Ten brokers made this shortlist out of the twenty we have opened funded accounts with. Every one of them was tested with real money: spreads sampled across the Asian, London and New York sessions, an order sample placed and timed, a live withdrawal requested and clocked to the hour, and support contacted without announcing who we were. The scores below come from that testing. None of them comes from a features list or a press release.
A word on what the scores measure. Each number is our overall broker rating, built from six weighted categories, and regulation carries the heaviest weight of the six. That is deliberate: for money you cannot afford to lose, who holds the account matters more than a fraction of a pip. But a forex shortlist is not the same thing as a general broker ranking, so this article also shows the cost picture separately, ranks the same ten brokers on measured all-in cost, and says plainly where the two orders disagree.
Every licence number quoted here was checked against the regulator’s own register on 27 July 2026. Everything else — spreads, fill times, withdrawal durations, support response times — is anchored to the month we measured it, because broker pricing and processes move and a page that states them in the present tense becomes wrong without anyone noticing. Where a broker has an open regulatory matter, a settled fine or a warning-list entry against its name, it is named in that broker’s section rather than buried.
We accept no payment for placement or ranking; the funding model is set out in how we make money. Forex is traded on leverage, and at every broker on this list the majority of retail accounts lose money — the published figures reach as high as 81.7%, and they are collected in a table further down. Nothing here is investment advice, and no broker on this page changes the odds of the trades you place.
The ten brokers at a glance
Scores are out of ten. Spreads are the lowest published or measured figure for the account named, and the raw-spread accounts all carry a separate commission that the headline number excludes — the all-in comparison follows in the next section. Swap-free availability is stated as we verified it in July 2026.
| Broker | Our score | Main licences | EUR/USD spread from | Minimum deposit | Swap-free |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interactive Brokers | 8.9 | FCA 208159; SEC/FINRA CRD 36418; ASIC 453554 | 0.2 pips measured, commission from $2 | $0 cash / $2,000 margin | No, in any form |
| IG | 8.7 | FCA 195355; ASIC 515106; BaFin 148759 | 0.6 pips, no commission | $250 by card; none by transfer | No, and no workaround |
| Tickmill | 8.6 | FCA 717270; CySEC 278/15 | 0.0 pips Raw; 1.6 pips Classic | $100 | Yes, terms published |
| Pepperstone | 8.5 | FCA 684312; ASIC 414530; CySEC 388/20 | 0.0 pips Razor; 1.1 pips Standard | $0 ($200 recommended) | Yes, $100 per lot after day five |
| CMC Markets | 8.4 | FCA 173730; ASIC 238054; BaFin 154814 | 0.0 pips FX Active; 0.7 pips standard | None (£100 suggested) | No, under any entity |
| XM | 8.3 | CySEC 120/10; ASIC 443670; DFSA F003484 | 0.0 pips Zero; 0.6 pips Ultra Low | $5 | Yes, no substitute fee |
| FOREX.com | 7.9 | FCA 446717; NFA 0339826; ASIC 345646 | 0.0 pips RAW; 1.0 pip Standard | $100 | Yes, terms unpublished |
| Swissquote | 7.9 | FINMA banking licence; FCA 562170; CSSF | 1.3 pips Premium; 0.0 pips Elite | $1,000 (Premium) | On request, undocumented |
| OANDA | 7.7 | FCA 542574; ASIC 412981; NFA 0325821 | 0.1 pips Core; 1.1 pips Standard | None | Yes, five-day grace period |
| FxPro | 7.6 | FCA 509956; CySEC 078/07 | 0.0 pips Raw+; 1.2 pips Standard | $100 | Yes, requested by email |
What a round turn actually costs
The headline spread is the number brokers advertise and the number that misleads most reliably, because a commission-based account shows a low spread and charges you separately. The figures below are what we measured on one standard lot of EUR/USD during our testing windows in the first quarter of 2026, with commission converted into pips so the accounts are comparable. Spreads are variable, every one of these figures widened around scheduled data, and none of them is a rate card.
| Broker and account | Measured spread | Commission, round turn | Approximate all-in cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMC Markets FX Active | 0.0 pips raw | $5.00 | Near 0.5 pips |
| Tickmill Raw | 0.1 pips at peak hours | $6.00 | About 0.7 pips |
| XM Zero | From 0.0 pips | $7.00 | About 0.7 pips |
| Pepperstone Razor (MT4/MT5) | 0.09 pips | $7.00 | About 0.79 pips |
| FxPro Raw+ | From 0.0 pips | $7.00 | Roughly level with Razor |
| IG standard CFD | 0.6 pips | None | 0.6 pips |
| Pepperstone Standard | 1.1 pips | None | 1.1 pips |
| OANDA Core (from $10,000) | From 0.1 pips | $10.00 | Around 30% below its Standard account |
| FOREX.com RAW | 0.1 to 0.3 pips | $10 international / $14 US | Near 1.2 pips |
| FxPro Standard | 1.4 pips | None | 1.4 pips |
| Swissquote Premium | 1.3 to 1.8 pips | None on forex | 1.3 pips and up |
Two things fall out of that table. First, the cheapest account at a broker is often three-quarters of a pip below its own default account, and choosing the wrong one costs more than choosing the wrong broker. Second, cost ranking and overall ranking are not the same list: CMC Markets sits fifth on our overall score and first on measured all-in cost, while Interactive Brokers leads the overall table on the strength of its regulation, capital and instrument access rather than on forex pricing alone.
Interactive Brokers — 8.9 out of 10
Interactive Brokers is the strongest overall broker we have tested, and it earns that position on balance-sheet strength and market access rather than on being the obvious first choice for a forex trader. The group holds FCA authorisation under FRN 208159, held since 17 May 2001, alongside SEC and FINRA registration under CRD 36418, Central Bank of Ireland authorisation C423427 for EU and EEA clients, and ASIC AFSL 453554. Behind those licences sits a NASDAQ-listed firm with $22.3 billion of equity capital, no long-term debt and an A- rating. That is not the profile of a company that disappears with client money.
On cost it is genuinely competitive. EUR/USD averaged 0.2 pips across our sampling, with forex commission from $2 charged separately rather than folded into the price — a structure that is harder to read and, at the volumes it targets, cheaper. Execution was the single strongest part of the experience: across more than 40 orders, fills on US equities came in under 40 milliseconds in the majority of cases, routed by SmartRouting to whichever venue showed the best price at that instant. That headline figure is an equities measurement rather than a forex one, and we say so rather than borrowing it. Independent measurement over the same period put total implicit costs, spread plus slippage, between 1.8 and 5.7 basis points. A $500 wire withdrawal requested in March 2026 was processed in one business day and reached the bank two business days after that.
It suits the experienced trader who wants forex, shares, futures and options under one login and whose first filter is regulatory strength. It suits people who trade in size, since the commission structure rewards volume and there is no inactivity fee. It suits beginners badly. Trader Workstation assumes competence the way a professional tool does, and nothing about the onboarding softens that.
The drawbacks are specific. There is no swap-free account in any form and no workaround, which rules the broker out entirely for anyone who needs interest stripped from overnight positions. Support is the weakest category we scored, at 7.0: one phone call reached an agent in eight minutes, a second failed outright because the voice menu could not be navigated to the right department, and that complaint recurs in public reviews. Five separate FINRA disciplinary settlements against Interactive Brokers LLC concluded during 2025 — $2.25m over free-riding surveillance, $650,000 over an options-approval system, $475,000 over securities lending, $400,000 over complaint reporting and $150,000 over market data displays. All are supervisory and systems failures settled without a finding of dishonesty, but five matters inside one year is a pattern and it cost the regulation category its perfect mark. Note too that SIPC cover does not extend to forex, futures or options on futures, so the headline $500,000 figure does not protect a currency position. The full detail is in our Interactive Brokers review.
IG — 8.7 out of 10
IG is the largest CFD provider in the world and, after three weeks on a funded account, it is clear why. It holds eight authorisations including FCA 195355 for IG Markets Limited, authorised since 1 December 2001, FCA 114059 for the spread betting entity, ASIC AFSL 515106, BaFin registration 148759 for IG Europe GmbH and NFA 0509630, with further permissions in Singapore, Japan and Switzerland. It was promoted to the FTSE 100 in the March 2026 quarterly review, so its accounts are audited and public in a way most of this industry’s are not.
Execution was among the fastest we have measured. IG reports over 99% of orders filled in under 0.014 seconds, and our own sample was consistent with that: slippage appeared on 2 of 60 trades and both instances fell during scheduled news. EUR/USD sat at 0.6 pips through the London session, which is competitive among commission-free accounts, and widened to 1.2 pips during the US employment release. Withdrawals were the cleanest of any broker here — a $1,200 bank transfer cleared in two business days and a $500 PayPal withdrawal in a few hours, both free, with no retention call and no surprise conditions. The instrument range is unmatched at more than 17,000 markets, including 98 currency pairs.
It suits traders who want regulatory strength and breadth in one account, UK clients who want spread betting alongside CFDs, and anyone who values a platform they will not outgrow. It is a reasonable first broker for someone starting with a meaningful balance rather than a token one.
What it is not is cheap, and trading costs is its weakest category at 6.8. There is no swap-free account and no workaround, so a whole class of trader is excluded. The card minimum is $250 against brokers that start at $5. Overnight funding is charged at Tom-Next plus a 0.8% annual admin fee, which we measured at roughly -$6.50 per night on one standard lot of long EUR/USD in February 2026 — slightly above the market average, and it compounds against anyone holding positions for weeks. There is a $12 monthly inactivity fee after 24 dormant months. IG also launched a strategic review in 2026 that includes a possible move of its listing to the United States, with an outcome expected in the autumn; it changes nothing today, but it is the kind of item worth tracking. Our full findings are in the IG review.
Tickmill — 8.6 out of 10
Tickmill is the clearest cost argument on this list for a trader whose main enemy is friction. It holds FCA authorisation 717270, held since 29 July 2016, CySEC 278/15, FSCA FSP 49464 in South Africa and an FSA Seychelles licence for offshore clients. The UK and EU entities are the ones that matter for most readers here, and both were confirmed active with no restrictions when we re-checked the registers in July 2026.
Our February 2026 Raw testing gave an average EUR/USD spread of 0.1 pips at peak hours; with the $6 round-turn commission that is about 0.7 pips all-in, which sits in the cheapest decile of everything we have measured. The same pair on the commission-free Classic account measured about 1.7 pips, so Raw is the right account for anyone placing more than a handful of trades a week. Execution matched the marketing: across 50 live orders the median fill landed near 150 milliseconds, 47 filled at the requested price and there were no requotes. Withdrawals worked without obstruction — $200 back to a Visa card was processed inside one business day and appeared five business days later on the card issuer’s refund cycle, while $150 via Skrill landed the same day. The minimum deposit is $100 and the minimum withdrawal $25.
It suits the active trader who places enough orders that a fraction of a pip shows up on a monthly statement, and it suits swap-free traders unusually well: the terms are actually published, with a fixed daily administration fee after three consecutive nights and a 41-day extended grace on some instruments on the Classic account. Most competitors make you email support to find out what replaces the swap.
Against that, the gaps are real and several are structural. There is no ASIC authorisation, so Australian and New Zealand traders fall outside a locally regulated retail offering. The crypto book runs to fifteen coins, which is thin. There is no two-factor authentication and no mobile price alerts. Support runs roughly 07:00 to 16:00 GMT, so the second half of the US session is thinly covered — live chat answered in about two minutes and email in about four hours inside those hours, but outside them you wait. An entry for Tickmill sits on the Securities Commission Malaysia investor alert list, which flags firms serving Malaysian clients without local authorisation rather than alleging fraud; it does not affect a UK or EU account but it does mean a Malaysian reader has no local recourse, and it cost the regulation category three-tenths of a point. The inactivity fee could not be verified: third-party schedules describe $10 per quarter after twelve months while Tickmill’s own cost pages list none. Its own group licensing page also cites the £120,000 figure that applies to bank deposits, not the £85,000 that actually applies to a failed investment firm — a transparency lapse we scored against it. Full detail in the Tickmill review.
Pepperstone — 8.5 out of 10
Pepperstone built its reputation on execution speed and raw pricing and both held up under measurement. Across 50 live orders the median fill landed around 30 milliseconds with 47 filled at the requested price, and EUR/USD on the Razor account averaged 0.09 pips before commission — close to the tightest spread available anywhere in retail CFD trading. Eight licensed entities sit behind it, including FCA 684312, ASIC AFSL 414530, CySEC 388/20, BaFin 151148 and DFSA F004356, all confirmed active with no enforcement action against any of them.
The commission structure rewards paying attention. Razor is $3.50 per lot per side on MT4 and MT5, which is $7 round turn, but cTrader is charged at $6 round turn and TradingView at $7 — making cTrader marginally the cheapest venue at the same broker. All-in, a standard lot of EUR/USD cost roughly 0.79 pips on Razor against 1.1 pips on the Standard account. The nominal minimum deposit is $0, though $200 is recommended and required for the swap-free account. A $300 PayPal withdrawal requested on a Tuesday morning drew an emailed confirmation request within the hour and landed roughly six hours later.
It suits scalpers and intraday traders who need fills measured in milliseconds, algorithmic traders who want MT4, MT5 and cTrader on one login, and anyone who wants TradingView charting wired to a live account. It suits traders who go quiet for months, because nothing is deducted from a dormant balance.
Three things hold it back. The swap-free account charges $100 per standard lot once a position passes day five, among the steepest substitute fees we have measured and enough to make it the wrong choice for a swap-free trader who holds positions. Gold pricing lags cheaper rivals at 1.30 pips against 0.30 elsewhere, which is a meaningful handicap if metals are a large share of your volume. And Pepperstone’s Financial Commission membership ceased on 27 February 2026 by voluntary withdrawal, removing external dispute resolution and access to a EUR 20,000 compensation fund for clients onboarded under its Bahamas entity — clients who had no statutory compensation scheme to begin with. That is a reduction in protection rather than a sanction, but it is the change that moved the withdrawals category down. Email support was the weak channel at 4 to 12 hours, and around ten hours for a Friday evening enquiry. Separately, an FCA warning-list entry names “PepperStone VIP / EMC Capitals” as an unauthorised firm; that is an impersonator trading on the brand, not a finding against the licensed broker. See the Pepperstone review for the full workings.
CMC Markets — 8.4 out of 10
CMC Markets has the lowest measured all-in forex cost on this list and one of the two best platforms. It has traded since 1989, has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since February 2016 under CMCX, and holds FCA 173730 and 170627, ASIC AFSL 238054 and 246381, BaFin 154814 and a Singapore capital markets services licence. Audited results for the year to March 2026 showed net operating income of £392.6m, up 15%, pre-tax profit of £101.3m and record assets under administration of £46.3bn. Very few CFD brokers publish anything comparable.
The FX Active account is the reason it belongs on a forex shortlist. Raw spreads from 0.0 pips against $2.50 per $100,000 per side — $5.00 round turn — put all-in cost on EUR/USD near 0.5 pips, competitive with dedicated ECN brokers and clearly better than the standard account’s 0.7. There is a 25% discount on more than 300 non-major pairs, which matters more the further you trade from the majors. Across 50 orders execution was fully automated with no dealer intervention and a high fill-at-requested-price rate during active sessions. Next Generation is one of the few proprietary platforms genuinely worth choosing over MetaTrader, with 115+ indicators, a pattern scanner and backtesting, and TradingView integration arrived in 2025. There is no minimum deposit, though £100 is a realistic floor. Support answered a deliberately technical question on overnight financing in three minutes with worked examples, and the phone in about one minute.
It suits multi-asset and technical traders who want charting depth from a broker whose finances are public, and cost-sensitive forex traders willing to use FX Active rather than the default account.
The exclusions are firm. There is no swap-free account under any entity and no workaround. MetaTrader 5 is available only in Canada; MT4 is offered to UK and Australian clients, but MT5 users elsewhere are out of luck. Share CFD commissions are materially more expensive than specialist competitors. Support runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm London, with no 24/5 desk, so an overnight problem waits. Our tested withdrawal cleared in four business days, slower than most here, and express international transfers now cost £15 where standard ones remain free. Two disclosures matter: in November 2023 ASIC supervised AU$4.3m of compensation across seven CFD brokers, CMC among them, for offering leverage above the caps in force since 2021 — self-reported, attributed to change-management weakness, remediated with no penalty or licence condition; and a Federal Court class action, NSD410/2022, alleging unsuitable leveraged products over a claim period that closed in April 2021, is listed for trial in October 2027 with the allegations unproven and CMC defending. Both are set out in the CMC Markets review.
XM — 8.3 out of 10
XM earns its place on two specific strengths: the lowest barrier to entry of any broker here, and the best swap-free terms we have measured. It holds CySEC 120/10, ASIC AFSL 443670, DFSA F003484, FSC Belize 000261/397 and FSCA 49976, with newer entities in Kenya, Mauritius and the Seychelles that are not tier-one regimes. No regulator warning, enforcement action or fine was found against any XM entity.
The minimum deposit is $5, which is not a marketing number — it is the actual floor, and it makes XM a defensible place to test a broker before committing. The Zero account charges $3.50 per lot per side, $7 round turn, working out at roughly 0.7 pips all-in on EUR/USD. Standard and Ultra Low are commission-free with cost in the spread, from 1.0 pip and 0.6 pips respectively. The swap-free Ultra Low account carries no swap and no substitute administration fee at all, where competitors typically levy $5 to $15 per lot after a grace period of one to seven days — the single clearest reason to choose XM over a cheaper rival. Withdrawals were the fastest here: a $350 Skrill withdrawal requested at 11:00 on 10 February 2026 landed at 16:30 the same day, and a $500 bank transfer cleared in three business days, with no fees on any method. Documents were approved in roughly 18 hours. Live chat answered in under two minutes and email in eight hours.
It suits beginners on a small balance, given the $5 entry, a demo account with no expiry and a large free education library. It suits swap-free traders more than any other broker on this list. And it suits people who want shares and forex under one login, with 1,200+ equities alongside 55+ currency pairs.
The disqualifying limitation for many readers of this site is access: XM does not accept UK residents, and registration redirects UK traders to Trading.com, a separate FCA-authorised brand under the same parent. Whether XM is currently onboarding new Australian retail clients could not be confirmed at publication, so we state that rather than repeating an old position as current. Under stress the pricing showed its limits — during the February 2026 US payrolls release we recorded 1 to 3 pips of slippage on EUR/USD, normal for the event but a real cost for news traders. Crypto is thin and depends entirely on which entity holds your account. Inactivity charges start after 90 days at $5 to $15 per month, one of the shorter dormancy triggers here. The UAE licence obtained in late 2025 is a promotion and introduction permission, not an execution licence, and we corrected an earlier description that overstated it. See the XM review.
FOREX.com — 7.9 out of 10
FOREX.com is on this list for jurisdictional reach rather than price. It operates across seven tier-one jurisdictions through StoneX Financial Ltd under FCA 446717, GAIN Capital Group LLC under NFA 0339826, StoneX Financial Pty Ltd under ASIC AFSL 345646, StoneX Europe Ltd under CySEC 400/21 and GAIN Global Markets Inc. under CIMA 25033, with further authorisations in Singapore, Canada and Japan. The parent, StoneX Group, is NASDAQ-listed and reported fiscal 2025 operating revenues of $4.1 billion. For a US resident, it is one of very few genuinely regulated retail forex options; Australian clients have onboarded to the ASIC-licensed entity since 31 October 2025.
Execution was solid. Across 50 trades over two weeks, average execution came in under one second, roughly 85% filled at the requested price, slippage of 0.1 to 0.3 pips appeared on 10 of 50 — four positive, six negative — and there were no requotes at all. Spreads widened for 30 to 60 seconds around the February 2026 US employment report and recovered. A $300 Visa withdrawal requested on a Tuesday was processed the same day and settled in two business days; an international wire took four business days and attracted a $20 intermediary bank charge, which is a banking cost rather than a broker fee but lands on you either way. Live chat connected in under two minutes.
It suits traders who need a licensed route in a jurisdiction the cheaper brokers do not serve, and traders who value a listed parent with published financials over a fraction of a pip.
Cost is the reason it sits seventh and not higher, and it is the category we scored lowest at 5.5. Standard spreads were the widest of the four brokers we measured against each other, running 1.0 to 1.4 pips on EUR/USD. The RAW account does not rescue that as cleanly as it once did: commission is charged per leg, at $5 per $100,000 internationally and $7 in the US, which is roughly $10 and $14 round turn — putting all-in cost near 1.2 pips against roughly 0.8 pips at the cheapest raw-spread brokers. Swap-free terms are published nowhere; you have to ask support what replaces the overnight charge, and our emailed request still came back without the fee schedule after eight hours. The inactivity fee is $15 per month on the international entity and $25 on the US entity after twelve months. One enforcement matter is on the record: the NFA fined GAIN Capital Group LLC $700,000 in December 2022 after a platform malfunction over 31 March and 1 April 2021 led to dealing at incorrect prices across 14 currency pairs, after which the firm negatively adjusted 17 customer accounts by approximately $2.84m. It was settled without admission, no licence was restricted, and the regulation category was scored 9.0 rather than higher because of it. Full detail in the FOREX.com review.
Swissquote — 7.9 out of 10
Swissquote is the only broker on this list that is a licensed bank, and that distinction decides what happens to your cash if the firm fails. It has held a full FINMA banking licence since 2000 and its shares trade on the SIX Swiss Exchange under SQN, forcing audited reporting most brokers never face. FY2025 net revenue was CHF 723m, up 9.4%, with pre-tax profit of CHF 420m and client assets of CHF 88.7bn. Execution averaged about 9 milliseconds across our 50 test orders with 98% filled without requote — the fastest figure we recorded anywhere on this list.
The protection is worth understanding precisely, because it is not uniform. Swissquote Bank Ltd in Switzerland carries esisuisse cover to CHF 100,000. Swissquote Bank Europe SA in Luxembourg is a licensed bank under CSSF and ECB supervision with EUR 100,000 of FGDL cover and a seven-working-day payout. Swissquote Ltd in the UK, under FCA 562170, is an investment firm and not a bank: the cover is FSCS to £85,000 plus client-money segregation, and there is no Swiss deposit guarantee behind it. A UK client is not buying the Swiss bank protection the brand implies. Separately, Swiss banking law segregates custodied securities from the bankruptcy estate, so a share portfolio is protected by segregation rather than capped.
It suits traders whose first concern is the institution rather than the spread — someone holding a substantial balance who wants a regulated bank rather than a brokerage, and who trades infrequently enough that pricing does not dominate.
For an active forex trader the pricing is the problem, and trading costs scored 5.0, the lowest of any broker here. Swissquote came last against three comparison brokers on all seven instruments we sampled: EUR/USD ran 1.3 to 1.8 pips in active hours in February 2026 against an industry norm nearer 0.7, widening to 3 to 4 pips around scheduled data. Entry is high at $1,000 for Premium, $5,000 for Prime and $10,000 for Elite. Withdrawals are by bank transfer only, ours took five business days, and there are no e-wallets at all; card deposits attract issuer fees of 2.2% to 2.5%. The swap-free account is unadvertised, its administrative fees undocumented and it carries no certification from a recognised board. There is no ASIC entity, so Australian residents are served offshore without AFCA recourse. The Prime tier’s 0.6-pip spread could not be verified on re-check and is published as unverified rather than repeated. And FINMA used its 2025 supervisory assessment letter to instruct Swissquote to reduce its suspicious-activity-report volume — prudential correspondence rather than enforcement, with no penalty or restriction, but it cost the regulation category its perfect mark. Our workings are in the Swissquote review.
OANDA — 7.7 out of 10
OANDA has been pricing currencies since 1996 and it shows in the parts of the business that are hard to fake. Its execution engine filled 50 of our orders without a single requote at a median around 12 milliseconds, its research reads like a desk note rather than marketing, and it voluntarily publishes execution-quality and slippage data that most competitors decline to offer. That last point is rarer than it sounds and it is the main reason the broker is here. It holds FCA 542574, ASIC 412981 and NFA 0325821, with EU clients served by OANDA TMS Brokers S.A. in Warsaw under KNF supervision.
There is no minimum deposit — we opened with $200 and were never prompted for more — and the demo account has no time limit, where most brokers cut access at 30 days. The Standard account averaged around 1.1 pips on EUR/USD. Core Pricing offers raw spreads from 0.1 pips plus $5 per side per 100,000 units, worked out roughly 30% cheaper all-in during our test, and requires $10,000, which only pays back above roughly 20 trades a day on majors. Spreads widened to 2.8 pips during a US employment release and normalised within about 30 seconds, faster than several competitors measured under the same conditions. Card withdrawals took two business days and wires four, with the first withdrawal each calendar month free from OANDA and a $25 correspondent bank charge on the wire.
It suits traders running short-horizon strategies where fill quality matters more than a fraction of a pip on the headline spread, and it suits TradingView users particularly well. The absence of a minimum deposit makes it a sensible place to test a broker with a small amount first.
The compliance record is the reason the score is not higher, and regulation was scored 7.0 rather than the roughly 9.0 the licence set alone would justify. OANDA Corporation, the US entity, has been fined three times since 2020: $500,000 by the CFTC in August 2020 over a net capital shortfall, improper dividend payments and supervisory failures, with the CFTC expressly finding no indication that customers suffered losses; $200,000 by the NFA in April 2021 over inaccurate reporting and complaint handling; and $600,000 plus restitution of up to $428,592 by the NFA in May 2025, which included under-collection of security deposits from around 3,900 retail customers after incorrect margin rates were applied to GBP and JPY pairs. All three are settled and closed, restitution was ordered, and all three concern the US entity only — UK, EU and Australian clients onboard through entities that were not involved. But “failure to supervise” appears in all three findings and capital rules were breached in both 2020 and 2025, which is a pattern rather than a one-off. Elsewhere: MT4 was discontinued at the start of 2025 and only MT5 is offered, which will frustrate anyone with an MT4 expert advisor library; there is no Skrill, Neteller or PayPal; card funding is capped at $20,000 a month; and there is a $10 monthly inactivity fee after twelve months. Ownership also changed — FTMO completed its acquisition on 1 December 2025 and the chief executive stepped down on 27 March 2026. See the OANDA review.
FxPro — 7.6 out of 10
FxPro rounds out the list on execution quality and platform choice. It holds FCA 509956, CySEC 078/07 issued on 5 March 2007, FSCA 45052 and SCB SIA-F184, with no enforcement action, fine, suspension or revocation on record across roughly twenty years of operation. It runs four platforms including MT4, MT5 and cTrader, which is a wider spread of choice than most brokers of its size offer, and cAlgo gives algorithmic traders an option beyond MetaTrader alone.
Execution was among the best we have measured: no-dealing-desk routing at 12 to 14 milliseconds average with zero requotes across more than 50 trades in February 2026. A $350 Visa withdrawal requested at 10am on a Tuesday was processed the same day and landed two business days later with no broker-side fee. Live chat answered in about three minutes during the day and seven minutes late in the evening; email came back in 45 minutes and roughly three hours, with replies that actually addressed the question.
It suits algorithmic traders who want a choice of platform under one broker, and traders who will use the Raw+ account. That last qualification is the single most useful thing to take from our testing: the minimum deposit is $100 on both Standard and Raw+, and the cost difference over a year of active trading is substantial.
Because on the Standard account FxPro was the most expensive broker of four we measured, on all seven instruments — 1.4 pips on EUR/USD against 0.77 at Pepperstone. On ten standard lots a day that is roughly $58 to $62 of additional cost per day before commission, before swaps, and regardless of which way the trades go. On Raw+ it is competitive, at $3.50 per side and roughly level with Pepperstone Razor. The Elite tier weakened since our first testing: commission rose from $2.50 to $3.50 per side and the discount was replaced by volume rebates from $1.50 per lot, on a $30,000 minimum. There is no ASIC licence, so Australian clients are routed offshore without compensation-scheme cover. FxPro is private and unlisted, so no financial statements are publicly inspectable — a transparency weakness we scored at 6.5. Withdrawing without having traded costs 2% to 2.7% depending on the rail, and compliance checks introduced in early 2026 can slow larger payouts. An FCA warning-list entry for “Fx Pro” is a clone of the authorised firm rather than a finding against it. Detail in the FxPro review.
How we picked these
Every broker on this list was tested the same way. We opened an account as an ordinary retail client, funded it with our own money, sampled spreads across sessions rather than quoting a marketing figure, placed an order sample — usually 50 orders — and recorded fill times and slippage individually. We requested a real withdrawal and timed it end to end. We contacted support unannounced, on more than one channel, with questions specific enough that a scripted reply would fail. And we checked every licence number on the regulator’s own register rather than accepting the broker’s list.
The score is then built from six weighted categories, set out in full in how we rate brokers:
| Category | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation and licensing | 25% | Which authority supervises the entity that will hold your account, and its enforcement record |
| Trading costs | 20% | Measured spreads, commission, financing, and every fee that is not advertised |
| Withdrawals and fund access | 20% | Whether the money comes back, how fast, at what cost, and what protects it if the firm fails |
| Platforms and execution | 15% | Fill times, requotes, slippage, platform choice and stability |
| Customer support | 10% | Measured response times and whether the answers were accurate |
| Research and transparency | 10% | Quality of research, and whether the firm publishes what it charges |
Regulation carries the heaviest weight because it is the only category where a bad outcome is unrecoverable. A wide spread costs you money slowly and visibly; an unsupervised broker holding your balance can cost you all of it at once. When we assess a licence we look at which entity actually onboards clients from your country, not which authority appears in the footer — several large groups hold a tier-one licence in one jurisdiction while routing most clients to an offshore entity with no compensation scheme behind it. Our explainers on FCA supervision and on fund safety set out what each regime actually covers.
The order of this list is our overall score, descending, with one tie-break: where two brokers score the same, as FOREX.com and Swissquote both do at 7.9, the one with the better trading-costs category goes first, because this is a forex list and cost compounds faster in currencies than in any other asset class. We have deliberately not re-weighted the categories to produce a forex-specific score, because that would give you a number you cannot check against any of our other pages. Instead the cost table near the top of this article shows what the ranking would look like if you weighted cost alone — and it is a visibly different order.
One more thing the scores cannot capture: the right broker depends on how you trade. A trader placing two positions a month and holding them for weeks should care about overnight financing, not spread. A trader placing thirty round turns a day should care about almost nothing else. A trader who needs swap-free terms can eliminate half this list on that criterion alone. Read the drawback paragraph in each section above before the score.
Brokers that did not make this list
Leaving a broker off is a judgement, so here are the ones closest to the cut and why they are not on it.
- Capital.com, 8.5. It scores as high as Pepperstone and its pricing is genuinely low — 0.6 pips on EUR/USD with no commission at all, and gold at 0.30 points, among the tightest we have measured. It is off a forex shortlist for structure rather than quality: everything is a contract for difference, there is no raw-spread account, so all-in cost cannot go below the spread, and MetaTrader 5 remains unavailable to UK clients while MT4 exposes only forex, commodities and major indices. For a discretionary trader it is a strong option; for an active or algorithmic forex trader the ceiling is lower. Our Capital.com review has the detail.
- eToro, 7.8. NASDAQ-listed, licensed by the FCA, CySEC and ASIC, and it lets you own real shares rather than only CFDs. But it was wider than every comparison broker on every instrument we tested, EUR/USD sat at 1.0 pip in active hours and 1.5 or more in thin liquidity, and there is no MetaTrader. It is a copy-trading platform that also does forex, which is a different product. See the eToro review.
- Plus500, 7.2. Browser-only, with no MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader or third-party platform of any kind, and that was still true when we re-checked in July 2026. Clean for a beginner clicking two buttons; unusable for anyone who wants custom indicators, scripting or backtesting. The Plus500 review explains the trade-off.
- Evest, 4.2. The lowest score we have published. No tier-one licence and therefore no investor compensation scheme behind your balance, no MetaTrader, and a licence count we had to correct downward after establishing that one claimed authorisation carries no legal effect. We found no regulator warning against it and we say so plainly, but the absence of a warning is not the same as the presence of protection. Our Evest review sets out what we found.
Several other brokers we have tested — including HFM, Admirals, AvaTrade, FXTM, FXCM and FBS — scored between 6.5 and 7.9 and are covered individually across all our broker reviews. None of them was excluded for a single disqualifying fault; they simply lost ground across several categories to the ten above.
Who should avoid forex trading
This is the section a shortlist usually skips, and it is the most important one on the page. Choosing well from the ten brokers above lowers your costs and improves the odds that your money comes back when you ask for it. It does nothing whatsoever to the odds of the trades you place. Every broker on this list is legally required to publish the proportion of its retail clients who lose money, and every one of those figures is a majority.
| Broker | Published retail loss rate | Entity and date |
|---|---|---|
| Interactive Brokers | 59.7% | IBUK risk disclosure, 10 April 2026 |
| CMC Markets | 68% | Own disclosure, re-checked 27 July 2026 |
| IG | 69% | Current regulatory disclosure |
| Tickmill | 69% UK / 73% EU | Tickmill UK Ltd / Tickmill Europe Ltd |
| Pepperstone | 72.9% | UK entity, verified July 2026 |
| FOREX.com | 74% | Current disclosure; 77% when we tested |
| XM | 75.33% | CySEC entity |
| FxPro | 76% | Current disclosure; 77% when we tested |
| OANDA | 76.6% | UK entity |
| Swissquote | 81.7% UK / 55.05% EU | Own disclosures, July 2026 |
Read that table as a range rather than a league. The figures are entity-specific, brokers revise them periodically, and a lower number reflects the client base a broker attracts as much as anything it does. What is consistent across all of them is the direction: at every broker here, most retail clients lose money on leveraged products.
You should not be trading forex on leverage if any of the following is true:
- The money is needed for something. Rent, a deposit, school fees, an emergency fund — leveraged positions are the wrong home for capital with a job to do.
- You are borrowing to fund the account, including on a credit card or from family.
- You cannot explain, without looking it up, what happens to your position when the margin requirement is not met.
- You are relying on trading to replace an income within a fixed timeframe. Time pressure and leverage are a bad combination and the loss rates above are what it looks like at scale.
- You are trading to recover a previous loss. This is the pattern that turns a bad month into a bad year.
- You have not yet placed a single trade on a demo account, and understood why it went the way it did.
If you do proceed, three practical protections are worth understanding. Negative balance protection is mandatory for retail clients under FCA, ESMA and ASIC rules and means you cannot lose more than your account balance — but it is a retail entitlement, and it is one of the things you give up if you elect to be treated as a professional client in exchange for higher leverage. Leverage caps of 1:30 on major pairs exist for the same reason; the offshore entities that offer 1:200 or more are outside those regimes. And compensation schemes protect you against the broker failing, not against your trades failing: FSCS covers £85,000 in the UK, the Cyprus and most EU schemes cover EUR 20,000, and several of the offshore entities named in this article cover nothing at all.
We assess brokers, not outcomes. Nothing on this page is investment advice, no broker here offers a route to a return, and you should not commit money you cannot afford to lose.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best forex broker for beginners?
On our testing, XM has the lowest barrier: a $5 minimum deposit, a demo account with no expiry, documents approved in roughly 18 hours and a withdrawal that cleared in under six hours. It is not available to UK residents, though, and UK beginners are better served by CMC Markets, which has no minimum deposit, suggests a realistic £100 floor and answered a technical support question in three minutes with worked examples. Avoid starting on a platform designed for professionals — Trader Workstation at Interactive Brokers is powerful and unforgiving, and a first account is the wrong place to learn it.
How much money do I need to start trading forex?
The published minimums on this list run from nothing at all — CMC Markets, OANDA, Pepperstone and Interactive Brokers cash accounts — through $5 at XM and $100 at Tickmill, FOREX.com and FxPro, up to $1,000 for Swissquote’s entry tier. But the minimum deposit is not the same question as the sensible deposit. A very small balance leaves almost no distance between your entry price and a margin close-out, which means normal market noise can end the position before the idea has had a chance. Pepperstone recommends $200 against a $0 minimum for exactly that reason. Whatever the figure, it should be money you can afford to lose entirely.
Is a raw-spread account always cheaper than a commission-free one?
No, and the crossover point depends on how often you trade. On the accounts we measured, Pepperstone Razor cost roughly 0.79 pips all-in against 1.1 pips on its Standard account, and Tickmill Raw about 0.7 pips against about 1.7 on Classic — so for anything more than a handful of trades a week, the raw account wins clearly. FOREX.com is the counter-example: its RAW commission is charged per leg at roughly $10 round turn internationally, which puts all-in cost near 1.2 pips and removes most of the advantage over its own Standard account. Always convert the commission into pips before comparing.
Which of these brokers offers a swap-free account?
Seven of the ten: Tickmill, Pepperstone, XM, FOREX.com, OANDA, FxPro and, on request, Swissquote. The terms differ enormously and the terms are the whole point. XM charges no substitute administration fee at all, which is the most generous arrangement we have measured. Tickmill publishes its terms, applying a fixed daily administration fee after three consecutive nights. Pepperstone charges $100 per standard lot once a position passes day five, which is steep enough to change the arithmetic on any held position. OANDA gives a five-day grace period then a fixed fee. FOREX.com and Swissquote do not publish their replacement charges anywhere, and our emailed request to FOREX.com came back without them. Interactive Brokers, IG and CMC Markets offer no swap-free account under any entity and no workaround.
Are all of these brokers regulated in the UK, the EU and Australia?
No, and this is the check most worth doing yourself. XM does not accept UK residents and redirects them to a separate brand. Tickmill and FxPro hold no ASIC authorisation, so Australian clients fall outside a locally regulated retail offering. Swissquote has no ASIC entity either, so Australian residents are served offshore without AFCA recourse. Several groups here also operate offshore entities — Pepperstone in the Bahamas, FOREX.com in the Cayman Islands, FxPro in the Bahamas and Seychelles — and those routes carry no compensation scheme. Establish which entity will hold your account before you fund it, because the compensation scheme, the leverage cap and the complaints route all follow the entity, not the brand.
How fast should a forex withdrawal be?
Faster than most people expect, and slow withdrawals are the earliest visible sign of a problem. Our tested withdrawals in the first quarter of 2026: XM cleared a Skrill request in under six hours, Pepperstone a PayPal request in about six hours, IG a PayPal request in a few hours and a bank transfer in two business days, FxPro and FOREX.com card withdrawals in two business days, Interactive Brokers a wire in three, CMC Markets in four, and Swissquote in five by bank transfer, its only route. None of them obstructed us, asked for documents mid-withdrawal or made a retention call. Two rules explain most of the delay complaints you will read online: your identity verification must be complete, and money generally has to return to the method it came from.
Does faster execution make a broker more profitable to trade with?
It lowers one specific cost — the difference between the price you asked for and the price you got — and that is all. Across this list, median fills ranged from about 9 milliseconds at Swissquote to about 150 at Tickmill, and every broker here widened its spreads around scheduled data releases. Fast execution matters if you are scalping, where slippage on entry and exit is a large share of the edge you are trying to capture. It matters far less if you hold positions for days, where overnight financing dwarfs it. No execution speed changes whether a trade is right.
How do I check a broker is genuinely licensed?
Take the licence number from the broker’s own site, then look it up on the regulator’s register directly rather than following a link the broker provides. Check that the entity name on the register matches the entity named on your client agreement, and that the permissions cover dealing in investments rather than merely arranging or promoting them — we corrected an earlier description of one licence on this list after establishing it was a promotion permission, not an execution licence. Be aware of clone firms: the FCA warning list carries impersonation entries against several brokers on this page, including Interactive Brokers, IG, Pepperstone, Swissquote and FxPro, where fraudsters quote a genuine firm’s reference number on a fake website. Reaching the broker through its own domain rather than a search advert defeats most of that. Our guide to scam checks sets out the full procedure.
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