Is Revolut worth it?

Revolut is no longer the travel card your friend recommended in 2018. It now claims 8 million customers in France, 2.5 million of them added in 2025 alone.¹ It made £1.7 billion of profit before tax last year on £4.5 billion of revenue, and in July an employee share sale valued it at $115 billion.²³ On 10 August it obtained a French banking licence for a new Paris-based subsidiary, Revolut Bank S.A.⁴

This review asks a practical question: if you live in France, what is Revolut actually good for, and what does it cost compared with BoursoBank, Trade Republic, N26, Wise, Fortuneo and the brokers French investors use? I read Revolut’s fee schedules (the current versions and the ones they replaced), its 2025 annual report, the competitors’ tariff brochures, regulator decisions in Lithuania and Italy, and the tax rules. Everything below was checked on 28 September 2026. There are no affiliate links in this article.

Great card, average brokerVerdict

Keep the free Standard plan as your everyday and travel card: the app is the best in the market, payments in foreign currency are free up to €1,000 a month, and you get a French IBAN. Do not pay for Premium or Metal to invest or to save. Since the summer, Standard users pay €1 per stock order, savings above €500 earn 0.75% before tax, and there is still no PEAPEAPlan d’épargne en actions: a French tax-advantaged brokerage account for European shares and funds, capped at €150,000 of deposits.Read in the glossary →, no IFUIFUImprimé fiscal unique: the annual statement a French financial institution sends to you and to the tax office, listing dividends, interest and capital gains to report.Read in the glossary → and a foreign securities account to declare every year. A French investor gets more from a PEA at Trade Republic or BoursoBank and a Livret A, with Revolut as the card in the wallet.

What each plan costs

Revolut sells five plans in France. The prices and allowances below come from its French plan page and the fee document for each plan.⁵⁶

Above the ATM allowance, every withdrawal costs 2% with a €1 minimum, whatever the plan.⁶ A physical card on the free plan costs €7.99 to deliver; SEPA transfers and direct debits are free on all plans.⁶

The paid plans got more expensive this year. For anyone subscribing from 7 May 2026, and for existing subscribers from 9 July, Premium went from €9.99 to €10.99 a month, Metal from €16.99 to €18.99 and Ultra from €55 to €60.⁷ Plus was left alone. Revolut’s own Metal fee document still shows the old €16.99 price in the section written for customers of its French branch, which tells you something about how carefully these pages are maintained.⁷

Revolut’s 2026 price rise, plan by plan

Increase in the monthly price. New subscribers from 7 May 2026, existing ones from 9 July. Hover for old and new prices.

The card: still excellent, no longer unique

The currency exchangeCurrency markupThe extra percentage a bank adds on top of the market exchange rate when you pay or withdraw cash in another currency.Read in the glossary → is what made Revolut famous, and it remains good. On the free plan, card payments in a foreign currency are converted at Revolut’s rate with no markup up to €1,000 a month on weekdays. Above that, a 1% “fair usage” fee applies, and on weekends, when markets are closed, 1% applies from the first euro.⁶ A week in New York spent on Saturdays and Sundays is therefore not free.

What has changed since 2018 is the competition. Several French or French-facing accounts now charge nothing on foreign card payments, with no monthly cap:

For a traveller who spends €3,000 abroad in a month, including a weekend, Revolut Standard costs around €20 to €30 in markups. BoursoBank Welcome, Trade Republic and Fortuneo charge nothing for the same payments. Revolut’s advantage is elsewhere: holding and exchanging dozens of currencies inside one app, instant payments between users, virtual and disposable cards, spending controls, and an interface that competitors copy. That is worth having for free. It is not, on its own, worth €110 a year.

Savings: good for €500, poor after that

Revolut’s savings account pays interest daily, which is pleasant to watch.¹³ The rate depends on the plan, and on the free plan it drops after the first €500: 2.25% gross up to €500, then 0.75% gross.⁵ New savers are currently offered 5.25% for up to 120 days on up to €25,000, a promotion that ends long before your savings have grown.¹⁴

Interest is taxed at the flat taxFlat tax (PFU)France’s single flat-rate tax on investment income: 12.8% income tax plus 18.6% social contributions, 31.4% in total since 1 January 2026.Read in the glossary →, withheld by Revolut at source by default, and you receive a French tax statement.¹⁴ The flat tax rose to 31.4% on 1 January 2026, because social contributions on savings income went from 17.2% to 18.6%.¹⁵ The Livret ALivret AFrance’s tax-free, state-regulated savings account, capped at €22,950, whose rate is set twice a year by a formula mixing inflation and short-term rates. 1.70% since 1 August 2026.Read in the glossary →, by contrast, pays 1.70% until 31 January 2027 with no tax at all.¹⁶

So the fair comparison is interest after tax. Here is what €10,000 left for a year earns on each option, at the rates in force today:

What €10,000 earns in a year

Interest before tax (light) and after the 31.4% flat tax (dark), at today’s rates. The Livret A is tax-free.

On the free plan, €10,000 at Revolut earns €82.50 before tax and about €57 after it. The same money in a Livret A earns €170, three times more. Trade Republic pays 3% on uninvested cash with no ceiling for accounts opened since 12 May 2026, which gives €206 after tax.¹⁷¹⁸ Metal and Ultra pay closer to the Livret A, but the extra interest over Standard on €10,000 is about €98 after tax, and Metal costs €185 a year.

For context, the ECB deposit rateECB deposit rateThe European Central Bank’s main policy rate: what banks earn on money parked at the ECB overnight. It anchors euro savings rates, the Livret A formula and variable-rate loans.Read in the glossary → has been 2.50% since 16 September, after a second rate rise this year.¹⁹ A bank paying 0.75% on most of your balance is keeping most of that spread.

Investing: cheap orders, the wrong account

This is where Revolut has changed most in 2026, and where the marketing is most misleading.

The pricing. Until May, orders outside your monthly allowance cost 0.25% of the amount. Since 27 May 2026 they cost a flat €1.²²²³ On 28 July Revolut removed the free monthly orders from the Standard and Plus plans, which used to include one and three.²³ Today the allowance is zero on Standard and Plus, five orders a month on Premium, ten on Metal and Ultra, and bonds count towards it.²² Recurring purchases of selected ETFs through the “investment plan” feature remain commission-free, and there is no custody fee.²² Moving your shares to another broker costs $35 per line.²²

Currency. Buying American shares means converting euros to dollars, and that conversion uses your plan’s exchange allowance: free up to €1,000 a month on Standard, then 1%, and 1% at weekends.²²²⁴ An investor who puts €2,000 a month into US stocks on the free plan pays €10 a month in exchange fees on top of the order fees.

What that means in euros. I compared a year of 24 orders of €1,000, first on shares listed in Paris, then on American shares:

A year of investing: 24 orders of €1,000

Total fees in euros. US shares assume €2,000 converted each month on weekdays. Revolut Premium includes its €110 plan fee. Click the legend to compare markets.

On European shares, Revolut Standard and Trade Republic are equally cheap at €24 a year, and both are far cheaper than BoursoBank’s entry tier. On American shares, Revolut’s exchange fee makes it six times more expensive than Trade Republic, which charges no conversion fee.²⁵ Upgrading to Premium removes both fees, but the plan costs €110 a year, so it only makes sense if you place close to five orders every month and also spend heavily abroad.

The wrapper problem. For a French resident, the order fee matters less than the account the shares sit in. Revolut offers only an ordinary securities account (compte-titres). There is no PEA, no assurance-vieAssurance-vieFrance’s most popular savings wrapper: an insurance contract holding a guaranteed euro fund and/or unit-linked funds, with tax benefits after eight years.Read in the glossary → and no PER, and no date has been given for any of them.²⁶ Revolut has said it intends to offer a PEA and a Livret A through its new French bank, but those products still need the supervisors’ approval.⁴ Trade Republic has offered a PEA since January 2025; BoursoBank, Fortuneo and N26 offer one too.^1881210

The PEA matters because of tax. After five years, gains and dividends inside a PEA are exempt from income tax and bear only social contributions. In a securities account, every euro of gain is taxed at 31.4%. On a long-term ETF portfolio, that difference is worth far more than any order fee.

The paperwork. Revolut’s brokerage is run by Revolut Securities Europe UAB, a Lithuanian investment firm.²² For French tax purposes that is a foreign account, so you must declare it every year on form 3916Form 3916The French tax form on which residents must declare every bank, securities or crypto account held abroad, each year, with the income return.Read in the glossary →, and the crypto account, held by a Cypriot entity, on form 3916-bis.²⁷²⁸ The current account with a French IBAN does not need declaring. Forgetting costs €1,500 per undeclared account.²⁹ Revolut does not issue an IFU for the securities account, only an in-app tax report that you copy into your return yourself.²⁷

The protection. If Revolut’s broker failed and client assets were missing, the Lithuanian investor compensationInvestor compensation schemeThe fund that repays investors if a broker fails and their securities or cash are missing: €70,000 in France, €22,000 in Lithuania. It never covers market losses.Read in the glossary → scheme would cover up to €22,000 per investor.³⁰ Client assets are held in segregated accounts, so a failure should not touch them, but the cap is worth knowing if you hold a large portfolio there.

Crypto and the robo-advisor

Buying crypto in the Revolut app costs 1.49% on Standard and Plus and 0.99% on Premium and Metal since 10 August, according to the specialist site Upside24.³² Revolut’s own fee document adds a spread that “typically” varies between 0% and 3% of the trade.³³ Revolut X, its separate exchange, is much cheaper: 0% for orders that add liquidity and 0.09% for orders that take it.³⁴ You can withdraw coins to your own wallet for a £1 or £3 service fee plus the network fee, and on staking Revolut can keep between 0% and 50% of your rewards.³³ The crypto business is licensed in Cyprus under the EU’s MiCAMiCAMarkets in Crypto-Assets: the EU regulation, fully applicable since December 2024, that licenses crypto platforms across the single market.Read in the glossary → regulation since October 2025.³⁵ Nothing you hold in crypto is covered by any guarantee.

The Robo-Advisor charges 0.75% a year, VAT included, plus the fees of the underlying ETFs, from a €100 minimum.³⁶ That is in line with French robo-advisors, but it runs inside a securities account, so it has the same tax disadvantage as the rest of the brokerage.

How safe is your money?

Today your deposits sit in Lithuania. Revolut serves French customers through the French branch of Revolut Bank UAB, a Lithuanian bank, and your IBAN starts with FR76.⁵ Deposits are protected up to €100,000 by the Lithuanian deposit guaranteeDeposit guaranteeThe EU-wide protection of bank deposits up to €100,000 per person and per bank, paid by the scheme of the country where the bank is licensed.Read in the glossary → scheme, with the French FGDR acting as a relay if it were ever needed.³⁷

Soon they should move to France. The licence granted on 10 August means French customers will be transferred to Revolut Bank S.A., and their deposits will then be covered by the FGDR. No date has been set, and Revolut has promised two months’ notice before any transfer.⁴³⁷

The track record is mixed. Revolut’s accounts for 2021 were published late and with a qualified audit opinion, because the auditor could not verify £477 million of revenue.³⁸ The audits since 2023 have been clean.³⁹ In April 2025 the Bank of Lithuania fined Revolut Bank €3.5 million for weaknesses in its anti-money-laundering monitoring, the largest anti-money-laundering fine ever imposed in Lithuania.⁴⁰ Revolut’s 2025 annual report says an inspection by the French supervisor, the ACPR, led it to strengthen its customer checks across Europe.² The UK finally granted it a full banking licence in March 2026, after 20 months of restrictions.⁴¹

Revolut’s regulatory record, 2025 to 2026

Blue: licences granted. Red: fines and incidents. Hover each point for the detail.

The account-freeze problem

The most common serious complaint about Revolut is not fees. It is accounts suddenly frozen for a “review”. Readers of MoneyVox give Revolut 2.2 out of 5, with stories of €2,000 to €4,000 blocked for five to ten days or more and closures announced by text message.⁴² In April 2026 the Italian regulator fined Revolut a further €5 million for what it called aggressive handling of blocked accounts, noting that clients could lose access to their money “for long periods” with little notice and little support.³¹

Banks must run these checks by law, and every bank freezes accounts. The difference with Revolut is scale and how hard it is to reach a person. On the app stores the picture looks very different: 4.8 out of 5 on the French App Store and 4.7 on Trustpilot from more than 465,000 reviews.⁴³⁴⁴ Both things are true. Most customers never have a problem, and the ones who do can wait weeks.

Two further points. In the UK, Revolut received more fraud complaints at the Financial Ombudsman than any other firm between January and August 2025.⁴⁵ And on 12 September 2026 it confirmed that fraudsters posing as a government agency had obtained customers’ identity documents and addresses through fake legal requests.⁴⁶ The French comparison site Selectra puts the number of customers affected at about 680; Revolut has not published a figure.⁴⁷

Is a paid plan ever worth it?

Take Premium, at €110 a year. Against the free plan it gives you unlimited currency exchange with no weekend markup, five free orders a month, twice the free ATM allowance, a slightly better savings rate and partner subscriptions.

The five free orders are worth at most €60 a year, if you use all of them every month. The savings upgrade is worth about €20 after tax on €10,000. That leaves roughly €30 to recover from currency exchange, which means spending about €3,000 a year in foreign currency beyond the free €1,000 a month, or a lot of weekend spending. Someone who travels outside the euro area several times a year and invests every month can get there. Most people are better served by the free plan plus a free card from BoursoBank or Trade Republic for trips.

Metal and Ultra are mostly insurance and lounge access. Their value depends on whether you would otherwise buy travel insurance and use airport lounges, and Revolut’s own plan page cannot agree with itself on how much Metal’s benefits are worth.⁵

Who should use Revolut, and how

Use the free plan as a spending and travel card, for splitting bills and for holding foreign currencies. It is excellent at that and costs nothing.

Do not use it as your main savings account. Above €500, the Livret A pays more after tax, and Trade Republic pays more still.

Do not use it as your main broker if you are a French tax resident building a long-term portfolio. Open a PEA elsewhere first. Revolut’s €1 orders are fine for the occasional share bought in a securities account, as long as you remember the 3916 form.

Pay for Premium only if you both invest every month and spend several thousand euros a year in other currencies.

Keep a second bank. Whatever you think of Revolut, one app should never hold all your money.

Bottom line

Revolut is the best banking app in France, and its free plan is a genuine bargain for everyday spending. But the company has spent 2026 raising prices on paid plans, removing free orders from the cheap ones and paying 0.75% on most savings, while its French competitors give away what used to be Revolut’s selling points. The French banking licence may eventually bring a PEA, a Livret A and FGDR protection; when that happens, this verdict should be revisited. Until then, treat Revolut as a card, not as the place where your savings and investments live.

Sources

All links accessed 28 September 2026.

Footnotes

1. Journal du Geek, “Revolut annonce 8 millions de clients en France et une croissance record”, 8 July 2026. ↩

2. Revolut Group Holdings, Annual Report 2025, 12 March 2026. ↩ ↩²

3. CoinDesk, “Revolut hits $115 billion valuation in employee share sale”, 22 July 2026. ↩

4. Le Journal des Entreprises, “Revolut obtient son agrément bancaire français”, 10 August 2026; MoneyVox, “Ce que change l’obtention par Revolut d’une licence bancaire en France”, 11 August 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Revolut, Comparer nos forfaits. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

6. Revolut, Frais du forfait Standard, version of 26 November 2025. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

7. Revolut fee documents, previous and current versions: Premium v1.8.0 and v1.9.0; Metal v1.9.0 and v1.10.0; Ultra v1.5.0 and v1.6.0. ↩ ↩²

8. BoursoBank, Brochure tarifaire, tariffs from 4 September 2026. ↩ ↩²

9. Trade Republic, Informations tarifaires du compte de paiement; MoneyVox, Trade Republic, updated 15 September 2026. ↩

10. N26, Tarifs and PEA. ↩ ↩²

11. Wise, Tarifs and Frais de la carte. ↩

12. Fortuneo, Conditions tarifaires, 6 August 2026. ↩ ↩²

13. Revolut, “Compte d’épargne, comment ça fonctionne ?”. ↩

14. MoneyVox, “Compte épargne Revolut”, updated 15 September 2026. ↩ ↩²

15. Service-public.gouv.fr, “Revenus de capitaux mobiliers : prélèvement forfaitaire unique”, checked 15 April 2026. ↩

16. Service-public.gouv.fr, “Livret A”, checked 1 August 2026. ↩

17. Trade Republic, Intérêts. ↩

18. MoneyVox, “Trade Republic : bourse en ligne”, 20 August 2026. ↩ ↩²

19. European Central Bank, Key ECB interest rates and monetary policy decision of 10 September 2026. ↩

20. Revolut Securities Europe, Ex-ante costs report, money market funds. ↩

21. Wise, Intérêts, rate dated 23 September 2026. ↩

22. Revolut help centre (France), “What fees will I be charged for my trading?”. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

23. MoneyVox, “Revolut : ce qui change fin juillet pour les tarifs bourse”, 28 May 2026. ↩ ↩²

24. Ma Banque en Ligne, “Revolut : tarifs”, updated 25 September 2026. ↩

25. S’investir, “Frais de Trade Republic 2026”, 7 May 2026; Degiro, Tarifs, 1 January 2026. ↩

26. Signal-Alpha, “PEA Revolut”, July 2026. ↩

27. Finbooks, “Impôts et Revolut”, 13 July 2026. ↩ ↩²

28. impots.gouv.fr, Formulaire 3916. ↩

29. Meilleurtaux, “Déclaration d’un compte à l’étranger”, 25 November 2025. ↩

30. Revolut Securities Europe, Terms and conditions; Indėlių ir investicijų draudimas, Investment insurance. ↩

31. Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato, press release PS12974, 2 April 2026; Crowdfund Insider, “Italian regulator fines Revolut €11.5m”, 3 April 2026. ↩ ↩²

32. Upside24, “Carte crypto Revolut”, updated 24 August 2026. ↩

33. Revolut Digital Assets Europe, Fees for exchanging cryptocurrencies. ↩ ↩²

34. Revolut, Revolut X fees. ↩

35. CoinDesk, “Revolut secures MiCA license in Cyprus”, 23 October 2025. ↩

36. Revolut Securities Europe, Ex-ante costs report, Robo-Advisor. ↩

37. MoneyVox, “Revolut est-elle couverte par la garantie des dépôts de 100 000 euros ?”, 16 June 2026; Kohen Avocats, “Néobanque, courtier européen, faillite”, 27 September 2026. ↩ ↩²

38. City AM, “Revolut auditor flags concern over £477m of revenue”, 1 March 2023. ↩

39. Revolut, Annual Report 2023, 28 June 2024. ↩

40. The Paypers, “Revolut fined €3.5 million for AML failings in Lithuania”, 9 April 2025. ↩

41. Tech.eu, “Revolut wins full UK banking licence”, 11 March 2026. ↩

42. MoneyVox, Avis clients Revolut. ↩

43. Apple App Store (France), Revolut. ↩

44. Trustpilot, Revolut reviews. ↩

45. Which?, “Revolut still the worst UK firm for fraud complaints”, 1 October 2025. ↩

46. TechCrunch, “Revolut confirms customer data breach through fake government requests”, 12 September 2026. ↩

47. Selectra, “Revolut : données clients, faux agents”. ↩

48. Revolut France, Politique de traitement des réclamations. ↩