Forex Brokerage Fees

During my assessment, FP Markets has proven itself to be an ideal choice for scalping, providing low costs and access to MetaTrader 4 and 5 platforms. Tests conducted by my colleague Ross Collins reveal an impressive 0.41 pips average RAW spread for EUR/USD, surpassing competitors like Admirals with 0.79 pips average.

Along with a $3.00 US dollar per lot commission, FP Markets stands out for having low brokerage fees. Combining these advantages with MT4/5 and an efficient one-click trading feature, I highly recommend FP Markets for scalping.

During my tests, I found that FP Markets RAW account spreads are excellent, averaging 0.1 pips on EUR/USD. For me, this is a solid average spread if you are a scalper, as it allows you to take advantage of tight pricing when aiming to capture small intraday price movements. For context, narrow spreads help reduce the cost of entering trades, allowing you to mark-up potential gains on each scalp.

While executing trades on FP Market’s RAW account, I discovered the commission charged was low at just $3.00 per lot traded. This left me with a positive impression since it’s lower than the industry average by almost $0.50.

This may not seem significant initially, but these savings accumulate substantially, especially if you’re a scalper who trades frequently. This is one of the reasons why I like them — low commissions allow you to retain more of your profits, particularly when scalping multiple times throughout the trading session.

The reason FP Markets can offer these low trading costs is that it’s an ECN broker, which provides direct access to interbank liquidity pools. As a scalper, this is beneficial because you can trade on raw, unfiltered price feeds with minimal risk of requotes or slippage. In addition, depth of liquidity from institutional players ensures your scalping orders can be filled swiftly, even during volatile market conditions.

With the broker using the ECN model, our analyst Ross Collins tested how fast FP Markets’ market order execution speed is and compared the result with other brokers with the MetaTrader 4 platform.

Impressively, FP Markets achieved an average speed of 96 ms, one of the fastest I’ve seen. Surprisingly, the broker turned out to be faster than other well-known fast execution brokers such as Pepperstone and IG Group.

In my honest opinion, this is crucial for scalpers because you have to have fast execution speeds — especially when it comes to instant market orders. Delays of even milliseconds can mean missing your intended entry or exit point, impacting your scalping strategy’s profitability.

While testing FP Markets, I found their range of trading platforms extensive, with popular options like cTrader, MetaTrader 5, and TradingView. However, I felt that MetaTrader 4 is a top choice for scalping with its 30+ indicators, three chart types, and nine timeframes that go as low as tick charts.

From my experience, the feature that paired well with scalping is the one-click trading setting. This reduces the time it takes to place your orders. T help you capture your scalps faster and maximise profit margins on each successful trade.

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I recommend Pepperstone’s Razor account for zero spreads. This isn’t just a marketing tactic; my tests confirmed that the broker consistently maintained a 0.0 pip spread on EUR/USD 100% of the time outside of rollover periods.

With an impressive 98/100 review score, Pepperstone excels in customer support, while offering a wide array of markets to trade. The broker also supports the best trading platforms including MT4, MT5, cTrader, and TradingView.

If you want to start trading with a broker that gives tight spreads, quick execution, and reliable service, Pepperstone is a commendable choice.

Pepperstone gives you the choice of two trading accounts:

• The standard account has no commission, but you pay the spreads.
• The RAW account charges a small commission with tighter spreads.

Pepperstone advertises spreads from 0.0 pips on major pairs with the RAW account, So, again, our analyst Ross Collins tested to see how frequently the broker offered them this low.

Surprisingly, Ross found that zero pips spreads were offered 100% of the time on major pairs like USD/JPY, which was one of the only brokers to do so in the test.

For me, this makes the RAW account ideal for scalpers; not only will you enter with zero spreads, but your trading costs will also be fixed, thanks to the commission charged. With fixed commissions and zero spreads, you’’ll appreciate that trading costs will be the same in both volatile and liquid markets. Hence, whether you’re CFD trading or otherwise, they are consistent.

During my tests, I also found that spreads on Pepperstone’s Standard account are low, averaging 1.12 pips on EUR/USD. This result is impressive because it performed well against the industry average of 1.24 pips. With the price included as one cost, I consider this option as ideal if you’re a beginner, as it simplifies your trading costs.

I value that the broker offers a range of trading platforms, including MetaTrader 4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView, all of which provide excellent trading tools from which you can choose. I tried MetaTrader 4 and found that it comes with 30+ indicators, three chart types, nine timeframes down to tick charts, customisable indicators, and automated trading through Expert Advisors. It also impressed me that the broker offers its own Smart Trader Tools and an additional 13 Expert Advisors you can access with a live trading account.

One of the EAs that stood out to me is the Mini-Terminal, which filled in some of the gaps the MT4’s one-click trading lacked. For example, you can add a default stop-loss and take profit levels to get added to every trade you make – saving you time and potentially protecting you from future mistakes.

As you can see in the image below, I entered the default lot size as 0.01, with a stop loss of 10 pips and take profit of 20 pips. These settings will be used when you click the buy and sell buttons.

Fusion Markets earned my recommendation for showing a blend of low trading costs and swift execution speeds during my tests.

While examining the broker’s Zero account, I found that the EUR/USD spread averaged 0.22 pips— the I lowest observed. With only $2.25 per lot commission, Fusion Markets stands out as a cost-effective choice compared to other brokers I tested.

In addition, the broker ranked second in execution speed at 77ms in my test, while offering an extensive range of trading platforms, including MT4, MT5, and cTrader. Due to this stellar performance, Fusion Markets earned a 79/100 overall score in my review.

Based on the results of my tests, Fusion Markets has the lowest commissions, charging just $2.25 per lot traded. This is much lower than the industry average of $3.29. In fact, my research found that their commissions are 32% cheaper than the industry standard.

In my opinion, these ultra-low commissions are excellent if you trade frequently, as you’ll save a fortune, an average of $1.04 per lot, when you execute multiple trades.

To test Fusion Market’s spreads, I opened their Zero account, which is the broker’s commission-based trading account with tight spreads. Our analyst, Ross Collins, used this account to measure the average spreads, finding Fusion Markets provided very competitive raw spreads averaging just 0.16 pips on EUR/USD.

Combining the low commissions and these razor-thin spreads helps minimise your trading costs.

The broker also impressed me with their execution speeds. I used Fusion Market’s Zero account to test the broker’s execution speed on MetaTrader 4 and compare the results against 14 other brokers.

My findings showed that they have the fastest market execution speed, clocking in at 77 ms, and came second place for its limit order speed of 79 ms. These rapid execution times are crucial as they reduce your chance of getting slippage, a hidden expense to trading that can cost you a good amount of capital in volatile markets.

With excellent execution services and low trading costs, I feel you can effectively take advantage of these benefits across the broker’s diverse range of trading instruments, including 90+ forex, 100+ stock CFDs, 10+ indices, 23+ commodities, and 10+ cryptocurrencies.

I found AvaTrade to be an excellent choice for day trading, thanks to the broker’s fixed spreads. AvaTrade offers fixed spreads from 0.9 pips on EUR/USD with no commission, meaning your trading costs remain constant even when the markets are volatile.

This can be a big plus if you’re day trading, where market announcements can happen and impact the spreads. You can enjoy fixed spreads across the 1,250+ markets available on AvaTrade.

In trading, fixed spreads aren’t as common as variable spreads because the latter tend to be lower more frequently. With AvaTrade, I noticed that their spreads are competitive even with a fixed model.

I tested the broker’s Standard account and found that they offer 0.9 pips on EUR/USD, cheaper than the average of most of variable spread I tested. What I like about AvaTrade’s structure is that fixed spreads will not rise or fall during volatile conditions and price spikes. This can save you quite a good amount of money when day trading as you’ll always know your exact trading costs upfront.

AvaTrade offers fixed spreads on a range of markets, including 55 forex pairs, 632 shares, 33 indices, 27 commodities, and 17 crypto markets. This varied product range is valuable, allowing you to apply your day trading strategies across multiple asset classes while benefiting from the broker’s competitive fixed pricing.

In addition, the broker has a platform called AvaTradeGO, which I found to be offering decent charting tools with 40+ indicators and access to Trading Central. Based on my experience, AvaTradeGO’s impressive market sentiment feature is a valuable partner, offering excellent trading insights by displaying how AvaTrade’s clients perceive market movements. This can enhance your day trading analysis and help validate your trades.

While fixed spreads offer brings certainty, the AvaTradeGO platform further enhances your day trading tools by giving real-time pulse on market sentiment. Access to this data alongside technical analysis can help validate your trading ideas or alert you to potential opportunities you may have missed.

If you want advanced trading platforms that let you customise your charts, AvaTrade also offers MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5.

IG Group sets the bar high when it comes to financial products, offering an impressive range of over 17,000 markets. The broker even has trading on less-common products like futures, options, and sectors.

What impressed me is that, above these novel offerings, IG Group has low brokerage fees. They offer commission-free trading and low average spreads from 1.13 pips on EUR/USD which can keep your brokerage costs low.

Having low average spreads, a wide range of markets, a great selection of trading platforms, and responsive customer support propelled IG Group to score 81/100 in my review.

In my testing, I found that IG Group offers an impressive 17,000+ markets — the most I’ve seen from a CFD broker. These markets include 80+ currency pairs, 12,000+ shares, 130 indices, 41 commodities, and 6,000+ ETFs. Personally, I appreciate having an extensive product range from my provider because it allows me to trade across multiple asset classes using a single account and platform.

Adding to the diverse product range, IG Group offers access to over 7,000 options markets. For context, options are derivative contracts that grant you the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset at a predetermined price within a specific timeframe.

These instruments allow you to enhance returns by taking advantage of anticipated price direction, especially in volatile market conditions. And in case your forecast is accurate, options enable you to capture price movement that can be accelerated by the volatility of the price movement, giving you potentially higher returns vs. a CFD trading. Plus, options have a limited downside risk defined by the upfront premium, meaning you’ll never lose more than the premium paid.

IG Group only provides a Standard account, which is a spread-only account with no commissions, as the pricing is bundled into the spread (which is why it’s wider). I tested this account to see how competitive the spreads are across the forex majors and found the broker averaged 1.13 pips on EUR/USD. This is below the industry average, putting IG Group in line with other low-spread providers like Pepperstone.

I also appreciate that the broker offers several trading platforms, including MetaTrader 4, ProRealTime, L2 Dealer, and its proprietary IG Trading Platform. Based on my experience, the IG Trading Platform is the best overall — you can trade all the markets offered by IG Group, whereas MetaTrader 4 and the other platforms are more limited in comparison.

It also helps that the platform web-based, making it easier to access. You simply need an Internet connection and any browser to load. I tried using it myself and found that it offers expansive charting tools, including over 40 technical indicators and five chart types like line, bar, and candlesticks.

I also liked that you can trade options directly on the same platform, unlike some brokers like AvaTrade, which require separate platforms. This can disrupt workflow and make managing positions clunky.

I highly recommend ThinkMarkets for the broker’s outstanding VPS services and low average spreads. They are a perfect choice for automated trades across various time zones — whether you’re trading in Australia or in London, you’re covered well.

The Standard account offers attractive average spreads of 1.1 pips on EUR/USD, while the ThinkZero account goes even lower at 0.1 pips, with a $3.50 per lot commission. Trading platforms include MT4, MT5 and ThinkTrader.

I also liked that you can buy shares, allowing you to trade CFDs and equities from one broker.

If you’re looking for a broker to maximise your potential with automated trading, choosing one with a VPS is the next logical step. For me, ThinkMarkets is a standout pick in this category, offering low trading costs and top-class VPS service.

Their VPS service comes with servers located next to the exchange to maximize execution speed and reduce lag. I see this service working excellently if you automate your trades, as you can set up your MT4 platform on the VPS and run it remotely 24/7 with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This ensures your trading strategies can execute around the clock without interruptions from your local internet connection or computer downtime.

If you want the tightest spreads, I recommend ThinkMarkets ThinkZero account. This account gives you access to average spreads from 0.1 pips on EUR/USD, but you pay a commission of $3.50 per lot traded which is in line with the industry average. This account works best with the VPS, as your commissions will remain fixed, even when the markets are more volatile.

In fact, in my testing, the broker offered zero-pip spreads 94.93% of the time, as recorded by our analyst Ross Collins across the major pairs. Combining the VPS with razor-thin spreads allows your automated strategies to capture even the smallest price movements with precision and minimal trading costs.

Alternatively, the Standard account is best if you want to avoid commissions and have a one-off trading cost. In my tests, the spreads for the no-commission account are more competitive, at 1.1 pips on EUR/USD. This spread-only pricing model may appeal to those who prefer a straightforward, all-inclusive cost structure for automated trading activities.