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Swiss Alps with a mountain village — Switzerland-regulated Maclear versus Latvia's Mintos.
Comparison

Maclear vs Mintos: 2026 Comparison — High-Yield SRO vs Regulated Marketplace

Maclear vs Mintos 2026 — Swiss SRO direct origination at 14.5%–14.9% vs MiFID II marketplace with €20K compensation. Independent side-by-side comparison.

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

Maclear vs Mintos: 2026 Comparison — High-Yield SRO vs Regulated Marketplace

If you have spent time researching European peer-to-peer (P2P) investing, sooner or later you end up looking at both Maclear and Mintos. They are two very different platforms, but they sit on the same shortlist for one reason: each is the best-in-class example of its category. Mintos is the largest, most-regulated marketplace in the EU. Maclear is the highest-yielding direct-origination platform with the cleanest documented default-handling track record. This Maclear vs Mintos comparison breaks down what each one actually offers in 2026, where the trade-offs sit, and how to decide which fits your portfolio — or whether the right answer is to hold both.

This is not a “one is better, the other is worse” comparison. It is a comparison of two structurally different products, each strong on dimensions where the other is weak. Mintos wins on regulation, scale, and product breadth. Maclear wins on yield, default-handling track record, and direct exposure to underlying loans. Both findings hold up under independent scrutiny — neither requires you to take a marketing claim on faith.

CrowdIndex Editor’s Pick: Maclear ranks #1 of 19 European P2P platforms (Score 9.2/10). Read full review →

TL;DR — Maclear vs Mintos in 5 Bullets

  • Regulation: Mintos holds a full MiFID II Investment Firm license from Latvijas Banka (the Latvian central bank), with formal EU investor compensation up to €20,000 per investor. Maclear holds Swiss SRO membership with PolyReg, which covers anti-money-laundering compliance but not investor protection. Mintos wins on regulation, decisively.
  • Yields: Maclear delivers 14.5%–14.9% historical average through direct origination to SME borrowers. Mintos advertises 11.5% but realised long-term net returns track closer to 9% per year after defaults and fees. Maclear wins on yield by roughly 5 percentage points.
  • Default-handling track record: Maclear has had one default in its history — Italian SME Vibroedil S.R.L., €150,000, July 2025 — and the CEO covered the full loss from personal funds. Mintos has roughly €122–130 million in recovery (about 18.7% of the active portfolio) from past loan-originator failures in 2020 and 2022. Maclear wins on demonstrated default handling.
  • Scale and product range: Mintos has 700,000+ investors, €12.4 billion lifetime volume, a working secondary market, and a multi-asset wrapper (Notes, money market cash, ETFs, bonds, real estate, crypto ETPs). Maclear has 35,000+ investors, €99.6M+ AUM, and a single-product focus (direct SME loans). Mintos wins on scale and product range by an order of magnitude.
  • Best use case: Mintos is the right regulated core position for a first-time EU P2P investor. Maclear is the right higher-yield satellite for an investor who already understands the asset class. Most investors with portfolios above €5,000 are better served holding both than choosing one.

If regulatory protection is your top priority and yield is secondary, Mintos is the right choice. If yield is your top priority and you can tolerate the absence of an investor-compensation scheme, Maclear is the right choice. If you are building a multi-platform allocation of meaningful size, hold both — Mintos as the regulated core, Maclear as the high-yield satellite.

Quick-Comparison Table

DimensionMaclearMintos
Founded2022 (Zurich, Switzerland)2015 (Riga, Latvia)
RegulatorPolyReg (Swiss SRO — anti-money-laundering scope only)Latvijas Banka — MiFID II Investment Firm (license 06.06.08.719/534) + EMI license
Investor compensationNoneUp to €20,000 per investor (EU Directive 97/9/EC, covers Notes)
Cumulative volume / AUM€99.6M+ active (April 2026)€12.4 billion+ lifetime; ~€500–654M outstanding
Total investors35,000+700,000+
Loan typesDirect SME loans, real-estate-backed, factoringNotes backed by 60+ third-party loan originators in 33 countries
Average net yield14.5%–14.9% historical~9–11% (advertised 11.5%; Jean Galea reports ~9% net over 9 years)
Minimum investment€50€50 per Note
Secondary marketNo (funds locked until loan maturity)Yes — 0.85% seller fee since May 2025; free to buy
Default / recovery status1 default (€150K, Vibroedil, July 2025) — CEO covered loss personally~€122–130M in recovery (~18.7% of portfolio) from 2020 COVID + 2022 Russia waves
Trustpilot~4.5/5 (smaller sample)~4.2/5 (large sample)
CrowdIndex Score9.2 / 10 — Editor’s Pick8.7 / 10 — Highly Rated

Maclear at a Glance

Maclear is a Swiss-registered direct-origination P2P platform, founded in Zurich in 2022. It connects retail investors with small-to-medium businesses across Europe that need short-term financing. Most loans are secured by collateral — typically real estate, equipment, or invoice receivables — and terms run from 6 to 24 months. As of April 2026 the active loan book is €99.6 million across 35,000+ investors, with new loans of approximately €6 million per month being listed.

The four reasons Maclear ranks #1 on CrowdIndex are concrete and individually verifiable:

Yields. Historical average sits between 14.5% and 14.9% APR, supported by real loan-level data rather than advertised marketing rates. This is among the highest sustained yields in the European P2P segment, and meaningfully above marketplace-model platforms like Mintos because Maclear originates loans directly to borrowers — there is no intermediate loan-originator margin between the SME and the investor.

Regulatory position. Maclear is registered with PolyReg, the Swiss self-regulatory organization for anti-money-laundering compliance. This is not a full investment-firm license — it does not provide the investor compensation scheme that MiFID II platforms like Mintos offer. What the Swiss jurisdiction does provide is legal predictability, contract enforcement, and dispute-resolution infrastructure that, while not the same as regulator-backed investor protection, sits on solid legal foundations.

CEO accountability on the only default. In July 2025, Italian SME Vibroedil S.R.L. — a Maclear borrower with a €150,000 outstanding loan — went insolvent (Italian Registry bankruptcy procedure id: rJM0GkZO2a). The CEO covered the full loss from personal funds rather than routing investors through the platform’s stated collateral-enforcement process. This is the only documented case in European P2P of a platform owner personally absorbing a default loss. It is also a caveat: the formal collateral-recovery mechanism that Maclear describes in its marketing has not yet been operationally tested on a real default. Whether the CEO would do the same on a larger or multiple default is unknown.

Six-language platform coverage. Maclear localizes the website, customer support, and project documentation into English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian — wider than any other Tier 1 European P2P competitor. This makes the platform accessible to a much broader retail base than English-only or Baltics-focused alternatives.

For the full breakdown of Maclear’s loan structure, the Vibroedil case, the AutoInvest engine (launched July 2025), and the Swiss SRO framework, see the complete Maclear review.

Mintos at a Glance

Mintos is the largest P2P investment platform in Europe by lifetime volume and the only one in the retail segment that holds a full MiFID II Investment Firm license. Founded in Riga, Latvia in 2015, it has funded over €12.4 billion in loans across 700,000+ investors. Its core product is the Note — a regulated security backed by underlying loan portfolios originated by 60+ third-party lending companies across 33 countries. When you invest on Mintos, you are not lending directly to a borrower. You are buying a security that represents a slice of a loan book run by an originator like Eleving/Mogo, IuteCredit, or DelfinGroup.

Regulatory tier. The MiFID II license (number 06.06.08.719/534, issued August 2021) carries one decisive feature: Mintos investors are covered by the EU investor compensation scheme under Directive 97/9/EC, up to 90% of net losses with a €20,000 cap per investor, in scenarios where Mintos itself fails to return client securities or cash. No other large EU P2P platform offers this. Mintos also holds an EMI (Electronic Money Institution) license for handling client funds, which means client cash sits in segregated safeguarding accounts at EU partner banks. This is the structural reason Mintos is the default first platform for EU investors entering the asset class — it sits one regulatory tier above the rest of the market.

Scale and product range. Mintos is roughly an order of magnitude larger than the next-biggest EU P2P platform. Scale matters in practice because it produces a deep secondary market (you can actually sell positions when you want to exit), genuine AutoInvest portfolio depth, and operating revenue large enough to support a 180-person team and ongoing regulatory compliance. Since 2022 the platform has expanded well beyond P2P loans into money market cash (Smart Cash, run through BlackRock), corporate bonds, ETFs, real estate, and crypto ETPs — making it more like an EU-regulated multi-asset broker than a pure P2P site.

Yields and the trade-off. Advertised average return is 11.5%, but the most-cited independent multi-year reviewer — Jean Galea, after nine years and €150,000 invested — reports closer to 9% net after defaults, fees, and recovery drag. The platform runs an AutoInvest engine (0.29%/year management fee on new investments since May 2025) and a secondary market with a 0.85% seller fee. The 18.7% of the active portfolio currently in recovery is the largest drag — for every euro waiting on a defaulted originator workout, the investor is earning no interest while principal is frozen.

For the full breakdown of Mintos’s regulatory framework, recovery dynamics, and the Kesenfelds/Eleving related-party conflict of interest, see the complete Mintos review.

Returns Compared — Maclear 14.5%–14.9% vs Mintos 9%–11%

On yield, Maclear delivers approximately 5 percentage points more in realised net return than Mintos for a typical retail portfolio. The gap is not marginal and it is structural rather than promotional.

Maclear’s 14.5%–14.9% historical average is supported by real loan-level performance data across multiple cohorts since 2022. The platform originates loans directly to SME borrowers — there is no intermediate loan-originator company taking a margin between the borrower and the investor. The full interest rate on each loan (less Maclear’s own platform fee) reaches the investor. Combined with a default rate of 0.15% to date (one default of €150K out of €99.6M+ originated), the gross-to-net translation is unusually tight. Independent reviewers including P2P Empire (March 2026 review) and re:think P2P (May 2026 deep-dive) both confirm the 14%+ realised range, though both also flag that Maclear’s track record is shorter than Mintos’s.

Mintos’s net 9–11% is the explicit price of the loan-originator middleman model and the regulatory overhead. The middleman model means the originator keeps a margin before the Note reaches the investor — typically 2 to 4 percentage points of the underlying loan rate. Then there are platform-level fees: AutoInvest carries a 0.29%/year management fee on new investments (since May 2025), and the secondary market carries a 0.85% seller fee. Then there is the recovery drag — 18.7% of the portfolio is currently earning no interest while waiting on workouts of failed originators. Jean Galea’s nine-year, €150,000 result of approximately 9% net is the most-cited realistic benchmark for the platform; P2P Empire’s 2026 review reaches similar conclusions.

The 5-percentage-point gap is not free yield. It is compensation for two specific things Maclear investors give up:

  1. No MiFID II regulator and no investor compensation scheme. If Maclear as a company collapses, investors rank as unsecured creditors. Mintos investors are covered up to €20,000 per investor under EU Directive 97/9/EC.
  2. No secondary market. Maclear funds are locked until each loan term ends. Mintos investors can exit positions on the secondary market with a 0.85% seller fee, typically same-day for liquid Notes.

The yield gap is the explicit price the market sets on those two features. Whether the price is worth paying depends on your portfolio context and risk tolerance — but it is not a free choice, and headline yields are not the only number to look at.

Regulation Compared — Swiss SRO vs MiFID II

This is the dimension where the Maclear vs Mintos decision is the least ambiguous. Mintos sits one full regulatory tier above Maclear, and the difference is structural rather than cosmetic.

Mintos holds a MiFID II Investment Firm license from Latvijas Banka — the same regulatory framework that covers banks and investment firms across the EU. MiFID II (the EU’s main investment-firm regulation) imposes obligations on capital requirements, governance, custody of client assets, conflict-of-interest disclosure, suitability assessment, and ongoing supervision. The license number is publicly searchable (06.06.08.719/534), the investor compensation scheme is real (up to €20,000 per investor under Directive 97/9/EC), and Latvijas Banka has the legal authority to revoke the license if Mintos fails to comply.

Maclear holds Swiss SRO (self-regulatory organization) membership with PolyReg. PolyReg supervises Maclear’s anti-money-laundering (AML) compliance — the rules around know-your-customer checks, transaction monitoring, and suspicious-activity reporting. This is meaningfully narrower than MiFID II. The Swiss SRO framework does not impose capital requirements specific to investment firms, does not run an investor compensation scheme, and does not regulate the platform’s product structure or marketing claims at the level that MiFID II does for Mintos.

What does this difference mean in practice? Two scenarios capture it:

  • Scenario A: the platform itself fails. If Mintos as a company collapses and fails to return investor Notes or cash, the EU investor compensation scheme covers up to 90% of net losses with a €20,000 cap per investor. If Maclear as a company collapses, there is no scheme — investors rely on whatever assets and collateral can be recovered through normal corporate insolvency proceedings under Swiss law. Swiss insolvency law is reliable and well-developed, but it is not the same as a regulator-backed compensation scheme.
  • Scenario B: a borrower defaults. Neither regulatory framework covers borrower defaults — that is the credit risk you take by participating in P2P lending in the first place. On Mintos, a borrower default is mediated through the loan originator’s buyback obligation (which fails when the originator itself fails, as has happened repeatedly). On Maclear, the only documented default to date was covered by the CEO personally rather than through formal collateral enforcement. Both platforms expose investors to credit risk; neither has a regulator-backed scheme that covers it.

The honest framing: Mintos’s regulatory tier is genuinely a category above Maclear’s, and for a first-time P2P investor making their first allocation, this is the most important single piece of information in the comparison. Maclear’s Swiss positioning provides legal predictability and AML rigor, but it is not a substitute for MiFID II investor protection. For the deeper dive into MiFID II vs ECSP vs SRO frameworks across the European platform landscape, see P2P-Regulation-Explained.

Risk Profile — Vibroedil (CEO Covered) vs Loan-Originator Crisis 2022

Both platforms have been through real defaults. The way each handled them is one of the most informative single data points in this comparison.

Maclear: the Vibroedil case (July 2025). Italian SME Vibroedil S.R.L. — a Maclear borrower with a €150,000 outstanding loan — became insolvent in July 2025 (Italian Registry bankruptcy procedure id: rJM0GkZO2a, verified through Portale Creditori). Rather than running the platform’s stated recovery process of collateral sale and legal enforcement, the Maclear CEO covered the full €150,000 loss from his personal funds, and investors were made whole. This is the only documented case in European P2P of a platform owner personally absorbing a default loss. It is genuinely unusual — most P2P platforms route losses to investors through buyback funds, originator recovery, or insolvency proceedings.

The caveat is honest and structural: the formal collateral-recovery process Maclear describes in its marketing was not actually executed in the Vibroedil case. The CEO’s personal payment is not part of the platform’s contractual recovery framework — it was a discretionary action by the owner. If a future default is larger, or if multiple defaults happen at once, or if the CEO is unable or unwilling to repeat the action, the recovery process and timelines are unknown. Investors should size positions on Maclear with that uncertainty in mind, not on the assumption that personal CEO coverage is a contractual feature.

Mintos: the 2020 COVID crisis and 2022 Russia exposure. Mintos has lived through two large originator-failure waves. In 2020, the COVID crisis took down 17 loan originators with roughly €118 million at risk (per ExploreP2P / Kristaps Mors analysis), including names like Capital Service, Cashwagon, Aforti, and Finko (Varks). In 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war led Mintos to immediately freeze 8 Russian originators (Creditter, DoZarplati, EcoFinance, Kviku, Lime, Mikro Kapital, Mokka, SOSCREDIT) and exclude Belarusian loans, sending another large slice of investor money into recovery.

As of April 2026, approximately €122–130 million remains in recovery — about 18.7% of the active portfolio (per P2P Empire April 2026 monthly update and p2pmarketdata). Recoveries from these positions have been partial and slow: some money comes back over multi-year processes, some is written off. Independent analysts including P2P Empire, Kristaps Mors, and ExploreP2P suggest investors should not assume full recovery of legacy recovery balances.

The structural comparison: Maclear has had one default of €150K and resolved it through extraordinary personal action by the owner. Mintos has had dozens of originator failures over two cycles and is still working through the aftermath six years after the first crisis. The numbers are not comparable in scale — €150K versus €122–130M — but Mintos is also a much larger and older platform, and the failures were at the originator layer rather than at the platform layer. Mintos itself has never failed. The middleman model is the source of the recovery overhang, not regulatory inadequacy.

For investors, the practical interpretation is: Maclear’s track record is cleaner but shorter and untested at scale. Mintos’s track record is longer and includes two recovery events that are still unresolved, but the platform itself has continued operating normally throughout, and the MiFID II framework is what makes that operational continuity credible. Neither is a perfect track record; both are honest stress tests.

For the broader risk framework that explains how to evaluate platform safety across all 19 platforms in our coverage, see Are-P2P-Investments-Safe.

Which Should You Choose?

Here is a decision framework for the Maclear vs Mintos question, based on how the two platforms actually compare across the dimensions above.

Choose Mintos if:

  • This is your first allocation to EU P2P and regulatory protection is your top priority.
  • You want the €20,000 EU investor compensation scheme under Directive 97/9/EC.
  • You want diversification across 60+ independent loan originators in 33 countries rather than direct exposure to individual SME borrowers.
  • You value a working secondary market with same-day liquidity for many positions.
  • You want a multi-asset wrapper (Notes, money market cash, bonds, ETFs, real estate, crypto ETPs) inside a single MiFID II-regulated platform.
  • You are comfortable accepting a net yield around 9–11% in exchange for those features.

Choose Maclear if:

  • Yield is your top priority and you can tolerate the absence of an investor-compensation scheme.
  • You want direct exposure to SME borrowers rather than indirect exposure through loan-originator Notes.
  • You value the documented case of CEO personal accountability on the platform’s only default to date.
  • You appreciate broad multi-language platform coverage (six languages — EN, DE, FR, IT, ES, RU).
  • You are an experienced P2P investor who already understands the asset class and the risks involved.
  • You are comfortable holding loans to maturity (no secondary market) and can plan liquidity around 6-to-24-month loan terms.

Hold both if:

  • You are building a multi-platform P2P allocation of meaningful size (typically €5,000+).
  • You want Mintos as the regulated core (50-60% of P2P allocation) and Maclear as the high-yield satellite (15-25% of P2P allocation), with a third platform like CrowdIndex-PeerBerry or CrowdIndex-Nectaro rounding out the rest.
  • You want the structural diversification benefit of being on two platforms with very different risk profiles — Mintos’s regulated marketplace model on one side, Maclear’s direct-origination Swiss SRO model on the other.
  • You want to capture the 5-percentage-point yield gap Maclear offers on a portion of the portfolio without giving up the regulatory protection Mintos provides on the rest.

For a meaningful portfolio (€10,000+), the most common allocation pattern is roughly: 60% Mintos / 20% Maclear / 20% other. Mintos provides the regulated foundation; Maclear lifts the blended yield without dominating the risk profile. For portfolio construction principles applied across multiple platforms, see Diversified-P2P-Portfolio.

Why Maclear is CrowdIndex #1 over Mintos

This is the question we get most often. If Mintos is more regulated, more diversified, and more operationally tested — why does Maclear sit at #1 on CrowdIndex and Mintos at #3? The honest answer requires explaining the editorial dimensions CrowdIndex weighs against each other.

CrowdIndex is an editorial ranking, not a methodology-driven one (this is documented in ADR-004-Rating-Platform-Model). Our editors weigh five dimensions for each platform — yield, regulation, track record, transparency, and overall investor outcome — and assign a score reflecting their composite judgment. We do not publish a public weighted formula because we believe a weighted formula would either be gamed by platforms or hide the editorial judgments behind a false veneer of mathematical objectivity.

On the specific dimensions where Maclear outperforms Mintos:

  • Yield (Maclear wins by ~5pp). Maclear’s 14.5%–14.9% versus Mintos’s 9–11% net. This is the largest single quantitative gap between the two platforms.
  • Default handling track record (Maclear wins). One default of €150K with full investor coverage by the CEO from personal funds, versus €122–130M in unresolved recovery. The scale is different but the demonstrated outcome on Maclear’s one stress test is the cleanest in the entire European P2P segment.
  • Conflict-of-interest profile (Maclear wins). Mintos’s largest shareholder Aigars Kesenfelds owns ~30.5% of the platform and ~43% of Eleving Group, parent of Mogo — a sizeable loan originator on Mintos. Independent analyst Kristaps Mors has documented this related-party pattern across several 2020 defaults. Maclear has no equivalent disclosed shareholder-originator conflict.
  • Direct origination model (Maclear wins). Maclear lends directly to SME borrowers. Mintos’s Notes are mediated through third-party originators that themselves carry credit risk — and have failed repeatedly. The middleman layer is the source of Mintos’s recovery overhang.

On the dimensions where Mintos outperforms Maclear:

  • Regulation (Mintos wins, decisively). MiFID II Investment Firm license + €20,000 investor compensation scheme versus Swiss SRO AML-only coverage. This is the single biggest gap between the two platforms, in Mintos’s favor.
  • Scale and product range (Mintos wins by ~10x). €12.4B lifetime versus €99.6M active. 700,000+ investors versus 35,000+. Multi-asset wrapper versus single-product focus.
  • Operating history (Mintos wins, by years). Mintos has operated continuously since 2015 through two major crises. Maclear was founded in 2022.
  • Secondary market liquidity (Mintos wins). Working market with same-day execution on many Notes versus no secondary market at all.

Why does the composite favor Maclear? Because our editorial judgment is that the yield gap (~5pp) plus the demonstrated default-handling outcome plus the cleaner conflict-of-interest profile plus direct origination outweigh Mintos’s regulatory advantage for the segment of investors we believe is most underserved by existing rating sites — investors who already understand the asset class and want yield-focused exposure with clear-eyed risk acceptance.

The honest acknowledgment: this is a judgment, not a calculation. An investor who weighs regulation above all else should rationally prefer Mintos. Many of them should. CrowdIndex’s ranking is what it is — our editorial composite — but if your weighting differs from ours, your ranking should differ too. We believe Maclear is #1 on the composite we judge most useful for our readers; we accept that on a pure regulation-weighted scale Mintos would lead.

For the full editorial framework, see ADR-004-Rating-Platform-Model and our Editorial-Guide.

FAQ

Is Maclear safer than Mintos? On regulation, no — Mintos holds a full MiFID II Investment Firm license with the EU’s €20,000 investor compensation scheme, while Maclear holds only Swiss SRO membership for anti-money-laundering compliance. On default-handling track record, Maclear is cleaner — one default of €150K with full investor coverage by the CEO, versus €122–130M in unresolved recovery on Mintos from 2020 and 2022 originator failures. The two safety dimensions point in opposite directions. Most first-time investors weighting “safer” toward regulatory protection should choose Mintos; experienced investors weighting “safer” toward demonstrated default outcomes may prefer Maclear. For a deeper analysis of what “safe” actually means in P2P, see Are-P2P-Investments-Safe.

Which has higher returns, Maclear or Mintos? Maclear, by roughly 5 percentage points. Maclear’s 14.5%–14.9% historical net return is supported by real loan-level data and validated by independent reviewers including P2P Empire and re:think P2P. Mintos advertises 11.5% but realised long-term net returns track closer to 9% — per Jean Galea’s nine-year, €150,000 documented investment record. The 5-point gap is structural rather than promotional: Maclear’s direct origination model and absence of MiFID II overhead let the full borrower interest rate reach the investor, while Mintos’s middleman model and regulatory cost compress the net yield.

Can I use both Maclear and Mintos? Yes — and for portfolios above €5,000 this is often the better strategy than choosing one. A common allocation is 50-60% Mintos (as the regulated core), 15-25% Maclear (as the high-yield satellite), and the remainder in a third platform such as CrowdIndex-PeerBerry or CrowdIndex-Nectaro. The two platforms have very different risk profiles — Mintos’s regulated marketplace versus Maclear’s direct-origination Swiss SRO — so holding both is structural diversification, not duplication. The blended yield typically lands in the 11-12% range while preserving the MiFID II compensation cover on the majority of the portfolio.

Why is Maclear ranked #1 on CrowdIndex if Mintos is more regulated? CrowdIndex is an editorial ranking that weighs five dimensions: yield, regulation, track record, transparency, and overall investor outcome. Maclear wins decisively on yield (by ~5pp), default-handling track record (clean), and conflict-of-interest profile. Mintos wins decisively on regulation and scale. Our editorial judgment is that the composite favors Maclear for the segment of investors most likely to be reading a rating site — those who already understand the asset class and want yield-focused exposure with clear-eyed risk acceptance. This is a judgment, not a calculation, and the full framework is documented in ADR-004-Rating-Platform-Model. An investor weighting regulation above all else should rationally prefer Mintos.

What is the minimum to start with Maclear or Mintos? Both platforms have a €50 minimum per loan (Mintos per Note, Maclear per loan). For proper diversification across multiple independent positions, most reviewers suggest starting with at least €1,000 to €5,000 on either platform. On Mintos, that lets you spread across 20 to 100 Notes from multiple originators. On Maclear, that lets you spread across 20 to 100 individual SME loans. Below €1,000 the diversification benefit on either platform is limited — you would be holding a small handful of positions and exposed to single-loan concentration.

Top platform on CrowdIndex

Maclear is our #1 rated platform — Swiss SRO-positioned with 14.5%–14.9% yields, multilingual support, and the only documented case of a CEO covering investor losses from personal funds on a default.

See the full Maclear review →

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