Spread plus commission
Lowest spread forex brokers
The tightest spread is rarely the cheapest trade. RoboForex Prime quotes from 0 pips and charges 10 per million, which works out at about 0.2 pips on a standard lot of EUR/USD; Tickmill Raw quotes 0.0 and charges $3 per lot per side, about 0.6 pips; Tickmill's own commission-free Classic account quotes 1.6. Spread plus commission is the number that decides.
Spreads and commissions checked against each broker's own pages
What one standard lot of EUR/USD costs
Ordered by what one standard lot of EUR/USD costs to open and close, cheapest first, using each broker's own published spread and commission. Accounts whose cost cannot be worked out from published figures sit at the bottom, and the reason is in the cell.
| Broker | Account | Spread from | Commission | In and out, one lot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpari | ECN | from 0.1 pips | none | 0.1 pips · $10.1 pips of spread and no commission — $1 on a standard lot. |
| RoboForex | Prime | floating from 0 pips | 10 per million traded | 0.2 pips · $210 per million on a 100,000 lot is $1, so $2 in and out — 0.2 pips. RoboForex does not say whether the charge falls on each side; this assumes it does. |
| Alpari | Standard | from 0.3 pips | none | 0.3 pips · $30.3 pips of spread and no commission — $3 on a standard lot. |
| RoboForex | ECN | from 0 pips | 20 per million traded | 0.4 pips · $420 per million on a 100,000 lot is $2 a side, $4 in and out — 0.4 pips. |
| Alpari | Pro ECN | from 0.0 pips | $2.5 per lot traded on forex | 0.5 pips · $5$2.5 per lot in and $2.5 out is $5 — 0.5 pips. Read as a per-side charge, which is how a per-lot-traded commission usually works. |
| Tickmill | Raw | 0.0 pips | $3 per lot per side | 0.6 pips · $6$3 in and $3 out is $6 — 0.6 pips. Tickmill states the per-side charge itself. |
| FxPro | Raw+ | zero spreads for 90%+ of the trading day | max 3.5 USD per lot per side | 0.7 pips · $7$3.5 in and $3.5 out is $7 — 0.7 pips at the stated maximum, and the spread is zero only for most of the day, not all of it. |
| FxPro | Standard | floating FX spreads from 1.2 pips | none | 1.2 pips · $121.2 pips of spread and no commission — $12 on a standard lot. |
| RoboForex | Pro | floating from 1.3 pips | none | 1.3 pips · $131.3 pips of spread and no commission — $13 on a standard lot. |
| Alpari | Micro | from 1.5 pips | none | 1.5 pips · $151.5 pips of spread and no commission — $15 on a standard lot. |
| Tickmill | Classic | 1.6 pips | zero commissions | 1.6 pips · $161.6 pips of spread and no commission — $16 on a standard lot. |
| LiteFinance | Classic | floating, from 1.8 points | none | 1.8 pips · $181.8 points of spread and no commission — $18 on a standard lot. |
| Bybit | MT5 CFD, Tight-Spread mode | not published | $6 per lot on forex | cannot be worked outThe $6 per lot is 0.6 pips on a standard lot, but Bybit does not publish the raw spread it sits on top of, so the total cannot be worked out. |
| LiteFinance | ECN | floating, from 0.0 points | from $0.25 per lot | cannot be worked out$0.25 per lot is the floor of a range, and LiteFinance publishes neither the top of it nor whether it applies per side. |
| Deriv | MT5 | not published as a figure | not published | cannot be worked outDeriv publishes a specification table that loads ten instruments at a time in the browser and no EUR/USD figure on a static page. |
| Libertex | Libertex platform | not published | percentage of trade value, published in the platform | cannot be worked outLibertex's specification page says tight spreads apply and to check them inside the platform, so there is nothing to compare from outside. |
| ForTrade | Fortrade account | not published to visitors outside its markets | not published | cannot be worked outThe spreads page answers with a country notice rather than a table for visitors it does not serve. |
Scroll the table sideways →
Spreads and commissions are quoted as each broker publishes them. The last column is our arithmetic on those figures — one standard lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 euro, one pip on it is about $10 — and the working is shown in every row so you can redo it. Spreads quoted «from» are a best case, not a promise.
The spread is one of three things you pay
A quoted spread is the gap between buy and sell price at the moment you look. It is real, it is not the whole bill, and on the accounts that advertise 0.0 pips it is deliberately not the whole bill: those accounts move the cost into a commission per lot. Tickmill is the clearest example because both accounts come from the same broker — Classic quotes 1.6 pips with no commission, Raw quotes 0.0 and charges $3 per lot per side. On a standard lot that is $16 against $6.
The arithmetic behind every figure in the table is the same. One standard lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 euro, and one pip on it is worth about $10. So a $6 round-turn commission is 0.6 pips, and a 1.6-pip spread is $16. Once both are in the same unit they can be added, and only then do the accounts become comparable.
The third cost is swap — what you pay or receive for holding a position overnight. It does not appear in this table because it depends on the instrument, the direction and the day, and because it is the figure brokers publish least consistently. If you hold positions for more than a day, look it up per instrument before the spread matters at all.
What a zero-spread account actually promises
Read the qualifier next to the zero. FxPro states zero spreads on Raw+ for 90%+ of the trading day, which is a straightforward admission that the other 10% is a different number. RoboForex and LiteFinance write theirs as floating from 0 pips, where from does the same work: it is the best case, usually on the most liquid pair at the most liquid hour.
None of this is misleading in itself — a floating spread genuinely floats, and no broker can promise otherwise. It does mean that comparing two brokers on their best-case spread compares two marketing floors rather than two prices.
It also means the top of the table should be read with that in mind. The cheapest rows on published figures are commission-free accounts quoting from 0.1 and 0.3 pips, where the entire cost is the floating part and nothing about it is contractual. One row below sit accounts where most of the cost is a fixed commission you can predict before you open the trade. Which of the two is genuinely cheaper depends on how often the floating half is anywhere near its floor — and that is the one thing no broker publishes.
Three brokers you cannot compare from outside
Deriv publishes a specification table that loads ten instruments at a time in a browser widget; nothing on a static page gives a EUR/USD figure, so there is nothing to quote. Libertex is more direct: its specification page says tight spreads apply and asks you to check them inside the platform, and its cost model is a percentage commission rather than a spread. ForTrade's spreads page answers visitors from countries it does not serve with a country notice instead of a table.
That is not an accusation. Spreads move, and a broker that publishes a live table has to keep it live. But a cost you can only see after installing the platform is a cost you cannot compare before choosing, and on a page about what trading costs, that is the finding rather than an omission.
What else moves the number you pay
The entity your account sits with. Tickmill's published leverage is 1:30 for retail clients under its European company and 1:500 for professional ones; leverage does not change the spread, but it changes the size you can open at the same deposit, which changes what a pip costs you.
The pair. Every figure on this page is EUR/USD, the most liquid pair there is. Minors and exotics are wider by multiples, and a broker that is cheapest on EUR/USD is not automatically cheapest on GBP/JPY.
The size you trade. Commission scales with volume while spread scales with it too, so the ranking above holds at one lot and at ten. It does not hold at 0.01 lots, where a minimum ticket charge — Bybit publishes one on stock CFDs, $0.2 per order — can dominate everything else.
Questions people ask
Which forex broker has the lowest spread?
Several quote from 0.0 pips — RoboForex Prime and ECN, Tickmill Raw, FxPro Raw+, Alpari Pro ECN and LiteFinance ECN — and all of them charge a commission instead, so the tightest quoted spread and the cheapest trade are not the same account. Adding both on published figures, RoboForex Prime comes to about 0.2 pips on a standard lot of EUR/USD and Tickmill Raw to 0.6. Alpari publishes a lower floor still, 0.1 pips with no commission on its ECN account, but a commission-free floor is a best case that floats, while a commission is fixed.
Is a zero spread account actually free?
No. Zero-spread accounts move the cost into a per-lot commission: $3 per side at Tickmill Raw, up to $3.5 per side at FxPro Raw+, $6 per lot on forex at Bybit. The commission is fixed and published, which usually makes it easier to predict than a floating spread, not cheaper by itself.
How do you compare a spread with a commission?
Convert both to the same unit. One standard lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 euro and one pip on it is worth about $10, so a $6 round-turn commission equals 0.6 pips and a 1.6-pip spread equals $16. Add the two and compare the totals.
What is a good spread for EUR/USD?
On a commission-free account, 1.2 to 1.6 pips is the range the brokers on this page publish. On a commission account the spread starts near zero and the all-in cost lands between roughly 0.2 and 0.7 pips. Anything advertised far below that deserves a look at where the cost has been moved to.
Why do brokers quote spreads as ‘from’?
Because a floating spread changes with liquidity. The quoted figure is the best case, typically on the most liquid pair during the London–New York overlap. During news or thin hours the same pair can trade several times wider, at every broker.
Does a tighter spread matter if you trade once a week?
Much less than the swap you pay for holding those positions overnight, and less than whether you can withdraw. Spread is a per-trade cost, so it compounds with frequency: it decides the economics for a scalper and is a rounding error for someone holding a position for a month.
Want to see the spread on your own screen before funding anything? Open a demo account — the quotes are live even when the money is not. Trading more than currency pairs? The same brokers as CFD brokers — asset classes, leverage per class, and which company takes the other side.
Whether a broker tolerates scalping on those spreads is a separate question, answered on brokers for scalping.