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Comparison

Maclear vs PeerBerry: 2026 Comparison — Swiss SRO vs Consumer-Lending Marketplace

Maclear vs PeerBerry compared head-to-head: 14.9% Swiss SRO yields vs €3.35B consumer marketplace with a war-tested buyback record. Which wins for 2026?

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

Maclear vs PeerBerry: 2026 Comparison — Swiss SRO vs Consumer-Lending Marketplace

Two of Europe’s most-discussed peer-to-peer platforms sit at very different ends of the same market. Maclear is a Swiss-positioned, high-yield platform focused on small-and-medium-business lending. PeerBerry is one of the continent’s largest consumer-lending marketplaces, with eight years of track record and a real wartime stress test behind it. This guide compares them head-to-head on the dimensions that actually move investor outcomes — returns, originator structure, regulation, track record, and liquidity — so you can decide which fits your portfolio.

TL;DR

  • Maclear pays more, PeerBerry has more history. Maclear’s average yields sit between 14.5% and 14.9%, well above PeerBerry’s roughly 11%. PeerBerry has eight years of operations and €3.35 billion in cumulative volume; Maclear has been live since 2022 with €99.6 million+ originated.
  • Different loan products entirely. Maclear lends directly to European SMEs (often backed by real estate, equipment, or invoices). PeerBerry is a marketplace funding short-term consumer loans, leasing, and some SME/real-estate loans across 28 originators in 15 countries.
  • Both lack EU investor protection — for different reasons. Maclear holds a Swiss SRO membership (anti-money-laundering scope, not investor compensation). PeerBerry has no investment-firm licence and its ECSP application with the Bank of Lithuania remains pending. Neither offers the up-to-€20,000 investor compensation that platforms like Mintos do.
  • PeerBerry has been crisis-tested. Maclear has not. PeerBerry repaid €51.4 million in Ukraine-war-affected loans in full by December 2024 through the Aventus group guarantee — the most credible real-world stress test in EU P2P. Maclear’s single default (Vibroedil, July 2025) was covered out of the CEO’s personal funds before its formal recovery process was tested.
  • Concentration is the trade-off. Over 83% of PeerBerry’s loan book comes from one originator group (Aventus). Maclear originates loans directly from independent borrowers, reducing single-source concentration.

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

Quick Comparison Table

FieldMaclearPeerBerry
Founded20222017
HeadquartersZurich, SwitzerlandZagreb, Croatia (operations: Vilnius, Lithuania)
RegulatorPolyReg (Swiss SRO — AML scope)None — ECSP application pending (Bank of Lithuania)
Cumulative volume€99.6M+ (April 2026)€3.35B (May 2026)
Outstanding AUMn/a (project-by-project)€119.6M (March 2026)
Total investors35,000+118,000+
Average yield14.5% – 14.9%~11% (loyalty tiers up to +1%)
Loan typesSME business, real estate, factoringShort/long consumer, leasing, real estate, SME
Originator structureDirect origination from multiple borrowersMarketplace — 28 originators, 83%+ from Aventus
Languages6 (EN, DE, FR, IT, ES, RU)4 (EN, DE, FR, ES)
Minimum investment€50€10
Welcome bonus€100 on first qualifying deposit+0.5% interest boost for 90 days
Secondary marketNo (April 2026)Yes — launched 15 January 2026 (0% fee)
AutoInvestYes (launched July 2025)Yes
Default rate0.15% (1 default of €150K)0% capital losses in 8 years
CrowdIndex Score9.2 / 10 (Editor’s Pick)8.6 / 10 (Highly Rated)
CrowdIndex rank#1 of 19#3 of 19

Maclear at a Glance

Maclear is a Zurich-based peer-to-business platform that has originated more than €99.6 million across SME loans since 2022. The product is straightforward: investors fund short-to-medium term loans (typically 6 to 24 months) to European small and medium businesses, secured where possible by collateral — usually real estate, equipment, or invoice receivables. Interest is paid monthly, and the platform’s headline yield of 14.5% to 14.9% APR sits at the top of the European P2P market.

A few things make Maclear stand out from the cohort of high-yield platforms:

  • Six-language coverage — English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian — is wider than any other Tier 1 European P2P competitor, opening it to retail investors across most major EU markets.
  • An active project pipeline of roughly €6 million per month keeps cash deployed quickly. Idle money is one of the most common complaints about smaller P2P platforms, and Maclear’s pipeline is consistently large enough to absorb new deposits without long waits.
  • CEO accountability on the platform’s only default to date. When Italian SME Vibroedil S.R.L. filed for insolvency in July 2025 with a €150,000 outstanding loan, the Maclear CEO covered the loss personally — investors received their principal back from the owner’s own funds, not from a buyback fund or recovery proceeds.

The trade-off, which we discuss in detail below, is that Maclear is not licensed as an MiFID II Investment Firm (the EU’s main investment-firm regulation) or under the ECSP (European Crowdfunding Service Provider) framework. Its PolyReg Swiss SRO (self-regulatory organisation) membership covers anti-money-laundering — meaning the platform is supervised for KYC (Know Your Customer — identity verification) and AML compliance — but it does not include an investor compensation scheme.

PeerBerry at a Glance

PeerBerry is one of the largest peer-to-peer lending marketplaces in Europe, with €3.35 billion in cumulative funded loans, 118,000+ investors, and an eight-year track record (founded November 2017) without a single capital loss to investors. The platform aggregates loans from 28 loan originators across 15 countries, dominated by two corporate groups — Aventus and Gofingo — with their group-level cross-guarantees.

What makes PeerBerry credible:

  • The Ukraine war loans repayment. In February 2022, roughly one third of PeerBerry’s outstanding portfolio — about €51.4 million — was tied to borrowers in Ukraine and Russia and got frozen when Russia invaded Ukraine. By 16 December 2024, every one of those loans had been repaid to investors in full, with accrued interest, through the Aventus group guarantee. This is the clearest real-world stress test any large European P2P platform has been through. Marketing claims about “buyback” mechanisms (a guarantee from the loan originator to repurchase defaulted loans) and group guarantees are common in the industry, but PeerBerry is the platform that has actually executed one at scale.
  • A working secondary market since January 2026. After years without one, PeerBerry rolled out a 0%-fee secondary market on 15 January 2026. Investors can list loans for sale after a six-month minimum holding period, offer discounts of up to 50%, and trades clear directly inside the platform.
  • A clean recovery picture. As of April 2026, PeerBerry reports 0% of funds in recovery — meaning no loans sitting past their due dates waiting for collection. Compare that to EstateGuru (above 60% of its portfolio currently in recovery) or Mintos (around 19%). Whether the figure can stay that low over time is another question, but the historical position is strong.

The structural caveat — and the one investors should think about hardest — is concentration. Of PeerBerry’s 28 active loan originators, around 17 belong to the Aventus Group, and per industry analysis from P2P Empire and re:think P2P, Aventus represents over 83% of the loan book by volume. Aventus is financially strong on paper (€225.7M equity, €95.7M net profit in 2025), and PeerBerry’s largest shareholder Andrejus Trofimovas is simultaneously CEO of Aventus Group. But the country-level diversification across 15 markets is much more concentrated at the credit-risk level than the surface numbers suggest.

Returns Compared — Maclear 14.5%–14.9% vs PeerBerry 11%–13%

On headline yield, the gap is straightforward and large.

Maclear publishes a historical average APR (annual percentage rate) between 14.5% and 14.9%, supported by loan-level data from its three-year operating history. The platform reaches these numbers because it originates directly to SME borrowers — there is no intermediate loan originator taking a margin, so the spread between borrower interest rate and investor yield stays with the investor.

PeerBerry’s declared historical average sits around 11.04%. Loyalty boosts can push individual investor yields higher: Silver tier (portfolio €10,000 or more) adds +0.5%; Gold (€25,000+) adds +0.75%; Platinum (€40,000+) adds +1%. A Platinum-tier investor with a focused strategy can realistically land in the 12% to 13% range. The structural reason PeerBerry’s yields sit below Maclear’s is the marketplace model — loan originators capture a margin between the borrower’s contractual rate and what’s paid to investors, which is the cost of the buyback guarantee and group cross-guarantee.

The simple way to read it: Maclear is paying for direct exposure to the underlying borrower; PeerBerry is paying for a contractual safety mechanism between you and the borrower. Both are legitimate trade-offs. Higher yield without that safety net suits investors who already understand the risk; the buyback structure suits investors who want a smoother experience even if it costs three to four percentage points of yield.

Originator Structure — Maclear Direct Loans vs PeerBerry 83% Aventus Concentration

This is the most important structural difference between the two platforms, and it gets less attention than it deserves.

Maclear is a direct lender. Each project on the platform is a specific borrowing entity — a named SME, with named directors, audited financials where available, a stated use of proceeds, and a specific collateral package. You are not lending to a loan originator that then lends to a final borrower; you are lending to the borrower directly through the platform’s contractual structure. The credit risk concentration in your portfolio depends entirely on how you allocate — diversifying across, say, 20 to 40 different SME loans gives genuine borrower-level diversification.

PeerBerry is a marketplace, with one dominant group inside it. When you invest in a PeerBerry loan, you are buying a claim against a loan originator (typically an Aventus or Gofingo subsidiary), which in turn holds the loan against the final consumer or business borrower. The buyback guarantee comes from that originator, and the group guarantee comes from Aventus or Gofingo group. The concentration problem is that 83%+ of the loan book sits with the Aventus group, regardless of how you diversify across individual loans on the platform. If Aventus group as a whole faced operational, regulatory, or financial trouble, every Aventus-backed loan in every PeerBerry investor’s portfolio would be exposed simultaneously.

Aventus passed its biggest stress test (the Ukraine war loans), and its financials are healthy. But the structural reality is that on PeerBerry, picking 50 different loans across 15 countries gives you less independent diversification than it appears — most of those 50 loans share the same originator’s balance sheet.

On this dimension, Maclear has the cleaner architecture. PeerBerry’s eight-year history of repayment is the offsetting strength.

Track Record — Maclear Single Default (CEO Covered) vs PeerBerry Stress-Tested Military Repayment

Track records tell different stories in this comparison because the two platforms have lived through different things.

Maclear’s track record is short but unusually clean. Across €99.6 million+ of originated volume since 2022, the platform has had one default: Vibroedil S.R.L., an Italian SME that filed for insolvency in July 2025 with €150,000 outstanding. That works out to a 0.15% default rate by volume — exceptionally low. The unusual feature is how the default was resolved: the Maclear CEO covered the loss from his personal funds rather than running the platform’s stated recovery process (collateral enforcement, legal action, secondary sale of the asset).

The credibility implication runs both ways. On one hand, personally absorbing a loss is a strong signal of skin-in-the-game from the platform owner — rare in P2P, and a useful indicator of alignment between platform incentives and investor outcomes. On the other hand, the formal collateral enforcement system has not been tested in a real default. The marketing describes a recovery process based on collateral sale, but that process has not actually been executed against a defaulting borrower. If a future default is materially larger, or if the CEO does not personally cover it, the recovery timelines and outcomes are unknown.

PeerBerry’s track record is the inverse — long, public, and operationally tested. Eight years of operations, €3.35 billion of cumulative volume, 118,000+ investors, and zero capital losses is one of the cleanest historical positions in the European P2P segment. The real evidence comes from the wartime test:

  • February 2022: Russia invades Ukraine. Around €51.4M of PeerBerry’s loan portfolio is in Ukraine and Russia. Loans freeze.
  • 2022–2024: The Aventus group, under its group guarantee, repays loans to investors month by month rather than dumping the entire obligation at once.
  • 16 December 2024: The final war-affected loans are repaid. Total repaid to investors: €51.4 million in principal plus accrued interest. Every investor received what the contract promised.

This is not a marketing claim — it is publicly verifiable from PeerBerry’s portfolio statistics and from independent coverage in industry media. For investors trying to decide whether the words “buyback guarantee” and “group guarantee” actually mean anything, the PeerBerry Ukraine resolution is the strongest piece of evidence in the European P2P market. Maclear has no equivalent operational test yet.

The cleanest way to think about this: Maclear has the better default rate (0.15% vs not directly comparable, but PeerBerry is also low) and stronger personal accountability. PeerBerry has the stronger operational proof that its safety mechanisms actually function under stress. A complete portfolio would arguably benefit from both.

Regulation and Investor Protection

Neither platform offers EU government-backed investor compensation, but they sit in different regulatory categories.

Maclear is registered with PolyReg, the Swiss self-regulatory organisation, which supervises anti-money-laundering compliance. This is not an investment-firm licence. PolyReg does not provide an investor compensation scheme. If Maclear were to become insolvent, investors would rank as unsecured creditors in any liquidation. The Swiss jurisdiction itself provides legal predictability, contract enforcement, and dispute resolution that not every EU jurisdiction matches, but the regulatory layer above the platform’s AML supervision is thin.

PeerBerry is not licensed as an investment firm either. The platform’s loans are structured as “claims” (legally, an assignment of the right to repayment) rather than securities, which puts it in a weaker legal category than competitors like Mintos (MiFID II Investment Firm), Twino (Latvijas Banka IBF — Investment Brokerage Firm under Latvian law), or Nectaro (MiFID II Investment Firm). PeerBerry announced an ECSP application with the Bank of Lithuania in autumn 2024, but as of May 2026 no public status update has been published. Until that licence actually arrives, all investor protection comes from the contractual buyback obligation and the Aventus/Gofingo group guarantees — not from a regulator.

If regulatory cover is your primary criterion, neither platform is the right anchor for a P2P portfolio — see Safest-P2P-Platforms-Europe for ECSP-licensed and MiFID II-licensed alternatives. Both Maclear and PeerBerry sit further out on the risk-yield curve.

Liquidity — No Secondary Market vs Working Secondary Market

This is the cleanest factual win for PeerBerry.

Maclear has no secondary market as of April 2026. Once you invest in a project, your funds are locked until the loan term ends — typically 6 to 24 months. If your circumstances change, there is no way to exit early by selling your loan to another investor. Plan your liquidity carefully.

PeerBerry’s secondary market went live on 15 January 2026 after years of being one of the platform’s most-requested features. The mechanics: a six-month minimum holding period before a loan can be listed; zero fees for both buyer and seller; discounts of up to 50% allowed; listings stay live for 14 days; trading happens directly inside the platform interface. Volume is still small (€389,585 in March 2026) and the feature is currently desktop-only — a mobile version has been announced without a confirmed date — but the structural liquidity gap is closed.

For investors who value the ability to exit a position before maturity, PeerBerry wins this dimension unambiguously. For investors who plan to hold to maturity anyway, the difference is functionally zero.

Which Should You Choose

There is no universal answer — the right choice depends on what role the platform plays in your overall P2P allocation. Three patterns are realistic:

Choose PeerBerry if:

  • You want short-term consumer-loan exposure with a working buyback mechanism behind it.
  • You value eight years of track record and a documented crisis resolution (the Ukraine war loans).
  • You want liquidity via a working secondary market.
  • You prefer lower minimums (€10 per loan) for testing the platform before committing more.
  • You are comfortable with single-group concentration (83%+ Aventus) as the trade-off for the buyback protection.

Choose Maclear if:

  • You want maximum yield in the European P2P market (14.5%–14.9% versus PeerBerry’s 11%).
  • You prefer SME and real-estate-backed loans over short-term consumer credit.
  • You value direct originator structure rather than a marketplace with one dominant group.
  • You want CEO personal accountability as a signal of platform-level alignment.
  • You can tolerate no early exit (no secondary market yet) and the smaller operating track record.

Choose both if:

  • You are building a diversified P2P allocation and want to combine PeerBerry’s long-track-record, mid-yield core position with Maclear’s higher-yield SME exposure. This is the most common pattern among experienced investors — neither platform is a complete portfolio on its own, but they complement each other on yield, product type, and tested-vs-untested defaults.

For most investors building a P2P allocation from scratch, the recommended sequence is: start with a formally regulated platform (Mintos for scale, Nectaro for MiFID II, or Crowdpear for an ECSP-licensed sibling to PeerBerry), add PeerBerry as a mid-yield core position once your foundation is in place, then add Maclear at the higher-yield end as a yield-enhancement complement. See Diversified-P2P-Portfolio for the full portfolio construction guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Maclear safer than PeerBerry? Neither platform offers EU government-backed investor protection. Maclear has a Swiss SRO membership (AML scope), and PeerBerry has no investment-firm licence with an ECSP application pending. On default track record, Maclear has 0.15% (one default, CEO-covered) but its recovery process has not been operationally tested. PeerBerry has zero capital losses in eight years and has proven its group-guarantee mechanism by repaying €51.4M in war-affected loans by December 2024. Different kinds of safety — Maclear’s owner has skin in the game, PeerBerry has documented crisis resolution.

Which platform pays higher returns — Maclear or PeerBerry? Maclear pays significantly more on headline yield: 14.5% to 14.9% APR versus PeerBerry’s ~11% (loyalty tiers can push PeerBerry up by 0.5% to 1% on top of the base rate). The gap reflects the difference between direct origination (Maclear, no intermediary margin) and a marketplace with originator margin and buyback cost built in (PeerBerry).

Can I invest in both Maclear and PeerBerry from outside the EU? Both platforms generally require investors to have an EU/EEA bank account capable of receiving and sending SEPA transfers, and to pass KYC verification. Specific country eligibility lists differ by platform — check each platform’s terms before committing. As of May 2026, both platforms accept investors from most EU/EEA countries and a limited list of additional jurisdictions.

What is the minimum to start on each platform? PeerBerry has a €10 per-loan minimum, which makes it one of the lowest-barrier platforms in Europe. Maclearhas a €50 per-loan minimum . To diversify properly across multiple independent loans, realistic starting portfolios are around €500-€1,000 for PeerBerry and €1,000-€5,000 for Maclear.

Which one is better for a P2P beginner? Neither is the ideal starting platform — both lack the formal investor compensation framework that platforms like Mintos or Nectaro offer. For a first P2P platform, an MiFID II-licensed or ECSP-licensed platform is the safer starting point. Once you have a foundation in place, PeerBerry is the easier second platform (lower minimum, longer track record), and Maclear is the natural higher-yield addition after that. See Safest-P2P-Platforms-Europe for the recommended starting set.

Bottom Line

Maclear and PeerBerry are not direct substitutes — they are complementary platforms covering different ends of the European P2P market. Maclear is the higher-yield, cleaner-architecture, Swiss-positioned SME platform with strong CEO accountability but an untested recovery process. PeerBerry is the larger, more mature, marketplace platform with documented crisis resolution but heavy concentration in a single originator group. For most investors, the right question isn’t which one — it’s what role each plays in a diversified P2P allocation built around a regulated foundation.

If you are choosing only one, start with PeerBerry if you want longer track record, working liquidity, and lower minimums; start with Maclear if you want maximum yield, SME exposure, and direct originator structure. If you are building a real P2P portfolio over time, both have a place.

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

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