Ledger Nano X or Trezor Safe 5: where they really differ

Analysis reviewed on . The price is checked separately and carries its own date.

Both keep the key in a chip that never lets go of it, both sign inside the device and both make you write a handful of words down on paper. If you were after the short answer: the decision is not about security, it is about who you are willing to trust.

The figures, side by side

  Ledger Nano X Trezor Safe 5
Secure element ST33J2M0, CC EAL5+ EAL6+ certified
Firmware Closed Open, and you can compile it yourself
Can the seed leave the device? Yes, in encrypted fragments, with a Ledger Recover subscription There is no equivalent service
Screen Monochrome, with buttons 1.54″ colour touchscreen, 240 × 240
Connection USB and Bluetooth BLE 5.2 USB
Price checked €129 (23/08/2026, official shop)
Do we earn a commission? Yes, on the Amazon link No

Where there is a dash, it means we do not have the figure checked. We do not put a zero there, or an old price: a price from a year ago presented as today's is a made-up figure.

The one difference that decides

Everything else is nuance. This is not: Ledger's firmware is closed and Trezor's is open.

With Ledger, the guarantee that the device does what it says is a certification awarded by an external laboratory. It is a serious guarantee — the same scale bank cards are held to — but it is a guarantee you cannot verify yourself: you are trusting the laboratory and the manufacturer. Ledger Recover showed where the limit of that trust lies: it turned out the firmware could pull fragments of the seed out if it was asked to, and a great many buyers believed that was impossible by design.

With Trezor, the code is published. You do not have to read it yourself; it is enough that it can be read, because then there are people who do and who publish what they find. That is what happened in 2020, when the Kraken team demonstrated that the seed could be extracted from the Trezor devices of the time with the device in hand. That attack came to light precisely because the system can be examined.

Which one suits your case

  • You are going to use it from your phone and you want the widest catalogue: Ledger Nano X. The Bluetooth and the ecosystem are its own, and for most people that is what you notice day to day.
  • You want to be able to check the code, and to know that no function exists that can pull the seed out: Trezor Safe 5.
  • You are worried about somebody ending up with the device in their hand: either will do, and in both cases the defence that really counts is the passphrase. Turn it on.
  • You are worried about your home address getting out: weigh up the track record. Ledger had a leak in 2020 that included the home addresses of some 9,500 customers; the Trezor one in 2024 stopped at names and email addresses.
  • You hold less than a thousand euros in crypto: neither of them, not yet. It is explained on the products page.

And for what matters to the Spanish tax authority it makes no difference which you pick: moving your coins from an exchange to either of them is not a taxable event, and that balance stops counting towards form 721.

Trezor Safe 5

€129.00
Price checked on August 23, 2026

See it in the official shop

Frequently asked questions

Neither is better in the abstract. Ledger has the wider ecosystem, Bluetooth and an EAL5+ certification; Trezor has open firmware, EAL6+ on the Safe 5 and no function capable of extracting the seed. The decision is whether you would rather have an external audit you cannot repeat or code you can read yourself.

Yes, if the recovery scheme is compatible: the recovery phrase is a standard and it can be restored on another device. Do it with the new device freshly set up, and always check the words on its own screen, never on the computer.

No. Moving cryptocurrencies between wallets of your own is not a disposal: there is no gain and no loss to declare. You are only taxed when you sell or swap.

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