Where each euro goes in P2P lending: borrower rate, originator, platform fee and investor return

Updated: 3 October 2026

Borrower payments, origination fees and investor charges follow different routes; which party pays depends on the platform and product. Estateguru's price list, in force from 1 November 2025, charges borrowers an intermediation fee of 2.5% to 4%. It charges investors a monthly AUM fee of 0.083% under set conditions. Mintos, Bondora, PeerBerry, Debitum and Maclear place their charges differently.

The four parties in a P2P payment: borrower, originator, platform and investor

Four parties take part in a P2P loan. Each platform's own documents name which of them pays which charge, as the list below sets out.

• The borrower owes contractual interest and, on some platforms, fees. Estateguru's price list sets an intermediation fee of 2.5% to 4% and an annual administration fee of 0% to 2%. Its borrower page (modified 11 May 2026) quotes interest from 0.6% per month.
• The originator is the company that issues the loan. On Mintos, lending companies pay a service fee calculated on outstanding loans. It came to EUR 9,099,426 of EUR 9,737,271 in commission and fee income (93.4%) in the 2021 report of Mintos Holdings AS. KPMG Baltics was the auditor. Still, that report shows who paid in 2021 and says nothing about later years. Originators also carry repayment duties. PeerBerry's auto-invest page describes the originator's obligation to buy back a late loan by the 60th day of delay at the latest. However, Debitum's help page of 4 December 2025 gives its partners a buyback option on late loans entering recovery.
• Platforms collect from borrower-paid fees, investor-paid fees and secondary-market fees, and the table below sorts each platform's charges into those three.
• The investor receives the interest left after any spread and investor-paid fees. Estateguru's price list defines the interest spread as the difference between the interest paid by the borrower and the interest received by the investor. Withholding happens at the portal operator before interest reaches the investor's virtual account. It also lists the spread at 0% to 2% and points to each project description for the figure that applies.

Fee bearers on Estateguru, Bondora, Mintos, PeerBerry, Debitum and Maclear

Each platform below states its charges on its own pages. Every date is taken from the page itself, and "read" marks a page without one, opened on 3 October 2026.

Mintos's 0.85% applies to Notes only, because Mintos states that since 1 July 2022 its secondary market is open to investments in Notes. Core Loans, by contrast, have a cash-out option that sells to investors in the same portfolio without a fee.

Bondora's page lists the EUR 178 contract fee in the borrower example. Go & Grow's help pages opened for this article list the EUR 1 withdrawal fee as the investor's only cost. Those pages give no breakdown of how borrower interest divides between Go & Grow investors and Bondora. Also, the two figures in the row cover different products.

Worked example: EUR 1,000 through a stylised Estateguru-type loan

In this stylised schedule an investor receives EUR 99.60 of interest on EUR 1,000 in twelve months. Against that, the investor pays 11 monthly AUM fees of EUR 0.83, which total EUR 9.13.

The rate is real: 9.96% is the weighted average interest rate on Baltic loans issued since 2023, per Estateguru's recovery update of 22 July 2026. Fee rates come from the price list. The loan is invented: one investor, 12 months, interest received at the end of each month, principal repaid with the month-12 receipt and no losses. Note 11 governs the AUM fee. So it falls in a month after a month with a receipt and is calculated on the principal outstanding then. As a result, the schedule has charges in months 2 to 12 and none after the principal is repaid. Both cases pass the test that 25% of the return at least equals the fee. Figures are EUR 2.08 (low) and EUR 1.66 (high) against a fee of EUR 0.83. Administration fee and spread are applied to the principal as percentage points of a year. That is an assumption, since a project's own spread is in its description.

```python loan, rate, months = 1000.00, 0.0996, 12 AUM_MONTHLY, RETURN_SHARE = 0.00083, 0.25 cases = {"low": (0.00,), "high": (0.02,)} # annual interest spread

for name, (spread_pct,) in cases.items(): interest_m = loan * rate / 12 # 8.30 a month spread_m = loan * spread_pct / 12 return_m = interest_m - spread_m # return received each month fee = loan * AUM_MONTHLY # 0.83 on EUR 1,000 outstanding assert RETURN_SHARE * return_m >= fee # note 11 condition holds every month aum = fee * (months - 1) # charges in months 2 to 12 net = (interest_m - spread_m) * months - aum print(name, round(interest_m * months, 2), round(spread_m * months, 2), round(aum, 2), round(net, 2)) ```

Borrower rows list fee amounts alone, so a full borrower cash flow and any APR are left out. Notary costs, security agent fees, tax, withdrawal fees and losses are also omitted from the example.

Maclear charges investors EUR 0 for deposits, withdrawals and primary-market investing. Clause 2.2 states no rate for the success fee that falls on the borrower's target loan amount. So the same arithmetic cannot run on Maclear's terms.

Contractual, accrued, credited and withdrawn interest defined

A loan's contractual rate is the interest the borrower owes, and an investor's account shows three other figures that start from it.

• Maclear's interest calculation FAQ of 3 August 2026 gives monthly interest as invested amount × (annual rate ÷ 12). So EUR 1,000 at 15% APR yields EUR 12.50 a month. On accrual start, the FAQ says interest accrues after the loan is transferred to the borrower. However, clause 3.7 of the terms says it accrues from the date of successful funding. In addition, uninvested or reserved balances earn nothing.
• PeerBerry's earnings page computes interest on short-term loans daily as invested amount / 360 × days × rate. EUR 100 for 30 days at 11% gives 0.92, so a 30-day EUR 100 investment earns less than one euro. Mintos's NAR help page (updated 21 November 2022) counts outstanding principal, accrued interest income, service fees charged by Mintos and withheld taxes in the figure.
• Credit timing depends on the loan type. For example, PeerBerry business and real estate loans pay interest monthly and principal at closing, while its short-term loans pay both after closing. Maclear credits interest to the Available balance on repayment-schedule dates, and Debitum's launch announcement of 11 September 2026 describes daily interest for Debitum Flow.
• A withdrawal fee reduces what reaches the bank. Go & Grow deducts EUR 1 from every withdrawal, which is 2% of a EUR 50 request, and Estateguru charges EUR 3.

Published return figures sit on top of these amounts and differ in what they leave out. For example, Mintos's historical performance page defines net return as gross return minus the annualised loss rate with no bonuses or fees included. It reports 9.3% for 2024. Personal NAR as described above puts actual fees and withheld tax into its XIRR cash flows. It leaves out expected impairment losses until they are written off.

Estateguru's statistics page, with figures as read, defines each yearly figure as the weighted average return of repaid loans in that origination year. That gives 9.48% for the 2024 origination cohort (repaid part) and 8.98% for 2025. A repaid-loan average and a 9.96% rate on loans issued since 2023 therefore measure different things. Return series by year are in crowdlending returns and yield, while monthly income timing is in passive income from crowdlending.

Lending structures and legal routes are covered in peer-to-peer loans, while the instruments behind these platforms in what crowdlending is.

P2P lending fees and returns FAQ

Who pays the fees in P2P lending?

Which party pays depends on the platform and product. Borrowers pay interest and, on platforms such as Estateguru and Maclear, an origination fee. Investors, in turn, pay separate charges that vary by platform. Examples are a monthly AUM fee at Estateguru, 0.39% a year on Mintos Core Loans or nothing for deposits and withdrawals at PeerBerry. On Mintos, lending companies pay the platform a service fee.

Is Estateguru's 0.083% fee charged once a year?

No, because Estateguru calculates it on the 4th day of each month on performing principal and debits it on the 5th. On EUR 1,000 outstanding each charge is EUR 0.83, with a cap of EUR 100. A charge follows only a month in which returns were received and 25% of that return at least equals the fee. In the stylised schedule above that is 11 charges and EUR 9.13.

Does the interest rate on a P2P loan equal what the investor earns?

No. In the stylised EUR 1,000 example the investor keeps EUR 90.47 of EUR 99.60 in contractual interest in the low-fee case. Under the high-fee case the investor keeps EUR 70.47. This happens because any spread and the AUM fee come out first. Losses reduce the amount further. Mintos's net return subtracts them as an annualised loss rate, and the example assumes none.

What does selling Mintos Notes on the secondary market cost?

Mintos charges the seller 0.85% of the sale. For example, selling Notes worth EUR 500 costs EUR 4.25, and buyers pay nothing.

Who funds the Maclear provision fund?

Maclear does, from its own revenues, by transferring 2% of every successfully funded project, according to its provision fund FAQ of 10 September 2026. On EUR 1,000 of funded loans that is EUR 20. Grant Thornton AG audits the segregated bank account where the fund sits. Under clause 3.9 of the terms it covers investors' losses on interest and/or principal to the extent funds are available. A borrower delay of more than 3 days then activates it for outstanding interest.