% a year), assets-under-management fees (EstateGuru 0.083% a month on performing principal), exit fees (0% to 2.5% of a secondary-market sale), and account fees (EUR 3 per withdrawal, EUR 4.90 to EUR 50 a month for inactivity, 2% on card deposits).
• The invisible fee is the largest. Platforms disclose it as “commission from lending companies” or “interest spread”: 1-5% of the portfolio at PeerBerry, 3.9% at Nectaro, 5-6% at Indemo, 0-2% of interest plus 2.5-4% intermediation at EstateGuru. It is already deducted from the rate on the project page.
• On a EUR 10,000 portfolio earning 10% gross, an EstateGuru-style AUM fee takes about EUR 100 a year, a Mintos Core Loans fee about EUR 39, and a Maclear primary-market holding EUR 0. A single early exit on Maclear costs EUR 250 in fee before any discount.
• Maclear’s own FY2024 accounts show the other side of “no fees”: the platform paid investors CHF 827,849 in a year when borrowers paid CHF 464,322 in interest, because CHF 297,583 of bonuses came from Maclear’s own revenue. Zero fees plus cash bonuses were funded by a loss.

Three layers of cost, and only one is on the price list

When a bank sells you a fund it has to publish an ongoing charge figure. When a P2P platform sells you a loan it publishes an interest rate, and the rate is net of everything the platform has already taken. So the honest question is not “what fees do I pay” but “where, in the chain from borrower to me, does money leave”.

There are three places.

Layer one is the price list. These are the charges deducted from your account balance or from a transaction: a percentage of assets, a percentage of a sale, a fixed euro amount per withdrawal, a monthly charge for doing nothing. They are visible, published, and on most platforms small or zero.

Layer two is the spread. The borrower on a Maclear project pays a commission to Maclear on the funding raised, plus fees for advisory services such as financial modelling and business valuation [source: Just-P2P, Maclear review, updated 21 July 2026]. A lending company on PeerBerry pays 1-5% of the portfolio value depending on quality [source: PeerBerry-full SS5]. A borrower on EstateGuru pays an intermediation fee of 2.5-4% plus an annual administration fee of 0-2%, and on top of that the platform withholds an “interest spread” of 0-2% between what the borrower pays and what you receive [source: EstateGuru price list, in force from 1 November 2025]. None of that is a fee to you. All of it is a cost that determines what rate the platform can afford to show you.

Layer three is the cost of behaviour. Selling early, converting currency, paying by card, leaving cash idle, or failing to log in for a year. These charges are published, but they sit at the bottom of the page and only apply if you do something. They are the ones that surprise people.

Once you see the three layers, the marketing sentence “we don’t charge investors” resolves into something precise: layer one is zero, layer two is unknown, layer three depends on you.

The visible fees, platform by platform

Here is where the 19 platforms we cover in depth stand on the charges you can actually see, from the platforms’ own price lists and the dossiers in our vault. “Free” means no charge for deposit, primary-market investment and withdrawal.

Sources: Maclear fee table (3 August 2026), Mintos price list (retrieved 10 September 2026), EstateGuru price list (1 November 2025), and SS5 of Maclear-full, Mintos-full, PeerBerry-full, EstateGuru-full, InRento-full, Capitalia-full, Crowdpear-full, InSoil-full, Twino-full, Hive5-full, Nectaro-full, Lendermarket-full, Robocash-full, Debitum-full, Indemo-full, Scramble-full, Loanch-full, Profitus-full, Reinvest24-full.

One pattern is worth stating plainly. The platforms with the most fee lines, Mintos and EstateGuru, are also the two with the most regulation and the most to fund: Mintos is a MiFID II investment firm (an EU licence that treats loan notes as securities and puts the platform under conduct rules) selling loans, bonds, ETFs and cash products; EstateGuru holds an ECSP licence (the EU crowdfunding regime) and runs a large recovery operation. The platforms with no fee lines at all are mostly marketplaces paid entirely by the lending company. A short price list is not a sign of a cheap platform; it is a sign of where the platform chose to be paid.

The fee you never see: the spread

The most important number in P2P pricing is not on any price list. It is the difference between what the borrower pays and what you receive.

Some platforms disclose it as a commission rate. Nectaro reported a 3.9% commission from its lending companies in its FY2025 accounts [source: Nectaro-full SS5]. Indemo’s originators pay 5-6%, according to press coverage the platform has not contradicted [source: Indemo-full SS5]. PeerBerry’s dossier records 1-5% of portfolio value depending on originator quality [source: PeerBerry-full SS5]. Mintos earned EUR 8.9 million of service fees from lending companies in 2024, plus EUR 1.8 million of net interest on client money and EUR 1.4 million of other fees, out of EUR 12.4 million of revenue [source: Mintos-full SS7]. That is the shape of the business: roughly 72% of Mintos’ income came from the borrower side before a single investor fee was charged.

EstateGuru is the only platform in our table that prints the spread as a line item: “the interest spread is the difference of the interest paid by the borrower and received by the investor. The interest spread is withheld as a fee by the portal operator prior to transferring interest payments” [source: EstateGuru price list, note 10]. The range is 0-2%, and the specific figure for each project is in the project description. That is unusually honest, and it means an EstateGuru investor can in principle see both the borrower’s rate and their own.

On Maclear the borrower’s commission rate is not published as a percentage. What we know is structural: the borrower pays Maclear a commission on the funding obtained, 2% of that commission is set aside in the provision fund, and the platform also bills for advisory work [source: Maclear-full SS5 and Just-P2P]. The bullet loans on the platform carry rates of 13.5-15.8% for investors [source: Just-P2P], so the borrower’s total cost of capital is that plus whatever the commission adds. We do not know the exact number and neither, for most projects, does the investor. We say this not as a criticism specific to Maclear, because it is the norm in the segment, but because it is the honest limit of any fee comparison: on most platforms the biggest cost is the one that cannot be tabulated.

Why does it matter, if the rate on the page is already net? Two reasons. First, because the spread is the platform’s margin, and a platform whose margin is too thin to cover its costs is a platform risk, a point we developed in How to Read P2P Platform Accounts. Second, because a wide spread on a high-rate loan tells you the borrower is paying a rate that only a stressed business would accept. A borrower paying 14.9% to you plus a commission to the platform is paying materially more than 15% for money. That is not a fee question, it is a credit question, and it belongs in the same thought.

What the visible fees cost in euros

Percentages on a price list are easy to dismiss. The same numbers on a EUR 10,000 portfolio are not.

Take a year in which the loans perform and pay 10% gross, which is a fair mid-case for the consumer and property platforms in our coverage, and 14.5% on Maclear, the lower end of its realised range [source: Maclear-full SS6].

Maclear, held to maturity. Interest EUR 1,450. Platform fees EUR 0. Withdrawal fee EUR 0. Net before tax EUR 1,450. If you sell the whole position on the secondary market instead, the 2.5% fee on EUR 10,000 is EUR 250 before any discount, which is about two months of interest at that rate, a calculation we set out in P2P Lending How to Exit Early.

Mintos Core Loans. Interest EUR 1,000. The 0.39% annual fee on the invested amount is about EUR 39, taken monthly from your balance [source: Mintos price list]. Net EUR 961. Sell everything on the secondary market at par and the 0.85% fee adds EUR 85. Leave the account untouched for a year with cash in it and the inactivity charge of EUR 4.90 a month adds up to EUR 58.80. Pay in by card and 2% of EUR 10,000 is EUR 200, which is larger than every other Mintos fee combined, so the free bank transfer is the only sensible route.

EstateGuru. Interest EUR 1,000, from which a 0-2% spread was already withheld before the rate was quoted. The AUM fee of 0.083% a month on EUR 10,000 of performing principal is EUR 8.30 a month, EUR 99.60 a year, roughly 10% of your interest [source: EstateGuru price list]. It is charged only in months when you receive returns, and not on late or defaulted loans, which sounds like a concession until you notice that it means the fee stops precisely when the platform’s problems start, so the platform is paid for the loans that work and not for fixing the ones that do not. Each withdrawal costs EUR 3, so twelve monthly withdrawals cost EUR 36. If you stop investing for twelve months while waiting for recoveries, the account fee of EUR 10 a month, rising to EUR 50 after a further year, is charged on any positive balance. Investors with stuck capital have described this as paying to wait for their own money [source: EstateGuru-full SS14].

PeerBerry. Interest EUR 1,000, fees EUR 0, exit fee EUR 0, provided you wait six months before listing. The platform’s income is entirely the 1-5% it takes from the lending companies, which is why the investor price list is empty.

The arithmetic points to a rule that is not obvious from the price lists themselves: on a performing portfolio, the ongoing fee matters less than the exit fee, and both matter less than the spread. A 0.39% management fee costs a Mintos investor about EUR 39 a year; one early exit on Maclear costs EUR 250; and the borrower-side commission on any of these platforms is measured in hundreds of euros per EUR 10,000 lent, every year, invisibly.

Who pays for zero fees: Maclear’s accounts as the worked example

A fee-free platform still has payroll, compliance, a Swiss registered office and an AML auditor. Maclear’s own annual report for 2024, published on 3 June 2026 and still unaudited, shows how the money moves, and we use it here because it is the most detailed disclosure of its kind from a platform that advertises no investor fees [source: Maclear, Annual Report 2024, via Maclear-full SS7].

Revenue for the year was CHF 758,222, which is the borrower-side commission and services income. Against it the company recorded a net loss of CHF 122,941 and ended the year with negative equity of CHF 87,026. Two lines explain the loss. Borrowers paid CHF 464,322 in interest during the year. Investors received CHF 827,849, made up of CHF 530,266 of interest and CHF 297,583 of bonuses. In other words, the platform paid out CHF 363,527 more to investors than borrowers paid in, and the difference was covered from Maclear’s own revenue and reserves. The provision fund, financed by 2% of commissions, stood at CHF 195,049.

Read as a fee statement, that is the mirror image of the price list. Investors paid nothing and received bonuses worth 36% of everything paid to them; the borrower paid the platform; the platform paid the bonuses and booked a loss. The EUR 15 welcome bonus, the EUR 30 per EUR 500 invested and the loyalty tiers of +1.5% to +3% on the standard rate [source: Maclear-full SS15] are not free either. They are the acquisition cost of a platform that had decided, in its own words as reported by Just-P2P, to prioritise growth over profitability.

This is not an accusation. It is how most young platforms are built, and Maclear discloses more of it than its peers. But it converts “zero fees” from a benefit into a trade: you are not paying the platform, so the platform is paying you, and it is doing so from a balance sheet that its own auditor has not yet signed and that its own notes describe as “not sufficiently cushioned” [source: Maclear, Annual Report 2024, note 6]. The fee you do not pay today is a fee the platform must eventually recover somewhere, whether by raising borrower commissions, trimming bonuses, or introducing an investor fee, as Mintos did in May 2025 [source: Mintos-full SS17] and EstateGuru did in November 2023 [source: EstateGuru-full SS17].

Maclear’s fee schedule, and what it does and does not tell you

Maclear earns its #3 place for reasons set out in Maclear Review 2026, and we have been explicit elsewhere about its gaps: the unaudited accounts, the negative equity, the investor funds held on the company’s own balance sheet. Fees are one area where the platform’s position is simply strong, and it deserves to be stated with the same precision as the caveats.

Maclear (#3 of 44, 8.4/10): the shortest fee table we track

Maclear publishes a seven-line fee table and six of the lines say EUR 0: SEPA deposit, withdrawal, primary-market investment, AutoInvest, account maintenance and secondary-market purchase are all free. The only charge is 2.5% of the transaction amount on a secondary-market sale, paid by the seller, with a EUR 30 minimum listing and a 14-day expiry [source: Maclear, What fees does Maclear charge investors, 3 August 2026]. There is no inactivity fee, no withdrawal fee, no card surcharge and no ongoing percentage on the portfolio. Realised yields of 14.5-14.9%, EUR 99.6 million funded and one default in its history are the loan-side numbers [source: Maclear-full SS6].

Three caveats belong in the same box. The 2.5% exit fee is the highest in our table, so the fee-free structure holds only if you hold to maturity, which on 12 to 16-month bullet loans means planning your liquidity in advance. The borrower’s commission rate is not published, so the spread, the largest cost in the chain, is as invisible here as on most platforms. And the accounts show that the fee-free model plus cash bonuses produced a CHF 122,941 loss in 2024 and negative equity; a platform cannot subsidise its investors indefinitely, and the terms that are generous today are the ones most likely to change.

Read our full Maclear review | Visit Maclear

What should an investor take from this? On a performing Maclear position held to maturity, fee drag is zero and the number on the project page is the number you receive, before tax. That is rare and it is real. The price of that simplicity is paid at the exit, at 2.5%, and it is being paid, for now, out of the platform’s own equity. Both facts are true at once, and we would rather you hold them together than either alone.

How to read any platform’s price list in five minutes

The comparison above will be out of date within a year, because fee schedules change more often than any other platform term: Mintos introduced portfolio fees in May 2025, EstateGuru introduced its AUM fee in November 2023 and raised it in November 2025, Maclear changed its secondary-market rules in June 2026. The durable skill is reading a price list, not memorising one. Five questions cover it.

Is there an ongoing percentage? Look for “management”, “AUM” or “portfolio” fees quoted per year or per month. Multiply a monthly rate by twelve, then divide by the gross yield: EstateGuru’s 0.083% a month is about 1% a year, a tenth of a 10% return.

What does it cost to leave? Find the secondary-market seller fee and the withdrawal fee, and check whether a secondary market exists at all. Seven of the nineteen platforms above have none.

What happens if I do nothing? Inactivity fees are the charges investors forget: EUR 4.90 a month on Mintos, EUR 10 rising to EUR 50 a month on EstateGuru. Both apply only to cash left on the platform, which is the strongest argument for withdrawing idle balances.

How is the platform paid? Search the price list or the annual report for “commission”, “spread” or “service fee” from originators or borrowers. If nothing is published, assume the spread is there and unknown.

Has the schedule changed recently, and in which direction? A platform that has just added fees is a platform whose borrower-side income no longer covers its costs. That is information about the business, not only about the fee.

FAQ

Do P2P lending platforms charge fees to investors?

Most European platforms charge nothing to deposit, invest on the primary market or withdraw: 17 of the 19 platforms in our table are free on all three, EstateGuru charges EUR 3 per withdrawal, and Reinvest24 has not processed withdrawals since early 2024. The fees that do exist sit elsewhere: Mintos charges 0.29-0.39% a year on its loan portfolios plus EUR 4.90 a month for inactivity, and EstateGuru charges 0.083% a month on performing principal and EUR 10 to EUR 50 a month on inactive accounts. Almost every platform charges the seller on the secondary market, from 0.85% on Mintos to 2.5% on Maclear.

How do P2P platforms make money if they charge no fees?

From the borrower or the lending company. The borrower pays a commission on the funds raised and, on some platforms, an interest spread between the rate it pays and the rate you receive. Nectaro reported a 3.9% commission from lending companies in its FY2025 accounts, PeerBerry’s dossier records 1-5% of portfolio value, and Mintos earned EUR 8.9 million of its EUR 12.4 million 2024 revenue from lending-company service fees. Maclear’s FY2024 revenue of CHF 758,222 was borrower-side commission and advisory income.

What is the interest spread in P2P lending?

It is the difference between the interest the borrower pays and the interest you receive, kept by the platform before the rate is quoted to you. EstateGuru is the only platform in our table that prints it as a line item, at 0-2%, with the project-specific figure in each project description. On most platforms it is not disclosed, which means the rate on the project page is already net of a cost you cannot see.

Are hidden fees common in P2P lending?

Undisclosed spreads are universal; hidden fees in the sense of charges not on the price list are rare among regulated platforms. What catches investors is the published fees at the bottom of the page: card deposit surcharges (2% on Mintos), inactivity charges, per-withdrawal fees and secondary-market seller fees. The practical defence is to deposit by bank transfer, withdraw idle cash, and check the exit fee before investing rather than when you need the money.

Is a platform with zero fees cheaper than one with a management fee?

Not necessarily. A 0.39% annual fee on Mintos Core Loans costs about EUR 39 a year on EUR 10,000; a single early exit on fee-free Maclear costs EUR 250 in fee alone. And both are small next to the borrower-side commission, which on any platform runs to hundreds of euros per EUR 10,000 lent each year and is already deducted from your rate. Compare the rate you actually receive, the cost of leaving, and whether the platform’s income covers its costs, rather than the length of the price list.

What to read next

• P2P Lending How to Exit Early - the exit fee in full: what a secondary-market sale really costs on 19 platforms and how to avoid needing one.
• How to Read P2P Platform Accounts - where the borrower-side commission shows up in a platform’s annual report, and what a loss-making platform means for you.
• Maclear Yields Explained - how Maclear’s 14.9% headline becomes a net figure after the drags that are not fees.
• P2P Lending Realistic Returns - advertised versus realised returns across the platforms we track.
• Maclear Review 2026 - the full review of our #3-ranked platform, strengths and gaps.
• P2P Buyback Guarantee Explained - the other thing platforms sell as free, and what it actually covers.
• Maclear Welcome Bonus - the other side of the ledger: the six bonus tracks those FY2024 figures paid for, with the exact 2026 terms.