The Hausbank of the Self-Employed Is No Longer a Sparkasse: Freelancers Bank with N26, GmbHs with Qonto

Which bank does a self-employed person in Germany use when they start today? The obvious answer would be the Sparkasse around the corner: the country's densest branch network, for decades the Hausbank of Germany. The data paints a different picture. This analysis is based on the bank connections that self-employed people and small businesses in Germany linked to their accounting in Norman, with data through the end of September 2026.

A connected bank is a strong signal. What gets linked is the account that runs the day-to-day business: income, expenses, receipts. So the numbers do not show where someone once opened an account, but which account actually works.

More than six in ten connections lead to a neobank

The picture remains clear. More than six in ten bank connections lead to a neobank or fintech, about 63 percent. Counted by business, it is two in three: that many have connected at least one neobank account. Traditional big and direct banks account for about 16 percent of connections, Sparkassen and cooperative banks for about 12 percent, and the rest is spread across other institutions (about 9 percent).

Download CSV

N26 leads by a wide margin

Within the neobanks there is a clear front-runner. With about 22 percent of all connections, N26 is by far the most frequently linked bank, almost twice as often as the runner-up Revolut with about 11 percent. New in third place are the Sparkassen with about 9 percent, just ahead of Qonto with about 8 percent.

Download CSV

Vivid and Finom follow with about 6 percent each, then Deutsche Bank, Postbank, Wise and Commerzbank in the low single digits. N26 alone accounts for about two and a half times as many connections as all Sparkassen combined.

Freelancers bank with N26, GmbHs with Qonto

New in this edition is the split by legal form. It shows three different banking landscapes.

Download CSV

For freelancers (Freiberufler), N26 is the Hausbank: almost one in three has connected an N26 account (about 31 percent), followed by Revolut with about 16 percent. Among trade businesses (Gewerbe), N26 also leads with about 21 percent, but the Sparkasse is already second with about 16 percent. Among UG and GmbH, Qonto leads: almost one in three corporations has connected a Qonto account (about 31 percent), ahead of the Sparkasse with about 15 percent, Finom with about 14 and Vivid with about 11 percent. N26 does not appear among the five most common banks of corporations.

Sparkassen and cooperative banks are almost twice as strong among trade businesses and corporations as among freelancers: about one in five trade businesses and one in five UG or GmbH has connected a Sparkasse or Volksbank (about 22 and 21 percent), but only about one in eight freelancers (about 12 percent).

What changes from quarter to quarter

Download CSV

Over six quarters, the picture shifts slowly. The neobank share of all connections was about 69 percent in mid-2025 and about 63 percent at the end of September 2026; in the last quarter it fell by just over 2 points. In the same quarter, Sparkassen and cooperative banks rose from about 11 to about 12 percent, N26 fell from about 24 to about 22 percent, and Qonto rose from about 6 to about 8 percent.

We do not read moves of 2 to 3 points as a trend. They come mainly from who is new in the data: since the start of 2026, far more trade businesses and corporations have joined, and they bank differently from freelancers. Within one legal form the picture is calmer. Of the freelancers, about 29 to 31 percent had connected an N26 account at the end of March, June and September 2026, and about 10 to 12 percent a Sparkasse or Volksbank.

The big gap: the Sparkasse

The distance to the retail market is still large. There, Sparkassen and cooperative banks are the backbone. Together they hold about half of all private current accounts: the Sparkassen, depending on the count, around 35 to 45 percent, the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken about 13 percent. Among the self-employed analyzed here, both groups together reach about 12 percent of connections.

About half turns into about one in eight. The banking group that defines Germany's retail market plays a minor role in the operating day-to-day of these self-employed people, most of all among trade businesses and GmbHs.

Why this is, and what it means

One reason lies in the nature of the data, and we name it openly: anyone who keeps their books digitally and links the account via an interface belongs to the digitally working half of the self-employed. That is exactly where neobanks are strong: they offer the fastest account opening, the best app, and the most open interfaces. The actual Sparkassen share across all self-employed people is therefore likely higher than about 12 percent.

The split by legal form also shows that the choice of bank depends on the legal form. Freelancers, who mostly work alone and under their own name, most often choose N26 or Revolut. Whoever runs a UG or GmbH needs an account for a corporation, and there Qonto, Finom and Vivid lead. Trade businesses sit in between and are the most loyal to the Sparkasse. For the neobanks, the picture is still clear in all three groups: a neobank leads everywhere, and in every legal form about six in ten bank connections go to neobanks.

We update this analysis quarterly at this address; the changelog at the bottom of the page documents every revision. All analyses in this section: Data & Research.

Methodology

This is based on the bank connections that self-employed people and small businesses in Germany linked to their accounting in Norman, with data through 30 September 2026. Every started connection counts, even if the bank does not complete the link: what matters is which account someone wants to connect. Open-banking links fail more often at traditional banks; completed connections alone would understate their share. Multiple connections to the same bank are consolidated; different legal entities of the same brand (e.g. several Revolut or Postbank entities) are merged into one brand. Only Norman core users are analyzed; connections from white-label partnerships are excluded. "Neobanks & fintechs" includes, among others, N26, Revolut, Qonto, Finom, Vivid, Wise, Kontist, bunq, and C24; Direktbanken such as DKB and ING count as traditional banks.

A business can connect several banks. Shares by bank type and bank refer to all connections; the split by legal form shows the share of businesses that have connected at least one account at the bank. The legal form comes from the company details in Norman; UG and GmbH are combined. Internal and test accounts are excluded.

All values are shares; no published figure is based on fewer than 40 businesses. We do not publish absolute user numbers. The sample represents digitally working self-employed people and tends to over-represent neobanks, since they offer the best interfaces.

Retail-market shares per Der Bank Blog and Handelsblatt. How we work with data in general is documented in Methodology & data basis.

About this data

Norman is an accounting platform for self-employed people and small businesses in Germany; the anonymized bank connections analyzed here originate there. Charts and figures from this page may be reused freely with attribution to "Norman". Press inquiries and data requests: press@norman.finance.