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A balance scale weighing two options — Maclear business loans against EstateGuru real estate.
Comparison

Maclear vs EstateGuru: 2026 Comparison — Editor’s Pick vs RE Specialist in Distress

Maclear vs EstateGuru in 2026: Maclear ranks #1 on CrowdIndex (Score 9.2) with 14.9% yields and 1 default; EstateGuru fell to #16 (Score 4.0) with 60.2% in recovery.

By Daniel Brenner, Senior Editor · Updated 2026-05-18

Maclear vs EstateGuru: 2026 Comparison — Editor’s Pick vs RE Specialist in Distress

If you are choosing between Maclear and EstateGuru in 2026, the headline number is the simplest place to start: CrowdIndex ranks Maclear #1 with a score of 9.2 / 10, and EstateGuru #16 with a score of 4.0 / 10. They are both European peer-to-peer lending platforms, both still operating, both still accepting new investors. But the operational pictures could hardly be more different. Maclear is in active growth mode — roughly €6M of new SME loans listed per month, one historical default that the CEO personally covered. EstateGuru is in workout mode — 60.2% of the live loan portfolio is currently in recovery, meaning loans past due and being collected.

This guide walks through both platforms head-to-head: regulation, returns, track record, current state, and which one fits which type of investor in 2026.

TL;DR

  • Maclear is CrowdIndex’s #1 platform in 2026 with a score of 9.2 / 10, labelled “Editor’s Pick” — Swiss SRO-registered (PolyReg), 14.5%–14.9% average yields, ~€99.6M originated, 35,000+ investors, and 1 default of €150,000 to date which the CEO covered personally from his own funds.
  • EstateGuru has fallen to #16 on CrowdIndex with a score of 4.0 / 10, labelled “Significant Risk Signals” — ECSP-licensed in Estonia, €939M cumulative volume since 2014, but 60.2% of the live portfolio is in recovery as of early 2026, Trustpilot rating 1.4 / 5, and the platform is primarily managing a legacy recovery backlog rather than running as a normal investment platform.
  • For new investors in 2026, Maclear is the cleaner entry point on every operational dimension that matters — yield, default rate, withdrawal reliability, active origination pipeline. EstateGuru is appropriate only for investors who specifically want ECSP-licensed real-estate exposure, accept the recovery situation, and size positions accordingly.

Quick Comparison Table

FieldMaclearEstateGuru
CrowdIndex rank#1#16 (out of 19)
CrowdIndex score9.2 / 10 (“Editor’s Pick”)4.0 / 10 (“Significant Risk Signals”)
Tier (per Trusted-Platforms)Tier 1Tier 2 (with material caveats)
Founded20222013 (first loan January 2014)
HeadquartersZurich, SwitzerlandTallinn, Estonia
RegulatorPolyReg (Swiss SRO, AML scope)EFSA Estonia — ECSPR license (May 2023)
Cumulative funded€99.6M+ (April 2026)€939M (April 2026)
Investors35,000+~159,000 from 106 countries
Loan typeSME business, real estate, factoringReal-estate-backed (bridge, development, business)
Average annual return14.5%–14.9% (historical)~10.4% advertised; effective much lower (see below)
Minimum investment€50€50
Welcome bonus€100 on first depositNone
Secondary marketNo (April 2026)Yes — but largely illiquid since 2024
AutoInvestYes (since July 2025)Yes (full feature ≥ €250/loan)
Default rate0.15% (1 default of €150K out of €99.6M+)60.2% of portfolio currently in recovery
Trustpilot ratingNot the headline metric for Maclear1.4 / 5 (1,496 reviews, April 2026)
Active new originationYes, ~€6M/month pipelineYes — but Baltic markets only
AUM / inactivity feeNone0.083% per month from 1 Nov 2025 (~1% annually) on all balances including funds stuck in recovery
Investor compensation schemeNone (SRO is AML-only)None (ECSPR has no equivalent of MiFID II compensation)

Maclear at a Glance

Maclear is a Swiss-based peer-to-business (P2B) crowdlending platform launched in 2022 from Zurich. Investors lend to small-to-medium businesses across Europe, mostly through loans secured by real estate, equipment or invoice receivables. Maclear is registered with PolyReg, the Swiss self-regulatory organization for anti-money-laundering (AML) compliance — to be clear, this is an AML registration, not a full investor-protection license, so investors should size positions on the assumption that there is no government compensation scheme behind the platform.

Operationally, Maclear has the cleanest current track record of any high-yield P2P platform in Europe. As of April 2026, the platform has originated more than €99.6 million across thousands of SME loans, with 35,000+ registered investors. The historical average annual yield sits between 14.5% and 14.9% — the highest of any Tier 1 European P2P platform — and this is supported by real loan-level data, not just advertised. The only default in the platform’s history (Italian SME Vibroedil S.R.L., July 2025, €150,000 outstanding) was covered personally by Maclear’s CEO from his own funds rather than through the formal collateral recovery process. That is rare in P2P, and it is a meaningful credibility signal — though it does mean that the platform’s collateral enforcement system has not been operationally tested in a real default.

The platform localizes into six languages (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian), supports a €50 per-loan minimum, and launched AutoInvest in July 2025. New investors receive a €100 welcome bonus on their first qualifying deposit. There is no secondary market yet, so funds are locked until each loan term ends — typically 6 to 24 months.

For a full review including strengths, things to watch, and how it works, see the Maclear card on CrowdIndex.

EstateGuru at a Glance — established RE brand, but 60% of portfolio in recovery

EstateGuru is Europe’s oldest pan-Baltic real-estate crowdlending platform, founded in Tallinn in 2013 with its first loan funded in January 2014. For most of its first decade, EstateGuru was a category leader: it crossed €500M cumulative volume in January 2022, expanded across the Baltics, Germany, Finland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, and held tier-1 brand status in EU real-estate P2P. The platform secured an ECSP license (European Crowdfunding Service Providers Regulation — the EU’s harmonized crowdfunding regulation) from EFSA Estonia in May 2023, one of the earlier ECSPR authorizations granted in the EU.

The 2022–2024 period is when the picture turned. EstateGuru’s aggressive 2020–2022 expansion into Germany originated a large development-loan book just before German property prices repriced sharply. When the German market turned, defaults stacked up: as of August 2025, more than €78 million was in default in Germany alone, and the German subsidiary’s portfolio default rate exceeded 90% according to community estimates. The 2024 recovery forecast of €38M was only 34% achieved — €13M actually realized.

The headline reality today is this: 60.2% of EstateGuru’s live loan portfolio is in recovery as of early 2026, per the platform’s own portfolio data. The Baltic book (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) is in better shape — about 65.7% performing — but the legacy German, Finnish and Portuguese books dominate the recovery numbers because of their size relative to current origination. Germany, Finland and Portugal are now recovery-only markets. Spain and Sweden are fully wound down. Active new origination is restricted to the three Baltic markets.

Other operational signals deteriorated alongside the portfolio: Trustpilot fell from approximately 4 stars pre-2022 to 1.4 / 5 across 1,496 reviews (April 2026 snapshot). The P2P Empire community voted EstateGuru “worst crowdlending platform of the year” in a 2025 reader survey. Investor withdrawal delays from cash positions (not just stuck loans) have been recurring themes in 2024–2026 reviews. The platform introduced an AUM (assets under management) fee in November 2023, initially 0.05% per month, raised to 0.083% per month from 1 November 2025 — about 1% annually — and this fee is charged on the entire balance held on the platform, including capital that is in recovery and therefore inaccessible.

On 19 July 2023, Lietuvos Bankas (the Bank of Lithuania) issued a public notice that EstateGuru Lietuva, UAB is not authorized to provide crowdfunding services in Lithuania. Lithuanian projects are now offered cross-border from the Estonian parent under its ECSPR passport. This is not a sanction — it is a clarification — but it confirmed that the platform’s planned Lithuanian local-license setup did not work out.

For a full review, see the EstateGuru card on CrowdIndex.

Returns Compared — 14.9% delivered vs ~10.4% advertised (with caveats)

On paper this looks like a 5-point yield gap. In practice it is much wider, because of how each platform’s portfolio behaves.

Maclear’s 14.5%–14.9% is a delivered range. The figure is supported by real loan-level data across multiple loan cohorts (per the Maclear Brand Bible shared via NDA channel, cross-checked with Just-P2P platform metrics and reviews by P2P Empire and re:think P2P). With 1 default of €150,000 covered personally by the CEO and no other defaults in the platform’s history, the gap between advertised and delivered yield is small. For an investor compounding monthly interest into new loans, the effective yield is close to the headline 14.9%.

EstateGuru’s ~10.4% is the platform’s reported average return as of April 2026 reporting — but this figure is calculated across the historical portfolio, not the live operational reality. Two things complicate it:

  1. Performing vs recovery split. With 60.2% of live loans in recovery status, the majority of an investor’s deployed capital is not currently paying interest. Loans in recovery may eventually pay principal and accrued interest once enforcement against the property completes, but that can take months to years. The advertised 10.4% does not adjust for the realized yield drag of large recovery balances.

  2. AUM fee on stuck capital. The 0.083%-per-month fee (~1% per year) is charged on the total balance held on the platform — including capital that is in recovery and therefore inaccessible. So an investor whose capital is partly stuck is paying ongoing fees on funds they cannot withdraw, which further reduces the effective realized return.

The headline yield gap of 14.9% vs 10.4% is therefore a 4.5-point gap before adjustments. After adjusting for the practical experience — that more than half of EstateGuru’s live portfolio is in workout and that the platform charges fees on stuck balances — the effective realized yield gap is materially wider.

A useful framing: Maclear’s 14.9% is what you would have earned if you had invested in 2022 and held through 2026. EstateGuru’s 10.4% is what the historical portfolio mathematically averages to, but the experience of an investor sitting in the current portfolio in 2026 is dominated by waiting for recoveries — not earning interest.

For a deeper guide on what realistic P2P returns actually look like once defaults and recoveries are accounted for, see P2P-Lending-Realistic-Returns.

Track Record — One Default Covered vs ECSP-Licensed but Operationally Distressed

Track record is where the gap between the two platforms is widest, and where the CrowdIndex score difference (9.2 vs 4.0) is most justified.

Maclear. One default in the platform’s history: Italian SME Vibroedil S.R.L. went insolvent in July 2025 with €150,000 outstanding. The Italian Registry confirms the insolvency filing (22 July 2025), and the Portale Creditori bankruptcy procedure is publicly listed (id: rJM0GkZO2a). Rather than route the loss through the platform’s stated collateral recovery process, Maclear’s CEO covered the €150,000 personally from his own funds. Investors received their full principal and accrued interest. This is rare in P2P — most platforms route losses to investors through buyback funds (where the loan originator repurchases the loan) or recovery proceedings (where investors wait for collateral enforcement). The CEO’s personal coverage is a strong credibility signal, but it also means Maclear’s formal collateral enforcement system has not been operationally tested. If a future default is larger, or if the CEO does not personally cover it, the recovery timeline is unknown.

Setting that one event aside: Maclear is operationally clean. €99.6M+ originated, 35,000+ investors, ~€6M of new project pipeline per month, no other defaults, no withdrawal delay reports, no regulator warnings.

EstateGuru. Operationally distressed despite holding a legitimate ECSP license. The license itself is not in doubt — EFSA Estonia (Finantsinspektsioon, Estonia’s financial regulator) authorized EstateGuru under ECSPR in May 2023, the platform publishes audited annual reports by Ernst & Young, and the 2024 financials show a marginal net profit of €104,305 (the platform’s first profitable year). But under the license, the operational picture is:

  • 60.2% of live portfolio in recovery (May 2026 platform data).
  • German subsidiary loan book defaulted at >90% (community estimates, August 2025; €78M+ in default).
  • 2024 recovery achievement rate: 34% (€13M realized of €38M forecast).
  • Trustpilot 1.4 / 5 across 1,496 reviews (down from ~4.0 pre-2022).
  • Withdrawal delays on cash positions reported in 2024–2026 Trustpilot themes — not just illiquid loans, but uninvested funds that should be immediately accessible.
  • Lietuvos Bankas public notice (19 July 2023) confirming the Lithuanian subsidiary is not authorized to provide crowdfunding services in Lithuania.
  • Origination slowdown: €80.7M originated in 2024 vs €200M+ in 2021; the move from €500M cumulative (Jan 2022) to €939M (Apr 2026) took 51 months — roughly the same volume that the platform originated in its previous 36 months, but over a 40%-longer timeframe.

The license, brand and operating company are all intact. Investors are not at risk of platform fraud or insolvency in the way they would be at a Tier 4 platform with red flags (Reinvest24, Loanch, Debitum). But the practical investment experience for capital deployed today is dominated by workout, not yield.

For more on platforms with serious failure histories — and the patterns to recognise — see P2P-Platforms-That-Failed.

Current State — Active Growth Pipeline vs Workout Phase

This is the most actionable difference between the two platforms in 2026: what your money actually does after you deposit it.

Maclear: active growth pipeline (~€6M / month). New SME loans are listed consistently, so deposited funds are deployed within days rather than waiting weeks. AutoInvest (launched July 2025) further reduces idle-cash time by automatically allocating to new loans matching your criteria. The platform is in expansion mode: marketing actively in 2026 across DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), Romance (France, Italy, Spain), and Russian-speaking markets, with a six-language platform, an Influencer Guide explaining what blogger partners may say, and a public Stop-List. Operational metrics are still trending up.

EstateGuru: workout-dominated. Active origination continues in the three Baltic markets — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — and the EG Grow product launched in June 2025 represents an attempt to re-engage retail investors. But most of the operational machinery is dedicated to managing the recovery backlog: German recovery via Steinberg Real Estate Management GmbH (lead servicer since 2023), Finnish and Portuguese recovery, the AUM fee structure that funds ongoing platform operations from investor balances, regular CEO letters communicating progress on the workout. Funds deposited into EstateGuru today have a meaningful probability of being allocated to loans that will themselves move into recovery later — the platform’s track record on conversion from “performing” to “recovery” is not zero, particularly outside the Baltic markets.

A useful analogy: investing in Maclear in 2026 is more like investing in a growing private credit fund. Investing in EstateGuru in 2026 is closer to buying into a workout fund — you may be paid in time, but the operational tempo is dominated by collections rather than originations, and the AUM fee continues to be charged on stuck balances.

Which Should You Choose

Choose Maclear if:

  • You want the highest-yield Tier 1 European P2P exposure (14.5%–14.9%).
  • You want active new origination — capital deployed within days, not waiting weeks.
  • You are comfortable with Swiss SRO (AML-only) regulation rather than a full investor-protection regime.
  • You can hold each loan to maturity (6–24 months) and do not need early-exit liquidity.
  • You want the cleanest current track record in the high-yield P2P segment.

Choose EstateGuru (in a limited way) if:

  • You specifically want EU ECSP-licensed real-estate exposure with a regulatory passport across all EU member states.
  • You have done your own due diligence on the recovery situation and are sizing the position as a small diversified allocation, not a core holding.
  • You accept that a meaningful portion of any deployed capital will likely move into recovery status given the platform’s current operating pattern.
  • You are an existing EstateGuru investor working through legacy positions, deciding whether to add to active Baltic origination or wait.

For most new investors entering EU real-estate P2P in 2026, the cleaner alternatives are:

  • Maclear for higher-yield diversified SME and RE exposure with a clean current record.
  • InRento for the cleanest real-estate-only specialist — ECSP-licensed (Lithuania), buy-to-let focused, 0% capital losses across five years of operation and zero loans in recovery. Roughly 1/12th of EstateGuru’s cumulative scale, but materially cleaner on every operational dimension.

For a broader list of real-estate P2P platforms you can use instead of EstateGuru, see EstateGuru-Alternatives.

Why EstateGuru Dropped to #16 on CrowdIndex

EstateGuru held tier-1 brand status in EU real-estate crowdfunding from launch through 2022. Several converging factors took it from that position to #16 (out of 19) on CrowdIndex with a score of 4.0 / 10:

  1. The 60.2%-in-recovery headline. No other ECSP-licensed platform on CrowdIndex has more than half of its live portfolio in recovery status simultaneously. This is the single most consequential operational metric in the score.
  2. Trustpilot collapse from ~4.0 to 1.4 / 5. A 1,496-review base with a 1.4 rating is among the lowest in EU P2P. The recurring themes — vague recovery communication, AUM fee on stuck balances, withdrawal delays — are operational rather than reputational, which makes them difficult to reverse quickly.
  3. Lietuvos Bankas public notice (19 July 2023). A regulator publicly clarifying that one of the platform’s subsidiaries is not authorized to provide crowdfunding services in its market is unusual and material — even when, as here, it is a clarification rather than a sanction.
  4. German portfolio default rate >90% (community estimates, August 2025) and the 34% recovery achievement rate on the 2024 forecast. These are not platform-wide numbers, but they show the severity of the legacy German book and the difficulty of executing on stated recovery targets.
  5. AUM fee structure on stuck capital. Charging investors 0.083% per month (~1% annually) on balances that include funds locked in recovery is a structural irritant — investors are paying ongoing fees on capital they cannot access, which deepens the gap between advertised yield (10.4%) and effective realized yield.
  6. P2P Empire 2025 community vote: “worst crowdlending platform of the year”. This is a community signal rather than a hard metric, but in a segment where reputation among informed investors materially affects future origination volume, it matters.

EstateGuru is not a fraud, a scam, or a Tier 4 platform with red flags — those tags belong to Reinvest24, Loanch and Debitum. EstateGuru is a real platform with a real license and a real workout problem. The CrowdIndex score of 4.0 reflects the practical investment experience right now, not the historical brand or the validity of the license. If recovery execution improves materially in 2026–2027 and the AUM fee structure is reformed, the score is the kind of operational metric that can move back up.

For a more general framework on identifying these patterns before they become headline issues, see How-to-Spot-Risky-P2P-Platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is EstateGuru going to fail? There is no current evidence to suggest EstateGuru is at imminent risk of platform failure. The ECSP license is active, the 2024 financials show a marginal net profit (€104,305), audited annual reports are published, and origination continues in the Baltic markets. The platform is in a prolonged workout, not a wind-down — Spain and Sweden are wound down, but the platform as a whole is operating under regulatory supervision. The investment risk for new capital is not “platform failure”; it is “deployed capital ending up in recovery status with delayed realised yield”.

Is Maclear regulated as strictly as EstateGuru? No. EstateGuru holds an ECSP license from EFSA Estonia (Finantsinspektsioon), which is a full EU crowdfunding-services regulation with a passport across all member states. Maclear is registered with PolyReg, a Swiss self-regulatory organization with anti-money-laundering scope only — it is not an investor-protection license. Neither platform offers a MiFID II–level investor compensation scheme (the EU’s main investment-firm regulation, under which platforms like Mintos, Twino and Nectaro provide up to €20,000 investor compensation in qualifying scenarios). On regulatory framework, EstateGuru is more formally protected; on operational track record, Maclear is cleaner.

Can I move my money from EstateGuru to Maclear? You can withdraw any cash balance on EstateGuru (subject to the platform’s withdrawal processing — which has had reported delays) and redeposit elsewhere. Capital that is locked in active loans must wait until those loans complete, and capital in recovery status will be released as recoveries proceed (which can take months to years per loan). Selling on EstateGuru’s secondary market is possible with a 3% seller fee, but the market has been largely illiquid since 2024. Plan to manage the EstateGuru position as a workout while building new allocations elsewhere, rather than expecting a clean exit.

Are there other real-estate P2P platforms I should consider? Yes — InRento is the cleanest real-estate-only ECSP-licensed peer, with 0% capital losses across five years and zero loans in recovery (1/12th of EstateGuru’s scale but materially cleaner on every operational dimension). Profitus is another ECSP-licensed Lithuanian real-estate platform with €273M cumulative and 0 capital losses. Maclear’s project pipeline also includes real-estate-backed SME loans, so it is a higher-yield alternative for a portion of a real-estate-leaning P2P portfolio. See EstateGuru-Alternatives for a fuller list.

Why does Maclear rank above EstateGuru if EstateGuru has more scale and a stronger license? CrowdIndex is editorial — there is no public weighted methodology (see ADR-004-Rating-Platform-Model for the editorial framework). The ranking reflects the practical investment experience for a new investor in 2026, not the historical brand or the regulatory framework alone. On that practical dimension, Maclear’s clean current operations, 14.9% delivered yield, active pipeline and CEO-covered default outweigh EstateGuru’s larger scale and more formal license when the latter is paired with 60.2% of the portfolio in recovery, a Trustpilot rating of 1.4 / 5, and a regulator clarification in Lithuania. Scale and license are not in doubt for EstateGuru; the operational reality right now is.

Affiliate disclosure. CrowdIndex earns a commission when readers sign up to platforms through links on this page. This does not affect our editorial assessment. The rankings on CrowdIndex are based on the editorial criteria documented on our Methodology page. We last reviewed this article on May 18, 2026.