The best business account for a startup in Europe depends on the stage the company is at

Anyone searching best business account for startups europe wants a name, and I understand why. The best business account for a startup in Europe depends less on the app than on which stage your company is at when you apply. A company that doesn't exist yet needs somewhere to deposit share capital. A founder still trading under their own name can use accounts that a limited company is flatly refused. And a company with a shareholder outside the EEA will find some doors shut before the pricing page matters at all. I'd sort providers by that before I looked at a single fee.

I read the pricing and eligibility pages of five providers on 17 September 2026: Qonto, N26, bunq, Revolut Business and Wise Business. I had assumed the free plans would be the obvious place for a startup to begin. I was wrong about that more often than I was right, because most of the free tiers turned out to exclude companies altogether.

First, there's no right to an account

Knowing this saves a certain amount of indignation later. The EU Payment Accounts Directive, 2014/92/EU, gives a right to a basic payment account under Article 16, but it gives it to consumers, defined as "any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business, craft or profession". A startup plainly isn't one of those. The FCA said the same for the UK in September 2023, noting that "there is no right to an account in the UK and some protections" do not apply to businesses.

So every business account is a decision the provider makes about you. There's no appeal to a statute if the answer is no, only to the next provider, and that changes how I'd approach the whole process: apply where your company plainly fits the written rules, rather than where the app looks nicest, because a refusal costs days you probably don't have and often tells you nothing about why. That decision runs, above all, through anti money laundering checks. Article 13 of Directive 2015/849 requires "identifying the beneficial owner and taking reasonable measures to verify that person's identity", and Article 3(6) treats "an ownership interest of more than 25 %" as an indication of direct ownership. In the UK, regulation 28 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 asks for a company's registration number and "the address of its registered office". From 10 July 2027 the EU directive gives way to Regulation 2024/1624, though the idea stays the same: the provider has to know who owns you.

Startup bank account requirements, provider by provider

Revolut Business in Ireland says "Your company must be fully incorporated and active", and the applicant must live in the UK, Switzerland or the EEA. It asks for ID, an incorporation certificate, proof of business activity, an operating address and "A document listing all directors and major shareholders (ownership over 25%)". It says it aims "to review your information within 24 hours of submission". Charities, public sector bodies and cooperatives are excluded. That's clear enough.

bunq's business FAQ asks for "a verified Personal account, directors aged 18+, a legitimate business registered in a supported country, an accepted legal form, and only one bunq Business Account per entity". It also says, in its business savings FAQ, "We decline applications with non-EEA UBOs, insolvency, or incomplete documentation". I cannot tell from that page whether the non-EEA rule covers every bunq business product or only savings, and I'd ask before applying with a founder in, say, the US. A written answer from the provider costs an email. A rejected application costs a week, sometimes more, and it lands at the moment a founding team has the least patience for starting again somewhere else.

Wise's help centre says it works for "sole traders and freelancers", "limited and public companies" and partnerships, with some UK exceptions. It turns away businesses with bearer shares, "regardless of the jurisdiction they are incorporated in", along with trusts in the UK and EEA and crypto businesses.

N26 is the sharpest line of all. Its support page says its business accounts "are designed for self-employed and freelancers doing business under their own name (meaning you can't have your company's name on your account or card)". Its Italian eligibility page spells it out: no sign-up "in the name of a partnership (e.g., GPs and LPs), capital company (e.g., LLCs and INCs), or another entity". So N26 Business isn't a startup account in the company sense at all. It's a freelancer account, and a good one for that. It also says "You can't have a business account and a personal account at the same time", which can catch out a founder who opened a personal N26 account years ago and assumed they could simply add a business one alongside it.

Free business account Europe: what free actually covers

People search for a free business account in Europe and find several. Here's what they cover, as of 17 September 2026.

Read from each provider's own pricing and eligibility pages on 17 September 2026. Qonto prices are monthly equivalents of annual billing.

Provider	Cheapest plan	Next plans	Who can open it
N26 Business	Standard, free	Smart 4.90, Go 9.90, Metal 16.90 euro a month	Self-employed and freelancers only
bunq Business	Free Business, sole proprietors	Core 7.99, Pro 13.99, Elite 23.99 euro a month	Registered businesses in supported countries
Qonto	Basic 9 euro a month, ex VAT	Smart 19, Premium 39; Essential 49, Business 109, Enterprise 199	Freelancers and companies; founders in 4 countries
Revolut Business (Ireland)	Basic from 10 euro a month	Grow from 35, Scale from 125, Enterprise custom	Fully incorporated companies
Wise Business	No monthly plan	One-off set-up fee, 60 euro on the Irish page	Sole traders, companies, partnerships

Read the right hand column before the left. The two genuinely free plans, N26 Standard and bunq Free Business, are aimed at people trading in their own name; bunq labels its free tier "For Sole Proprietors". A limited company looking for a free business account in Europe among these five providers mostly won't find one. Wise comes closest, with no monthly fee at all, though it's a one-off 60 euro on the Irish page and 55 on the German one, and it's an e-money institution in the UK rather than a bank.

I'm slightly annoyed by it, if I'm honest, and not because anyone is hiding it. Every one of the 5 pages states its eligibility plainly. It's that the word free does the marketing work on the landing page while the exclusion sits two clicks away on a support article, and a founder in a hurry reads the first and not the second.

A company that doesn't exist yet

This is where Qonto stands apart from the others in this comparison. Its company creation page says it's "currently available for founders and entrepreneurs in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy", and it opens accounts for companies still being formed. In France the online share capital deposit costs €69 excluding tax, and the annual pack starts from €177 excluding tax for the first year, which includes that deposit and 12 months of the Basic plan. Qonto says you "typically" get proof of deposit "within 24 hours". That matters more than the price. A notary or a registry waiting on a deposit certificate doesn't care how elegant the banking app is, and a founder who loses a week to a slow certificate loses it at exactly the point where every other deadline in the formation is lined up behind it, which is why the speed claim is the one I'd test first, by asking someone who formed a company through it recently.

For the French deposit it asks for ID for every associate, the articles or draft articles, and "A proof of address for the registered office less than 3 months old". It also says "At least one of the associates must reside in France". I have not found Qonto's deposit fee for Germany, Italy or Spain. I went looking for it on 17 September in the German help centre, which returned a browser check instead of an article, and I'd rather leave a gap than guess a number.

A short digression on Qonto's prices. The plan cards show monthly equivalents of annual billing, "Billed annually at €108" for Basic. Monthly billing is available, and the French deposit page mentions a monthly Basic account from €11 excluding VAT. So 9 euro and 11 euro are both correct for the same plan. Anyway, the difference over a year is 24 euro, which is small next to the cost of opening an account at the wrong provider.

Business account comparison EU: what sits behind each app

A business account comparison in the EU that stops at price leaves out the licence. From the provider profiles in this index: N26 Bank AG holds a German banking licence with the German scheme covering 100,000 euro per depositor; bunq B.V. holds a Dutch banking licence; Revolut Bank UAB is a Lithuanian bank; Qonto is a French payment institution under ACPR licence 16958 that keeps client funds at partner banks. Wise's UK entity, Wise Payments Limited, is an e-money institution. I don't know which Wise entity an Irish customer contracts with, because I didn't confirm it for this piece, and the Irish pricing page alone doesn't settle it.

For a startup holding a seed round, that difference is not academic. A bank balance sits under a deposit guarantee up to 100,000 euro. A payment or e-money balance is safeguarded instead, which ring fences the money but pays no compensation. I suspect most founders choose on the app and discover the licence later, often only after the first 100,000 euro lands, and I'd reverse that order. No survey I know of measures this, so treat it as an impression from reading a great many onboarding flows rather than a statistic.

Which one I'd pick at each stage

If you're a freelancer trading in your own name in the eurozone, N26 Standard or bunq Free Business are genuinely free and built for you, though N26's support page says a deposit fee may apply to balances above 50,000 euro. If you're forming a company in France, Germany, Italy or Spain and need a capital deposit, Qonto is the one of these five whose pages I found offering it. If you're incorporated, every founder lives in the EEA and you want a bank licence, Revolut Business from 10 euro a month or a paid bunq plan fit, subject to bunq's line on non-EEA owners. If you mostly move money across currencies and don't want a monthly fee, Wise's one-off charge is hard to argue with. I would guess a good share of early startups end up with 2 of these rather than 1, a bank for the balance and something cheaper for payments, and that's a perfectly sensible place to land.

What I still don't know is how often each of them turns down a startup that meets every written rule. I didn't find a rejection rate published by any of the five, and the FCA's 2023 review found that the middle half of the firms it looked at declined between 0.2% and 11.4% of business applications, a range so wide it tells you mainly that the provider matters. That's the uncomfortable part. Two companies with identical paperwork can get opposite answers from two firms, and neither answer necessarily says anything about the company. My guess is that it often says something about the firm's appetite that quarter, which no pricing page, and no comparison like this one, can show you in advance.