Qonto vs Shine 2026

Shine wins this round, and not only because of its free plan. Here are three profiles with real numbers, and the yearly total in the table right after.

First profile: a French micro-entrepreneur who sends 10 transfers a month. On Shine Free that costs €0, plus €0.50 per transfer after the first 3, so €42 a year. The same profile pays €108 excl. VAT a year on Qonto Basic, as long as you pay the year upfront. Pay monthly and it climbs to €132. One catch on Shine Free: the physical card is an extra €7 excl. VAT, only the virtual card is included.

Second profile: a small company sending 120 transfers a month. Shine Plus includes 150 for €20 excl. VAT, so €240 a year. Qonto Smart includes 100 for €19, and each extra transfer costs €0.20: €228 of subscription plus €48 of transfers, so €276 a year. Shine also leaves more headroom for the month when business takes off.

Third profile: a three-person company, one physical card each, 40 transfers a month. Shine Plus covers everything (3 cards, 150 transfers) for €240 a year. Qonto's solo plans include 2 physical cards at most, so the first plan with more is Essential, at €49 a month billed yearly, or €588 a year. The gap is over €340.

Where Qonto claws back is interest on your balance, which Shine does not offer. From Smart, idle cash earns 1.5% a year after two months at 5%, up to €50,000 on Smart. On €30,000 left on the account, that is roughly €450 a year, enough to cover the subscription. You do need at least five transactions a month to qualify.

Both apps are clean, and that is what customers praise most on both sides. You open either account fully online, ID and company documents in hand. Shine scores 4.8/5 on the App Store and 4.6/5 on Google Play. Qonto takes a small lead for teams: each member gets a role (admin, accountant, employee), their own cards and limits, and a manager approves spending from a phone.

The language is the real difference for an English-speaking reader. Qonto's app, help center and support run in English. Shine is French from end to end, including the onboarding and the Urssaf reminders. If you read French comfortably, Shine is the more beginner-friendly app: the dashboard shows what to set aside for social charges and VAT, and explains every step.

A forum tip on the flip side: moving from a micro-enterprise to a company means opening a new account, and a second account can be refused while your legal status changes. Plan for it. And a trap common to both: until the compliance check (KYC) is done, you can create cards and prepare transfers, but nothing leaves. Open your account at least a week before you need it.

Qonto is more complete. Sub-accounts with their own IBAN (handy to ring-fence VAT or a project), Spanish, Italian or German IBANs to bill a foreign client, virtual cards on the fly for every subscription, cash-flow forecasting from Smart. Qonto has also been an approved platform for French e-invoicing since late 2025, sending and receiving. Both offer financing, up to €30,000 at Qonto against €12,000 at Shine, but it goes through partners and reviews call it expensive: compare with your bank before signing.

Shine has strengths Qonto lacks. Cash deposits at around 1,600 partner tobacco shops, with a barcode generated in the app and an instant credit. Urssaf contribution estimates. And on Plus and Business, ten calls a year to a legal helpline and a debt collection service. Those two plans also come with a Mastercard Premium card, its insurance, and a card spending limit of €60,000 over 30 days (€20,000 on Free). At Qonto, the stronger insurance comes with the Plus and X cards.

On e-invoicing, Shine arrived later: receiving works, sending was just added. And Shine Free's invoicing tool handles only 5 clients. At the sixth, you move to Start.

Both post good ratings, but the complaints look alike: an adviser who is hard to reach right when the account is frozen. Shine advertises its French customer service award for 2026 in the online business bank category. Reviews paint a more mixed picture: several customers describe two-line answers or slow replies, and Shine answers only about 5% of negative reviews. Support is in French.

At Qonto, complaints mostly target being bounced between teams and early e-invoicing issues. The real risk, common to every fintech account, is closure: Qonto can close an account with notice, or without notice in some cases, and support is not allowed to tell you why. Shine follows the same anti-money-laundering rules. Size matters too: Qonto has over 600,000 customers, Shine over 150,000.

Our advice: always answer requests for documents on time (the first closure reason Qonto cites), and keep a second account, even a free one, so you are never left with no way to pay.

Qonto wins clearly. It pushes entries automatically to Cegid Quadra, Cegid Loop, MyUnisoft or Sage, and feeds Pennylane with transactions, receipts and invoices. It also connects to Make and Zapier. You can, for instance, send your Qonto invoices automatically with Make or browse the Qonto integration on Make and the Qonto integration on Zapier. For an accountant, that is often the deciding factor.

Shine mostly works on its own. Accounting connections exist but stay more limited. Cegid, a French business software publisher, closed its acquisition in 2026: expect bridges to its own tools, but nothing is shipped at scale yet.

A trap spotted on a French forum: some online accounting firms do not pull the receipts stored in the bank account, so you enter them twice. Before signing, ask your accountant which account they read natively.