Commission instead of markup
ECN forex brokers
Nobody can verify from outside that an order reached an electronic network — no regulator defines the term and no broker publishes routing data. What can be verified is the pricing model: a spread near zero plus a stated commission per lot. Six of the nine brokers we track sell an account of that shape, and one of them calls it ECN while charging no commission at all.
Conditions checked against each broker's own pages
Raw-spread accounts, priced
Ordered by what a standard lot of EUR/USD costs to open and close on the raw-spread account, cheapest first. The commission column is what the broker publishes; the total is our arithmetic on it, and the working is on our lowest-spread page.
| Broker | Account | Spread | Commission | In and out, one lot | To open |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RoboForex | Prime | Floating from 0 pips | 10 per million traded | About 0.2 pips in and out — $2 a lot | 10 USD / 10 EUR |
| RoboForex | ECN | From 0 pips | 20 per million traded | About 0.4 pips — $4 a lot | 10 USD |
| Alpari | Pro ECN | From 0.0 pips | $2.5 per lot traded on forex | About 0.5 pips — $5 a lot, read as a per-side charge | $500 |
| Tickmill | Raw | 0.0 pips | $3 per lot per side | 0.6 pips — $6 a lot, and Tickmill states the per-side charge itself | 100 |
| FxPro | Raw+ | Zero spreads for 90%+ of the trading day | Maximum 3.5 USD per lot per side | 0.7 pips — $7 a lot at the stated maximum | No fixed minimum |
| LiteFinance | ECN | Floating, from 0.0 points | From $0.25 per lot | Cannot be completed — the top of the commission range is not published | $50 |
| Alpari | ECN | From 0.1 pips | None | 0.1 pips — $1 a lot, but this is a marked-up spread rather than raw pricing | $300 |
| Bybit | MT5 CFD, Tight-Spread mode | Not published | $6 per lot on forex | Cannot be completed — the raw spread underneath is not published | Not published |
Scroll the table sideways →
Spreads and commissions as each broker publishes them, read on 24 August 2026; the total is our arithmetic on those figures. Deriv, Libertex and ForTrade publish no raw-spread account and are absent from the table rather than marked as expensive.
What ECN means, and what nobody can check
In principle an ECN account routes your order into an electronic network where banks and other participants quote against each other, and the broker earns a commission for the access rather than a markup on the price. That is the claim, and it is a reasonable one.
What cannot be checked is whether it happens. No regulator defines the term, no broker publishes routing data, and nothing in a trading terminal distinguishes an order that reached a liquidity pool from one the broker matched internally. Every «ECN» badge on every comparison page in this industry, including the pages above ours in the results, is repeating a claim rather than reporting a verified fact.
So the useful question is not who is a real ECN broker. It is who prices like one: a spread that starts at or near zero, plus a commission stated per lot or per million traded. That structure is in the tariff, it is checkable, and it is what actually changes your cost.
The tell: an ECN account with no commission is not one
Alpari publishes an account called ECN with a spread from 0.1 pips and commission «None». Read the structure rather than the name: if the broker takes nothing per lot, it earns from the spread, which means the spread is marked up — the opposite of the model the letters describe. Its Pro ECN account, at $2.5 per lot on forex with spreads from 0.0, is the one shaped like raw pricing.
This is not deception; the account is exactly as described on the page, and at 0.1 pips all in it is genuinely cheap on published figures. It is a naming convention, and it is the reason to compare structures rather than badges.
The same reading catches Bybit from the other side: a $6 per lot commission is raw-spread pricing in shape, but the spread it sits on is not published, so the total cannot be worked out at all.
What raw accounts actually cost
Converted to one number for a standard lot of EUR/USD: RoboForex Prime about $2, its ECN account $4, Alpari Pro ECN around $5, Tickmill Raw $6, FxPro Raw+ $7 at the stated maximum commission. One pip on a standard lot is about $10, so those are 0.2 to 0.7 pips of total cost.
Against a commission-free account at the same brokers — 1.2 pips at FxPro Standard, 1.3 at RoboForex Pro, 1.6 at Tickmill Classic — the raw accounts win by a factor of two to eight on published figures. The catch is that spreads quoted «from» are a best case: the commission is fixed and the spread is not, so the real gap narrows whenever liquidity thins.
Which is the honest summary of raw pricing: it moves most of your cost into a number you can predict, and leaves the unpredictable part smaller.
Who does not sell one
Deriv, Libertex and ForTrade publish no raw-spread account among the brokers we track. Libertex prices its own platform by commission on trade value rather than by spread, which is a third model again; Deriv and ForTrade publish no comparable figure at all.
That is not a mark against them so much as a limit on what can be compared. A broker that does not publish spreads cannot be placed in a table about spreads, and pretending otherwise is how comparison pages end up recommending whoever markets hardest.
Questions people ask
What is an ECN forex broker?
One that claims to route orders to an electronic network of liquidity providers and earn a commission rather than a markup on the spread. The claim cannot be verified from outside — no regulator defines the term and no broker publishes routing data — so compare the pricing structure instead: raw spread plus a stated commission per lot.
Which brokers offer ECN or raw-spread accounts?
Of the nine we track: RoboForex on its Prime and ECN accounts, Alpari on Pro ECN, Tickmill on Raw, FxPro on Raw+ and LiteFinance on ECN. Deriv, Libertex and ForTrade publish no such account.
Is an ECN account cheaper?
Usually, on published figures. Raw accounts at these brokers work out at 0.2 to 0.7 pips all in on EUR/USD, against 1.2 to 1.6 pips on their commission-free accounts. The advantage narrows when spreads widen, because the commission is fixed and the spread is not.
Why does one ECN account have no commission?
Because the cost is in the spread instead. Alpari's ECN account quotes from 0.1 pips with no commission, which means a marked-up spread rather than raw pricing — the structure is the opposite of what the name suggests, even though the total is low.
Is ECN better than STP?
They describe different pieces of the same idea and neither is verifiable from a client's side. Both are worth less as labels than the two numbers a broker publishes: the spread it quotes and the commission it charges per lot.
What deposit does an ECN account need?
It varies more than the pricing does: 10 USD at RoboForex, $50 at LiteFinance, 100 at Tickmill, $500 for Alpari's Pro ECN, and no fixed minimum at FxPro. The cheapest raw pricing here also has the lowest threshold, which is unusual.
Getting the terminal itself is a different question — which version to download and where from. The full cost arithmetic for every account here is on what a trade actually costs, and a demo account The same arithmetic across every account type, commission-free ones included, is on what a trade actually costs, and a demo account lets you watch a raw spread widen around news before it matters.