Best MT4 Brokers In Canada

We awarded OANDA as the top MetaTrader 4 broker with an overall score of 71/100 due to its low trading costs, extensive product range, and exclusive plugins. One unique plugin is ‘open order book indicator’, which scalper traders will appreciate for its trade volume insights.

OANDA has 3 Trading Platforms – OANDA Trade, MT4 and Tradingview, 69 Forex pairs, 16 indices along with bonds and commodities to trade, which we think makes them the best Canadian forex broker.

Since OANDA has no minimum deposit,  we opened a live trading account to see how OANDA Trade compares with the MetaTrader 4 platform, as the experiences can vary between trading platforms. We were curious as some brokers have different spreads and products to trade with between the platforms they offer.

While using the platform, we noticed that the average spread of EUR/USD was 1.2 pips and GBP/USD was two pips on the standard account. Although the spreads are competitive, we liked that OANDA offers a way to reduce them further through the Elite Trader program.

To join the program, we had to meet the minimum requirements, which is to trade $10,000,000 in volume per month, and then we’d save 10% on our trading costs. As a bonus, we also received high-priority support and a dedicated relationship manager to liaise with if we had an issue, which is a nice touch.

One of OANDA’s key features that makes it a solid choice for MetaTrader 4 is its “open order book indicator”. This tool lets you see all its clients’ open and pending orders. Not everyone will find this helpful, but if you scalp the markets or day trade, this can certainly give you an edge with your analysis.

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Overall, FP Markets features competitive spreads with the average being 0.1 pips on EUR/USD when using their Raw accounts. We were also impressed with the broker’s fast execution speeds of 96 ms for market orders to help you avoid slippage when trading.

FP Markets also offers ‘Traders toolbox’ and other additional trading tools to enhance your MetaTrader platform experience.

From our experience using the live RAW trading account FP Markets offers, the spreads on the MT4 averaged 0.1 pips on EUR/USD, over 50% lower than the industry average of 0.22%.

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	0.30	0.50
	0.06	0.27	0.23	0.49	0.59
	0.02	0.05	0.36	0.19	0.23
	0.10	0.21	0.54	N/A	0.40

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

FP Markets can offer such low spreads because it is a No-Dealing Desk (NDD) broker, which means it passes your trades instantly to the liquidity provider without adding any markup to the prices as other brokers do.

We found the NDD experience excellent when placing our trades on the MT4 platform, which executed lightning fast at an average of 96 ms in our testing. It placed in third place, behind BlackBull Markets and Fusion Markets, and all achieved below-industry-average results of 141.42 ms.

Plus, we didn’t suffer any slippage during our tests (this isn’t guaranteed, as slippage can always happen).

If we compare FP Markets with the CIRO-regulated brokers offering NDD execution and RAW trading accounts, there is no competition. FP Markets has over 50% cheaper commissions than those of the CIRO-regulated brokers ($3.00 vs. $7.00), saving you a small fortune over time.

We recommend FOREX.com for its excellent trading tools on MetaTrader 4. The desktop version is our pick, which comes with FX Blue and consists of over 20 EAs and custom indicators to automate your trading and improve your technical analysis.

Additionally, we like the large range of 90 forex pairs that are available for trade with the broker’s Standard and RAW spread account.

FOREX.com offers a decent selection of trading platforms – these being FOREX.com trading platform, MetaTrader 4 and TradingView. Having tested all three, we think it’s the best choice for MetaTrader 4 as it offers nine Expert Advisors that enhance the platform further.

We set up our Forex.com account with MetaTrader 4 to test these plugins and found that they added some much-needed account management tools that can save you some time.

One Expert Advisor that stood out to us is the “mini terminal” included in the bundle. We felt it took the one-click trading to another level by adding a default stop loss and take profit level, so it will always add them to your instant executions.

FOREX.com offers a decent range of markets on the MetaTrader 4 platform, with 84 forex pairs, 17 indices, and 13 commodities covering the most popular markets.

The spreads were also decent, averaging 1.2 pips on EUR/USD with no commissions, which aligns with the norm for CIRO-regulated brokers in our tests, averaging 1.17 pips. Alternatively, their RAW pricing account has tighter spreads from 0.0 pips on EUR/USD but charges a commission of $7.00 per lot, which is average for a CIRO-regulated broker.

With 95 cryptocurrencies, we think Eightcap has a competitive advantage since CIRO-regulated brokers cannot offer cryptos as CFDs. Additionally, Eightcap is one of the best forex brokers for low-spread STP/ECN forex trading accounts, with average spreads being 1 pip for EUR/USD.

One feature we love that you can use with MT4 is Capitalise.ai, which allows you to create automation bots without knowing any code.

Please note, that Eightcap is regulated by the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC), not IIROC, but still accepts Canadian clients.

In our tests, we liked that Eightcap had the largest choice of crypto markets, offering a 95 cryptocurrencies with MT5 and TradingView and 79 with MT4. Crypto includes Bitcoin, XRP, and Litecoin, plus over 100 more to trade. Since Eightcap is an offshore broker (regulated by ASIC in Australia and SCB in Bahamas), they can offer CFD crypto trading which CIRO regulated brokers cannot.

One of the advantages of MT4 is the ability to automate your crypto trades through Expert Advisors, and can be complicated to code. However, Eightcap overcomes this by offering Capitalise.ai, allowing you to program your automated strategies through AI without knowing any code.

We tested Capitalise.ai and found it pleasant to work with, as it offered interactive tutorials on how to use the tool. After 10 minutes, we could write our automated strategy by selecting our rules, and Capitalise.ai did the rest, including backtesting and optimizing.

Capitalise.ai made launching our new automated strategy easy as it integrates directly with MetaTrader 4, and it took a few clicks to get it working.

As for forex trading with Eightcap, we like to test the broker’s average spreads of the major pairs as we feel this gives a better impression of the trading costs. Eightcap impressed us in our tests, recording an average spread of 1.06 pips across the majors, much lower than the industry average of 1.52 pips we tested.

We recommend Fusion Markets for its industry-leading lowest commissions with MT4 at $3.50 per round-turn trade.

This is further enhanced by the broker’s under 80 ms execution speeds, the fastest broker we tested, standing out as a cost-effective choice for Forex traders.

Our recommendation is grounded in the Fusion Markets’ commitment to providing a competitive edge, ensuring that you can optimize your trading experience while keeping expenses minimal.

From using a live trading account with Fusion Markets, it’s safe to say they offer one of the cheapest overall trading fees. Only a few brokers can compete with Fusion Market’s low commissions, which is $2.25 per one lot traded, $1.23 cheaper than the industry average ($3.48).

This is impressive as it is a staggering $4.75 cheaper than its CIRO-regulated competitors, like Forex.com, for what is essentially the same service. The low commissions and spreads make an excellent choice if you are a scalper, as the fees and the tight spreads will boost your profit margins much more than most other brokers.

We like that Fusion Markets provides access to extra tools for the MT4 platform, including copy trading services like DupliTrade, which plugs into your MetaTrader 4 account. This lets you automatically mirror the trades from one of their 13+ strategies.

We got our MT4 account connected to DupliTrade, and it was as simple as choosing the strategy we liked, clicking duplicate, and then choosing how much you wish to invest.

Once we allocated our funds to our chosen strategy, all the trades were placed on the MetaTrader 4 platform, automatically copying each trade the strategy made.

We recommend AvaTrade as an excellent choice for day trading, as it offers stable spreads that suit scalping strategies, which are lower for Canadian traders than in other countries. One unique feature we love is the availability of Forex options, which even has a specialized app called AvaOptions.

AvaTrade’s solid reputation is underscored by a noteworthy 77/100 Trust score in our market tests, confirming its reliability. You can trade using the broker standard account, which has zero commissions.

AvaTrade has spreads that start from 0.6 pips on EUR/USD and average 0.9 pips. This in some ways is interesting as it does make AvaTrade the best choice for low spreads.

During our tests, we found that AvaTrade offers a range of markets covering 55 forex pairs, 33 indices, 59 ETFs, 27 commodities, and 632 stocks. Although they cover a variety of markets, the range is limited (especially on MT4) overall however they do have Options trading which is unique.

AvaTrade has 42 Forex pairs available as options plus Gold and Silver. To trade options, you must use AvaOptions which is available for Web browsers and for Android and iOS mobile apps. We like that the expiry times can be as far as one year in the future as most brokers have daily, 1 week or 1 month expires. Another feature we liked when testing was the Live Forex Options Widget. This widget shows the strike prices (call and put option), the implied volatility and the delta for each currency pair.

We recommend CMC Markets for its extensive offering, featuring the largest range of currency pairs with over 175 pairs using MT4 (and 330 with NGEN).

When using the broker’s RAW account, you will receive low EUR/USD variable spreads of 0.5 pips. When combined with low commissions, set at $2.50 round-turn, CMC Markets ensures cost-effective trading, enhancing affordability which we like.

Vast currency selection and low trading costs are why we recommend CMC Markets for traders seeking diversity, cost efficiency, and competitive pricing.

While reviewing CMC Markets, we liked that they offer an impressive 13,000+ markets, the largest out of the MT4 brokers in Canada. Although, most of these are stocks unavailable on MetaTrader 4 due to MT4 not having the infrastructure for the price feeds of stocks.

However, within this large group, we also found they offered 338 different forex pairs to trade on the MT4, including 23 FX forward markets. We can confidently say this is the largest range of currency pairs on a broker we’ve tested.

While opening a live account, we were surprised to see their FX Active Trader account offering commissions at $2.50 per lot traded, which is very low for a CIRO-regulated broker. Other CIRO-regulated brokers like FXCM and Forex.com charge $7.00 per lot, which is expensive for RAW spread pricing.

So you’re certainly getting a solid deal if you want to trade with RAW spreads and low commissions while using a CIRO-regulated broker.

We recommend BlackBull Markets for its exceptional execution speeds of 72 ms for limit orders and 90 ms for market orders, which reduces your slippage risks.

The flexibility of the broker’s 3 ECN account types sits well with us, notably the Prime ECN Account which offers a competitive US$6 round-turn commission per 100k traded (albeit with a $2,000 minimum deposit.)

We like platform variety and BlackBull doesn’t just limit you to MetaTrader 4, you can also use MetaTrader 5, cTrader and TradingView, further enhancing its appeal.

One test we put all brokers through is to find their true execution speed, which is where we use MetaTrader 4 to test how fast the broker is.

In our tests, BlackBull Markets led the pack with its speed, with solid results of 72ms on the limit order test and 90ms on the instant execution tests. These figures are rapid, as only two other brokers came close to these speeds: Fusion Markets and Pepperstone. All the other brokers were above 100ms, and the average was 129ms.

Based on the results, this makes BlackBull Markets an excellent broker for automating your trades with Expert Advisors. These speeds ensure your EA’s instructions are executed faster than any other broker we tested, helping you reduce slippage and lower your automated trading costs.

What makes BlackBull Markets stand out is that CIRO does not regulate them, so they do not follow the leverage restrictions, allowing you to leverage your positions up to 1:500 on major pairs.