A spread is the gap between the price at which you can buy an instrument and the price at which you can sell it at the same moment. It is not a fee you are invoiced for. It is charged the instant you open a position, by starting you slightly behind, and you pay it whether the trade works out or not. On one standard lot of EUR/USD — 100,000 units — one pip of spread is worth about $10, so a 1.4-pip spread costs roughly $14 to enter a position, and a 0.6-pip spread costs about $6.
That arithmetic is why “spreads from 0.0 pips” has become the most repeated claim in retail broking, and why it is close to meaningless on its own. In almost every case the 0.0 figure describes a raw-spread or ECN account that charges a separate commission per lot, and the advertisement quotes the spread before that commission is added. A broker advertising 0.0 pips and charging $7 a round turn is charging you 0.7 pips. A broker advertising 1.4 pips with no commission is charging you 1.4 pips. The second number is the one you actually pay, and it is the number almost nobody publishes side by side.
So this list ranks on all-in cost: measured spread plus commission, converted into a single figure for one standard lot of EUR/USD traded and closed. It is deliberately not ranked on our overall broker score. The two orders disagree sharply, and the disagreement is the most useful thing on this page — the broker at the top of the cost table scores 7.1 out of 10 overall, and the broker with our highest overall score sits third on cost. Both facts matter, and neither one substitutes for the other.
Every figure below comes from our own funded-account testing, sampled across the Asian, London and New York sessions in the first quarter of 2026, and is reported as measured then rather than as a claim about today. Spreads are variable, they widen around scheduled data at every broker on this list, and a page that states them in the present tense becomes wrong without anyone noticing. We take no payment for placement or ranking; our funding model is set out in how we make money, and the six weighted categories behind each score are explained in how we rate brokers. Leveraged trading carries a high risk of loss, the majority of retail accounts lose money at every broker named here, and nothing on this page is investment advice.
How we calculated the all-in cost
One instrument, one trade size, one unit of measurement. We use EUR/USD because it is the most liquid pair in the world and therefore the one where broker pricing is most directly comparable, and because it is the pair every broker advertises. We use one standard lot because commission is quoted per lot and a per-lot figure converts cleanly into pips. And we quote a round turn — opening and closing — because a position you cannot close is not a position.
The conversion is straightforward. On EUR/USD, one pip on a standard lot is worth about $10. So a $7 round-turn commission is 0.7 pips of cost, and it is added to whatever spread the account actually shows. An account quoting 0.1 pips with $7 commission costs 0.8 pips all-in, or about $8. An account quoting 0.6 pips with no commission costs 0.6 pips all-in, or about $6. The commission-free account is cheaper, which is the opposite of what the marketing on both pages implies.
Three limits on what these numbers can tell you. First, they describe EUR/USD and nothing else: several brokers on this list are competitive on majors and poor on gold, and one of them prices gold at more than four times what the tightest broker in our sample charges. If metals or indices are most of your volume, the ranking below is the wrong ranking for you. Second, they describe active-session pricing. Every broker we tested widened materially in thin liquidity and around scheduled releases, and an overnight or news-driven strategy will not see these figures. Third, spread and commission are only two of the four things that determine what a year of trading costs — overnight financing, inactivity charges, withdrawal fees and currency conversion make up the rest, and they are covered further down because they routinely exceed the spread differences argued over here.
One methodological note on consistency. Each broker’s dedicated review is the primary source for its own figures. Where one of our reviews samples a competitor for comparison, the two measurements sometimes differ by up to 0.2 pips because they were taken in different windows. We use the dedicated review in every case, and where the gap is material we say so in that broker’s section rather than picking the flattering number.
Low-spread brokers compared on all-in cost
Ranked cheapest first on measured all-in cost for one standard lot of EUR/USD, round turn, during active sessions in the first quarter of 2026. Scores are out of ten and come from our six-category rating, in which regulation carries the heaviest weight — which is why they do not track the cost order.
| Broker | Score | Account | EUR/USD spread from | Commission, round turn | All-in per standard lot | Minimum deposit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FXTM | 7.1 | Advantage | 0.0 pips at peak liquidity | $4.00 | About $4.00 (0.4 pips) | $200 |
| CMC Markets | 8.4 | FX Active | 0.0 pips | $5.00 | About $5.00 (0.5 pips) | None stated |
| Interactive Brokers | 8.9 | IBKR Pro | 0.2 pips | From $4.00 | About $6.00 (0.6 pips) | $0 cash / $2,000 margin |
| Capital.com | 8.5 | Standard | 0.6 pips | None | About $6.00 (0.6 pips) | $20 by card |
| IG | 8.7 | Standard CFD | 0.6 pips | None | About $6.00 (0.6 pips) | $250 card; none by transfer |
| Admirals | 7.5 | Trade | 0.6 pips | None | About $6.00 (0.6 pips) | $100 |
| Axi | 8.1 | Pro | 0.1 to 0.3 pips | $4.50 | About $6.50 (0.65 pips) | $500 |
| Pepperstone | 8.5 | Razor (cTrader) | 0.09 pips | $6.00 | About $6.90 (0.69 pips) | $0 ($200 suggested) |
| Tickmill | 8.6 | Raw | 0.1 pips | $6.00 | About $7.00 (0.7 pips) | $100 |
| XM | 8.3 | Zero | 0.0 pips | $7.00 | About $7.00 (0.7 pips) | $5 |
| FxPro | 7.6 | Raw+ | 0.0 pips | $7.00 | About $7.00 (0.7 pips) | $100 |
| Pepperstone | 8.5 | Razor (MT4/MT5) | 0.09 pips | $7.00 | About $7.90 (0.79 pips) | $0 ($200 suggested) |
| ThinkMarkets | 7.3 | ThinkZero | Near 0.1 pips | $7.00 | About $8.00 (0.8 pips) | $500 |
| FXCM | 6.9 | Active Trader | 0.3 pips | Near 0.5 pips equivalent | About $8.00 (0.8 pips) | $25,000 to qualify |
| HFM | 7.9 | Zero | Not separately sampled | $6.00 on currencies | Not published; see below | About $5 |
| OANDA | 7.7 | Core Pricing | From 0.1 pips | $10.00 | Roughly 30% below its Standard | $10,000 |
| FOREX.com | 7.9 | RAW | 0.1 to 0.3 pips | $10 international / $14 US | Near $12.00 (1.2 pips) | $100 |
Two things fall out of that table before you read a single broker section. The cheapest account at a broker is often three-quarters of a pip below that broker’s own default account, so choosing the wrong account type inside the right broker costs more than choosing the wrong broker. And four of the seven cheapest entries charge no commission at all — the raw-account advantage is real but far narrower than the “from 0.0 pips” advertising suggests, and it disappears entirely against a genuinely tight spread-only account.
FXTM Advantage: the lowest all-in cost we measured, with the largest caveat
On the Advantage account we found EUR/USD spreads at or near zero through London and New York liquidity, and the round-turn commission is $4 per standard lot — the lowest commission of any account in this comparison. Add the two and the all-in cost lands at roughly 0.4 pips, or about $4.00 a round turn. That is genuinely the cheapest figure in our data set, and it is not close: the next account down costs 25% more.
It requires the Advantage account specifically, at a $200 minimum deposit. Advantage Plus, the commission-free sibling, is poor value by comparison and should not be confused with it. Execution held up in our testing: more than 90% of over 60 trades filled in under a second, with no requotes, and slippage on roughly 15% of fills, almost all under one pip.
Now the caveat, and it is a significant one. The 0.4-pip figure assumes the near-zero spread we observed at peak liquidity. Our separate sampling for the FBS review, taken in a slightly later window, recorded FXTM Advantage EUR/USD at 0.5 pips of spread — which would put all-in cost nearer $9 than $4. Both measurements are ours and we are not going to hide the one that is less flattering. Treat $4.00 as a best-case, peak-liquidity figure rather than a typical one, and check live pricing on a demo before you commit. The other drawback is the score: at 7.1 this is the lowest-rated broker anywhere near the top of this table, held back by a retail loss rate of 88% disclosed when we tested — the highest figure in this comparison and one we could not re-verify at publication — and by a licensing picture that leans on a Mauritius entity for its highest leverage. Cheap execution at a weaker broker is a trade-off, not a free lunch. Our FXTM review sets out the full position.
CMC Markets FX Active: the cheapest account at a strong broker
FX Active prices raw from 0.0 pips and charges $2.50 per $100,000 notional per side, which is $5.00 a round turn on a standard lot — the lowest commission-based all-in figure in our comparison at roughly 0.5 pips. Our review records no minimum deposit on the account. On our overall rating CMC Markets scores 8.4, which makes this the strongest combination of price and broker quality on the page.
The default account is a different proposition. CMC’s standard CFD account charges no commission and we measured EUR/USD at 0.7 pips, so about $7.00 all-in — competitive, matching IG almost exactly, but 40% more expensive than FX Active for the identical trade. If you open here and leave the account on its default setting, you pay the difference for no reason.
The drawbacks are specific rather than structural. Share CFDs are expensive: we were charged 0.10% with a €9 minimum on most European shares and $0.02 per share with a $10 minimum on US and Canadian stock, so a $2,000 position in a $40 stock costs $10 in and $10 out — 1% round trip before spread. There is no swap-free account under any entity. And the inactivity fee bites at twelve consecutive months without a trade, at £10 per month from available balance, which can quietly remove £120 a year from a dormant account. Express international bank transfers now carry a £15 charge that was not there at our original review. Full detail is in the CMC Markets review.
Interactive Brokers: low commission, tight spread, highest overall score
Interactive Brokers runs the opposite model to most of this list — low commission against a tight passed-through spread, with quotes aggregated from seventeen large liquidity providers. We measured EUR/USD at 0.2 pips, which is $2 on a standard lot, and forex commission starts at $2 per trade and falls with volume. At that floor a round turn is $4, putting all-in cost at about $6.00. The commission scales with volume rather than against you, so the figure is a ceiling for larger traders and a floor only in the sense that $2 is the minimum charge per leg.
Execution was the strongest single element of our testing anywhere: fills on US equities under 40 milliseconds in the majority of more than 40 orders, SmartRouting to the best-priced venue at each instant, and total implicit costs of 1.8 to 5.7 basis points on independent measurement over the same period. More than 100 order types and algorithms are available, including an Adaptive algorithm that works an order toward the best fill while limiting slippage. At 8.9 this is our highest-rated broker, and the lowest disclosed retail loss rate in the comparison at 59.7%.
Two hard drawbacks. There is no swap-free account in any form — we confirmed it during testing and again before publishing, and overnight financing cannot be switched off on forex or CFD positions, which excludes anyone who needs interest-free trading outright. And the platform is built for professionals: the account opening process, the margin account’s $2,000 minimum and the sheer density of Trader Workstation will defeat a beginner who wanted a simple pricing decision. Five FINRA disciplinary settlements concluded during 2025, none of which involved client-money shortfall, are set out in the Interactive Brokers review.
Capital.com: 0.6 pips with no commission and no inactivity fee
Capital.com prices spread-only across every asset class, with no commission anywhere. We sampled EUR/USD between 0.6 and 1.0 pips in peak hours and about 1.5 in quiet periods or ahead of major data, giving an all-in cost of about $6.00 a round turn at the tight end. Gold came in at 0.30 points, among the tightest we have measured, and the gap against standard accounts at XM and other spread-only rivals is wide enough to compound quickly with trade frequency.
The non-trading side is unusually clean. Deposits and withdrawals are free, the minimum deposit is $20 by card, and the $10 monthly inactivity fee that previously applied under the Cyprus and Bahamas entities was removed entirely in late March 2026 and now applies to no account at any balance. Overnight funding runs at 4% annually divided by 360 or 365 days depending on currency, and was removed on unleveraged share and crypto positions during 2025, so a 1:1 position costs nothing to carry. Across 50 trades, execution filled essentially instantly, with slippage on eight, all under 0.3 pips and all in high volatility.
The cost our original testing missed is currency conversion: 0.7% of the spot rate for retail clients, charged whenever you trade an instrument denominated outside your account currency. On US shares held from a GBP or EUR account that is a real recurring drag that no spread comparison captures. The structural limit matters too — everything here is a contract for difference and there is no raw-spread account, so all-in cost can never fall below the spread, and an algorithmic trader hits a floor a raw account does not have. The international entity discloses a 78.48% retail loss rate against 61% in the UK. See the Capital.com review.
IG: 0.6 pips all-in, and the financing cost that undoes it
IG uses an all-in spread on its standard CFD account with no separate commission. Across an active London session and a quieter Asian session we measured EUR/USD at 0.6 pips — about $6.00 a round turn — matching Saxo Bank almost exactly and undercutting several raw accounts once their commission is added. Execution was IG’s strongest measured attribute: across more than 60 trades, fills on major pairs were effectively instant against a published figure of over 99% inside 0.014 seconds, with slippage on only two trades, both during scheduled news. Guaranteed stops are available, filling at exactly the specified level regardless of gapping, with the premium charged only if triggered.
USD/CHF at 1.5 pips was IG’s weakest quote and materially worse than the raw accounts on this list. The DMA account runs a commission model against a tighter spread, scaled from $10 to $60 per million dollars traded, which only makes sense at high volume.
The real drawback is not the spread. Overnight funding is the number of nights multiplied by the Tom-Next rate plus a 0.8% annual admin charge, and on a one-lot long EUR/USD position in February 2026 we recorded roughly -$6.50 per night — slightly above the market average. Hold that position for a month and financing alone exceeds the entire spread cost many times over, which turns a cheap entry into an expensive holding. If you swing trade or position trade, IG’s 0.6 pips is close to irrelevant to what you will actually pay. The minimum deposit is $250 by card, though nothing by bank transfer, and the inactivity fee is $12 a month but only after 24 full months — among the most generous triggers we have found. Our IG review has the full cost picture.
Admirals Trade: a commission-free account that beats most raw accounts
Measured between 10:00 and 16:00 GMT, the commission-free Trade account showed EUR/USD at 0.6 pips — about $6.00 all-in, with nothing added. That is cheaper than Tickmill Raw, XM Zero, FxPro Raw+ and Pepperstone Razor on MT4 or MT5, all of which advertise from 0.0 pips. It is the clearest single illustration on this page of why the headline number misleads. Admirals also runs a Zero account at $3 per lot per side, so $6 round turn, but we did not separately sample its raw spread and so do not publish an all-in figure for it.
Across 50 live orders, 42 filled at exactly the requested price and five slipped between 0.1 and 0.3 pips, almost all during elevated volatility. Inactivity costs €10 a month but only after 24 consecutive months without trading, which is lenient against the twelve-month trigger common elsewhere. The minimum deposit is $100 on Trade and Zero.
Three drawbacks pull the score to 7.5. A 0.3% currency conversion fee applies whenever you trade an instrument denominated outside your account base currency, which on a mixed portfolio can exceed the spread advantage entirely. Trade accounts run a hybrid execution model rather than pure STP, which is worth knowing if counterparty arrangement matters to you, although nothing in our fill data suggested it disadvantaged us. And entity routing is the significant one: many clients outside the UK and EU are routed to Admirals SC Ltd in the Seychelles under licence SD073, where the minimum deposit is $25 and there is no statutory compensation scheme at all behind your balance. Which entity holds your money is a bigger question than half a pip, and it is covered in the Admirals review and in our guide to fund safety and client money protection.
Axi Pro: the commission cut that moved it up the table
Axi Pro raw spreads on EUR/USD held between 0.1 and 0.3 pips throughout our February 2026 sampling. At the $7 commission in force when we tested, the all-in cost was roughly 0.9 pips. The commission has since been cut to $4.50 a round turn — 0.45 pips equivalent — which puts the same spread at about 0.65 pips, or $6.50. That is a real improvement and it moves Axi ahead of both Pepperstone Razor and the other $7-commission accounts on this list.
Execution behaved the way honest market execution should. Of 50 live orders placed deliberately across high and low liquidity and through scheduled data, six slipped: four against us and two in our favour. A broker showing zero negative slippage across 50 orders would be the finding worth worrying about. Axi runs an STP/ECN model with no dealing desk, and holds FCA, ASIC, DFSA, CySEC and FMA licences.
The entry requirement moved the other way: Pro now needs a $500 minimum deposit where it previously needed none, and Elite needs $25,000. The commission-free Standard account is not the reason to come here — we measured EUR/USD at 1.3 pips, mid-table at best and wider than several commission-free accounts above. Inactivity costs $10 a month after twelve consecutive months, and the disclosed retail loss rate is 72.4% globally, rising to 83.1% on one entity. Three FCA warning-list entries touch the Axi name, all impersonation of the licensed broker rather than action against it, and all detailed in the Axi review.
Pepperstone Razor: the tightest raw spread we measured, and the platform that decides the price
Pepperstone Razor produced the tightest EUR/USD raw spread in our sample at 0.09 pips, tighter than every comparison broker we measured it against. What it costs you depends on which platform you trade it through, which is a detail almost no comparison captures: commission is $3.50 per lot per side on MT4 and MT5, so $7 a round turn, but cTrader is $6 a round turn and TradingView $7. That makes cTrader the cheapest venue for an identical trade, at about $6.90 all-in against $7.90 on MetaTrader. Choosing the platform you are used to rather than the one that is cheapest costs you a full pip per ten round turns.
Execution is where Pepperstone measurably outperforms. Across 50 orders on a funded live account the median fill was around 30 milliseconds and 47 filled at the requested price, with the three that slipped moving less than 0.2 pips, all during data releases. There is no inactivity fee at any duration — accounts dormant beyond three months are archived rather than charged, and support can reactivate them, which is genuinely unusual and worth real money to a seasonal trader.
Gold is the weakness, and it is a large one. We measured XAU/USD at 1.30 pips against 0.30 at the tightest comparison broker — a meaningful handicap if metals are a significant share of your volume, and enough on its own to make this the wrong choice for a metals trader. The swap-free account charges $100 per standard lot after a five-day grace period, which is expensive against brokers that levy no substitute fee. And Pepperstone’s Financial Commission membership ceased on 27 February 2026 by voluntary withdrawal, removing external dispute resolution and €20,000 compensation-fund access for clients under the offshore entity — a reduction in protection rather than a sanction, but one that matters most to exactly the clients who had no statutory scheme to begin with. The Pepperstone review covers it in full.
Tickmill Raw: $6 commission, with a scope limit worth reading
Tickmill Raw showed EUR/USD at 0.1 pips through the European and US sessions and charges $3 per side per standard lot, so $6 a round turn — about $7.00 all-in, or 0.7 pips. The commission undercuts the $3.50 per side charged by several direct rivals, and the minimum deposit is $100 across every account type. Across 50 live orders the median fill was around 150 milliseconds, 47 filled at exactly the requested price, and we recorded no requotes at all.
The scope limit is easy to miss and it changes the calculation for anyone trading outside forex: the $3 per side applies to FX and precious metals only, so the $6 round turn does not travel across the whole instrument list. Other CFD classes are priced differently. The rate was also $2 before the 2026 restructure, so the current figure is a 50% increase on what long-standing clients were paying.
Two further drawbacks. Raw spreads widened noticeably between the New York close and the Tokyo open, so an overnight strategy will not see the headline numbers. And the inactivity position is genuinely unresolved: Tickmill’s own cost pages list no fee, while the weight of current third-party schedules describes $10 or currency equivalent per quarter after twelve months of dormancy. We could not reconcile the two from published sources, so we record it as not verified at the time of publication and suggest confirming with support before leaving an account idle. Separately, an entry for Tickmill appears on the Securities Commission Malaysia investor alert list — a territorial authorisation listing rather than a fraud finding, with no bearing on the FCA or CySEC entities, but disclosed in full in the Tickmill review. There is no ASIC authorisation, so Australian and New Zealand traders are outside a locally regulated retail offering.
XM Zero: $5 to open, $7 a round turn, and a swap-free account with no substitute fee
XM Zero charges $3.50 per lot per side, $7 a standard round turn, and our measurement put all-in cost at about 0.7 pips on EUR/USD — level with Tickmill Raw and the raw-spread specialists. The minimum deposit is $5, which is the lowest entry to a genuinely competitive account anywhere in this comparison. Our separate sampling for the Tickmill review recorded XM Zero nearer 0.9 pips all-in in a different window, so treat 0.7 as the better-case figure of the two.
The strongest cost feature is not the spread at all. The swap-free Ultra Low account carries no swap and no substitute administration fee, where competitors typically levy $5 to $15 per lot after a grace period of one to seven days. For a long-hold or faith-based trader that is worth considerably more than the fractions of a pip argued over higher up this page.
Three drawbacks. XM runs a dealing desk and acts as counterparty to client trades rather than routing straight to liquidity providers; we saw no evidence of price manipulation across four weeks and 50 trades, but the model creates a theoretical conflict of interest that an ECN account does not. Gold is not competitive — 2.7 pips on Ultra Low against 1.5 or lower at the raw-spread brokers, and that gap compounds fast at volume. And the inactivity fee is the weakest line in the schedule: charges begin after only 90 days with no account activity, at a published $5 to $15 per month depending on the stage of dormancy, where Pepperstone charges nothing. Detail is in the XM review.
FxPro Raw+: competitive pricing attached to an expensive default
Raw+ prices from 0.0 pips with $3.50 per lot per side — $7 a round turn — putting all-in cost at roughly 0.7 pips, level with Tickmill Raw and Pepperstone Razor on MetaTrader. On cTrader the same charge is expressed as $35 per $1 million traded, which is the identical rate. The minimum deposit is $100, the same as the Standard account, and execution across more than 50 trades averaged roughly 12 to 14 milliseconds — the fast end of anything we have measured.
One live-trading detail we only found by placing orders: the full commission is deducted when the position opens, not split between opening and closing. It does not change the total, but it changes how a trade looks in your equity the moment you enter it, which matters if you size positions off available margin.
The Standard account is the problem, and it is why this scores 7.6 rather than higher. We measured EUR/USD at 1.4 pips against 0.77 to 0.82 at direct rivals, and FxPro was widest of the four brokers we compared on all seven instruments tested. Gold at 26 against 13 elsewhere is proportionally worse. On ten standard lots a day that is roughly $58 to $62 in additional cost per day before commission and before swaps, regardless of whether the trades go your way. Since both accounts have the same $100 minimum, Standard is difficult to justify for anyone trading with any regularity. The non-trading schedule adds two edges: withdraw without having placed a trade and a fee of roughly 2% to 2.7% applies depending on method, and the inactivity fee is $15 once then $5 a month after only six months without trades, deposits or logins. The FxPro review has the numbers.
ThinkMarkets ThinkZero: a third off the default, at a $500 entry
ThinkZero charges $3.50 per side, $7 a round turn. Adding spread to commission, a EUR/USD standard lot cost us about $8 on ThinkZero against about $12 on the Standard account — roughly a one-third saving that repays the $500 minimum deposit quickly for anyone trading more than occasionally. Across 50 orders most filled in under a second with no requotes on ThinkZero and three instances of minor slippage in volatile periods. We did not measure fill latency in milliseconds and so do not claim a median figure we did not record.
The Standard account, at 1.2 pips on EUR/USD, is competitive with the cheaper spread-only accounts and clearly behind the raw-spread brokers on almost everything. On ThinkZero the gap closes to nothing.
Two costs sit outside the spread and both are severe. When we tested in early 2026, ThinkMarkets charged $30 per month once an account had gone 180 days without a trade — among the highest inactivity charges in the industry, against competitors charging nothing. It cannot push a balance below zero and it stops when you resume trading, and published sources in 2026 now disagree about whether it applies at all, which suggests the schedule varies by entity or has been revised. Check the schedule for the entity named in your own client agreement. Second, e-wallet withdrawals cost 5.5% through Skrill and up to 7.5% through Neteller, which on a $2,000 withdrawal is $110 to $150 and dwarfs any spread saving. Use cards or bank transfer instead. A Bermuda Monetary Authority public alert entry also remains on the record and is set out in the ThinkMarkets review.
FXCM Active Trader: competitive, but only above $25,000
On the Active Trader tier, adding commission to spread produced an all-in cost of about 0.8 pips on EUR/USD when we calculated it — roughly 0.3 pips of spread plus about 0.5 pips of commission equivalent, so around $8.00 a round turn. That is genuinely competitive and it is the reason to clear the $25,000 threshold if you can.
Below that threshold the picture inverts. FXCM’s standard account was the widest of the four brokers we compared on every FX pair sampled — EUR/USD at 1.3 pips, GBP/USD at 1.8 — and it charges no commission, so 1.3 pips is what you pay. It was competitive on gold, beating both comparison brokers there. Slippage across 50 trades ran at roughly 15%, averaging 0.1 to 0.3 pips and running in both directions rather than consistently against us.
The drawbacks are why this scores 6.9, the lowest on the ranked table. FXCM does not publish swap rates on its website, directing traders to check inside the platform — a transparency failure, because a prospective client cannot compare financing costs against a competitor without opening an account first. Withdrawals cost $40 by international bank wire and £15 by UK domestic transfer, and inactivity is $50 a year after twelve full months. And the no-dealing-desk claim carries a caveat here it would not carry elsewhere: it is the exact representation the CFTC found to be false between 2009 and 2014. Different owners and four active regulators now stand behind it, but no client can verify routing independently. The FXCM review sets out that history.
HFM Zero: the cheapest commission we found, on a spread we did not sample
The Zero account charges $3 per lot per side on currencies, so $6 a round turn — matching Tickmill and undercutting the $3.50 per side charged by Pepperstone and XM. Roughly $5 opens it. On that commission alone it belongs near the top of this table.
We are not publishing an all-in figure for it, because our spread sampling covered the Premium account rather than Zero, and an all-in number built from a spread we did not measure would be a guess dressed as data. What we can report is the Premium account, where EUR/USD ran 1.2 to 1.4 pips during the liquid London afternoon and widened to 2.5 in the early Asian session. That places HFM ahead of XM’s standard account on most pairs and behind the tighter rivals on every pair except USD/JPY, where it came last of four. Gold on Zero costs $5 per side, so $10 a round turn, which is materially worse than the currency rate.
Execution was sound: 50 trades, no requotes, eight with slippage of 0.1 to 0.3 pips split three in our favour and five against. The dormancy schedule is the real weakness and it escalates in a way few others do — $5 a month after six consecutive months without trading, rising to $10 after a full year, then increasing by a further $10 each additional year, so three years of neglect means $30 a month. The HFM review covers the account tiers in detail.
OANDA Core Pricing: a $10,000 entry for a 30% saving
Core Pricing charges $5 per side per 100,000 units — $10 a round turn on a standard lot — against a raw spread from 0.1 pips. Comparing the two accounts on EUR/USD during our test, Core Pricing worked out roughly 30% cheaper in all-in cost than OANDA’s Standard account. The catch is the entry: it asks for $10,000, and on our arithmetic the saving only repays that commitment above roughly 20 trades a day on majors. For most retail traders it does not.
The Standard account has no minimum deposit at all, and we measured EUR/USD at 1.1 pips there — above several competitors and above every account higher up this page. Gold at 38 cents was the widest in its comparison group. What impressed us more than the pricing was the recovery: spreads reached 2.8 pips on EUR/USD during a US employment release and normalised within about 30 seconds, faster than several competitors measured under the same conditions.
Drawbacks: the inactivity fee is 10 units of your account currency per month after twelve full months with no open position, although OANDA refunds up to three months of it if you resume trading, which is more than most competitors offer. Instrument coverage varies enormously by entity, from 2,200-plus under the widest to as few as 120 under some. And three settled US enforcement actions against the American entity, including a 2020 CFTC net-capital matter, are documented in the OANDA review. The disclosed retail loss rate is 76.6%.
FOREX.com RAW: the account that was repriced against traders
This one is on the list as a caution rather than a recommendation, because it shows how quickly a cost advantage can evaporate. RAW charges per leg at $5 per $100,000 traded internationally and $7 in the US. A round turn is two trades, so a standard lot costs about $10 round turn internationally and $14 in the US. Adding the measured 0.1 to 0.3-pip spread gives an all-in cost near 1.2 pips internationally — against roughly 0.7 pips at the raw-spread brokers above and 0.6 pips at three commission-free accounts.
RAW is still cheaper than FOREX.com’s own Standard account for an active trader, and both carry the same $100 minimum deposit, so there is no reason to sit on Standard. But it is no longer the competitive answer to the spread problem that our original testing suggested, and a trader who chose it on that basis is now paying above the market. Active Trader rebates worth up to 15% of costs start at $100 million of monthly volume, which is beyond essentially every retail trader.
The Standard account measured 1.2 pips on EUR/USD and 1.7 on GBP/USD — roughly double the GBP/USD spread available elsewhere, and the outlier that should give a frequent trader pause. Inactivity costs $15 a month after twelve consecutive months without trading, and $25 a month on the US entity, which is steeper than most. The NFA fined the group entity $700,000 in December 2022 over a 2021 platform malfunction that allowed dealing at incorrect prices across 14 currency pairs; it is settled, and it is set out in the FOREX.com review. Regulation is strong — FCA, NFA, ASIC, CySEC, MAS, CIRO and JFSA — and it is the reason the overall score stays at 7.9 despite the cost position.
Headline spreads that do not survive the all-in test
Several brokers advertise raw or zero-spread accounts that look competitive until the commission is added, and several more charge no commission at all on spreads wide enough that the absence of commission is irrelevant. These are the ones we measured and did not rank, with the reason in each case.
| Broker and account | Score | Measured spread | Commission | Why it is not on the ranked list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LiteFinance ECN | 5.1 | 0.2 to 0.8 pips | Up to $10 per lot round turn on majors; $30 minors and exotics; $12 crypto | The zero-spread headline is real; the all-in cost is not competitive |
| FBS Zero Spread | 6.5 | Not sampled | $20 per lot | Roughly triple the industry norm; the ECN account at $6 is the sensible tier |
| Swissquote Premium | 7.9 | 1.3 to 1.8 pips | None on forex | Came last on every instrument against all three comparators |
| HYCM Classic | 7.0 | 1.2 pips | None | Won five of seven against its own peer group but sits at $12 all-in |
| Equiti Premier | 6.8 | Raw spread not sampled | $7 round turn | Standard account measured 1.4 pips; Premier spread not separately measured |
| RoboForex Pro | 6.5 | 1.3 pips | None on Pro | ECN and Prime commission not quantified in our testing |
| Plus500 | 7.2 | 1.1 pips | None | Above the competition on nearly every instrument; USD/JPY at 2.0 pips |
| eToro | 7.8 | 1.0 pip | None on CFDs | Cheapest on no line in its comparison table; gold at 45 cents |
| AvaTrade | 7.6 | 0.9 pips fixed | None | Wider on six of seven, but held near 0.9 through a release that widened rivals to 3–5 pips |
The LiteFinance review is the clearest case study of the trap this article is about: an ECN account genuinely quoting from 0.2 pips, attached to a commission that can reach $10 a lot on majors and $30 on minors, against $7 at a mainstream rival. Two of these entries deserve a fairer hearing than the table gives them. AvaTrade uses fixed spreads, and during a US employment release the variable-spread brokers in our sample widened to 3 to 5 pips on EUR/USD while AvaTrade held near 0.9 — if you deliberately trade releases, a fixed spread that is worse on average can be better when it counts. And HYCM won five of the seven instruments in its own comparison group, which is a strong result for a commission-free account; it simply competes against a weaker set than the brokers at the top of this page. The Swissquote review, meanwhile, makes the case that a Swiss banking licence is worth paying a wider spread for if you place a handful of trades a month — a genuine trade-off rather than a failure, and irrelevant if you place dozens a day.
The rest are documented individually in our broker reviews, including Equiti, RoboForex, Plus500 and eToro.
Why the cheapest spread is not the cheapest broker
Spread and commission are the costs you can see before you trade. They are usually not the largest costs you actually pay. Four other charges routinely exceed the fractions of a pip argued over above, and three of them are invisible on any comparison table that ranks brokers by spread.
Overnight financing dwarfs the spread on any held position
If you hold a position past the daily rollover you pay or receive financing based on the interest-rate differential between the two currencies, plus the broker’s markup. Wednesday is charged at triple rate to cover the weekend. In February 2026 we measured a one-lot long EUR/USD position at roughly -$6.20 a night at Tickmill, -$6.42 at XM, -$6.50 at Equiti and IG, and about -$6.40 at eToro. Hold that position for twenty trading days and financing costs somewhere near $130 — against a spread cost of $6 to $8 to enter and exit it. IG’s own review makes the point explicitly: hold a position a month and funding alone exceeds the spread cost many times over.
The practical consequence is that a swing or position trader should compare financing rates first and spreads second, and a broker at the bottom of this cost table with cheap financing may cost less over a year than the broker at the top. FXCM does not publish swap rates at all, directing clients to check inside the platform, which makes that comparison impossible before you open an account. Swap-free accounts are not automatically the answer either: several brokers replace the swap with a fixed administration charge that can exceed it, and Pepperstone’s $100 per standard lot after five days is a clear example. XM’s Ultra Low account, which carries no swap and no substitute fee, is the exception rather than the rule.
Inactivity fees take money from accounts that are doing nothing
The spread differences on this page run to fractions of a dollar per lot. Inactivity fees run to hundreds of dollars a year, and they apply whether or not you trade. The spread is what triggers them.
- ThinkMarkets: $30 per month after 180 days when we tested — up to $360 a year, though published sources now disagree on whether it still applies.
- AvaTrade: $50 after three consecutive months without a trade, levied quarterly, plus a further $100 administration fee at twelve months.
- HFM: $5 monthly after six months, rising to $10 after a year, then a further $10 each additional year.
- CMC Markets: £10 per month after twelve months, or £120 a year from a dormant balance.
- FOREX.com: $15 per month after twelve months, $25 on the US entity.
- XM: from 90 days, at $5 to $15 per month depending on the stage of dormancy.
- LiteFinance: $10 every 30 days after just 60 days, and logging in does not count as activity.
- Pepperstone, Capital.com, FBS and RoboForex: none at any duration.
A trader who saves 0.2 pips per lot and trades 100 lots a year saves $200. A single year of dormancy at ThinkMarkets’ tested rate costs more than that. If you trade seasonally, or intend to fund an account and wait for a setup, the dormancy schedule is a more important number than the spread. Withdraw the balance or close the account rather than leaving it idle.
Withdrawal and conversion charges hit the money on its way out
Most brokers on this list charge nothing to deposit and nothing to withdraw on their own side. The exceptions are specific and expensive. ThinkMarkets e-wallet withdrawals cost 5.5% through Skrill and up to 7.5% through Neteller. HYCM charges $30 on a bank transfer below $300, which on a $250 withdrawal is 12% of the amount — and a $20 minimum deposit invites exactly the small accounts that will hit it. FXCM charges $40 by international wire. Swissquote charges €10 through its Luxembourg entity. FxPro applies a fee of roughly 2% to 2.7% if you withdraw without having placed a trade. Plus500 allows five free withdrawals a month, then $10, plus a further $10 if you withdraw to a different method than you deposited with. Equiti’s published schedule reserves the right to charge 0.5% to 1% where an account shows “low, inactive, non-performing, suspicious or irregular” activity — wording broad enough that a nominally free withdrawal becomes discretionary.
Currency conversion is the quietest of the lot. Capital.com charges 0.7% of the spot rate whenever you trade an instrument denominated outside your account currency; Admirals charges 0.3%; eToro charges 0.5% to 1.5% depending on currency, method and tier, applied on the way in and again on the way out; Plus500 charges up to 0.7%. On a GBP account trading US instruments, 0.7% each way is worth far more than the 0.1-pip spread difference between two raw accounts.
Slippage and spread widening are real costs that no schedule lists
The advertised spread is what you see in calm conditions. What you pay is the price at which your order actually fills. Across our 50-order tests, slippage appeared on 6 of 50 orders at Axi, 8 of 50 at HFM and Capital.com, 10 of 50 at FOREX.com, 3 of 50 at Pepperstone and Tickmill, and roughly 15% of trades at FXTM and FXCM. Magnitudes were mostly 0.1 to 0.3 pips, which is comparable to the entire spread advantage separating the top ten accounts on this page.
Direction matters more than frequency. At Axi, four of six slipped orders went against us and two in our favour; at HFM, five against and three in favour; at FXCM and FOREX.com, both directions roughly evenly. That two-way pattern is what honest market execution looks like. A broker reporting zero negative slippage across 50 orders would be the finding worth worrying about, not the reassuring one.
Widening around scheduled data is universal and large. We recorded EUR/USD reaching 3.5 pips at ThinkMarkets during the February 2026 US non-farm payrolls release, 5.2 pips on RoboForex’s Pro account, 3 to 4 pips at Swissquote and HYCM, 2.8 pips at OANDA and 2.1 pips at Admirals. Recovery speed varied more than the peak did — OANDA normalised within about 30 seconds, faster than several competitors under the same conditions. If your strategy places orders into releases, recovery behaviour and guaranteed-stop availability matter more than the calm-conditions spread, and IG, CMC Markets and Capital.com all offer guaranteed stops that fill at exactly the specified level regardless of gapping, for a premium charged only if triggered.
What the difference actually amounts to over a year
Cost differences of a fraction of a pip sound trivial and become significant only through repetition. The table below applies the measured all-in figures from this page to four trading frequencies, on one standard lot of EUR/USD per round turn. It is arithmetic, not a forecast, and it assumes constant conditions that no real account experiences.
| Round turns per month | At $4.00 all-in | At $6.00 all-in | At $8.00 all-in | At $12.00 all-in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 (one or two a week) | $288 a year | $432 | $576 | $864 |
| 30 (one or two a day) | $1,440 | $2,160 | $2,880 | $4,320 |
| 150 (five to ten a day) | $7,200 | $10,800 | $14,400 | $21,600 |
| 400 (scalping) | $19,200 | $28,800 | $38,400 | $57,600 |
The pattern is the point. At one or two trades a week, the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive account on this page is under $600 a year, and account safety, platform quality and withdrawal reliability should decide your choice instead. At five to ten trades a day the same gap exceeds $10,000, and cost becomes the dominant variable in the account. Our own testing on AvaTrade produced the same shape from the other direction: an occasional trader paid $54 a month against $36 to $42 at a raw-spread broker, while a scalper paid $3,600-plus against $2,400 to $2,800.
Note also what the table does not include: financing on held positions, inactivity charges, conversion fees, withdrawal charges and slippage. Adding those routinely changes which column a broker belongs in.
Cost matters, and it does not change the odds
Everything above is about reducing a known, certain, recurring drag on an account. That is worth doing, and it is the one variable in trading you can control precisely. It is not a route to a profitable account, and it should not be read as one. Lowering your cost per trade from 0.8 pips to 0.4 pips halves the drag; it does nothing whatsoever to the probability that any given trade works out.
Leveraged forex and CFDs are high-risk products. Every broker on this page is legally required to publish the proportion of its retail clients who lose money, and every one of those figures is a majority. These are the figures each broker disclosed, with the entity or observation noted where it varies.
| Broker | Published retail loss rate | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Interactive Brokers | 59.7% | Lowest disclosed figure in this comparison |
| FXCM | 65% | Entity disclosure |
| CMC Markets | 68% | Spread betting and CFDs |
| IG | 69% | Entity disclosure |
| HFM | 70.77% | Entity disclosure |
| Admirals | 72% to 76% | Varies by entity |
| Axi | 72.4% global; 83.1% on one entity | Entity matters |
| Pepperstone | 72.9% | UK entity, observed July 2026 |
| Tickmill | 73% EU; 69% UK | Published separately by entity |
| FOREX.com | 74% | Entity disclosure |
| ThinkMarkets | 75.05% | Recorded at testing; not verified at publication |
| XM | 75.33% | Entity disclosure |
| FxPro | 76% | Entity disclosure |
| OANDA | 76.6% | Entity disclosure |
| Capital.com | 78.48% international; 61% UK | Entity matters |
| FXTM | 88% when we tested | Not verified at the time of publication |
Read those alongside the cost table rather than after it. The broker at the top of the cost ranking disclosed the highest loss rate in the set; the broker with the lowest disclosed loss rate sits third on cost and is the hardest of the group for a beginner to use. There is no arrangement of these numbers that produces a broker which is simultaneously cheapest, safest and easiest.
Before cost enters the decision at all, check that the entity you would actually be onboarded to holds a licence you can verify, that client money is segregated, and that a compensation scheme stands behind the balance. Several brokers here route non-UK and non-EU clients to offshore entities with no statutory scheme at all, which is a larger exposure than any spread on this page. Our guides to financial regulation, the Financial Conduct Authority and negative balance protection cover what those protections do and do not reach, and our broker coverage explains how we test.
Nothing on this page is investment advice or a recommendation to trade any instrument. We do not know your circumstances, your objectives or what you can afford to lose. Only trade money you can afford to lose entirely, and consider taking independent regulated advice if you are unsure.
Frequently asked questions
Does a 0.0 pip spread mean the trade is free
No. In every case we examined, a 0.0-pip headline describes a raw-spread or ECN account carrying a separate per-lot commission, and the advertised figure excludes it. Tickmill Raw advertises from 0.0 pips and charges $6 a round turn. FxPro Raw+ advertises from 0.0 pips and charges $7. XM Zero advertises from 0.0 pips and charges $7. Each of those costs roughly 0.7 pips once the commission is converted, which is more than three commission-free accounts on this page charge in spread alone. The 0.0 figure is also a “from” price observed at peak liquidity, not an average.
Is a raw account with commission always cheaper than a commission-free account
No, and this list is the counter-example. Admirals Trade, IG’s standard CFD account and Capital.com all charge no commission and all measured 0.6 pips on EUR/USD, which is about $6.00 a round turn. That is cheaper than Tickmill Raw, XM Zero, FxPro Raw+ and Pepperstone Razor on MT4 or MT5, all of which are raw accounts with commission. Raw accounts win where the broker’s commission is genuinely low — FXTM Advantage at $4 and CMC’s FX Active at $5 are the two clearest cases. They lose where the commission is $7 and the commission-free competitor prices tightly.
How do I convert a commission into pips so I can compare accounts
On EUR/USD, one pip on one standard lot is worth about $10. Divide the round-turn commission by 10 to get its value in pips, then add the spread. A $7 round turn is 0.7 pips; add a 0.1-pip spread and the account costs 0.8 pips all-in. A $4.50 round turn is 0.45 pips; add a 0.2-pip spread and it costs 0.65 pips. Do this before opening an account, because brokers publish the two components on different pages and rarely add them for you. Note that the $10 per pip figure applies to a standard lot on EUR/USD specifically — on other pairs and lot sizes the pip value differs.
Which broker had the lowest all-in cost in our testing
FXTM’s Advantage account, at roughly 0.4 pips or about $4.00 a round turn on EUR/USD, measured at peak liquidity in the first quarter of 2026. That figure comes with a real caveat: our separate sampling for another review recorded 0.5 pips of spread on the same account in a later window, which would put all-in cost nearer $9. FXTM also scores 7.1 overall, the lowest of any broker near the top of the cost table. CMC Markets FX Active at about $5.00 is the cheapest account attached to a broker scoring above 8.0.
Why do your spread figures differ from what the broker advertises
Because brokers advertise a minimum and we measure an average. A published “from 0.0 pips” describes the tightest quote the account can produce, usually during the London and New York overlap on the most liquid pair. We sample across the Asian, London and New York sessions and through scheduled data releases, which produces a higher and more representative number. Spreads are also variable and repriced continuously, so any figure — theirs or ours — is a snapshot. Ours is anchored to the month we measured it for exactly that reason.
Do low spreads mean worse execution
Not in our data. The tightest raw spread we measured, Pepperstone Razor at 0.09 pips on EUR/USD, came with a median fill around 30 milliseconds and 47 of 50 orders filling at the requested price. Interactive Brokers combined 0.2-pip spreads with sub-40-millisecond equity fills. What does vary is slippage during volatility, and there the pattern to look for is two-way slippage — some fills in your favour, some against — rather than an absence of slippage, which is not what a genuine market-execution model produces.
Should I choose a broker on cost alone
Only if you trade frequently enough for cost to dominate. At one or two round turns a week, the difference between the cheapest and most expensive account on this page is under $600 a year, and regulation, withdrawal reliability and platform quality matter far more. At five to ten a day the same difference exceeds $10,000 and cost becomes the largest controllable variable in the account. Our scoring weights regulation most heavily for that reason, and the cost ranking on this page is deliberately a different order from our overall ranking.
What costs should I check that are not spread or commission
Four. Overnight financing, which on a position held a month routinely exceeds the entire spread cost of entering and exiting it. Inactivity fees, which range from nothing at Pepperstone and Capital.com to $30 a month at ThinkMarkets when we tested. Withdrawal and currency conversion charges, which can reach 7.5% on an e-wallet withdrawal or 0.7% each way on conversion. And slippage, which ran at 0.1 to 0.3 pips on 6% to 20% of orders across the brokers we tested — comparable to the entire spread difference between the accounts at the top of this page.
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