Where the edge survives
Forex brokers for scalping
A scalper pays the spread and commission more often than anyone, so the account decides the strategy. On published figures, a round turn on EUR/USD costs about 0.2 pips at RoboForex Prime and 1.6 pips at Tickmill Classic — an eightfold difference, charged on every trade, before any market movement.
Conditions checked against each broker's own pages
Cost per round turn, and permission
Cheapest round turn first, with what each broker states about strategy restrictions beside it. Both matter: a cheap account that forbids your method is no use, and a permissive account with wide spreads takes the edge anyway.
| Broker | Account | Cost per round turn | What it says about strategies | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RoboForex | Prime | About 0.2 pips in and out — 0 pips plus 10 per million | Describes testing strategies and advisors under real market conditions | Market execution with no commission on cent and standard accounts; free VPS listed |
| Alpari | Pro ECN | About 0.5 pips — 0.0 pips plus $2.5 per lot on forex | No strategy restriction published on the account pages | Stop-out at 50% on ECN accounts, margin call at 80% |
| Tickmill | Raw | 0.6 pips — 0.0 pips plus $3 per lot per side | «All strategies allowed» on Classic and Raw, stated on the account cards | Minimum trade size 0.01 lots; EAs barred only on the $30 welcome account |
| FxPro | Raw+ | 0.7 pips — zero spreads most of the day plus up to $3.5 per lot per side | States that Expert Advisors are fully compatible with its MetaTrader platforms | Publishes a VPS guide and separate execution information |
| LiteFinance | ECN | 0.0 points plus commission from $0.25 per lot — the top of the range is not published | Presents its demo as a place to test advisors under real market conditions | Market execution, no requotes and no stop or limit levels, per its account page |
| Bybit | MT5 CFD, Tight-Spread mode | $6 per lot on forex, on a raw spread it does not publish | Expert Advisors supported on the CFD account | Commission is charged to the balance and can itself trigger liquidation |
| Deriv | MT5 | Not published as a figure | Publishes instructions for connecting an advisor to Deriv MT5 | Synthetic indices trade 24/7, which no other broker here offers |
| Libertex | Libertex platform | Commission on trade value, published inside the platform | No MetaTrader, so no MQL advisors | Overnight fee per night held on top of the commission |
| ForTrade | Fortrade account | Not published | No automation policy published on the pages we checked | MetaTrader 4 and its own platform |
Scroll the table sideways →
Costs are our arithmetic on published spreads and commissions, read on 24 August 2026; permissions are quoted from the brokers' own pages. Minimum order distance — the field comparison sites usually rank on — is published by none of the nine, and we say so rather than estimate it.
Scalping is an arithmetic problem before it is a strategy
A strategy taking ten pips per trade on a 1.6-pip account gives away sixteen per cent of the target to costs; the same strategy on a 0.2-pip account gives away two. Multiply by the number of trades a scalper makes and the account, not the method, decides whether anything is left.
The comparison to make is total cost per round turn, not the advertised spread: RoboForex Prime works out at about $2 a lot, its ECN account $4, Alpari Pro ECN $5, Tickmill Raw $6, FxPro Raw+ $7 at the stated maximum. Against commission-free accounts at the same brokers — $12 to $16 — the difference is not marginal.
The part that resists arithmetic is spread behaviour. Raw spreads are quoted «from», and a scalper trades in exactly the conditions that widen them: around releases, at rollover, in the thin hours. The commission is the fixed half of your cost, and the fixed half is the only half you can plan against.
Permission, and how brokers phrase it
Tickmill states «all strategies allowed» on its Classic and Raw account cards, which is the clearest wording any broker here uses. FxPro states that Expert Advisors are fully compatible with its MetaTrader platforms. RoboForex describes testing advisors under real market conditions and lists a free VPS.
None of the nine publishes an explicit prohibition on scalping on the pages we checked — but nor do most publish an explicit permission, and the restriction, where it exists in this industry, usually lives in the client agreement or in the terms of a promotion rather than on a marketing page. Tickmill's own exception proves the pattern: all strategies on live accounts, no advisors on the $30 welcome account.
If your method depends on holding positions for seconds, that is a question to put in writing to support before funding, and to keep the answer.
The field nobody publishes
Comparison pages in this niche rank brokers on minimum order distance — how close to the current price a stop or limit may sit — because a scalper working inside a few pips is stopped outright by a wide one. We could not find that figure published by any of the nine brokers on the pages we captured.
LiteFinance comes closest, stating market execution with no requotes and no stop or limit levels on its ECN account. That is the claim in the shape a scalper needs; it is also unverifiable from outside, like every execution claim in this industry.
What can be verified is the fee structure and the strategy policy, which is what the table above compares. Treat the rest as questions for support, and test the answers on a demo before they cost money.
Questions people ask
Which broker is best for scalping?
On published figures, RoboForex's Prime account is the cheapest place to trade frequently — about 0.2 pips per round turn — while Tickmill is the clearest about permission, stating that all strategies are allowed on its Classic and Raw accounts. The trade-off is regulation: RoboForex's licence is Belize, Tickmill's European entity carries a compensation fund.
Do brokers allow scalping?
None of the nine we track publishes a prohibition, and few publish an explicit permission. Tickmill states «all strategies allowed» on its live accounts; where restrictions exist in this industry they generally sit in the client agreement or in promotion terms — Tickmill bars advisors on its $30 welcome account, for instance.
What spread do I need for scalping?
The question is the total, not the spread. A round turn costs 0.2 to 0.7 pips on the raw-spread accounts here and 1.2 to 1.6 pips on commission-free ones. On a strategy targeting ten pips, that is the difference between paying two per cent and sixteen per cent of the target away.
Is a raw-spread account always better for scalping?
Usually, because the commission is fixed and predictable while the spread is not. The exception is a strategy trading rarely enough that the per-lot commission outweighs a slightly wider spread — which by definition is not scalping.
Does execution speed matter more than cost?
It matters, and it cannot be checked from outside: every broker claims fast execution and none publishes verifiable data. Cost can be checked, published policies can be checked, and both are on this page — treat execution claims as something to test on a demo rather than to compare in a table.
Do I need a VPS to scalp?
Only if you automate. A manual scalper needs a stable connection; an automated one needs the terminal running continuously, which is what a VPS provides — free at RoboForex, offered by Alpari and LiteFinance, rented yourself elsewhere.
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 full cost arithmetic for every account is on what a trade actually costs, raw-spread accounts specifically on ECN brokers, and a demo account is where execution claims can be tested before they cost anything.