Index of P2P lending and crowd-lending platforms reviews

(Nearly) all reviews on Alternative Investments, and other ways to find the right place to invest

If you roughly know which loans you want to invest in (consumer, real-estate, business) and which platform features you request, this filterable list of reviews will allow you to quickly find which platforms match your choices.

As I’m still in the process of migrating the reviews from one format to another, a few outdated reviews don’t appear in this index. I’ll add them back as soon as I manage to bring them up-to-date.

If you’re looking for an easier way to choose where to invest, the following articles are likely to help you :

Filtering the data​

Investors who know which loans they want to invest in can easily find which platforms match their preferences, using the following criteria :

  • Loans kind
  • Investment duration
  • Buyback feature
  • Auto-invest availability
  • Presence of a secondary market or other early exit mechanism

Loans kinds

Which loans do you want to invest in ? Individual loans are rather standard, and in most case come with the added safety of a buyback guarantee. They’re often rather short-term, although car loans usually span over several years. Business and real-estate loans often offer higher returns, but they are more speculative.

Loans durations

For how long do you want to invest ? If you want to invest in long-term loans, it’s strongly advised to use a platform that features a secondary market or offers an early exit option, in case you need to access your funds before the loan maturity date.

Buyback guarantee

Loans covered by a buyback guarantee A buyback guarantee is a guarantee provided by the platform or a loan originator. If repayment of a loan is delayed by more than a given delay (usually 30 or 60 days), the platform or loan originator will buy back the loan. The guarantee may cover only part of the capital, or in a much more interesting case, both the capital and accrued interests. As the conditions vary from one platform to another, it’s very important to check this point. are usually safer than those without it. Learn more about the buyback guarantee on our article about borrower’s default.

Early exit (secondary market or other mechanisms)

A very useful feature when investing in long-term loans is a secondary market, which is a marketplace where investors may resell their loans to other investors. Other platforms offer a buyback option, meaning that they will buy the loan back; however, this usually incurs a rather large fee.

Investing methods

Being able to invest automatically based on your investment preferences has several benefits : it allows to save time, prevents tedious and repetitive loans selection, and increases diversification. However, while this feature is standard for personal loans, not all platforms for business and real-estate loans offer it.

No result found​

Select at least one value for each criterion, or less restrictive criteria !

EstateGuru

While the interest rates offered by EstateGuru‘s projects are lower than at BulkEstate or ReInvest24, this platform provides great investment opportunities for those who want a more conservative portfolio. It’s also an excellent complement to CrowdEstate‘s real-estate loans.

EstateGuru’s long list of successfully repaid loans (as well as the way they managed the defaulted projects) help build confidence in this platform. It took me a long time to invest there, as I initially targeted more speculative loans. However, I now regularly add funds to this portfolio, in order to have a more balanced loans portfolio.

BulkEstate

I used to prefer CrowdEstate over BulkEstate, thanks to the superior interface and much larger loans volume. However, after more than two years on both platforms, I can’t help but notice that the performance of my BulkEstate portfolio is much higher.

Moreover, BulkEstate’s track record is basically spotless, while CrowdEstate is struggling with late or defaulted business loans.

Overall, the platform’s projects offer a good risk/reward ratio for investors who want slightly more speculative loans than at EstateGuru.

Esketit

So many platforms were founded by – or related to – lending groups in 2020 and 2021 that it’s easy to overlook Esketit. However, this platform offers several advantages over most competitors :

  • interests rates can be as high as 14%, a rare occurrence nowadays
  • loans from Jordan offer a great opportunity for geographical diversification
  • CreamFinance’s 12% loans offer a great risk/reward ratio
  • the loans volume is large enough to prevent the cash drags which sometimes plague competitors such as ViaInvest or Afranga.

Overall, I consider Esketit as an excellent complement to Robocash.

Mintos

Mintos is a very polarizing platform. Indeed, many investors lost money when several loan originators defaulted. At the same time, several other investors report that their Mintos portfolio provides the best performance among their peer-to-peer loans portfolios.

I tend to agree with the latter group, and consider that Mintos success is well deserved. Indeed, my portfolio delivers an excellent and very regular performance. Moreover, the impressive loans volume means that basically any amount can be invested without fearing a cash drag. Finally, thanks to the availability of Mintos strategies, even beginner investors can easily invest through the platform – although, as we’ll see, I basically recommend against using them -.

Of course, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. This especially holds true when it comes to providing reliable information about the loan originators – or even onboarding reliable ones -.

Additionally, now that many lending groups provide their own platforms, there’s no denying that Mintos isn’t as essential as it used to be.

Overall, as long as investors are aware of potential risks, Mintos proves to be an excellent choice to add some additional diversification to a loans portfolio.

ReInvest24

For a long time, I wasn’t so crazy about ReInvest24. Information about the projects were too scarce to my state, and the returns increased very slowly.

However, now that several rental projects were exited, the performance has reached decent levels. Fees management has also improved, which means that for new investors, returns will increase faster.

Although I overall still don’t like the interface – especially the secondary market -, I must admit that ReInvest24’s track record is very good. In addition, the amount of information provided – both during the funding phase and after projects are funded – is nothing short of remarkable.

Overall, ReInvest24 is a great complement EstateGuru, for investors who don’t mind bearing some additional risk in exchange for higher expected returns.

Robocash

At first glance, Robocash‘s offer seems less appealing than most competitors. Indeed, interest rates are lower than at Lendermarket and roughly similar to rates at Esketit or Afranga. Moreover, in terms of website ergonomics, the platform really lags behind most competitors. Finally, one may be concerned about the effect of international sanctions on Robocash Group, which originated in Russia.

However, as we will see in detail, Robocash Group is still financially very solid, and Robocash as a platform doesn’t operate in Russia. It’s thus shielded from the restrictions on transfers to / from Russia.

Overall, the group is very well managed and the platform’s risk/reward ratio is still very good. Along with Esketit, it’s currently one of my favorite platforms

Afranga

When Afranga started operating, the very high interest rates – up to 18% – made this platform stand out. However, things have changed fast as the platform grew increasingly popular among investors. This success unfortunately lead to reduced interest rates and a loans supply too small to absorb the demand for loans.

As of July 2022, the loans volume has slightly increased and cash drags don’t last as much as they used to. Moreover, many loans are available on the secondary market – although loans sold at face value usually only yield 12% -. The liquidity has thus improved, but the situation is still sub-optimal.

As a result, I view Robocash as a better choice than Afranga – in spite of the concerns which arose when Russia invaded Ukraine -. Indeed, this platforms offers the save level of interest rates while being considered as more reliable. Moreover, Robocash’s volume is clearly ample enough to meet the demand. One point in favor of Afranga is the much superior interface, tough.

All things considered, even when it comes to complementing Robocash, I currently prefer to invest at Esketit, which doesn’t suffer from liquidity troubles. Interest rates stand at roughly the same level as Afranga’s, and the interface is equally well-designed.

Crowdestor

Since Summer 2020, many improvements were unveiled at Crowdestor. It started with the enhanced projects descriptions and borrower’s credit report, which are a huge step forward in terms of investors information. In addition, the long awaited investor’s cabinet now provides useful data regarding the portfolio’s status. Similarly, the new loan management system (LMS) now guarantees that investors are kept up-to-date in term of projects updates. Finally, the availability of public statistics is an improvement in terms of transparency, although they may actually be biased, as we’ll see.

However, the current performance of Crowdestor’s loans portfolio is rather bad. Many loans are delayed or defaulted; roughly half outstanding projects are delayed by more than one month ! In addition, the reliability of the recovery process remains to be proven.

For now, unfortunately, investing in Crowdestor looks like a gamble. I really like this platform, but would advise prospective investors to carefully assess the projects they invest in !

Lendermarket

In a rather striking way, Lendermarket is the exact opposite of Moncera.

While the latter belongs to Placet Group – one of the most reliable lending groups -, the former lists loans from Creditstar, a lending company mostly known for their botched audits and recurring pending payments. Moncera’s Telegram channel is basically extremely quiet, and sees basically no investor complaining. In contrast, while browsing Lendermarket’s channel, one can feel the distrust towards the platform and the related loan originators.

The reason why investors prefer to stay invested at Lendermarket instead of switching to alternatives is simple : this platform offers very high interest rates – 15% or more as of July 2022, when Moncera’s offer single-digit interest rates at worst and 11% at best -.

Moreover, it wouldn’t be fair to paint Lendermarket in a totally negative way. In addition to the great performance, the loans volume is extremely high, and the website’s ergonomics is excellent.

At the end of the day, as investors we must always keep the risk/reward ratio in mind. 15% (or even higher) interest rates are unfortunately a very rare occurrence nowadays. Indeed, most competitors with a similar risk profile such as ViaInvest, Afranga or Esketit usually offer lower interest rates. I thus personally view Lendermarket’s loans as a great investment opportunity, especially considering that they are issued by a loan originator which as been profitable since its inception.

More conservative investors will probably feel more comfortable at Robocash, which is extremely solid and offers interest rates up to 13%. Another alternative is Esketit‘s loans from reliable lending group CreamFinance. They yield 12% annually, and thus also offer an excellent risk/reward ratio.

Moncera

I appreciate the opportunity to build a diversified portfolio by investing directly in loans from very reliable originator Placet Group without using Mintos.

For conservative P2P investors, investing in Moncera was basically a no-brainer. However, for a long time, interest rates were too low to my taste. Now that double-digit interest rates are more common, Moncera is worth considering again, even for investors who would previously favor Robocash or Esketit due to higher interest rates.

Omaraha

I used to really love Omaraha. It was one of the first P2P platforms I used, along with Mintos and Twino. At some point, up to 60% of loans portfolio was invested there !

For a long time, thanks to the excellent performance, it was totally worth investing some time (and of course money) on this platform, in spite of the terrible interface. But now that the loans volume has decreased, it’s harder to recommend it as much as I used to. Moreover, Omaraha’s lack of transparency and non-existent communication are clear negatives.

In spite of this, for investors who want to focus solely on consumer loans, Omaraha still offers the best returns.

PeerBerry

If it weren’t for the slightly lower returns than for most competitors and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, I would grant PeerBerry four stars.

It’s indeed hard to find fault with it. First, it’s a profitable platform which features many solid loan originators. Moreover, communication and transparency are both excellent, and the platform’s ergonomics is great. Overall, compared to other loans marketplaces Mintos or Iuvo, PeerBerry clearly stands out in every aspect.

Apart from the slightly deceiving the slightly deceiving performance, PeerBerry’s only drawback are the lack of a secondary market, as well as the necessity to actively manage one’s portfolio due to the frequent interest rate changes.

ViaInvest

It’s a pity that ViaInvest‘s offer is relatively complex when it comes to business or real-estate loans. In addition, the platform’s website pales in comparison to the well-designed interface most competitors offer.

However, the platform is part of a large group which is regarded as financially solid. In addition, returns are reasonable – roughly comparable to Moncera, but lower than Robocash or Lendermarket -.

Overall, ViaInvest provides a good way to diversify a P2P loans portfolio through reliable loan originators.

CrowdEstate

Although I still appreciate the large supply of loans available at CrowdEstate, I have to admit that my portfolio’s performance is deceiving. The actual returns for speculative loans are far from the expected ones !

Overall, I’m much more impressed by EstateGuru, both in terms of transparency and performance.

Swaper

It has always been hard for me to choose between Robocash and Swaper. For a long time, Swaper’s much better ergonomics has incited me to prefer this platform, in spite of the cash drags which used to occur regularly.

However, what finally tipped the scale in favor of Robocash is this platform’s transparency and financial solidity. Indeed, Swaper’s loan originators are mostly blackboxes, which publish zero financial information. In contrast, Robocash Group provides audited financial statements. They show that the group has been consistently profitable for several years.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.