A method, not a ranking
How to choose a forex broker
Most broker comparisons hand you a winner. This is the procedure behind ours: five checks in the order that decides outcomes, starting with the company that will actually hold your account and ending with the things worth ignoring. Every step links to the page where the figures live.
Figures checked against each broker's own pages
Before you start
The order matters more than the list. Almost every criterion people compare — instruments, education, bonuses, awards — moves the result less than the two at the top, and a comparison that starts in the wrong place produces a confident answer to the wrong question.
What follows is the method we use on every broker page here, written out. It takes about half an hour the first time, and most of that is reading two register entries.
Five checks, in order
- 01
Find out which company would hold your account
Not the brand — the legal entity, which is named on the account opening page and in the client agreement, and which is chosen by where you live. Tickmill answers to the FCA in London, CySEC in Cyprus and the FSCA in South Africa, and also runs a Seychelles company; Fortrade runs six entities; FxPro three. Which one you get decides everything downstream.
Then check what that entity carries. The UK's FSCS pays up to £85,000 per person per firm; the Cypriot fund pays the lower of 90% of claims and €20,000; an offshore registration in Belize, the Comoros or St Vincent carries no scheme at all. There is a quick tell if you are in a hurry: a European or UK entity must display the percentage of its retail accounts that lose money, and offshore entities usually do not.
This is first because it is the only check that cannot be undone later. Cost can be renegotiated by switching accounts; the protection behind a failed firm cannot.
- 02
Work out what one trade costs, in a single number
Spread plus commission, converted to the same unit. One standard lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 euro and one pip on it is about $10, so a $6 round-turn commission is 0.6 pips and a 1.6-pip spread is $16. Only after both halves are in the same unit are two accounts comparable.
The gap between accounts is larger than between brokers. Tickmill's commission-free Classic account quotes 1.6 pips — $16 a lot — while its own Raw account costs about $6 all in. Across the brokers we track the range runs from roughly 0.2 pips to 1.8 points on published figures.
This is second because it compounds. It is charged on every trade, winning or losing, and for an active trader it exceeds every other difference on this page within a year.
- 03
Check you can trade small enough to learn
The smallest position most brokers allow is 0.01 lots, where a pip on EUR/USD is worth about ten cents. Cent accounts go further: RoboForex holds the ProCent balance in cents, so a 10 USD deposit shows as 1,000 cents and the same lot sizes move a hundredth of the money.
Look at the leverage cap in the same breath, because it decides how large a position your deposit can carry. A European entity caps retail clients at 30:1; offshore entities of the same brands offer 1:2000 and 1:3000. The high number is sold as an advantage and functions as a speed limit removed.
Third, because position size is the only variable that reliably decides whether a bad month ends your trading or merely annoys you.
- 04
Pick the platform you will actually use, and check the broker runs it
MetaTrader 4 and 5 come from MetaQuotes and cTrader from cTrader Ltd, so the software is identical whichever broker licenses it — a comparison of brokers on “platform quality” is comparing the same program with itself. What differs is which one your broker runs: ForTrade offers MT4 and no MT5, Deriv and Bybit are MT5 only, three brokers run cTrader, four connect to TradingView.
If you already own a robot, this step moves up: MQL4 code runs on MT4, MQL5 on MT5, cTrader Algo on cTrader, and none of them ports. If you do not, this matters far less than the first two checks, because the interface stops being confusing after a fortnight while the account terms keep charging.
- 05
Read how money comes back before you send any
Withdrawal methods, fees, minimums and the identity checks that must be complete before the first withdrawal — done at account opening rather than at the moment you want the money. This is also where any bonus is worth reading: the one no-deposit offer among the nine brokers we track requires verification and a $100 deposit before profit can be moved, and one broker's bonus published elsewhere demands 10,000 in trading volume for every 1 of bonus.
It is last on this list and first in most complaints. Regulators report the same pattern repeatedly: deposits work smoothly, withdrawals meet a condition nobody mentioned at the start.
What to ignore, and why
Instrument counts. “10,000+ instruments” is a number nobody has ever needed; what matters is whether the handful of markets you intend to trade are there and on what terms.
Education sections. Every broker has one, they are broadly identical, and all of them end at the same call to action. They are not a reason to choose, and they are not why the firm earns.
Awards and “world's number one”. No comparable global ranking of brokers by size exists, because turnover is not published in a comparable form — FxPro's own site title says “The World's #1 Forex Broker”, and there is no measurement behind it that anyone could check.
Bonuses. Of nine brokers, one offers anything without a deposit, and the money out still requires a deposit. A bonus is a customer acquisition cost, and you pay it back through the spread.
The check before the deposit
The entity name from the client agreement, found in the regulator's register, with the status current and the permissions covering dealing rather than only advising.
The total cost of a round turn on the pair you trade, written down, so you can recognise a wider spread when you see one.
The smallest position size, and what a fifty-pip move against it costs in your currency.
The withdrawal path: method, fee, minimum, and what verification must be finished first.
If any of the four cannot be answered from the broker's own pages, that is an answer too — and it is the reason four of the nine brokers we track cannot be compared on cost at all.
Questions people ask
What is the most important thing when choosing a forex broker?
Which legal entity will hold your account, because it decides your compensation scheme, your leverage cap and often the products available. The same brand can offer a UK account with £85,000 of protection and an offshore account with none.
How do I compare broker costs properly?
Convert spread and commission into one number. One standard lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 euro and one pip is about $10, so a $3-per-side commission is 0.6 pips round turn. Add it to the spread and compare totals — a 0.0-pip account with commission can cost more or less than a 1.2-pip account without.
Should I choose a broker by regulation or by cost?
By regulation first, then cost within what is left. On our own list the cheapest entry and the cheapest round turn both belong to a broker licensed in Belize, with no compensation scheme — which is exactly the trade-off you are making when you sort by price alone.
Does the trading platform matter when choosing a broker?
Less than it seems, unless you already have a robot. MetaTrader and cTrader are written by independent vendors, so the software is identical across brokers; what differs is which version your broker runs and what the account behind it costs.
What should I check before making my first deposit?
The entity in the regulator's register, the total cost of a round turn, the smallest position you can open, and the withdrawal path including fees and verification. Anything you cannot answer from the broker's own pages is itself information.
Are broker rankings useful at all?
As a shortlist, yes; as an answer, no. A ranking encodes someone else's weighting of criteria. The order on this page is ours, stated openly so you can disagree with it — which is more than most rankings, including the ones with a methodology page, actually let you do.
The figures behind each step: entities and licences, cost per lot, position sizes and leverage caps and the platforms. To run the checks yourself against all nine brokers at once, use the comparison table.