Bitvavo review
Bitvavo is the exchange most euro-denominated bitcoin actually trades against, and the one whose licence was issued by the regulator of the country it comes from.
The Autoriteit Financiele Markten authorised it under MiCA in June 2025, on top of a De Nederlandsche Bank registration dating to 2020. That authorisation passports across all 30 states of the European Economic Area, which is what lets an Amsterdam company be a normal choice in Lisbon or Tallinn rather than an offshore one. It is the largest EUR spot venue anywhere by volume, with roughly two million users, so the euro order books are the deepest a European buyer can reach.
Pricing is a nine-tier maker and taker schedule keyed to 30-day volume. Anyone trading under 100,000 euros a month, which is nearly everyone, pays 0.15 percent as a maker and 0.25 percent as a taker. Above that both drop to 0.10 and 0.20 percent, and the top tiers approach zero. That entry tier is more expensive than Binance's flat 0.1 percent, which is why Binance still ranks first on most of these pages.
What Bitvavo has instead is the funding. Euro deposits by SEPA are free, and Dutch buyers can pay by iDEAL for nothing with a five euro minimum, which is the rail most of the Netherlands actually uses.
- Founded
- 2018
- Headquarters
- Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Fees
- A nine-tier schedule by 30-day volume, starting at 0.15 percent maker and 0.25 percent taker. Euro deposits by SEPA and iDEAL are free.
- KYC
- Required
- Payment methods
- SEPA transfer, SEPA Instant, iDEAL, Credit or debit card
- Status
- Operating
How you can pay on Bitvavo
Every deposit rail Bitvavo supports in at least one market.
- Domestic bank rail
- iDEAL
- SEPA (euro area)
- SEPA InstantSEPA transfer
As published by Bitvavo: iDEAL, SEPA transfer, SEPA Instant.
Pros and cons
What works
- Authorised under MiCA by the Dutch AFM in June 2025, which passports across all 30 EEA states
- The largest euro spot exchange in the world, so euro order books are the deepest available
- Free SEPA deposits, and free iDEAL for Dutch residents above a five euro minimum
- Holds a De Nederlandsche Bank registration from 2020 alongside the MiCA licence
What to watch
- The 0.15 percent base maker fee is above Binance's flat 0.1 percent, and the cheaper tiers need serious volume
- Euro-focused, so it is the wrong tool if you want to fund from a currency outside the SEPA area
- Custodial until you withdraw, like every exchange on this list
Fees in detail
- maker
- 0.15 percent below 100,000 euros of 30-day volume, 0.10 percent above
- taker
- 0.25 percent below 100,000 euros of 30-day volume, 0.20 percent above
- spread note
- The base tier is what almost every personal buyer pays; the cheapest tiers need volumes no individual reaches.
- deposit note
- SEPA deposits are free, and iDEAL is free for Dutch residents with a five euro minimum.
- withdrawal note
- Bitcoin withdrawals to self-custody are supported; euro returns by SEPA.
What it costs to use Bitvavo
| What you do | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Buy bitcoin at market on the BTC/EUR book | 0.25% taker at the base tier, 0.20% once 30 day volume passes 100,000 eurosTaker fees apply to every market order, and Bitvavo publishes no separate instant buy or convert charge. Its help centre works the example at the 0.25% maximum taker fee, and reserves that maximum on an order it cannot price at submission, returning the difference if your tier turns out lower. |
| Place a limit order that rests on the book | 0.15% maker at the base tier, 0.10% once 30 day volume passes 100,000 eurosThe maker schedule on EUR crypto pairs reaches zero only above 10 million euros of 30 day volume, which no personal buyer will see. USDC markets and stablecoin pairs run on separate, cheaper schedules. |
| Deposit euros by SEPA bank transfer | FreeBitvavo's published ceiling is 5,000,000 euros and up. That is Bitvavo's own charge, and your own bank may still price the transfer. |
| Deposit euros by iDEAL or Wero | Free, up to 50,000 euros per transactionThe highest per transaction ceiling of any instant rail Bitvavo publishes. |
| Deposit euros by Apple Pay or Bancontact | Free, up to 10,000 euros per transaction |
| Fund the account with a credit card | 1.00% of the deposit, up to 10,000 euros, plus the trading feeAbout 1.25% all in at the base tier, because the 1.00% charge only funds the account and the 0.25% taker fee is charged again on the trade. |
| Fund the account with PayPal | 2.00% of the deposit, up to 10,000 eurosThe dearest funding rail on the schedule before any trading fee. EPS and Giropay cost 1.75% but are capped at 1,000 euros. |
| Withdraw bitcoin to your own wallet | 0.000019 BTC flat, which is also the minimum withdrawalCrypto deposits are free. Bitvavo says withdrawal fees for digital assets vary with blockchain capacity, so this figure moves. |
| Withdraw euros to your bank account | FreeOne business day to a Dutch bank account, two business days to a bank elsewhere, and only to an account already linked to your Bitvavo account. Dutch national holidays can add delay. |
| Recover crypto sent on the wrong network | 50 euro administration fee, and only in cases where recovery is possibleBitvavo says such assets may simply be lost. |
Bitvavo's security and regulatory record
Everything on the record we could date and source, newest first, including the parts that count against it.
- Licence
AFM authorised Bitvavo under MiCA for the whole EEA
The Autoriteit Financiele Markten authorised Bitvavo as a crypto asset service provider under MiCA. The French AMF white list records the passport into France as taking effect on 14 July 2025 and names the three services covered: custody and administration of crypto assets, operation of a trading platform, and transfer services. The licence reaches every EU member state plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, on top of the national registrations Bitvavo already held in France, Austria, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. It also puts Bitvavo under AFM conduct supervision, which the 2020 DNB registration explicitly did not. Bitvavo reported nearly two million users and described itself as the largest player globally in the EUR spot market.
- Proof of reserves
Proof of reserves covers 13 assets and is attested once a year
Bitvavo publishes a Merkle tree proof of reserves attested by the independent accounting firm The Network Firm LLP, and a logged in customer can generate a report checking their own balance against the latest attestation. Bitvavo dates the scope of the programme to 31 December 2024, covering BTC, ETH, XRP, EUR, ADA, SOL, DOGE, VET, LINK, HBAR, SUI, FET and SHIB. The page states that attestations are performed annually, so this is a yearly snapshot rather than continuous cover, and any asset outside those thirteen is not covered at all. The figures published as of 31 March 2026 show every asset in scope at a reserve ratio of 100 percent or better, with dogecoin at 104 percent and euro at 113 percent.
- Breach
Data breach exposed names, home addresses and IBANs
Bitvavo emailed affected customers about a breach that exposed full name, email address, home address, IBAN, recent trading volume and the last three digits of the phone number. It described those hit only as a limited group of users and never published a number. Bitvavo said user funds were safe and that it had no indication passwords had been exposed, said it had reported the breach to the relevant authorities, and told users to watch their accounts for unusual activity, change their passwords and turn on two factor authentication.
Opgelicht, AVROTROS: Bitvavo informs users about data breach
- Outage
Five hour outage locked every user out of the platform
From about 13:30 customers could not log in, and Bitvavo put its systems into maintenance mode. Systems were brought back from 18:00 and the platform was running again at 18:30, so nothing could be traded, deposited or withdrawn for roughly five hours during market hours. On 23 November Bitvavo published the root cause confirmed by its third party cloud infrastructure provider: an infrastructure failure made worse by a monitoring system that entered a never ending loop while trying and failing to activate a backup, which the provider's engineers had to stop by hand. Customer assets were not involved. Bitvavo said it was accelerating a move to a microservices architecture to contain the next one.
- Resolved
Deal with DCG set expected recovery at 80 to 100 percent
After a second hearing on the night of 6 February 2023, Bitvavo and other creditors reached an agreement in principle with Digital Currency Group, set out in a term sheet filed on 10 February. Bitvavo put the expected recovery rate at 80 to 100 percent, payable in cash, digital assets and convertible preferred equity notes in DCG. An offer covering roughly the first 70 percent had been on the table since the start of that year and Bitvavo had rejected it as short of what DCG could pay. Bitvavo sat on the unsecured creditors committee and repeated that it guaranteed the outstanding amount from its own financial resources, so the recovery rate moved Bitvavo's balance sheet and not any customer's balance. Read the range as the expectation Bitvavo published at the time, not as a settled final figure.
- Insolvency
280 million euros of customer assets frozen at Genesis
Bitvavo disclosed that 280 million euros was locked at Genesis Global Capital, the Digital Currency Group lender it used to pay yield on customer balances, after Genesis suspended repayments in the wake of the FTX collapse. Bitvavo put its total customer deposits and digital assets at about 1.6 billion euros, so roughly a sixth of the book sat with a single counterparty. Genesis filed for Chapter 11 on 20 January 2023. Bitvavo kept the platform and withdrawals running, said it had the funds to prefund the locked assets, and carried the claim itself rather than passing the loss to customers.
The Block: Bitvavo unable to access 280 million euros held at Genesis Global Capital
- Breach
Cache misconfiguration exposed eight users' personal data
A misconfigured caching layer showed the personal data of eight users to other people logged in to the app and website for 15 minutes. Bitvavo cleared and reconfigured the cache inside those 15 minutes, then locked the app down because cached copies take about two hours to clear from user devices. All eight affected users were contacted and the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens was notified. Funds were never at risk, and Bitvavo stated the cause was a misconfiguration on its own side rather than a hack. The same post introduced the Bitvavo Account Guarantee, which may reimburse up to 100,000 euros if someone gains unauthorised access to an account and misappropriates funds.
- Licence
Registered with De Nederlandsche Bank as a crypto service provider
Bitvavo obtained the DNB registration that the Dutch implementation of the amended fourth anti money laundering directive, in force from 21 May 2020, made compulsory for exchange and custody providers. Its own press release was blunt about the limits: DNB supervised only compliance with the money laundering and terrorist financing prevention act and the 1977 sanctions act, there was no prudential supervision by DNB and no conduct supervision by the AFM, so financial requirements and business risks went unmonitored and there was no specific consumer protection. Bitvavo said Dutch clients had traded more than 3 billion euros on the platform that year. The registration has since been superseded by the 2025 MiCA licence.
The Bitvavo record by kind, and compared with its alternatives
Where we recommend Bitvavo
Countries where Bitvavo ranks in our local guide, each with its rank, the payment methods it takes there and the legal position. Availability beyond these is possible but unverified by us.
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
SwedenFrequently asked questions
Is Bitvavo regulated?
Yes. The Autoriteit Financiele Markten authorised it under MiCA in June 2025, and it has held a De Nederlandsche Bank registration since 2020. The MiCA authorisation passports its trading and custody services across the 30 states of the European Economic Area.
What does Bitvavo cost?
0.15 percent as a maker and 0.25 percent as a taker below 100,000 euros of 30-day volume, which covers nearly every personal buyer. Above that the rates fall to 0.10 and 0.20 percent, and the highest tiers approach zero.
Can I pay with iDEAL?
Yes, if you are a Dutch resident, and it is free with a five euro minimum. SEPA transfers are free everywhere else in the euro area.
Is Bitvavo only for the Netherlands?
No. It is Dutch and it is the natural choice there, but the MiCA authorisation lets it serve the whole European Economic Area, and it is the largest euro spot venue in any of those markets.
