Best CFD Brokers
Best Brokers in May, 2021
Fact-Checked and Verified Brokers
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The best CFD brokers list in 2021 helps you open your trading account with a regulated cfd platform. We’ve reviewed over 1800 brokers and blacklisted all CFD Scams.
P.S. Reviews are written by trading experts | We are 100% Independent
Best CFD Brokers in 2021
83% of our readers found their best CFD brokers here; let's help you get started with your CFD Trading journey.
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To help you find the best CFD brokers in 2021, our dedicated trading experts have reviewed over 1800 CFD trading platforms to shortlist the best brokers this month and blacklisted Scams and frauds.
In this top 10 best broker list, you can easily compare best CFD brokers from “Trading Portfolio, CFD offerings, Brokerage Fees, online trading Apps and software, research tools & Charting, Deposit Withdrawal process, Trading Account types, Quality of customer Support team” and many more essential factors.
You can find the best CFD brokerage companies and safely open your trading account, or if you are not confident to trade real stocks CFDs yet, Feel free to open your demo account and practice.
Top 10 CFD Trading Platforms in 2021
Best CFD Platforms For Professionals & Beginners
- Offers Low Trading Fees
- Multiple Base Currencies
- Trade Crypto Against Money Currencies
- Regulated in many countries
- Free & Fast Withdrawal
- Investment protection is only available in the EU Countries
- You will be charges "Administrative and Inactivity" fees
- Web trading platform is not that user-friendly
It’s known to all traders that AvaTrade is one of the best commission-free Broker that offers low fees CFD trading service. Overall, trading with AvaTrade is cheaper than many other brokers such as IG. AvaTrade makes money from charging spreads.
You can use many payment methods to deposit fund to your account or withdraw fund from your account.
The payment options that AvaTrade offers vary from a digital wallet, actual wire transfer to and from an actual bank and even payment providers such as PayPal. Here is the complete list:
AvaTrade is among brokers that accept PayPal to deposit fund to your account. You may also use your Credit card, which is fast er than Wire transfer. Overall, more than 25 payment options are available to you.
AvaTrade charges a 0.5 average spread cost for S&P 500 CFD, which is considerably low.
The account opening process takes minutes literally, and you’d be on your way to trade CFDs. If you are interested in options and want to open an options trading account, you can see their competitive price.
You can use these links to open a Demo account on AvaTrade, which is great for beginners, or choose to open a real trading account on AvaTrade and deposit $100 to get started.
You can use our interactive tool to compare brokers. However, for this review, we would like to share a simple comparison table to show you AvaTrade forex fees and compare CFD trading platforms with XM & Plus500.
| Forex Scenario | AvaTrade | XM | Plus500 |
|---|---|---|---|
| EURUSD | 19.2 | 17.1 | 17.2 |
| GBPUSD | 15.7 | 13.8 | 14 |
| AUDUSD | 12 | 13.9 | 12.6 |
| EURCHF | 8.5 | 9.1 | 9 |
| EURGBP | 14 | 12.2 | 12.6 |
“Illustrative prices.”
AvaTrade offers one of the best no-commission trading platforms for beginners and professional traders.
Apart from “AvaOptions”, which is their modern trading Apps, AvaTrade is one of the best MetaTrader 4 brokers. Since the default CFD platform you can use based on MT4 (it is familiar to all traders), you can easily set up your account and fully customise your trading environment and dashboard.
Here are your choices of the top 10 best CFD trading platforms:
- AvaTrade offers “WebTrader”. It is a web-based trading platform powered by “Web Trader” if you prefer to trade on your browser.
- The desktop trading platform is powered by MT4 and is available for windows and Mac users.
- For trading apps lovers, Avatrade offers “AvaTradeGO” for Android and IOS users.
- Low CFD Fees
- It offers Negative balance protection
- Stock exchange Listed, Well Regulated by Top Financial Authorities
- Fast & Free withdrawal process
- Modern Mobile Trading App
- It does not offer fundamental data
- Plus500 offers CFD Only
- It does not offer trading ideas
- Education is limited to basic tutorials
There are several criteria to choose the best CFD Provider. We found Plus500 CFD fees competitive when compare CFD trading platforms with eToro and FXCM fees. Plus500’s revenue model is Buy or sell spreads; however, you can see charges from these 4 services on your dashboard.
- Overnight Funding
- Currency Conversion Fee
- Guaranteed Stop Order
- Inactivity fee
If you are interested to know, we have discussed in detail how do CFD brokers make money. In this case, unlike many expensive CFD platforms, you won’t pay a fee for the following services:
- just like other best no deposit brokers, you will not pay Deposits fees
- Live share CFD prices
- Real-time forex quotes
- Opening/closing trades
- Dynamic charts & graphs
- For rolling your position
In case you are interested in seeing the fees for S&P 500 CFD, Europe 50 CFD, EUR USD, we have listed them below. By the way, these fees are built into the spread.
✓ For S&P 500, Europe 50, EURUSD, the spreads and fees are calculated as per market condition, and they are variable.
✕ There is an inactivity fee of $10 per month after 3 months – Average.
We have compared Plus500, XTB and eToro together and prepared their CFD fee comparison table below. It’s worth having a look.
Since you know what is CFD and how does it work, Let’s make a comparison and have a look at CFD fees and compare it with eToro & XTB CFD commissions.
| CFD Fees | Plus500 | eToro | XTB |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 index CFD fee | $2.1 | $2.2 | $2.0 |
| Europe 50 index CFD fee | $1.3 | $2.7 | $2.2 |
| Apple CFD fee | $8.9 | $6.3 | $17.9 |
| Vodafone CFD fee | $7.6 | — | $20.9 |
“Illustrative prices”
Even though Plus500 has a global presence and is very active in most countries, its portfolio and the offer are limited to CFDs.
You won’t be able to change the leverage level; This is a negative point. To trade Foreign currency, you can visit our top 10 best forex brokers list.
If your profile’s security matters a lot to you, it’s easy to use a two-step authentication feature of Plus500. This increases your safety level.
The trading platform that Plus500 uses is not the usual MT4. It also does not offer a desktop trading platform.
On the other hand, Plus500 embraced Web trader and encouraged online traders to use browsers or install Plus500 trading mobile app that works just fine on iPad, iPhone, and Android. Although it’s not based on desktop, web trader and mobile apps’ search functionality is very smooth and strong.
It’s easy to place orders. In fact, you can place it with the following order types:
- Market
- Limit
- Stop
- Trailing stop
At a glance Plus500 trading app looks like this:
‘illustrative prices.’
Plus500 is one of the most popular online providers in the world. The company established its first office in Israel in 2008. In a short period, Plus500 managed to get publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange and be known as a credible CFD provider. It’s also regulated in the following financial markets:
- Plus500UK Ltd authorized & regulated by the FCA (#509909).
- Plus500CY Ltd authorized & regulated by CySEC (#250/14).
- Plus500SG Pte Ltd, licensed by the MAS (#CMS100648-1) and IE Singapore (#PLUS/CBL/2018).
- Plus500SEY Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (Licence No. SD039).
- Plus500AU Pty Ltd (ACN 153301681), licensed by ASIC in Australia, AFSL #417727, FMA in New Zealand,
- FSP #486026; Authorised Financial Services Provider in South Africa, FSP #47546.
Unlike its competitors eToro and AvaTrade, innovating in forex and CFD markets, Plus500 research functionality is not premium.
Basics works fine; for instance, the charting feature is convenient.
The search functions are very user-friendly and designed with simplicity in mind.
As for Market research, you might often think about what are good brokers because you want to have access to the best features in your CFD platform. Something like ‘Market sentiment’ illustrates the long position and short positions of a percentage of the clients.
Plus500 offers an economic calendar that covers important events regularly. It looks like this:
Plus500 might not be the best CFD platform for beginners, but it definitely offers exclusive advantages to professional traders with a proven record.
As for education and trading articles, we have created plenty of guides for the newbie to learn how to trade. Plus500 education is not that comprehensive, and all they offer is a demo account and a trading guide.
We believe plus500 is among top-tier CFD providers in Australia after careful evaluation, especially because of its regulation history, safety, and low CFD fees.
The company is listed in the London stock exchange and regulated in the UK, Australia, Cyprus, South Africa, New Zealand, Singapore, Israel.
Overall, plus500’s trading fees on CFD are comparatively low.
As for withdrawal, you can withdraw for free up to five times a month. Once you exceed that limit, you will be charged a withdrawal fee.
The CFD account opening process is instant, automated and very smooth.
Just remember that plus500 might charge you $10 inactivity fees per 90 days of inactivity.
Educational materials are not extensive and do not offer that much online trading training for beginners.
Due to the U.S. and Canada regulation, citizens of these 2 countries cannot open the CFD account with Plus500. Citizens of other countries are fine to go through the account opening. By the way, there is only one choice of accounts with Plus500.
Customer support is another important part. Overall, Plus500’s support team is responsive and help you via their live chat sessions. On the contrary, we had experienced delays when contacting them via email, which we think is not positive.
Their support is not limited to weekdays because they have established a 24/7 support mechanism that is a plus point.
- Low trading fee & free withdrawal
- Top 9 base currencies
- Very customizable charts & tools
- Fully Regulated
- Investment protection is only available in EU & Middle East
- $12 per month inactivity fees
- Web trading platform is not user-friendly
The fees that City Index charges you for S&P 500 CFD, Europe 50 CFD, and EUR USD are built into spreads:
✓ For S&P 500 CFD, the fee is 0.6 average spread cost, which is considered low.
✓ For Europe 50 CFD, the fee is 1.5 average spread cost, which is low.
✕ For EURUSD, the fee is 1 pips average spread fees.
✓ $12 per month after 12 months of inactivity is what City Index charges which is one of the non-trading fees.
When it comes to fees, our readers often ask, “Is city index good for spread betting & CFD Trading?”.
Well, this is a broad question and really depends on what you trade and how to trade.
Having said that, since trading CFDs brings the risk of losing your capital, you might want to be able to change the leverage. The negative side here is that You CAN NOT change the leverage when trading with the city index.
We thought it would be good to share a comparison of City Index CFD Fees side by side with IG and Plus500.
| CFD Scenario | City Index | IG | Plus500 |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 index CFD fee | $2.1 | $2.1 | $2.1 |
| Europe 50 index CFD fee | $1.6 | $1.6 | $1.3 |
| Apple CFD fee | $21.9 | $31.9 | $8.9 |
| Vodafone CFD fee | $25.7 | $25.7 | $7.6 |
“Illustrative Price”
City Index offers 4 types of online trading platforms for beginners, intermediate and experienced users. They are all very user-friendly, neat and easy to navigate through.
City Index’s online trading platforms are:
- AT Trader
- Web Trader
- Mobile Trading App
- City Index is also one of the best MetaTrader 4 brokers.
In short, City index’s MT4 platform is not only available in 21 languages; it allows you to create Expert Advisors and work with custom indicators and trading signals. The charting feature is strong and advanced.
Web trader that works on the web has a limitation that does not let you set up price alerts, but customising your environment, dashboard, and charts is a big plus that makes it exactly how you want it.
You can define stops & limits by price, points. It also gives you the power of advanced risk management.
Experienced traders and advanced users can use “AT Pro”. The entire platform is focused more on performance and analysis. Charts are meant for powerful analysis. You can use 
over 100 technical indicators and deal through charts.
Here is how the CFD trading platform looks:
To know the trading portfolio and CFD offerings of the city index, you must know what account type is good.
- First, the Trader Account that requires no minimum deposit and has leverage up to 30:1
- Second, The Premium Trader with the same leverage as the trader’s account. The difference is the minimum deposit of £10,000.
- Last, Professional Trader Account with leverage of up to 400:1 and zero deposit requirement.
- Tip: you can open a Professional Trading account by (request) only if you hold half a million Euro portfolio in the past year.
Since both Forex.com and city index belongs to one master holding company and the sister company is a forex trading hub, the City Index portfolio is designed to offer CFDs and crypto. Overall, the main trading instruments are:
- Stock Index CFD
- Spread Betting
- Other CFDs
City Index started offering brokerage services in 1983. The brokerage firm is part of “Gain Capital” and a subsidiary of “StoneX group”, an NYSE listed company and sister company of forex.com. The following financial authorities regulate it:
- (ASIC) in Australia, also known as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission
- (MAS) in Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore
City Index’s investment protection is £85,000 for European and Middle East citizens.
News and Market Analysis is a regularly-updated part of the city index website. It covers the majority of ideas from Covid-19 to the U.S election and what is happening in China, and its impact on the trading market.
As far as trading research goes, trading signals are becoming very important. To get the best out of market changes, trading with the City index enables you to receive an alert once a significant price movement (between 0.25% – 2%) is logged.
The city index offer news feeds and an economic calendar. Thanks to MetaTrader 4, you can perform technical analysis with up to 65+ indicators.
As for education, apart from a lot of trading guides that you can find on our investment guide, City Index is definitely one of the best online brokers for beginners.
The educational materials that the city index offers are in the forms of:
- In-depth Articles
- Videos
- Demo Account
Regardless of your trading experience, you have a series of educational videos, articles and a demo account at your disposal to master trading. Here is what you can expect:
Trading CFDs means you will be playing with leveraged products. That’s why it’s a high risk business. Using your margin, you can deposit just a fraction of your trade’s value to open a position.
Some brokers provide DMA to their client, professional traders in particular.
If you’re an advanced trader, you can get direct market access (DMA) which allows you to see all the available bid and offer prices at any given time, and trade at your preferred price.
In comparison with the other alternatives to city index, a positive point is offering over 84 currency pairs and 4500 Stock CFDs, that way you can find your way to trade your preferred contract for difference.
When it comes to online trading, support becomes very important to online traders. City Index customer support team respond fast to phone calls.
The live chat sessions allow you to talk in English with a representative and solve your issues fast. it’s a 24/5 process, so they won’t be available during Weekends.
Research tools in City Index is great and their news feeds is premium. Besides, when it comes to education it covers everything and it’s pretty easy to understand. Remember that you can easily begin trading with zero minimum deposit
You can choose between 3 account types to begin trading with City index. Each has different commission and spread structure:
- Trader Account: No minimum deposit
- Premium Trader: Min deposit of £10,000 and leverage up to 30:1
- Professional Trader Account: Leverage of up to 400:1 and no min deposit.
- Low CFD Fees
- Provides Trading Ideas
- Offers Negative balance protection
- Well Regulated in Top-tier Financial Markets
- It does not offer fundamental data
- Portfolio is limited mostly to CFD and Forex
- $5 inactivity charge applies after 12 month
To understand the fee structure, you must know more about the revenue model of the broker. This is how XM makes money:
- Fractional Pip Pricing
- Fixed Spreads
- Variable Spreads
- Commissions
The fees for S&P 500 CFD, Europe 50 CFD, EUR USD are built into the spread.
✓ For S&P 500 CFD, the fee is 0.7 average spread fees.
✓ For Europe 50 CFD, the fee is 2.5 average spread.
✕ For EURUSD, the fee has a different structure: the fee is 1.7 average spread cost for standard and micro-accounts.
✓ XM Zero account commission is $3.5 for every $100K trades. Spread= 0.1 pips.
✓ There is a $5 monthly inactivity fee after a quarter.
The default leverage for the following instruments is capped at 1:50:
- EURDKK,
- EURHKD,
- GBPDKK,
- USDDKK,
- USDHKD,
- USDCNH,
- EURRUB
- USDRUB.
In case you decided to opt for a deposit bonus broker and promotions, this table illustrates the deposit bonus structure.
Let’s have a look at Forex fees and compare cfd platform it with XTB & eToro:
| CFD Scenario | XM | XTB | eToro |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 index CFD fee | $2.4 | $2.0 | $2.4 |
| Europe 50 index CFD fee | $2.4 | $2.2 | $2.7 |
| Apple CFD fee | $3.4 | $17.9 | $6.3 |
| Vodafone CFD fee | $5.6 | $20.9 | — |
Because the XM platform is powered by MT4 & MT5, you can use EA/Expert Advisors. Besides, it’s easy to customise your dashboard, charts, reports.
XM trading platform gives you Automation capability and access to the following technical indicators. (It’s not available to everyone, You must contact your Account manager, though).
- Analyser Indicator
- ADX & PSAR Indicator
- Bollinger Bands Indicator
- Ichimoku Indicator
- River Indicator
- Ribbon Indicator
XM Group offers trading signal through MQL5. The advantage of using MT4 with XM is having smooth access to signals of MQL5 because the same company develops these two platforms.
We often refer to CFDs as high-risk products. When we talk about penny stocks, you should remember that they are very risky products, which can also be very profitable.
With CFD trading, you can open your live trading account with the best brokers for penny stock trading and buy your penny stocks.
That means you should search for companies that are either showing promising market share in future or have an innovative IP or a breakthrough that can be the next big thing. Remember, their stock price should be below $5. this way, you can even buy shares that are less than $1.
XM offers trading assets in the forms of:
- Forex Trading
- Growth Stocks
- Commodities
- Equity Indices
- Precious Metals
- Energies
To know what to trade with XM, you must first get the hang of the trading accounts and commission structure. Here is a break down of accounts:
Micro Account or Standard Account:
- Pay zero commission – Spreads are higher.
- Flexible in choosing these base currencies: (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CHF, AUD, HUF, PLN, RUB, SGD, ZAR),
- Your Minimum deposit is 5$.
Zero Account:
- You pay commissions – Very low spreads.
- Base currencies are UDS, JPY, EUR.
- The minimum deposit is $100.
XM Ultra-Low Account:
- Base currencies are: (EUR, USD, GBP, AUD, ZAR, SGD).
- Low spreads – Zero commission.
- The minimum deposit is $50.
XM is a top regulated CFD broker and part of XM group & Trading Point. The brokerage company is regulated in most financial markets, such as:
- United Kingdom: (FCA), Financial Conduct Authority for CFD brokers in UK.
- Cyprus: Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
- Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). It’s one of the best cfd brokers in Australia.
- International Financial Services Commission (IFSC)
XM’s investor protection amount is up to €20,100 only if you are from EEA Countries
When it comes to research, apart from trading tools and MQL5, XM offers the following services:
XM publishes the latest CFD market analysis and market news.
You can find the market summary and trade ideas on a different instrument.
A very comprehensive technical analysis of different major CFDs and FX CFDs is often published and discussed on their public platform.
In case you are looking for technical summaries, you can find something like this:
XM economic calendar is publicly available and updated regularly. Additionally, you can utilise the XM learning centre that offers education for both beginners and professional/experienced traders.
One interesting offering that XM has is educational rooms that separate beginners from experienced CFD traders.
We also liked their webinars, where the experts discuss different technical analysis approaches. It’s available in 18 languages and available throughout the week.
XM is not only a regulated broker but also is among the best CFD brokers in South Africa. It offers a fast & Free withdrawal process and low CFD fees, making it a competitor to the other online brokers.
As one of the top 10 best CFD brokers in Australia, XM provides an easy-to-use trading platform powered by MT4, MT5. If you are a fan of signals and trade with EA and Trading signals, you can utilise these features in the MQL5 platform. We believe this could be a plus point for XM.
Web Traders can enjoy using their platform on different compatible browsers; however, it has some drawbacks and lacks some features such as alerts and notification.
A big plus point is trading videos and trading educational repository, webinars, and news feed. Inexperienced CFD traders will learn a lot.
The economic calendar and market analysis are pretty up to date.
Obviously, XM’s low CFD trading fees, along with a demo account that you can open in a matter of a second, is a plus point.
We have analysed all account types in the review, and we think that the flexibility and structure are clear for traders of all category.
The minimum deposit is $5 for a Micro account and Standard account. In fact, not forcing you to deposit a couple of hundreds of dollars, to begin with, is another reason to nominate it to be a good CFD broker for beginners too. Remember, the deposit amount can go up to $100 for Zero accounts. It’s worth giving it a try.
- Low CFD Trading Fees
- XTB Provides Trading Ideas
- Offers Negative balance protection
- 70 indicators for Analysis
- Listed in Stock Exchange
- It charges low commission from 0.08%.
- It does not offer guaranteed stop losses (GSLO).
- Don't expect fast response time on Emails
- XTB charges commissions for cryptocurrency trading
- XTB also charges commissions for stock CFD transactions
Xtb brokerage services and its revenue stream is mostly through:
- Spreads
- Commissions
- Swap
The fees for S&P 500 CFD, Europe 50 CFD, EUR USD are built into the spread.
✓ S&P 500 CFD fee is 0.6 average spread fee – This is low.
✓ Europe 50 CFD fee is 2.2 average spread – This is low.
✓ EUR USD fee is €3.5 /£2.5 /$4 per lot for Pro accounts – This is low.
✓ There is no inactivity fee which is also considered good.
You can use Pound and Euro accounts or cards to deposit fund into your account. Using other currencies might incur additional fees.
This table shows the XTB commissions:
Let’s compare Forex fees of XTB Vs eToro VS IC markets.
| Benchmark Fees | XTB | IG | eToro |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 index CFD fee | $2.0 | $2.1 | $2.4 |
| Europe 50 index CFD fee | $2.2 | $1.6 | $2.7 |
| Apple CFD fee | $17.9 | $31.9 | $6.3 |
| Vodafone CFD fee | $20.9 | $25.7 | — |
XTB offers all 3 trading platform types, mobile Apps trading, desktop trading software and web trading app. One of XTB’s trading platforms is powered by MetaTrader. MT4 has been the backbone of most online brokers.
Additionally, XTB has also built an in-house stock trading app called “X Station”. XTB is not based on desktop and is a web-based trading platform, so you are not limited to your device. Sadly, no automated trading capability is offered, so algorithmic traders can only use MT4.
Of course, commissions and spreads matter the most to traders, but getting your hand on a good trading platform can make things easier. Is a dream.
Besides being able to trade on your smartphone, they offer an IoS trading App and one of the best Android apps for online trading. Both apps offer great features such as alerts, push notifications or enhanced touch experience to trade CFD by swiping right or left.
You can also enable a two-step login feature in your profile and receive a code whenever you or anyone logs in to the system.
While trading CFD with regulated brokers is legal in certain countries, we can not really define the safety level of trading because trading is precarious.
XTB has been in the industry for almost 15 years and can be considered safe. XTB offers the following CFD trading assets:
- FOREX
- INDICES
- COMMODITIES
- STOCK CFDs
- ETF CFDs
- CRYPTO
XTB is a stock exchange-listed CFD broker based in Poland. It that was established in 2002 and ever since has been regulated by the following regulation body, and authorities:
United Kingdom: (FCA), the Financial Conduct Authority.
Cyprus: Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
Poland: (KNF) the Polish Financial Supervision Authority.
(GySEC) the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission.
Belize: International Financial Services Commission of Belize (IFSC).
The research capability of Xtb is decent.
You can easily find a daily summary of the financial market. These summaries and posts are being published on the XTB portal daily and cover a good portion of events that impact traders.
- With market sentiment, you would compare the portion of sellers vs buyers of each market and instrument.
XTB offers one more useful tool called the ‘Heatmap,’ which visually shows the winners and losers.
Decent technical analysis tools are available in more than 20 languages (if you use MetaTrader 4) and engage you with its user-friendly environment and nice interactive charts. The charts and charting tools are pretty good. It saves automatically and let you play around with around 70 indicators.
Xtb online trading is one of those brokers that match the newbie’s skill set. Meaning it offers one of the top 10 CFD trading platforms for beginners who want to use trading guides, demo account and gradually trade online. You will get a demo account and sufficient balance to begin practising.
You can access Xtb’s trading academy and easily filter your training based on level or subject.
For instance, when you opt-in for a market analysis course, you will learn:
- How to find out the sentiment of traders: Market Sentiment shows you how traders are positioned in different financial markets
- How to use stocks screener in xStation5
- How to determine a trend with heatmaps
After careful evaluation, we believe XTB is among the best low fees CFD brokers in 2021.
First, XTB is regulated and listed on the stock exchange; that makes it reputable and safe. Several financial authorities also regulate it.
From the broker’s fees perspective, Xtb stock index CFD fees are low. You can easily withdraw your money for free. On the negative side, XTB’s stock CFD fees are relatively higher than their FX fees.
A side note; the broker’s trading portfolio and offers are limited to Indices, Currency trading, and CFDs.
Opening a trading account with Xtb online trading is more than easy, and you can get your account approved in one to three days. However, GSLOs or guaranteed stop losses that protect you from market gap risks is not offered by Xtb. the best
When trading CFDs, you must know that apart from price fluctuations caused by the market, your stock price might change based on pre-market price, Market Price, and Aftermarket price.
It’s also essential to ensure that your CFD trading app offers stocks in domestic and international markets. For example, if you are an Australian citizen, your broker automatically offers ASX stocks, but they might not have access to Nasdaq and NYSE stocks.
One of the most important factors that concern both beginners and professional traders is brokerage fees. That includes “Trading Fees” & “Non-Trading Fees”.
The second priorities are trading instruments & financial products, withdrawal fees, fx trading platform, research tools, education, and investor protection that comes after.
What is the Best Stock Broker?
Before we share the top CFD brokers of the year, let’s have a look at the characteristics of the best CFD brokers in today’s market.
When it comes to online Trading, finding the best forex brokers in 2021 can be as difficult as a decent broker that offers a profitable contract for difference. Recent economic impact on the global economy was enough reason for risi unregulated brokers and the forex scams to stay away from.
Here is what you need to do if you are a beginner, be cautious when trading FX because the instruments are risky & you might lose your capital. If you’re not ready, you can start reading our trading blog and open a demo account in one of the top forex brokers to practice.
If you’re an experienced trader, you go ahead and review the factors below, switch from your broker to the best brokers, or open a new live trading account.
- 17,000 Markets & 95 Currency Pairs
- Low spreads from 0.8 pips on EUR/USD & USD/JPY
- No Fee Deposit & Withdrawal
- 70 indicators for Analysis
- Well Regulated in Top-tier Financial Markets
- IG might charge you inactivity fees
- Stock CFD fees are high
- Portfolio may vary from country to country
Not all CFD brokers have the same business model. So it’s wise to compare CFD brokers to know how do CFD brokers make money. When you compare CFD platforms, you can clearly see that their revenue stream can vary from region to region. When it comes to IG markets, these are different fees that you might end up paying:
- Spreads or Commissions
- Share CFD commission
- conversion Rate
- Guaranteed stop premium
- Margin
- Slippage
- Volume-based rebates
- Overnight fees
- Inactivity fees
- You are not allowed to hedge, so going for hedging strategies* is not an option when trading with plus500.
If playing around with leverage matters to you, you should know that you Can Not change the default leverage.
IG’s fees for S&P 500 CFD, Europe 50 CFD, EUR USD are built into spread:
✓ For S&P 500 CFD, the fee is 0.6 average spread.
✓ For Europe 50 CFD, the fee is a 1.5 average spread fee.
✕ For EURUSD, the fee is €0.7 for each lot for PRO accounts, which is also low.
✕ There is an inactivity fee of $12 per month after 2 years.
When you compare CFD brokers in the UK, Australia, Ireland and other developed countries, you can see that Ig is one of the most regulated platforms and operates legally in most jurisdictions.
Since IG uses MetaTrader 4, you can build your algorithm on a secure automated trading platform And easily work with your EA strategies in more than 57 forex markets.
IG is also a good broker for risk management, especially when their platform gives you features to set up price change alerts.
As soon as you create your “instant buy and sell price alert”, which needs to be done once only, you’ll receive free notifications either via SMS, e-mail or push notification on your smartphone. Here is a sneak preview
Their Charts are standard and the common MT4 charts that you get, but you can easily conduct a search and find CFD instruments since it’s connected to the IG portfolio. Regular News is also available.
Finally, the IG platform comes in the forms of an iPhone trading app or Android trading app; Obviously, because meta trader supports many languages, you can change the dashboard to your preferred language.
When you compare CFD trading apps, you need to make sure that they offer domestic stocks and international stocks. Needless to say, your platform must be fully regulated. IG is regulated in different regions:
- Europe:
(FCA): Financial Conduct Authority in the UK.
Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in Europe.
Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). - Oceania:
Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).
Singapore Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
Japanese Financial Services Authority (FSA).
Financial Markets Authority (FMA) of New Zealand. - Middle East:
South Africa & Dubai (Financial Services Authority (DFSA)
(FSCA), Financial Sector Conduct Authority)
The amount of investor protection is £85,000 for UK residents, Swiss 100,000 CHF, and €20,000 for Europe. Since Canada and USA regulation is different from the rest of the world, we have listed the best forex brokers in Canada here. PLEASE NOTE THAT TRADING CFDS IS NOT YET ALLOWED IN THE USA.
When we evaluated IG research tools, these highlights came up:
- News Feed
- Charting
- Trading Ideas
- Technical Analysis
The good news is that you have plenty of technical analysis and the latest research at your disposal when trading CFD with IG.
‘Market sentiment’ is also available in IG. AS you know, it tracks the long and short positions of traders and clients, so you can know what happens in the market.
IG’s other tool to market researchers is ‘Heatmap,’ which visually draws the hotspots and shows the winners and loser traders.
Trading ideas won’t be possible without technical analysis tools, and the good thing here is that you can conduct your analysis in a user-friendly environment.
If you are a beginner and looking for a lot of trading videos and articles to learn how to trade, you should pay a visit to our forex trading blog and open a demo account on of the most trusted CFD trading platform Australia.
IG offers a handful of resources and good repository of videos, trading materials, and guides through it’s trading academy for Basic, Intermediate, Expert, and Premium traders. If you are keen to compare online brokers you should try them side by side.
- A demo account that is created instantly
- Series of tutorial videos on how to use the trading platform
- FINANCE 1-0-1
- LIVE Webinars
- Q&A sessions
We liked their live sessions, in fact, having Access to their webinars is another advantage if you need to clarify your questions with IG representatives.
We discussed a lot about IG markets pros & cons in this IG review, yet overall, IG is considered a safe brokerage company as it is regulated in most financial markets. You can compare eToro Vs IG.
IG Trading platform is designed for both professional and beginners to customise its UI or utilise the technical analysis and other research tools. IG accepts traders from the majority of countries.
IG FX fees are low and very reasonable. On the contrary, the Stock CFD fees you will pay are high; You might also be charged inactivity fees.
Just like AvaTrade, and FXCM CFDs, IG offers a wide variety of trading instruments such as 95 Currency pairs, 68 Stock index CFDs, more than 10k Stock CFDs, and about 1900 ETF CFDs and has the best trading portfolio in CFD and forex market,
When it comes to online trading, customer support becomes critical to all traders. We have tested their response time. It seems like IG offers top-notch support, as the team responds fast, even in high seasons.
The top CFD broker list presented above results from hundreds of fact-checking and practically evaluating the brokerage companies and their services.
Our team has prepared the list of top regulated CFD and best brokers in Canada, Australia, and the UK using our methodology.
Our editorial team has also included general advice on regulations, trading fees, and literally everything you need to know about them. We have done the research work for you so that you can focus more on CFD trading.
We all have experienced or have seen the impact of Covid-19 on the financial market. Interestingly, many people decided to give trading a shot and make money by trading CFDs.
Well, trading CFD is risky, and you might lose your money, so we thought before you get into one of the CFD scams or open an account with an unregulated broker, you should know a few things about them and have access to the best CFD list.
We have prepared plenty of step-by-step guides for Beginners and newbies that help you get started with online trading and open your demo account on the best CFD brokers for beginners. Since trading CFD risk is high, we encourage you to be extra careful and don’t attempt to trade big if you are not that ready. Perhaps, reading our trading blog and opening a demo account in one of the top CFD brokerage platforms for beginners is a good place to start.
As an experienced trader, you can review the critical factors and compare the best CFD brokers listed below or open a new live trading account with a regulated broker.
By the way, the most reliable CFD trading platforms are multilingual and available in the following languages:
Bulgarian Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch, Estonian Finnish French besten CFD broker in German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian broker CFD Terbaik in Indonesian Migliori broker CFD in Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Malay Mongolian Persian Polish melhores corretoras forex Portuguese in brazil Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Tajik Thai Traditional Chinese Turkish Ukrainian Uzbek Vietnamese.
