What Is The Best Forex Trading Platforms For Beginners?

We can attest to OANDA’s suitability for beginners with their OANDA Trade platform simplifying CFD trading and including a guaranteed stop loss order.

With over 100 drawing tools, numerous technical indicators, and real-time forex industry updates, you will be well-equipped to make informed decisions. The manual leverage adjustment is helpful for those learning the ropes.

After testing OANDA’s proprietary trading platform, OANDA Trade, we can safely say it’s one of the best beginner platforms we’ve traded with.

USER-FRIENDLY PLATFORM

We found OANDA’s web trader platform user-friendly and packed with analysis tools. These include over 100 drawing tools and a plethora of technical indicators. We liked the touch of seeing real-time news updates directly on the platform so we could stay up-to-date with the latest in the forex industry.

For novice traders like some of our team, the ability to manually set leverage when trading CFDs on OANDA Trade is an excellent feature. This is particularly significant because many top-tier brokers don’t permit altering leverage from its maximum limit, which can amplify the inherent risks of forex trading.

LOW SPREADS

Out of all the market maker brokers we’ve reviewed, OANDA has the lowest spreads of the lot, averaging 0.70 pips across the 5 major currency pairs. Not only that, OANDA recorded the lowest Standard account spreads of any broker, including those offering ECN-style execution like IC Markets and Fusion Markets.

We found OANDA’s low spreads were stable and helped reduce our slippage on trades when using both MT4 and the OANDA Trade platform, which will help you lower your trading costs as a beginner.

HIGHLY TRUSTED BROKER

OANDA is a highly trusted broker with a strong reputation, which is why they are well-suited for beginners.

We scored OANDA a 10/10 for trust based on our methodology which includes regulations, age of the broker, and search volume on the web.

What impresses us the most is how heavily regulated OANDA is, especially by tier-1 regulators such as ASIC in Australia, the FCA in the UK and the NFA/CFTC in the U.S., which not many brokers can boast from our analysis.

Also, the fact that OANDA was established in 1996 and has built a solid reputation for itself over almost 30 years (evidenced by the broker’s many positive TrustPilot reviews), catches our eye.

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With no-dealing desk execution, Pepperstone has low spreads and fast trading execution making it a good choice for new traders. Pepperstone has average spreads of 0.1 pips for EUR/USD and limit order execution speeds of 77 ms which are impressive.

Another aspect we like is the 4 quality trading platforms – TradingView, MT4, MT5 and cTrader. Lastly, Pepperstone also has good 3rd party tools like Myfxbook, DupliTrade, Capitalise.ai and 28EAs with Smart Trader Tools.

Though Pepperstone isn’t regulated in the UAE, the broker has always stood out to us for its fast execution speeds, competitive spreads and diverse range of forex trading platforms. It also has the best forex trading platform experience in the UAE, which will suit beginners.

100% ZERO PIP SPREADS

Everyone wants zero pip spreads and most brokers with RAW accounts advertise ‘spreads from zero.’ Well, from our testing, Pepperstone is one of those brokers that offers zero pip spreads 100% of the time.

When looking at data for hourly minimum spreads, by currency, for each broker, only Pepperstone and City Index achieved zero pip spreads 100% of the time for the 6 major currency pairs.

FAST EXECUTION SPEEDS

As a beginner, you want to lower your trading fees and one way to do that is through fast execution speeds to reduce slippage on trades. From our testing, Pepperstone has some of the fastest execution speeds out there.

Testing via the MT4 platform revealed Pepperstone achieved speeds of 77ms for limit orders and 100ms for market orders. This put the broker third overall out of 20 brokers, just behind BlackBull Markets and Fusion Markets.

BEST FOREX TRADING PLATFORM

Pepperstone has a diverse range of trading platforms including MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader, Capitalise.ai and TradingView (a personal favourite).

From a beginner perspective, however, we think Pepperstone stands out in its MetaTrader 4 offering. Not only will you get the ease of use, charting tools (30 technical indicators, 21 analytical objects and 9 timeframes), and enormous range of Expert Advisors that we’ve come to expect from MT4, Pepperstone also offers the Smart Trader Tools MT4 add-on, an additional 28 smart trading apps, including expert advisors and indicators.

Some of our favourite apps for beginners include the session map, which highlights key economic events in red based on the 4 major trading regions (New York, London, Tokyo and Sydney) and the trade terminal.

While the trade terminal has several features, we particularly liked that you could easily select multiple orders and set take profit and stop loss orders 10,20 or 30 pips apart for each, without having to set them individually.

The remaining platforms Pepperstone offers (MT5, cTrader, TradingView and Capitalise.ai) are all excellent and diverse forex trading platforms for different purposes.

MT5 is an upgrade of MT4 with more trading tools and the ability to trade on centralised exchanges, cTrader features DoM (depth of market) pricing and algorithmic trading tools, TradingView is one of our favourite standalone charting platforms with 100 pre-built indicators and Capitalise.ai allows you to automate your trading without knowledge of programming code.

We liked how Saxo Market facilitates CFDs and provides forward contracts and the advantage of direct asset ownership. The sheer diversity of their trading offerings, combined with a wide range of CFD instruments, makes it a solid choice.

For beginners aiming to broaden their trading horizon, Saxo Markets is a recommendation we confidently make.

Saxo Markets is a well-established, highly trusted broker that functions as a multi-asset trading and investment bank. As well as having an excellent proprietary platform, the broker stands out with its great CFD educational tools for novice traders.

GREAT CFD EDUCATIONAL TOOLS

Saxo Markets offers some of the best educational tools we’ve seen, with comprehensive daily commentary and in-depth analysis across the global markets.

We particularly enjoy SaxoStrats, the broker’s team of in-house strategists who provide market news and commentary, including a macro analysis, quarterly outlook and our personal favourite, outrageous predictions.

SaxoStrats also runs the Market Call podcast, which are 30-minute episodes released several times a week to give you a quick update on market news and upcoming risks and opportunities across all asset classes.

ACCOUNTS + HUGE RANGE OF MARKETS

While Saxo Markets offers 3 trading accounts (Classic, Platinum and VIP), only the Classic is accessible for beginner UAE forex traders with no minimum deposit. Having said that, average spreads are 1.2 pips for the EUR/USD pair, which is wider than the industry average of 1 pip for a commission-free account type.

To obtain the lowest spreads, you’ll need to fork out high minimum deposits of AUD 300,000 for the Platinum and $1,500,000 for the VIP account which won’t suit most beginners.

With these accounts, Saxo offers a huge range of over 8000 leveraged and investment products. While you can only trade 7 forex pairs as CFDs, you can spot-trade over 190 currency pairs. You can also trade FX options, FX swaps, and Crypto FX.

EXCELLENT SAXO TRADING PLATFORM

Saxo Markets offers three excellent platforms, SaxoTraderGo, SaxoTraderInvest and SaxoTraderPro, but it’s SaxoTraderGo that you’ll utilise as a beginner trader on the Classic account.

Key features of the SaxoTraderGo trading platform include:

• Intuitive, clean design
• Rich charting capabilities (including 20 drawing tools and 62 indicators)
• Multi-device syncing of features
• An abundance of market analysis and information resources

What we appreciated the most, from a beginner perspective, is how the SaxoTraderGo mobile trading app, combines a user-friendly interface with an abundance of market analysis features. We found this particularly useful when trading a currency pair such as EUR/USD, in which we could see related videos, news headlines and trading signals to help us make an informed trading decision.

We liked that IG Markets has consistently offered various financial products. They are one of the most prominent retail foreign exchange brokers online today. Practical risk management solutions safeguard transactions, and their outstanding research and trading tools further enhance the trading experience.

Beginners looking for a reliable start can do well with their integrated risk-management modules, diverse trading platforms, and extensive CFD products.

Established in 1974, IG Group is a trusted forex and CFD broker with a huge range of +12,000 products, a diverse range of platforms and a great range of educational tools. It is the broker’s risk management tools, however, that stand out for us amongst all others.

RISK MANAGEMENT TOOLS FOR NOVICES

IG Group provides a great range of risk management tools that go beyond what other brokers offer including stop and limit orders, Negative Balance Protection, built-in risk protection and price alerts.

We particularly found the broker’s guaranteed stop loss orders useful to limit the amount of slippage on our trades by getting triggered precisely at a pre-set price level. When used in conjunction with Negative Balance Protection, your account can’t go below zero, even if the market gaps.

USER-FRIENDLY PLATFORMS

While IG Group offers a great range of platforms, it is the broker’s trading app that will suit beginners most. This is because, from our testing, the platform combines a user-friendly interface with a depth of features.

We particularly liked how easy it was to switch between integrated news headlines, trading watchlists and trading itself in the mobile app. We also recommend trying IG’s web-based platform, as you can seamlessly sync your saved chart templates and access them via the IG app.

You can also trade on the popular MetaTrader 4 (suited for forex trading), L2 Dealer, which allows DMA (direct market access) trading for centralised products such as share CFDs, and ProRealTime, a charting and standalone trading platform in its own right, that comes with over 100 indicators.

TOP EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES FOR BEGINNERS

IG Group also leads the pack for its educational resources, which include videos, written articles, and tutorials.

Where IG Group stands out, however, is in its IG Academy, which is a series of eight free online courses, webinars and seminars, which are organised by experience level. What we particularly like about IG Academy is how interactive it is, with video content, lesson summaries, and quizzes incorporated throughout.