Forex Copy Trading Software

We think MT4 signals provide the easiest gateway into copy trading, as you’ll find everything you need within the MetaTrader 4 platform. The fact you can find signal providers that manually trade or automate their trades through Expert Advisors lets you find stand-out signal providers not available to other copy trading platforms.

Why Recommend MT4 Signals with Pepperstone

Pepperstone is our highest-rated forex broker out of the 40+ brokers tested, achieving a solid 98/100 for its excellent trading services and low trading costs. By leveraging Pepperstone’s fast execution speeds on MT4 with low spreads, you can mirror the signals without the worry of slippage or wide spreads, maximising your MT4 Signal returns.

One of the many benefits we found is that Pepperstone provides access to MetaTrader 4’s signals, which are generated by other experienced traders and can be copied.

Like other copy trading platforms, MT4 offers a web tool that lets you search over 5,500+ MT4 signal providers you can copy. You can also use the ‘Signals’ tab on your desktop platform, but we felt it wasn’t as easy to search for traders to copy compared to the web option.

In our tests, we used the web platform’s search tool to narrow traders based on their profit and max drawdown, giving us a solid idea of their accuracy. Based on our criteria, the results returned five potential traders to copy, saving us time from analysing thousands of options.

We liked the level of detail MetaTrader 4 Signals delivers for performance analytics on a trader’s profile, covering growth charts, trading history, and a statistical breakdown of their trading history. These stats allow you to dive deep into a trader’s performance and verify whether it matches your requirements before copying them.

During our testing, we used our Pepperstone MetaTrader 4 Razor account to mirror the MT4 Signal trades, as we felt the tighter spreads positively impacted our profitability. Interestingly, in our recent spread tests, our analyst Ross Collins found that Pepperstone’s Razor account offered 0.0 pips 100% of the time, lowering your overall trading costs.

The Razor account charges a commission of $3.50 per lot traded, which is the industry average. This isn’t a bad trade-off, considering you get zero-pip spreads.

To maximise your returns with MT4 Signals, you’ll need a broker that offers fast execution speeds to ensure your trade mirrors. Fortunately, based on our testing, we found Pepperstone to be the third fastest broker overall with limit order speeds of 77ms and market order speeds of 100ms, which is fast for copy trading.

We found eToro top-notch in social and copy trading, especially in the forex arena. The platform hosts a thriving trading community, making it a magnet for thousands of users keen to engage in CFD and physical asset trading. What sets eToro apart is the feature that allows you to mimic the strategies of successful traders, termed ‘popular investors’, effectively adding another layer to your trading game. The breadth of financial instruments available to trade with also means you can diversify your strategies and even look into long-term portfolio investments.

BEST SOCIAL TRADING PLATFORMS

As a social trading specialist with a focus on copy trading, eToro offers the best social and copy trading platforms on the market:

• COPYTRADER: CopyTrader is the brokerage’s key account mirroring service and most popular feature. It allowed us to effortlessly mirror seasoned traders’ trading strategies, while we could search for ‘Popular Investors’, which we thought was a nice touch.
• COPYPORTFOLIOS: After you invest in a CopyPortfolio, eToro manages your capital with assets re-picked and portfolios rebalanced as needed. Offering two types of portfolios, Top Trader Portfolios and Market Portfolios, we liked Market Portfolios’ unique approach to choosing a single market strategy on a bundle of commodities, ETFs and share CFDs. Overall, we found CopyPortfolios is a good approach to diversifying and minimising risk or a way to supplement forex copy trading with a long-term investment.

Beyond the copy trading aspect, we found value in eToro’s social network, where we could engage with other traders, comment on posts, follow our peers, and keep ourselves updated through the platform’s newsfeed.

COMPETITIVE SPREADS FOR COPY TRADING

Averaging 1.30 pips across the 5 major currency pairs, eToro’s commission-free spreads will keep trading costs low if you are a beginner copy trader. From our analysis, this puts eToro as one of the most competitive market makers out there, and the lowest spreads on this list. Only IC Markets and Fusion Markets can offer lower spreads, although both provide ECN-like trading.

MQL5 signals are one of the few copy trading services that let you mirror the trades of algo traders, letting you invest in a strategy rather than a trader. We like that it has in-depth performance analytics for each signal provider that updates after each trade, letting you easily verify the copy trader before investing.

Why We Recommend MQL5 Signals With AvaTrade

We like that AvaTrade offers fixed spreads as this allows you to ensure your copy trading costs are always the same, protecting you from volatile entries where spreads would widen. Fixed spreads are available across AvaTrade’s versatile range of financial instruments, from FX to equity markets, expanding your options to mirror signals across multiple markets to help diversify risk.

AVATRADE OFFERS MQL5 SIGNALS WHICH MAKES COPY TRADING SIMPLE

AvaTrade gives you complimentary access to MQL5 Signals, which can be fully integrated with both MetaTrader platforms, MT4 and MT5, a fact we found extremely convenient.

MQL5 Signals happens to be one of the largest automated trading communities globally, offering a plethora of strategies to copy once you’re in.

Once you open an MQL5 account, we recommend filtering by your broker (AvaTrade), MT4 and only show providers with reviews. When we tested this, we were able to easily narrow our search to highly rated providers with a strong performance history that matched our copy trading needs.

PROPRIETARY AVASOCIAL PLATFORM

When testing AvaTrade’s proprietary social trading platform, AvaSocial, we liked that you can see real time news feeds for the trades your friends and other traders in the community action. We also like that you can follow, chat with and share trading ideas as this allows us to leverage the knowledge of other better traders.

STABLE SPREADS FOR COPY TRADING

We found AvaTrade had stable and consistent spreads which suited us when copytrading. Based on our testing, AvaTrade averaged tight spreads of 0.9 pips for EUR/USD, which remained consistent throughout our trading session.

As a fixed spread broker, we found AvaTrade’s consistent spreads meant there was a level of predictability and stable market conditions that is essential to the set-and-forget nature of copytrading. It’s important to note, however, that despite being fixed, AvaTrade’s spreads can still vary during morning, day and night sessions.

Fixed Account Spreads	EUR/USDAUD/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDUSD/JPYAUD/JPYEUR/JPYUSD/CAD	EUR/USDAUD/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDUSD/JPYAUD/JPYEUR/JPYUSD/CAD	EUR/USDAUD/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDUSD/JPYAUD/JPYEUR/JPYUSD/CAD	EUR/USDAUD/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDUSD/JPYAUD/JPYEUR/JPYUSD/CAD	EUR/USDAUD/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDUSD/JPYAUD/JPYEUR/JPYUSD/CAD
	0.90	1.10	1.50	1.50	1.00
	0.70	1.20	1.50	1.30	1.00
	1.94	2.36	2.11	2.05	1.83
	1.60	1.90	1.70	2.10	1.60
	3.00	3.00	3.00	3.00	3.00

Avg. spreads are taken from each broker's website and updated monthly. Last update on 12/01/2024

We like pairing Tickmill with ZuluTrade due to the broker’s low trading costs and commissions on its Raw account. The broker also offers an excellent range of trading products, enabling you to mirror most traders on ZuluTrade.

Why We Recommend ZuluTrade

We think ZuluTrade is a top pick for copy trading as it has attracted a wide range of traders to its platform, providing various strategies and markets from which to benefit. Along with social trading tools to interact directly with potential copy traders and the innovative ZuluGuard feature, the platform offers excellent safeguarding tools to protect your capital.

GOOD ZULUTRADE TRADING EXPERIENCE

Providing access to ZuluTrade, one of the world’s biggest third-party social trading platforms, Tickmill stands out in a few ways from our testing of the platform.

For one, ZuluTrade facilitates direct copy trading, which means signal providers and signal followers can match each other. We liked the advanced search filters as signal followers, which helped us easily discover the best strategies to match our trading needs.

Secondly, we particularly liked the specific parameters such as maximum dropdown, maximum returns and average duration, that we could navigate the database to easily narrow down our search for a signal provider.

LOW COMMISSION FEES

Offering low commission fees on its Pro account, Tickmill will help keep your trading costs low as a forex trader who copy trades. The US$2 commission (per side) to open your copy trading position is the lowest we’ve seen in the industry.

Even Fusion Markets, another low-commission broker, offers slightly higher costs at US$2.25 per side, putting Tickmill at the top of the list.

We highly rate IC Markets as one of the best low-cost forex brokers. The broker’s tight spreads allow you to maximise your trading margins when copy trading with cTrader Copy. The broker also offers a solid selection of 1,700+ markets, allowing you to enter most markets no matter which copy trader you follow.

Why We Recommend cTrader Copy for cTrader

cTrader Copy is an excellent option for copy trading, offering a small selection of strategies to follow, each with a market-proven track record. We like that the platform includes beginner-friendly risk management features such as the equity stop-loss to protect your account when a strategy underperforms.

cTrader Copy offers a basic platform allowing you to choose from 433 strategy providers you can copy, with most specialising in forex and commodity markets.

From our testing, we found that cTrader Copy had some bonus features, such as an equity stop-loss, which will exit the strategy provider should you lose a certain amount of funds. This feature can protect your funds should a strategy provider go on a poor losing streak, and it is useful if you are new to trading.

We like that you can execute and manage your copied strategies on a desktop, app, or web platform, as your account syncs across all devices. The platform copies your trades through its servers, so we found out you didn’t have to have cTrader open to copy your trades, allowing for 24/5 trading.

Other platforms we tested, like MT4 and MT5, had to be switched on to copy trades, meaning you could miss out on opportunities while you sleep.

LOWEST AVERAGE SPREADS

Whether you use IC Markets’ Standard or RAW Spread account to copy trade, the broker offers the lowest overall spreads of any broker we’ve tested.

For its Standard account, we averaged spreads of 1.03 pips for the major currency pairs and for the broker’s RAW Spread account, we averaged spreads of 0.32 pips. This placed IC Markets at number 1 overall for Standard account types and number 3 for RAW Spread/ECN accounts.

Only Fusion Markets could boast tighter average spreads on this list of 0.22 pips for its RAW account.

RAW Account Spread Comparison	EUR/USDAUD/USDAUD/JPYEUR/GBPEUR/JPYGBP/USDUSD/JPYUSD/CADUSD/SGD	EUR/USDAUD/USDAUD/JPYEUR/GBPEUR/JPYGBP/USDUSD/JPYUSD/CADUSD/SGD	EUR/USDAUD/USDAUD/JPYEUR/GBPEUR/JPYGBP/USDUSD/JPYUSD/CADUSD/SGD	EUR/USDAUD/USDAUD/JPYEUR/GBPEUR/JPYGBP/USDUSD/JPYUSD/CADUSD/SGD	EUR/USDAUD/USDAUD/JPYEUR/GBPEUR/JPYGBP/USDUSD/JPYUSD/CADUSD/SGD
	0.10	0.20	0.50	0.20	0.71
	0.02	0.03	0.50	0.27	0.30
	0.02	0.05	0.36	0.19	0.23
	0.10	0.10	0.90	0.40	0.50
	0.14	0.43	1.10	0.75	0.87
	0.10	0.20	0.50	0.30	0.50

Avg. spreads are taken from each broker's website and updated monthly. Last update on 12/01/2024

We found Fusion Markets to offer some of the lowest trading costs and fastest execution speeds, providing an excellent environment to mirror trades from DupliTrade. One of its key strengths is the integration of DupliTrade within the MetaTrader 4 platform, letting you manually trade and copy trade all in one platform.

Why We Recommend DupliTrade

One of the many reasons we think DupliTrade is a top choice is that it offers strategy providers with unique strategies that you can review and choose to invest in. With each strategy being unique and focusing on either technical or fundamental analysis, we feel DupliTrade offers one of the more professional approaches to copy trading than following another individual.

TOP QUALITY SIGNAL PROVIDERS WITH DUPLITRADE

Fusion Markets’ offering of DupliTrade, integrated into the MetaTrader 4 platform, is our favourite trading experience of the popular third-party copy trading platform.

When testing DupliTrade, what stood out for us was the rigorous qualification process signal providers need to pass for them to be accepted. We noticed this resulted in a higher overall quality of signals for us to copy and gave us confidence in who we copy.

Beyond DupliTrade, Fusion Markets also throws Myfxbook AutoTrade into the mix, which is another copy trading option.

LOW TRADING COSTS FOR COPY TRADING

Fusion Markets offers some of the lowest trading costs of any copy trading broker that we’ve tested.

We found that the broker combines both low spreads and low commissions. For its Standard account, Fusion Markets averages 1.19 pips for the major currency pairs (placing it 3rd overall in our tests) while the broker averages 0.22 pips for its RAW account, placing it 1st overall.

Further lowering its trading costs, Fusion Markets charges low commissions of $2.25 per side, placing it second behind Tickmill overall.

BlackBull Markets has the fastest execution speed of all the brokers we tested, making it a top choice when copying trades from Myfxbook. The broker also offers a decent range of markets, allowing you to take full advantage of the variety of copy traders available on Myfxbook.

Why We Recommend Myfxbook

MyFXBook has some of the most advanced analytics for its copy traders, which we feel can help you easily verify your choice of traders. We also liked that all of the traders on MyFXBook are verified with live trading accounts, making it a reliable tool for finding traders to mirror.

GREAT MYFXBOOK BROKER

While BlackBull Markets supports multiple third-party copy trading platforms, such as ZuluTrade and Duplitrade, it is its integration with Myfxbook that stands out to us.

Myfxbook gives you the ability to not only track all of your trading systems in a private portfolio but your account is analysed automatically, doing all the hard work for you to quickly improve your copy trading strategy.

We particularly liked that once a week we were able to review our trading account in detail and question where things had gone wrong or highlight what worked well so we could focus on those key lessons.

BlackBull Markets even has its own copy trading platform, BlackBull CopyTrader, in addition to its other proprietary platforms.

FASTEST EXECUTION SPEEDS FOR COPY TRADING

When we tested execution speeds using MT4 on a demo account, BlackBull Markets had the fastest execution speeds overall.

For limit orders, BlackBull Markets achieved an execution speed of 72 ms while for market orders it had an execution speed of 90 ms. Only Fusion Markets had a faster execution speed for market orders at 77 ms.

Having a fast execution speed is great for copy trading to reduce slippage especially when you are essentially utilising a form of automatic trading, without much manual interference.