Freenance for Austrian Users 2026 — PFM App for Austria, IBAN Sync, KESt and Zukunftsvorsorge

Freenance for Austrian Users 2026 — A PFM App Built Around Austrian Realities

Austria sits at an interesting crossroads in European personal finance. The country shares the euro with most of its neighbours, follows full PSD2 open banking rules, and yet its tax system — particularly the Kapitalertragsteuer (KESt) at 27.5% — and its retirement products like Zukunftsvorsorge and Bausparen look nothing like what an investor in Germany, Italy or France deals with. If you live and pay tax in Austria, generic English-language money apps tend to ignore exactly the details that matter most to you.

Freenance is designed to work as a serious personal finance manager (PFM) for users across the EU, including those banking in Austria. Many users find that what makes it useful in Vienna, Graz, Linz or Innsbruck is not a long list of marketing features, but three concrete things: clean PSD2 sync with Austrian banks, multi-currency support that respects the euro as the home currency, and a portfolio view that can read brokers commonly used by Austrian retail investors. This article walks through how Austrian residents can consider setting Freenance up around their actual financial life in 2026.

Nothing in this article is investment, tax or legal advice. Always confirm tax treatment with your Steuerberater or directly with the Finanzamt.

Why a Generic Money App Often Falls Short in Austria

International personal finance apps tend to optimise for the US or UK market: USD or GBP as the base currency, IRS or HMRC tax categories, and bank coverage that quietly stops working once you cross the Channel. Austrian users typically run into a few specific issues:

• The app cannot connect to Austrian banks like Erste, BAWAG, Raiffeisen, bank99 or Easybank.
• Investment income is treated as plain "dividends" with no awareness of KESt 27.5% being withheld at source by Austrian custodians.
• Zukunftsvorsorge and Bausparen are either invisible or grouped under generic "savings" with no understanding of their tax-favoured status.
• Multi-currency is poorly handled, even though many Austrian investors hold USD ETFs through Trade Republic, FlatexDEGIRO, Scalable Capital or Interactive Brokers Austria.

Freenance approaches this differently. It treats the EU as the primary market, supports IBAN-based account aggregation across SEPA, and lets you classify accounts and assets so that Austrian-specific buckets — pension layer, Bausparen, brokerage, current accounts — show up clearly instead of being flattened into one pile.

PSD2 Sync With Austrian Banks: Erste, BAWAG, Raiffeisen, bank99 and More

Open banking under PSD2 is the regulatory backbone that lets a service like Freenance read your account balances and transactions, with your explicit consent, from your bank. In Austria, the practical landscape looks like this:

• Erste Bank and Sparkassen — the largest retail group, with strong digital tooling via George.
• BAWAG and easybank — popular for cheap current accounts and competitive savings.
• Raiffeisen Bankengruppe — the cooperative network spread across all Bundesländer.
• bank99 — the relatively young challenger backed by Österreichische Post.
• Bunq Austria, Revolut, N26, Wise — neobanks used heavily by younger users and freelancers.

Freenance connects to these institutions through certified PSD2 aggregation in line with the relevant EU and Austrian regulations. Once you authorise the connection at your bank, Freenance pulls in transactions, balances and standing orders into one consolidated view. Many users find that the real productivity gain in the first month is simply being able to see every Austrian IBAN, every neobank card, and every brokerage account on the same screen — instead of jumping between George, the BAWAG app, Revolut and a broker portal.

Sign up for Freenance if you want to stop logging into five different banking apps just to know your current month-end position.

Multi-Currency Reality: EUR Home Currency, USD ETFs, and the Occasional CHF

Although Austria is firmly in the eurozone, plenty of Austrian retail investors hold non-euro assets:

• USD-denominated US ETFs held synthetically via European wrappers or directly through IBKR.
• CHF holdings for those with cross-border ties to Switzerland or Liechtenstein.
• GBP or NOK exposure for individual stock pickers.

Freenance treats EUR as a natural home currency for Austrian users, but it does not force you into a single-currency world. Each holding is recorded in its native currency, and the dashboard converts to EUR for net worth and runway calculations using daily reference rates. The platform's local sync + EU-wide + multi-currency posture means that a user in Vienna who holds a USD MSCI World ETF through Trade Republic and a CHF cash account from a previous job in Zurich can see everything in one consistent EUR view, while the underlying currency is preserved for cost-basis and tax purposes.

KESt 27.5%: How Austrian Capital Gains and Dividends Are Treated

The Austrian Kapitalertragsteuer (KESt) is a flat 27.5% withholding tax on most capital gains, dividends and interest from financial assets — separate from regular income tax. For Austrian residents, KESt is typically withheld automatically by domestic custodians, which is why brokers like Hello bank!, easybank Brokerage, Erste Bank Brokerage or DADAT function as so-called "inländische depotführende Stellen" with the Abgeltungswirkung (final withholding effect).

For Austrian users of foreign brokers — and that includes the very popular Trade Republic Austria, Scalable Capital Austria, FlatexDEGIRO (DEGIRO with German custody) and Interactive Brokers — the picture is more nuanced. KESt may not be withheld at source for all instruments, and Austrian residents are generally required to declare gains and dividends in their Einkommensteuererklärung (Form E1, with E1kv attachment for capital income).

Freenance helps by:

• Tagging dividend and interest transactions per broker so you can later see how much was already taxed at source.
• Letting you mark realised gains and losses inside the year, supporting later compilation of figures for E1kv.
• Splitting accounts into "inländisch" vs "ausländisch" buckets so that, when tax season comes, you have a structured starting point for your Steuerberater.

Note: Freenance is not a tax filing tool and does not replace a Steuerberater. Many Austrian users find it useful as the structured raw-data source that they hand over once a year, rather than as the filing engine itself.

Bausparen, Zukunftsvorsorge and the Austrian Pension Layer

Austria has a distinctive layered pension system:

1. Gesetzliche Pensionsversicherung — the public pay-as-you-go pillar (PV).
2. Betriebliche Vorsorge — occupational pensions, including the Abfertigung Neu (severance fund).
3. Private Pensionsvorsorge — including the state-subsidised Zukunftsvorsorge (PZV) and tax-favoured pension insurance.
4. Bausparen — a hybrid savings/building product with state premium (Bausparprämie), still extremely common.

These are not investment recommendations, just the reality of how many Austrian households save. Freenance treats them as first-class accounts. You can:

• Add a Bausparvertrag as a manual account with maturity date, monthly contribution, expected Bausparprämie and current balance.
• Track a Zukunftsvorsorge policy with its accumulated capital and contribution history.
• Map an Abfertigung Neu vested amount as a separate retirement-only line, so that it does not get confused with liquid savings or your investment runway.

Because Freenance separates "liquid" from "long-term locked" accounts, the runway and FIRE-style metrics on your dashboard reflect only what you can actually live off — not artificially inflated by capital that is locked until age 60+.

Brokers Commonly Used by Austrian Retail Investors

Austrian retail investing in 2026 is dominated by a mix of domestic and pan-European platforms. Freenance does not endorse any particular provider, but many users connect (via supported aggregation, CSV import, or manual entry):

• Trade Republic Austria — €1 commission, broad ETF and stock universe.
• Scalable Capital Austria — flat-rate or per-trade pricing, automated savings plans.
• FlatexDEGIRO — long-standing pan-EU broker with German custody.
• DADAT and Hello bank! — Austrian domestic brokers with full KESt withholding at source.
• Erste Bank Brokerage via George — convenient if you already bank with Erste.
• Interactive Brokers Austria — the choice for active or international investors.

Inside Freenance you can build a single portfolio view that aggregates all of these, with positions valued in their native currency and totals shown in EUR. This is one of the key reasons people in Austria choose Freenance: local sync + EU-wide + multi-currency instead of an English-only US-centric tracker.

Sign up for Freenance and try aggregating a Trade Republic AT account alongside an Erste George account on the same dashboard.

How Austrian Users Typically Use Freenance

Below are three composite personas — they are not real customers, but they reflect patterns many Austrian users find familiar.

Persona 1: Lukas, 31, Software Engineer in Vienna

Lukas earns roughly €4,200 net per month, banks with bank99 for daily spending, keeps a savings buffer at easybank, and invests €600 per month into a global ETF through Trade Republic Austria. He also has an inherited Bausparer from his parents and a small Zukunftsvorsorge policy.

In Freenance he sets up:

• bank99 current account (PSD2 sync)
• easybank savings (PSD2 sync)
• Trade Republic AT (portfolio + transactions)
• Bausparvertrag (manual, with monthly contribution)
• Zukunftsvorsorge (manual, annual update)

He checks the runway view monthly to confirm how many months of his Vienna lifestyle (around €2,500/month all-in) his liquid savings would cover if he switched jobs, and uses the dividend tagging to estimate his annual KESt impact.

Persona 2: Anna, 42, Self-Employed Designer in Graz

Anna runs a one-person Einzelunternehmen, invoices clients across the DACH region, and keeps her business IBAN with Raiffeisen Steiermark and her private accounts at Erste. She holds a property in Graz with a mortgage at BAWAG and invests around €1,000/month into FlatexDEGIRO.

Freenance helps Anna by:

• Separating business IBAN from private accounts using tags.
• Tracking VAT (Umsatzsteuer) and net income roll-up from her business account.
• Showing the BAWAG mortgage as a liability that subtracts from net worth.
• Aggregating FlatexDEGIRO positions with the rest of her assets so she can see her total picture in EUR.

She finds that the combination of freelancer-style transaction tagging plus portfolio aggregation lets her run her practice without paying for two separate apps.

Persona 3: Markus and Julia, Dual-Income Couple in Linz

Markus works as an engineer at a Tyrolean industrial group with an Abfertigung Neu plan, Julia is employed in healthcare. They have a joint mortgage at Raiffeisen Oberösterreich, a shared Erste account for household expenses, individual current accounts, two Trade Republic AT depots, and a shared Bausparer for their daughter.

They use Freenance as a household dashboard:

• Joint and individual accounts visible side by side.
• Combined runway across both incomes.
• Family-level savings rate tracking (income minus household expenses, divided by income).
• Long-term retirement layer (Abfertigung Neu + Zukunftsvorsorge) shown separately from liquid net worth.

Many Austrian couples find that this kind of structured but lightweight household view is the missing piece between "we both have our own banking apps" and "we sit down with Excel once a quarter".

Practical Setup: Your First Two Weeks With Freenance in Austria

A reasonable order of operations for a new Austrian user:

1. Week 1, days 1-2. Connect your main daily-banking IBAN (Erste, BAWAG, Raiffeisen, bank99 or Easybank) via PSD2. Let Freenance categorise the last 6-12 months of transactions and review the categories.
2. Week 1, days 3-5. Add neobank accounts (Revolut, N26, Bunq AT, Wise) if you use them. Confirm that EUR balances and any USD/CHF sub-accounts are picked up.
3. Week 1, days 6-7. Connect or import your main broker (Trade Republic AT, Scalable, FlatexDEGIRO, DADAT, Hello bank!). Verify positions, average cost and dividend history.
4. Week 2, days 8-10. Add manual accounts for Bausparen, Zukunftsvorsorge, occupational pension and any real estate.
5. Week 2, days 11-14. Set up your runway target, your monthly savings-rate goal, and review the resulting dashboard.

By the end of two weeks, most Austrian users have a single source of truth for their finances, denominated in EUR, aware of KESt, and aware of which assets are liquid vs locked.

Sign up for Freenance to start this two-week setup with the banks you already use today.

How Freenance Compares to Local Tools Austrians Already Know

Austrians often use a mix of:

• George (Erste) — excellent for Erste accounts, blind to everything else.
• Finanzguru / Outbank / Numbrs (legacy) — useful PFM apps, but DACH-focused with less attention to Austrian-specific products.
• Excel and Numbers spreadsheets — universal, but rely entirely on manual updates.
• Specialised broker apps — great for the broker, useless for net worth.

What Freenance adds is a cross-bank, cross-broker, cross-currency layer with explicit awareness of EU regulatory context. It is not trying to replace your bank's app for day-to-day payments — it sits on top, reading the data those apps already expose under PSD2.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Freenance compliant with Austrian and EU data-protection rules? Freenance operates under GDPR and PSD2-aligned data handling. You explicitly authorise each bank connection at the bank itself, and you can revoke consent at any time directly with your bank or inside Freenance. Many users find this consent model more transparent than older screen-scraping tools.

Does Freenance file my Steuererklärung or compute my KESt automatically? No. Freenance is not a tax filing service. It organises your raw financial data and lets you tag transactions for capital income, but Austrian residents should consider working with a Steuerberater or using a dedicated filing tool for the E1 and E1kv forms.

Can I track my Bausparer and Zukunftsvorsorge if they do not appear on a PSD2 feed? Yes. Both are typically added as manual accounts with monthly contributions, expected premium and current value. Freenance will then include them in your net worth, while keeping them clearly separated from liquid assets in the runway view.

Will Freenance work if I move from Austria to Germany, Italy or the Netherlands? Generally yes. Freenance is built EU-wide. Your historical Austrian accounts can be kept as read-only history, and you can add new German, Italian or Dutch accounts as you open them. Many cross-border users find this continuity valuable when they relocate within the EU.

Does Freenance support couples and shared finances? Yes. Couples in Austria commonly set up a mix of joint and individual accounts. Freenance lets you tag and group accounts so that household-level metrics (joint runway, joint savings rate) are clearly separated from individual ones.

Further Reading

• Freenance for Investors — portfolio aggregation across brokers
• Freenance for FIRE Seekers — runway and savings-rate tracking
• Expat personal finance guide — managing money across borders

The Bottom Line for Austrian Users in 2026

Austria's banking landscape is solid, its tax rules around KESt are specific, and its pension architecture is layered in a way that generic global PFM apps simply do not model. Freenance is not magic — it is a careful PSD2-driven aggregator with multi-currency portfolio support, designed with the EU in mind. For Austrian users, the practical promise is straightforward: one dashboard for every IBAN, every broker, every Bausparer and every Zukunftsvorsorge policy, in EUR, with awareness of how KESt and Austrian pension layers actually work.

If that matches what you have been trying to build in Excel for years, sign up for Freenance and start with one PSD2 connection. You can always add more banks, brokers and manual accounts as you go.